Cretaceous Dawn

Most dinosaurs had four digits on the hand and three on the foot. For Troodon, however, only two digits touched the ground, leaving a distinctive print. The third toe curved up, supporting a hooked blade, one of the creature’s main offensive weapons. Although this animal averaged only about 50 kilograms, the size of a wolf, it was probably a highly effective and intelligent hunter. Judging by the size of the brain case, it was among the smartest of all dinosaurs. With its very large eye sockets, Troodon probably had keen vision in low light, enabling it to hunt at dawn and at dusk, and in the dim light of the forest.

It took Frank two days to make the journey to the western side of the island, moving slowly a short distance at a time with frequent pauses, and resting in the middle of the day. He remained alert and full of succinct advice; advice that they now knew was worth listening to. He seemed to know a great deal about survival in the wilderness.

It would have been better for the healing process if Frank had kept still for a week, but all had a common urge to get away from the beach and the giant crocodiles. They were also relieved to begin the thousand-mile journey, albeit a slow beginning, because by doing so they had made a decision, and felt their determination would keep them going. Frank was immensely cheered by the prospect of a river journey, at least at the outset. His leg might heal while they paddled upstream on a raft. Julian didn’t point out that the river on the mainland might be very short, or make a turn and take them in quite the wrong direction.

Yariko and Dr. Shanker built a crude shelter on dry ground, far enough from the edmontosaur swamp to be safe from flies, with fallen branches and fern fronds. The group spent four days there, in the end, and everyone felt better “inside,” although they knew the shelter would be meaningless to a predator. Frank kept both the gun and the VHF radio near him; he’d grasp them if there was a noise like an animal approaching. Otherwise, he sat next to the shelter making spears and various tools, or so he said. He’d get a small fire going to blacken the ends of straight sticks, which he’d then chop at with a stone, scattering charred wood everywhere.

Yariko became the water collector. She’d found an empty turtle shell about eighteen inches across that made an excellent pot for boiling water. With Julian’s knowledge they managed a reasonable diet that included roasted mammals, a very few plant stems, and tubers. But it was Dr. Shanker who was the best cook among them: once he made a mammal stew, complete with crisp plant stems and a leafy spice, that was almost tasty, although not entirely free of fur.

Yariko was also the weapons master. She claimed to have watched her father at his bow-making hobby, and despite her colleague’s derisive snorts, she determinedly collected sticks and vines and tried all sorts of arrangements, without any success. Julian would return to the camp and find the two of them sitting there, Frank surrounded by chips of stone or wood shavings, Yariko looking sadly at a tangle of braided vine and broken stick.

“This is hard work, this living like a caveman!” Yariko exclaimed on the second morning in their new camp, as she tried to chip wood with an axe of sorts created by Frank. Sweat was dripping off her upper lip and her T-shirt was soaked. Her hands were scratched and bleeding, her hair in its messy braid held bits of leaves and a twig, and dried mud flaked off her jeans every time she moved. Julian thought she’d never looked so beautiful, or so determined.

Yariko swung the makeshift axe again and the stone head flew off, fortunately missing Julian, and landed in a thicket. She finished the swing with the handle and then sat down on the branch she was trying to cut, and laughed.

“Stone age indeed. Do you know,” she said, rubbing her arm across her forehead and leaving a streak of dirt in the sweat, “I’ve spent so much time lately inside a lab, living in my head with computers and calculations, it was almost like I didn’t have a body anymore.” She looked up at Julian with her face flushed and her eyes big and bright. “Here I feel so alive. Not just my brain, but all of me. My hands.” She held her hands out, palms up, to show the calluses and splinters. “My arms. My legs. I can feel every muscle. I’d almost forgotten what my body was capable of,” she finished, with another laugh.

