6

It is a story from not so long ago,” Circe begins, “though to some of you whose purity has become muddied over the years with human effluvia, it may seem like ancient history. But remember—ancient history to the mammals is nothing more than yesterday to us.

“I first heard this story from our great founder Raal”—this name my best approximation of the grunt she emitted—“and he heard it from his parents, who heard it from their parents, and so on. It has lived through the ages, and now I pass it on to you.”

“This Raal must be the vacuum salesman,” Ernie mumbles to me, and I’m impressed at how well he pronounces the difficult dino name. “The one who started up the cult and then died off.”

“Less than one million years ago,” continues Circe, “our ancestors were faced with a problem. A certain branch of the hominid family, a species which they had been watching carefully for some time, had begun to evolve along a different path than that of their close relatives, the great apes. The change had become more significant, more pronounced over the last few hundred thousand years, and the great Councils were concerned that the evolution was somehow speeding up, that these hominids whose braincase was quickly enlarging might soon learn a form of communication, and with it, create a society. This was something never before seen in the course of our shared history: a potential rival.

“But the Council members urged caution. Surely these . . . monkeys could pose no threat to our well-being. They were gangly, they were dumb, they were loners, for the most part. And they were small, much smaller than we were. Even though we were no longer the size of the Great Ancestors, our forefathers of a million years ago still stood taller and broader than the dinosaur of today—ten, twelve feet at the minimum.”

“How’s she supposed to know this?” Ernie grumbles to me.

“It’s a story. You heard of stories, right?”

Circe goes on. “But it soon came to light that one band of humans had indeed organized itself and begun to live in a loosely based nomad society around the area that has now become Ghana. There was concern that the other hominids would do likewise within the next ten or twenty thousand years, and that something ought to be done about it.

“The most vocal of those urging action were three brothers, whose names and races are unfortunately lost to us. But these brothers were widely known to be the strongest, bravest of their kind, to have battled other natural predators with great skill and valor, and so it was decided that they should attempt to make contact with that first group of hominids.

“The first brother was a genial fellow—kind, giving, and always had a knack for putting others at ease. The second was uncommonly large and powerful, and some say he stood higher than the trees in the forest. And the third was particularly cunning, able to wrap his mind around the sharpest of problems. They were a perfect choice.

“The brothers wanted to go together—that had always been their way, and that indeed was how their own forefathers had defeated an attempted coup by a dinosaur faction earlier that eon. But the Council had mandated that each of the brothers would go singly to the valley of the hominids, and, as we know, when it comes to the Council, rules are rules. We may have evolved some in the last million years, but the Councils have not.” Laughter here from the audience, and I find myself chuckling along, caught up in the story’s flow.

“The first brother set out for the valley and, after a long and arduous journey, found his way to the outskirts of the hominid camp. These prehumans were living out in the open back then, not even bright enough to cover themselves with a simple lean-to or hut. The first brother hid in the forest and watched them for days, trying to figure out how best to communicate with these new creatures. After some time, he decided that the best course of action would be a direct and simple approach, perhaps with some pantomime thrown in for good measure.

“At dawn one morning, he strolled into the valley, head held high, trying to win them over with his best smile. He wanted to welcome them to the race of sentient beings, to glean their intentions toward the valley and toward the dinosaurs, and to see if they would be interested in forging a friendship.

“He was massacred on sight.”

An electric shock passes through the crowd, rocking us all backward as one. Circe’s voice hit a hard note with that last part, a flick of vitriol hitting hard on the word massacred, and it did the job right.

“When a few days had passed, and they had yet to hear from the first brother, the second was sent out to see what had become of him. He reached the valley quickly and proceeded to do the same as his sibling before him—hide in the forest nearby and observe the creatures before making his move. But that night, as he watched from a distance, he saw the whole tribe of hominids feasting on his brother’s carcass, shoving gnawed bones and bloody entrails into their disgusting, greedy little mouths.

