The Lost World

Guitierrez drained his beer. "The world," he said, is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent – and where they come from."

The loudspeaker called Levine’s flight. Both men stood up from the table. Guiitierrez said, "You’ll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today."

"To be quite honest," Levine said, "I don’t know what I saw today. It could have been anything."

Guitierrez grinned. "Safe flight, Richard."

"Take care, Marty."

Departure

His backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Guitierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back.

Directly ahead was the Customs desk, travelers lined up to have their passports stamped. He was booked on a night flight to San Francisco, with a long stopover in Mexico City; not many people were queuing up. He probably had time to call his office, and leave word for his secretary, Linda, that he would be on the flight; and perhaps, he thought, he should also call Malcolm. Looking around, he saw a row of phones marked ICT TELEFONOS INTFRNATIONAL along the wall to his right, but there were only a few, and all were in use. He had better use the satellite phone in his backpack, he thought, as he swung the pack off his shoulder, and perhaps it would be-

He paused, frowning.

He looked back at the wall.

Four people were using the phones. The first was a blonde woman in shorts and a halter top, bouncing a young sunburned child in her arms as she talked. Next to her stood a bearded man in a safari jacket, who glanced repeatedly at his gold Rolex watch. Then there was a grayhaired, grandmotherly woman talking in Spanish, while her two fullgrown sons stood by, nodding emphatically.

And the last person was the helicopter pilot. He had removed his uniform jacket, and was standing in short sleeves and tie. He was turned away, facing the wall, shoulders hunched.

Levine moved closer, and heard the pilot speaking in English. Levine set his pack down and beiit over it, pretending to adjust the straps while he listened. The pilot was still turned away from him.

He heard the pilot say, "No, no, Professor. It is not that way. No. Then there was a pause. "No," the pilot said. "I am telling to you, no. I am sorry, Professor Baselton, but this is not known, It is an island, but which one…We must wait again for more. No, he leaves tonight. No, I think he does not know anything, and no pictures. No. I understand. Adiós.

Levine ducked his head as the pilot walked briskly toward the LACSA desk at the other end of the airport.

What the hell? he thought.

It is an island, but which one…

How did they know it was an island? Levine himself was still not sure of that. And he had been working intensively on these finds, day and night, trying to put it together. Where they had come from. Why it was happening.

He walked around the corner, out of sight, and pulled out the little satellite phone. He dialed it quickly, calling a number in San Francisco.

The call went through, rapidly clicking as it linked with the satellite. It began to ring. There was a beep. An electronic voice said, "Please enter your access code."

Levine punched in a six-digit number.

There was another beep. The electronic voice said, "Leave your message."

"I’m calling," Levine said, "with the results of the trip. Single specimen, not in good shape. Location: BB-17 on your map. That’s far south, which fits all of our hypotheses. I wasn’t able to make a precise identification before they burned the specimen. But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes. As you know, this animal is not on the list -a highly sigificant finding."

He glanced around, but no one was near him, no one was paying attention. "Furthermore, the lateral femur was cut in a deep gash. This is extremely disturbing." He hesitated, not wanting to say too much. "And I am sending back a sample that requires close examination. I also think some other people are interested. Anyway, whatever is going on down here is new, Ian. There haven’t been any specimens for over a year, and now they’re showing up again. Something new is happening. And we don’t understand it at all."

Or do we? Levine thought. He pressed the disconnect, turned the phone off, and replaced it in the other pocket of his backpack. Maybe, he thought, we know more than we realize. He looked thoughtfully toward the departure gate. It was time to catch his flight.

Palo Alto

At 2 a.m., Ed James pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Marie Callender’s on Carter Road. The black BMW was already there, parked near the entrance. Through the windows, he could see Dodgson sitting inside at a booth, his bland features frowning. Dodgson was never in a good mood. Right now he was talking to the heavyset man alongside him, and glancing at his watch. The heavyset man was Baselton. The professor who appeared on television. James always felt relieved whenever Baselton was there. Dodgson gave him the creeps, but it was hard to imagine Baselton involved in anything shady.

James turned off the ignition and twisted the rearview mirror so he could see as he buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie. He glimpsed his face in the mirror-a disheveled, tired man with a two-day stubble of beard. What the hell, he thought. Why shouldn’t he look tired? It was the middle of the fucking night.

Dodgson always scheduled his meetings in the middle of the night, and always at this same damn Marie Callender restaurant. James never understood why; the coffee was awful. But then, there was a lot he didn’t understand.

He picked up the manila envelope, and got out of the car, slamming the door. He headed for the entrance, shaking his head. Dodgson had been paying him five hundred dollars a day for weeks now, to follow a bunch of scientists around. At first, James had assumed it was some sort of industrial espionage. But none of the scientists worked for industry; they held university appointments, in pretty dull fields. Like that paleobotanist Sattler whose specialty was prehistoric pollen grains. James had sat through one of her lectures at Berkeley, and had barely been able to stay awake. Slide after slide of little pale spheres that looked like cotton balls, while she nattered on about polysaccharide bonding angles and the Campanian-Maastrichtlan boundary. Jesus, it was boring.