Julian had never wanted so much to grab her in a hug . . . and perhaps more. He had certainly not forgotten what her body was capable of, when he used to watch her back at the university. There had been a distance between them even when Yariko was at her friendliest, as if she didn’t entirely see him, or didn’t let go of her mental calculations while talking to him. Or perhaps she was always thinking of someone else.

Looking down at her happy, very alive face, and smelling his own sharp sweat mixed with a whiff of hers, Julian suddenly wanted to stay in the Cretaceous forever.

And the Cretaceous was becoming more wonderful to him every day. At dawn and at dusk, he became an explorer. He sometimes brought in small animals to eat; but more often he brought reports of footprints or other signs of animal life around their camp.

Once he saw the distinctive footprints of Troodon sunk into the mud near the stream, not far from the camp. He studied them for some time, trying to estimate the size of the animal, and whether it was one or several who had stood on the bank. He hesitated over informing his companions of the find; in the end he said nothing. After all, they would be moving on very soon.

People often thought of the Late Cretaceous as the glory days and the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs, as Julian knew; but it was equally the dawn of the massive radiation of mammals, from a few very similar types into the diversified groups that would spread over the earth. It was these small mammals scampering through the forest, Julian’s own ancestors, that interested him more than any other type of animal. Often he sat off to the side in the twilight hours, silently watching for the creatures.

The most common type was about the size of a kitten and gray all over. It would rummage through the dry leaves and then sit up and gnaw on a beetle, with an audible little crunching of the carapace between its teeth. But it was not until he found a dead animal, torn apart and surrounded by Hilda’s pad prints, that he was able to study its teeth and guess at the genus.

Yariko squatted beside him, peering at the little bundle of fur and blood, holding her nose. “How do you know it’s a marsupial?”

Julian pried open the tiny mouth of his poor dead Alphadon and pointed out the unique marsupial dental formula: three premolars and four molars.

Alphadon was not the only mammal that Hilda obligingly killed. Each time she plodded into camp with a bit of gray fur dangling from her mouth, they would crowd around eagerly and Dr. Shanker would coax it away from her, much to her chagrin. Eventually she stopped bringing her kills to camp, and Julian would find them scattered around the forest, chewed almost beyond recognition.

They also found several larger animals killed, it seemed, by Troodon; these kills, with their distinctive disembowelment, were sometimes only a few hours old. Fortunately, none were found near their camp.

In addition to Alphadon, Julian saw a rat-sized, arboreal creature that might have been a species of Eodelphis. It had a ringed hairless tail and a hairless face; it looked rather like a small opossum, possibly being the direct ancestor of the modern animal. The opossum, he knew, was a wonderfully successful holdover from the age of dinosaurs, very little changed. Rodents he did not see; they would not evolve for another twenty million years.

Once he saw a Pteranodon, an immense, rust-colored creature, gliding with stately grace, a small airplane; vilified in the movies, but in actuality a toothless, harmless eater of fish. It gave out a shrill, lonely cry, caught an updraft, and disappeared to the north with a flap of its wings. He never saw another; they were already on the brink of extinction.

It was sitting on a branch, nibbling at a beetle of some sort. It could almost have been a squirrel, minus the fluffy tail. Julian was alone, walking back to camp, not even looking for wildlife at the time; but as soon as he spotted the animal he froze and stared up at it, and it stared back.

It seemed to know that Julian could not climb. The animal continued eating, turning the dead insect in its forepaws, peering down, curious but unafraid. Julian could see the very beginnings of a separation between the tiny thumb and fingers; and on the foot, which was clamped to the branch, the great toe was separating from the other digits. The creature had large, dark eyes, and its skull was not so low or narrow as that of the other mammals.

The meeting was so ludicrous and awesome at the same time that Julian felt dizzy. This creature might truly have been his direct ancestor, his grandparent removed by three million generations. He wondered what was passing through its tiny, slightly expanded brain; he could not quite read the expression in its eyes. Finally he asked it out loud, “Well, are you proud of me? I’m your own child.”