“Without thought, without any preparation, the enraged dinosaur rushed into the clearing, teeth bared, claws slashing out, and fell upon the unsuspecting hominids, bloodlust erasing all thoughts of danger or consequence.

“He killed twelve of them before he, too, was slaughtered.

“Now quite some time had passed, and neither of the brothers had returned. The Council had no choice but to send out the final one of the trio, and he set out willingly, eager to learn what had become of his siblings. But the third brother was the cunning one, the cautious one, and he took his time coming to the valley. He examined every trail, every path, attempting to get a true feel for how the hominids acted and hunted and ate and lived.

“So by the time he arrived at the valley and, like the others before him, hid in the woods to watch the hominids from afar, his brothers had already been consumed and their bones picked clean. All that remained of them were a pair of partially intact skeletons scattered across the valley floor.

“Perhaps because the remains of his brothers were unrecognizable to him, or perhaps because it was simply his nature, the third brother did not become enraged. He did not set out immediately to destroy the creatures, nor did he step down into the valley in the hope of forging a peace treaty between the species.

“What he did was come up with a plan.

“He tucked his tail between his legs and secured it there with a soft, flexible sapling, tying the edges around his waist. He covered his body in mud, slathering it across his scales, so that his natural hide looked like nothing more than that of any other creature who hadn’t bathed in some time. He retracted his claws. He broke off the two teeth that showed even when his mouth was closed, snapping them at the base. He pulled back his ears and touched up his eyes and covered his snout in a homemade mask of twigs and branches. He slathered himself in feces, so as to obscure his natural smell.

“The next morning, costumed up in the first guise ever, he walked out of the forest and into the heart of that hominid camp, sat down in the middle, and grunted along with the best of them. His costume was shabby, of course, and nowadays would seem downright ludicrous, but the humans were slightly dumber then than they are now, and they accepted the dinosaur as one of their own. That night, he even went so far as to partake in the marrow of one of his own brothers’ bones, so as not to raise suspicion. He looked like a hominid, he acted like a hominid, and he smelled like a hominid.

“And that night, when all of those upright mammals had gone to sleep, the third brother crept up to each and every one of the creatures, and cleanly, quietly, and efficiently slashed them all to death.”

A great cheer goes up from the audience, as if we’re personally welcoming the great and conquering dinosaur back from the battle. Circe raises her arms for silence.

“Now—can anyone tell me if this dinosaur, who tricked the humans by guising himself up as one of their ilk, was a hero?”

A few hands pop up instantly—brownnosers, no doubt, who’ve heard this story before and know the appropriate response. I chuckle at their eagerness to impress the teacher, but my laughter soon dribbles to a stop when I see that long, green finger being pointed in my direction.

“You,” says Circe, and there’s no doubt that she’s turned her attention to the one Raptor PI in the room who isn’t interested in playing twenty questions. “Tell me, was he a hero?”

Gotta stammer, a little hemming and hawing. “I don’t—I, ah—”

“Gut instinct. Hero or not?”

“Hero,” I say. “He killed those who had killed his brothers. Revenge factor right there.” I assume this is the correct answer, considering that the whole story seemed to be primarily up-with-dinos intensive.

“True,” says Circe, and the class goody-goodies fix me with envious glares. “But in doing so, did he not compromise his identity? Did he not force himself into an unnatural position?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, “but it’s nothing different from what we’re doing now.”

An ooooh from the crowd—including Ernie, the bastard—and I realize quickly that I’ve just made Circe’s point for her. But that smile she shoots my way smoothes over all possible feelings of ill will, and I find myself gravitating toward those beautiful pointy teeth and that shimmering green hide.

“What that one dinosaur started one million years ago as a means to avenge his family’s death has become our way of life. Some may say he was a hero, but we believe he was nothing more than the catalyst to our eventual downfall.”