At the sound of his voice the animal dropped the beetle, screamed at him, and then clambered away and disappeared into the forest canopy.

Dr. Shanker was also too restless to sit still. He busied himself transferring large rocks from scattered piles to the campsite. He built a more substantial wall on one side of their shelter and they felt a bit safer sleeping next to it. Once he came back from an exploration and claimed, jokingly, that he’d found a cairn.

“Looked just like one,” he said. “Gave me quite a turn, when I first spotted it. Just the size to cover a human. Of course, it was covered with creepers, which is probably what held the rocks together. I didn’t see any carvings though.” He winked at Julian. “This invisible rescue party is impressing me less and less all the time. First they leave a message in unintelligible symbols, and then one of them is killed and buried. Besides, it’s not like the ground here is too hard to dig a real grave.”

Julian had long since gotten over his embarrassment at trying to see letters on a rock; he chuckled along with Yariko, although they kept the ongoing joke from Frank.

When moving rocks was no longer useful, Dr. Shanker took to exploring the island with Hilda, the two of them crashing through the bushes like a herd of edmontosaurs. Indeed, Julian grumbled, they made rather more noise than the wary herbivores. Chasing all the interesting mammals away, he complained; to which Dr. Shanker countered that mammals were clearly dangerous beasts who would attack at will: witness Frank’s still swollen shoulder bite.

Julian found it vaguely annoying that Dr. Shanker spent so much of the day alone with Hilda, away from the camp and essential chores; although, to be fair, Shanker was quickly gathering long, straight branches for building a raft. At the same time, and quite irrationally, Julian felt a twinge of annoyance whenever he came back to camp and found Yariko and Frank so busy and amicable together.

It felt as if they’d been on the island for a lifetime, even though it was less than seven days; Julian wanted to be moving, fighting his way west, not waiting for his companions to play at making tools.

The second evening he came back to find Yariko fitting a short stick against a crude-looking bow. “Watch out,” she said as he approached. “I might shoot you. I haven’t figured out how to make it go straight yet.”

With that she pulled back on the braided vine string and let it go with a snap. The stick went remarkably far, Julian thought; almost thirty feet. It also went sideways, and tumbled in the air as it flew.

“Yeah, and anger it,” Yariko said, with a sigh. “It’s not just the lousy arrows. It’s the string too. Those vines are no good.” She turned back toward the shelter, and Frank.

She gave him a puzzled look. “Why do you wander around all day? Frank can’t move far and somebody has to stay with him. We’ve been making things, useful things. He’s working on a better axe and spears with stone heads.” When there was no answer she added, “We need these things, Julian. We need to get going on that raft, too. There’s nearly enough wood gathered.”

“Then let’s start it,” Julian said, still feeling annoyed. “Let’s get down to the water and start putting those sticks together. Surely you must have calculated it all out by now.” He stopped, surprised at the acrimony in his voice. He hadn’t meant to be angry.

Yariko looked at him for a long moment before speaking. “It’s true I’m trained as a physicist,” she said at last. “And that was useful when we first got here. But now. . . .” Her expression as she looked at Julian was almost an appeal. “Now, I’m not a physicist any more. I’ve had to redefine who I am, my essential self. You wouldn’t know. You’re as much a paleontologist here as back at the university. You can just be yourself. Sometimes,” she went on, sounding sad now, “I’m not sure who I am now. And this thousand-mile journey just seems insane. What does it matter? We can’t possibly make it.”

Julian had to suppress a new feeling of panic. Yariko, uncertain? Yariko not willing to try? And if she gave up, before they’d even really started, what would happen to him? It was her strength he needed to keep his own hope alive.

“You’re Yariko, and you’re my friend, and Dr. Shanker’s, and—Frank’s, too,” he said, feeling generous. “And if you give up, I’ll give up and we’ll just live on this island forever. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad life.” Seeing an ironical smile on her face he went on in a lighter tone, “And if I’m still a paleontologist, then you’re still a physicist. Physics still existed back in the Cretaceous, you know, just like paleontology.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Dr. Shanker’s voice, loud as usual. To his surprise Julian also heard Frank’s voice equally loud. He and Yariko hastily turned back to the camp, wondering what could have happened.

Frank sat in his usual spot; he was clutching his VHF radio in one hand and his gun in the other. Dr. Shanker stood beside him holding the crutch, as if he had just taken it from Frank and helped him to the ground.

“Stop playing with that thing,” Shanker was saying as they approached. “There-is-no-one-to-call. Unless you’re trying to hail a T. rex. If you’d brought two of the things there’d be some use in it; but it’s just a piece of plastic now. And stop grabbing the gun at every noise. You know Hilda’s step by now.”

Yariko opened her mouth but Frank spoke first. “It was worth another try. Going west is all well and good, but it’d be a hell of a lot easier if someone came out east to find us.”

“Somebody should take the Goddamn thing away from him. Trying to call a rescue party. . . .” Dr. Shanker turned away in disgust. Yariko followed him, trying to calm him down.

Julian looked at Frank. He had closed his eyes and leaned back to rest against the tree; but he was not quite close enough, and only one shoulder touched the rough bark. He looked tilted, unsteady, crumpled. He had dropped the gun but was still holding the radio.

Julian sat down beside Frank, feeling awkward. For a moment he drew in the sand with his finger, lazy spirals and shapes, not knowing what to say. He did not like conflict; he also couldn’t understand Frank’s strange mix of hard wilderness practicality and obstinate refusal to believe his radio wouldn’t work.

Julian was taken aback by the question; in answer, he said the first thing that came into his mind. “I’ll write up all my observations and publish them.”

“Yes.” Frank said. “In Nature. I know that one—that’s a big science magazine. Only great discoveries are printed there. You’ll have solved all the mysteries. People will look at fossils in a completely different way, because you’ve seen the animals, and where they live. Fossils from later periods will make much more sense, too.”

He paused and shifted his position a little, using his arms to scootch himself back to the tree. Julian was surprised; he had never mentioned these thoughts, and had always assumed Frank wouldn’t understand.

“And then there’s Dr. Shanker, with his Nobel Prize,” Frank continued. “This thing he’s done. . . ,” he gestured around them, “this’ll get it for him, he says.”

Julian waited to see what would come of Frank’s strange train of thought. A security guard among three academics, scientists at that, might feel out of place in another situation, but Frank had been their leader in day-to-day survival, and he must know that. Julian couldn’t imagine getting very far without him.

“You can walk around,” Frank continued. “Explore. Think about physics, and fossils. Things you know about. I just sit here,” he patted his leg and then the dirt beside him, “and wait for the predators. And think about the things I know. Fortunately,” he added with a snort, “you listen to me most of the time.”

Frank had more to say. “You—with your dentition and your footprints, your albadonts and sucho-whatevers; Shanker with his Nobel Prize and physics equations—and you think I’m crazy because I can’t stop from trying the VHF now and then? If there’s the remotest chance you’re wrong about the time period, I want to be in contact with someone.”

“How am I going to walk a thousand miles? I’m stuck here, unless someone else comes along and takes us back. Oh, I’ll cross this sheet of water with you, if we can make a raft, but what about after that? And look at yourselves. Wandering around daydreaming about the future. What future? The fantasy one, where you’re back in Creekbend and famous for your discoveries? Or the real one—here?”

The work went remarkably fast, taking only another day and a half. All of them felt the urgency of their limited window of two months; and the grueling work and sense of purpose brought them together again in supportive partnership.

With a common project to focus on Yariko seemed unconcerned with who she was, and became the driving force behind the boat; Dr. Shanker stopped pestering the others and spent more time in camp, discussing the future. He and Frank had many an amicable conversation about boats and their boating experiences. Even Hilda seemed to perk up; she liked to run off with the branches meant for the raft, lolloping in circles while everyone chased after her.