Murmurs of agreement as those head-of-the-class shoe polishers turn their noses up in my direction and go back to their business of being superior.

“I don’t tell you all of this to make you angry,” Circe says to the audience. “In fact, I don’t tell you all of this to make you feel anything. That’s not my job, to tell you how to feel, to give you . . . propaganda . . . despite what others might say. But it is important for each and every one of you to know who we are and where we came from, and why the dinosaurs of today are so much different from our true ancestors.”

Sure, I got it, but she didn’t have to make me feel like a problem student.

“Pooched that one pretty good, kid,” jokes Ernie. I don’t respond.

“This is where the issue of purity comes in,” Circe continues. “How natural are we as dinosaurs? How far have we strayed from our lineage? Stories tell of the days when our pheromones would carry for miles, when we could sense large packs of one another across entire seas. Now we’re lucky if we can sniff each other out across the dinner table.”

Around here is when she launches full force into a lecture about purity and naturalism and the torture we dinos put ourselves through every day, both physical and emotional, in order to blend in with the so-called ruling majority. I learn, over approximately one hour’s time, how the costumes we put on actually absorb certain chemicals, sapping us of our natural pheromones; how studies have shown that over prolonged exposure in a guise, a dino’s brain waves will actually become more similar to that of a mammal’s; how our Jekyll-and-Hyde, persona-by-necessity lifestyle has splintered us into thinking of ourselves as sixteen separate races of dinosaur, as opposed to one single species. It all makes a heck of a lot of sense, especially when it’s coming from the beautiful, sensuous snout of Circe.

Ernie is not quite as taken by this creature as I am; he uses the claws from one hand to pick at the other, occasionally looking up and nodding in mock enlightenment.

It’s another half-hour, perhaps, before the speech is all good and done, and another ten minutes after that before our applause settles down. As the band begins to play again—this time, the music jibing a bit more with my jangled ears—Circe takes leave of the stage, disappearing among a crowd of well-wishers.

“That was a big freaking waste,” Ernie says. “I didn’t smell him the whole time.”

“Smell who?”

“Rupert.”

“Rupert who?” I ask, and Ernie slaps me in the back of the head. Now it all comes rushing back—the ex-wife, the brother, the fact that I’m standing in the central room of some sort of cult. Whatever brain-fog I fell into during Circe’s speech dissipates, and I shake my head a few times to clear the last cobwebs.

Ernie puts a hand on my shoulder, catches my eyes with his. “You all right?”

“Never better. Let’s scram.”

But it’s not quite that easy. A receiving line has been set up by the door, Circe greeting her visitors and bidding farewell to the departing guests. Three beefy dinos, Samuel the Iguanodon one of them, stand by her side, watching the crowd with what is certainly dubious intent, insisting that anyone who wishes to leave first pay their respects to our esteemed hostess. There’s something just short of paranoia in those eyes, and Ernie and I realize that it’s best to go with the flow. We take our place in the back of the line and slowly make our way forward.

“You catch that?” Ernie asks me after a few minutes spent shuffling forward six inches at a go.

“Catch what?”

“That scent—the cappuccino-flavored one.”

I flare my nostrils as wide as they will go and take in a deep breath of the surrounding air. A rush of pheromones invade the olfactory nerves, and I have to close my eyes, my ears, shut down my other senses, in order to concentrate on separating the wildly varying scents. Yes . . . Somewhere in there, intertwined with the pine nuts and the oranges and the ocean breeze, is a distinct smell of after-dinner coffee drink, flavored lightly with cream, maybe a hint of chocolate.

“That’s him?” I ask. “He’s a mocha?”

“Can’t be certain, but I think so.”

We take a quick scan of the room, trying to direct our snouts toward the different dinos standing about us so as to isolate their individual scents. This is not simple—the practice of direct-line smelling is more art than science, and some would claim more hocus than pocus. The line continues to move forward, and we continue to come closer to our brief audience with Circe.