As for Frank, he took apart his radio and made a clever little saw, just right for shaping small wooden tools, out of a roughened piece of wire stretched tight across part of the plastic case.

The raft was assembled from the straightest and most buoyant wood that Dr. Shanker had collected; Julian had earlier done test runs on every species of tree in the forest and settled on cypress. The vines that grew in the low areas proved strong enough for lashings. The design, Frank’s brainstorm, was like a low log-cabin arrangement made of thick branches, with a thinner but tighter floor on top. This way, he pointed out, they wouldn’t be sitting low in the water and vulnerable to crocodiles; also, the raft couldn’t be capsized.

Frank also insisted they make the raft long and thin, for better steerage; and to cap it off, he designed a crude rudder, somewhat like a steering oar. He and Yariko became the master oar makers. Neither Julian nor Dr. Shanker had the patience to stand and shave wood for hours at a time. Julian found that his arm hurt after only a few minutes and he was easily frustrated by the makeshift tools, although Frank’s homemade axe wasn’t bad. Yariko persevered: she made some crude paddles and a bundle of sharp arrows.

And, purely by luck, she discovered an excellent material for bow strings: the tough fibers from the long, thin tuber they’d been eating. The root had a stringy core that was almost impossible to cut before cooking, and these fibers when twisted together could take the tension of the bow. The range was short, and the bow strings broke after three or four shots, but it was a start.

When the boat was at last complete they loaded it down with everything they could think to bring, and dragged it through the mud to the water to test it. Frank remained in camp, alone for the first time, but busily engaged in fashioning some last-minute tools.

“You put those bones inside my water pot?” Yariko glared at him. “You’re going to carry some animal’s bones a thousand miles?”

“Wait till he tries to bring a T. rex skeleton,” Dr. Shanker said. “Whitney, you can have your old bones as long as you don’t make me carry them. Now let’s get this boat, if you can call it that, in the water.”

They shoved the raft until it floated free of the mud, then climbed carefully onto it and paddled around while Hilda stood on the shore and barked. The crude floorboards were painful to sit on and the boat proved difficult to keep in a straight line, even with coordinated paddling. Dr. Shanker had been a kayaker in his youth, and tried to apply the same techniques, without much success. Julian knew nothing about canoeing or rafting. Finally Yariko clambered over them and took up the steering position, and by working together they were able to control their direction.

Dr. Shanker joked about how she and Captain Frank could sit in the stern together and plot the course, while the grunts paddled. Julian didn’t mind being a grunt, but he wanted to be the one sitting with Yariko. He thought they should paddle around the island for a bit and do some exploring.

But Yariko insisted they could not embark on any expeditions without Frank, the true designer of the boat. “Never mind dangerous,” she said. “It isn’t proper. Frank ought to be on the maiden voyage.”

“You just want the gun,” Dr. Shanker said, meaning to be funny. He got a sharp look in response, and Julian knew a sharp reply was coming next. Suddenly irritated with them both, he peevishly agreed to turn back. After dragging the boat ashore they walked silently back toward camp, Hilda plodding at their heels.

Partway along the jungle path they heard a gunshot, and then a second one. The sound was so unfamiliar and weird in that primeval forest that they froze and stared at each other, confused. It took an instant for the obvious to sink in: Frank was in trouble.

They began to run. As they came near enough to see the brown wooden angles of the lean-to through the trees, Hilda stopped suddenly. She growled, her ears laid back and the hair bristling on her neck; but she seemed frightened. She sat down in the trail, looked up at Dr. Shanker, and gave a whining yelp, exactly as if she were trying to speak.

Julian saw blood, everywhere, pooled in the uneven surface of the mud, spattered far up the trunks of the sycamore trees. He could smell it too, and it had a sickening, pungent odor.

Then he saw Frank, sitting in his usual position with his back against a tree. His stomach hung open like a glistening, crimson mouth and a wad of loose intestines lay in his lap. Scattered around him in the bloody soil were the two-toed footprints of Troodon, mingled and confused.

Julian’s horror only increased. He couldn’t move, but Yariko suddenly sprinted toward Frank. She stopped about ten feet away from him, and stood with her hands over her mouth. “What do we do? What do we do?” she said in a high voice.

Julian’s legs became unfrozen and he approached Frank, one slow step at a time, his mind still dazed. He stopped well behind Yariko. Dr. Shanker followed him.

Dr. Shanker looked down at Frank. “Get it all back inside, and wrap him up,” he said. “Before the thing comes back for him.” But he made no move to touch anything.

Julian was confused; did Frank want them to find his attacker and kill it? But why hadn’t those two shots killed it? Frank wasn’t one to miss.

Julian knew, intellectually, that Frank would be dead in half an hour; but some part of his mind clung to the irrational thought that he could be bandaged, splinted, and helped into the raft to begin their journey. Of course he would recover. Of course he was going with them.

Frank’s head moved again. “Can’t,” he said, his voice weaker now. “Dying. Want to die. . . .” his right hand clutched weakly at the gun again, “. . . before it comes back. Don’t want to be eaten . . . alive. Too slow.” He tried to push the gun toward Yariko; she stooped and took his left hand, and his eyes looked into hers. “You have to,” he whispered. “Now. Then go, get out. There’s too many. . . .”

Yariko dropped his hand and backed away. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, you can’t ask that, I can’t.” She bumped into Julian. “He wants us to shoot him!”

“He’s right,” Dr. Shanker said in a hard voice. “He’s dying. He doesn’t want to be alive when those things come back. We can’t stop them.”

Frank’s eyes moved from one to the other. Then his hand grasped the gun with sudden strength and lifted it to his head. “Run,” he said, and fired.

They ran. A sudden motion attracted Julian’s gaze and saved him from a close look back after the deafening shot. Four animals stepped out of the bushes. Julian had only time to see that they were bipedal and shorter than him, and to note the huge, sickle-shaped middle claw on the hind foot; then he was running harder than he had ever run, Yariko and Shanker were running, pelting for the water and the raft. Hilda ran ahead of them.

The Troodon hadn’t followed. They had a meal already. Julian, Yariko, and Shanker grabbed paddles and dug them into the water without a word. All their thought was to go, get away, far away so they wouldn’t hear anything, would stop imagining. . . .

The boat rode low in the water, weighted with three people, a dog, and everything they had put on it earlier in the day: the axe and four stone-headed spears, the turtle-shell pot, crude fern mats and wooden poles for making a shelter, and Yariko’s bows and arrows. Hilda lay in the bow on a pile of mats, Dr. Shanker and Julian sat ’midships and paddled, and Yariko sat in the stern, alternately paddling and steering. The afternoon sun burned in their eyes. Fish swam past, shadows in the murky depths. Some were enormous, maybe reptiles, longer than the boat; but none threatened them.

The mainland came slowly closer. At last it was there, and they entered the wide mouth of the river. The smell hit them like a wall: mud and decay, too much life, too much death. Green shores and dense jungle, silent in the afternoon heat, slid past on either side. Finally a bend in the river put their little island out of sight behind, and they were all relieved to be rid of it at last.

Yariko was silent a moment, and then said, “You didn’t do anything. None of us did anything. We just stood there . . . you didn’t even care.”

Dr. Shanker’s face was strangely white, his eyes still overlarge. But his voice was the same as always. “Of course I care. Do you think I want anyone to die, especially that way? And our chances aren’t any better without him.”

He didn’t want anyone to speak, he didn’t want to hear anything; but she looked at him and said, “You’re no better. You couldn’t even go over to him. You couldn’t even look at him.”

Yariko shoved the long steering oar to the left and the boat turned back toward the middle of the river, away from the too-near left bank.