“Quick run past the dame, we shake hands, say our thanks, and then we get ready to track him. Clear your nose, for what it’s worth.”

It’s another twenty minutes before we reach the front of the line, Ernie ahead of me. I’m anxious to get this part over with so that we can find Rupert, take him home, and close the case so that I can get in a good workout tomorrow morning. It’s been three weeks since I’ve played my Richard Simmons Sweatin’ with the Stegosaur tape, and my hind thighs are feeling a mite paunchy.

I stand back as Ernie approaches Circe and issues what I imagine to be polite thanks and some insincere toadying. I fully expect to repeat the performance.

But when I’m actually standing in front of her, when I’m fully face-to-face with that voluptuous Raptor body and those full Raptor lips, it’s hard for me to even stammer out “Thank you.”

“I hope I didn’t embarrass you,” she says. “With my question.”

“No, it’s—I learned a lot.” And then, like the babbling moron I have instantly become, I repeat, “Learned a lot.”

There’s an intoxicating aroma streaming out of Circe’s pores, and it’s more than just the strong whiff of a Raptor female that’s got me going. At this close distance, my head is spinning from whatever magical smells are dripping out of her body; Circe’s essence smells of the natural intoxicants—basil, oregano, cilantro. Never before have I encountered a dino with such pheromones, and I doubt I will again. The room tilts to the left, and I try to adjust my head in order to counterbalance. It doesn’t work.

“What’s your name?” she asks me.

“Vincent,” I say. “My name’s Vincent.” Then, because I haven’t made quite enough a fool of myself this evening, I give it one more go-round. “That’s me. Vincent.”

I’m being drawn in, somehow. Circe is three feet away, then two, then one. Those eyes, that snout are encompassing the whole of my vision, and the scent grows stronger. Even beyond basil and its brothers now, moving into thyme and rosemary and fennel—all of the most powerful herbs I’ve ever known—the scents are invading my head via these two wide nostrils, taking long, powerful strokes up my sinuses, spawning upstream toward my brain, and every care and worry in my head liquefies at once, pouring out through my ears . . .

“Vincent, it’s wonderful to meet you,” she says, and I can feel my lips curling into a goofy smile. Part of me is quite aware of this transformation from a detached private investigator to a drooling, dribbling schoolboy, but the other part is happy to lower the safety bar and hang on for the ride.

A hand on the back of my head—and Circe draws me closer, tighter. Is she going to kiss me? I pucker, waiting for the sweet feeling of flesh on flesh, but my head is pulled past those lips, past that perfect left cheek, and around to the back of the neck. I get it. I get it. I prepare to hold my breath. Can’t do this.

No time. Before I even have a chance to ready myself for that delicious smell-taste of Circe’s pheromones, I am hit full-on by a tidal wave of condiments cascading over my body, drenching my senses in a herbological assault.

And then I’m no longer in a house in the Hollywood Hills; I’m no longer standing in a receiving line, bent awkwardly and possibly obscenely over our host, my nose pressed to the back of her neck. In fact, I’m no longer in the City of Angels or its environs, and I’m no longer in this millennium.

Instead, I’m running through an endless forest, the trees overhead scraping the sky, leaves the size of Chryslers, my legs blurring as they churn faster and faster across the muddy ground, a warm wind whipping past my hide. A sweet wail fills the night and I find myself calling out in my own Raptor-tones, answering in some language that, although I have never heard it before, trips naturally off my tongue.

Circe is beside me, running strong.

A cliff approaches in the distance, and we increase our speed, some primal need accelerating our run into madness. There’s no slowing down now, no stopping as the cliff looms larger, the overhang and infinite drop below coming sharply into view. A turn of my head, a look toward my companion, and she grabs my claw in hers and smiles as we leap high into the air and off the cliff, rising higher and higher before gravity takes its toll and we begin the inevitable plummet . . .

We make love on the way down.