'TERTIARY'©    

                Chapter One - - - - - - - 'The Badlands'

A vast bowl of sky arched blue over the view to distant mountain ranges. The dusty Badlands of America. An agoraphobics' nightmare of space, distance and desolation.
Until you looked into the details. Down into the split of a canyon, across the boulder-full bed of its' river, and up from a rough trail on the far bank. Shattered levels of rock and debris. Small, scrawny plants gripped into the splits and crevices. A recently trodden path to a terrace. And a shallow cave wedged into the overhanging canyon wall; an enigmatic expression impressed into the rocks' face.
Three dust-streaked, hot and willingly busy figures were hauling boxes and packages out onto the open terrace; re-building a camp around scorched and blackened fire stones. The afternoons' shadows lengthening across their growing tiredness.
Two women and one man. Their battered Deilec Humvee was turned off the trail below them; its' overheated engine still audibly cooling down. The tings ringing in the enclosed stillness of the canyon, above the permanent presence of flowing water.
The older woman was checking date labels and seals, as each pack and box was pulled from under a camouflaged tarpaulin covered in dirt and debris.
"Everything looks the same. I don't think anyone's been up here."
Steven Anders didn't look up from an open crate.
"Who would have been - We hid the stuff well enough didn't we?"
Barbara Borman balanced on stocky legs, sweeping away a curl of grey hair, as she stared levelly at his bent back. "Well let's hope the second guy comes out as easy as the first - And we won't have to hang around here too long."
The junior member of the team was looking on uncertainly, anxious to defuse the tension, but unwilling to get involved.  "It would be good to get back to the lab - You know, work on them properly."
Steven looked up sharply at his colleague. Laura Lovell was too much the peacemaker in his opinion. He would prefer an argument.  "All I want is a good look at another specimen. If this one's as weird as the first - - -."
Barbara gave an impatient sniff, and brusquely turned her back to both of them. Laura unbraided her long hair, letting it swing around her face, as she turned to unpack cans and packets of food from another crate.
Steven was still irritated. "Well how do you explain those marks on the femur?" knowingly pushing Barbara. "If they're not rivet holes, what do you say they are?"
Barbara rounded on him; her face flushed and powdered with dust. "Look Steven - We've got to work together, and I know you want to make your mark, but let's not make up shit for the Enquirer Pages."
She stiffened in an effort to calm down; shoulders still raised as she faced him. "Isn't it enough that we've got a whole new dinosaur family, without crazy ideas about them practising surgery."
Steven turned, defeated and angry, releasing his grip on the crate with a shove of disgust, and walked across the terrace to a stack of wooden specimen boxes just inside the cave. Unlatched the top one and looked down at a long, fossilised bone, still embedded in a slab of rock. Shook his head in wonder at the perfection of its' preservation. And touched lightly at the curiously regular line of holes near its' centre.
Young and enthusiastic he might be, in Barbara's eyes, but he had never seen, nor heard of, such an incredibly detailed and complete dinosaur specimen of any species. And it was his team that had found it; and his team that was going to describe it.
Steven replaced the specimen box lid and moved into the deepest part of the cave, his shadow wavering ahead of him as the setting sun lit inwards from the opposite canyon rim. He crouched sideways, fingers reaching to dig at the inner rock face, and felt the curiously granular matrix crumble easily away under his clawing nails. He frowned, not for the first time, as it trickled, sparkling with a slight iridescence, to the cave floor.
Then, as he stretched stiffly upwards to move back out to the terrace, his turning boot caught under an unexplored corner of the rock wall. He limped and twisted, testing his ankle for a sprain, before stooping down. His boot had exposed a small, strangely regular, crystalline sliver. It winked a tiny point of light within his flowing and flattening shadow as he bent to look closer. 'Fools' gold', he whispered, and grinned through his fatigue.

The very last of the sunset lay a red bar along the black slab of the canyon wall opposite the expeditions' campsite. All three of the team lay in their sleeping bags, facing sleepily into the flames of a brushwood fire, and watched the swing of the coffee can hanging from a tripod in a hot updraught of sparks.
Steven leaned forward to hook the can and fill his cup, holding it up as he looked across at Barbara. But she only shook her head, apparently mesmerised by the spark column, twisting upwards into thin helices of smoke. He turned to Laura, thinking that her smile still looked wary in the flickering light. She shook her head as well. "No thank you Steven." Eyes glittering with flames. "You really think there's something strange here don't you - I mean apart from the species never having been found before?" She pushed up onto one elbow, brushing hair away from her face and the fire, and shivered as she peered into the dark wedge of the cave. The tarpaulin creaked and settled.
"I guess I have to, yes - It's not just the bones looking so damned fresh, and those weird marks on them, it's the matrix they're bedded in." He stared through the flames, not improving Laura's nerves.
"We'll have to get Arnie S. to have a closer look at that when we get back to the lab."
Laura slid down into her sleeping bag, curling up on her side, her eyes wide open; Steven still hypnotised by swirling sparks, as the Little Snake rushed through boulders, and the night, below them.
Laura was dreaming; her eyelids fluttering and her breathing deepening as she twisted in the hot confinement of a synthetic skin.

[ A distant, rushing beat, above the river sounds. A machine. A helicopter; with an alien, flapping quality to its' thudding rotor, and a hissing overtone in the whine of turbines. The noise was changing pitch, but always increasing, as the unseen machine snaked low in the winding canyon towards their camp.
Then sight in the darkness, as her eyes seemed snapped open, hair swept clear of her face, by the hot, fume-laden blast of downwash - And the helicopter hovered like some weird, unfamiliar dragon, level with the campsite terrace.
Something wrong about its' shape; not Russian or European. The details, and some subtlety of design making the machine slide away from Laura's dream perception. Something other-worldly. Something she has never seen before - -.]

And her eyes fell open to a shock of silence. Not even hearing the river water for long seconds, as she lay paralysed by a nightmare of relaxation; not yet connected to conscious control of her body.
She dipped back down, and in and out of the dream state, trying to replay and define the strangeness.
Only a helicopter, not even a very complicated nightmare, what the hell was it? Why did it look so sci-fi, and yet feel so out of place, and somehow ancient?
Just dinosaur dreams, she thought, shrugging inwardly. Just digging about for old bones in an old country. Disturbing the gods that wiser people once respected.
Laura turned onto her back, stretching into a comfortable warmth, and pushed the hovering image into a corner of memory that allowed her to sleep again.

Steven woke first in the early light; one open eye surveying the miniature landscape between his chilled head and a thread of smoke from the fires' ash. Trying, but failing, to remember his dreams. Only a sense of subdued, anticipatory anxiety that itched like an unseen, future pleasure.
He rolled over and sat up, to haul out, sliding, from the warm sheath of sleep. Observing himself as he went into an automatic routine of rousing the fire for the essential first task of brewing coffee. Passively flooding his eyes with light from the far rock wall, and jostling, sparkling reflections from the river below.  Something was going to happen. A certainty in that prescience that clenched like happiness in his belly.
Barbara was watching him through slitted eyelids. Seeing a thin framed, prematurely balding man, who probably wouldn't look much different at eighty years old. And would still have most of the nervous enthusiasm of an eighteen year old. So why did she find him such an asshole at thirty seven? Or at any time of the day or night. She was tired of the exasperation that his ageless boyhood inflicted on her. She wanted to be cool and professional rather than an irritable old woman. And to get on with the job of staking a joint claim to their new discovery.
Barbara shivered; decided to acknowledge that she was awake and definitely going to get up. Making a resolution, probably futile, to be calm today in the face of Steven's runaway theorising, and Laura's irritatingly anxious attempts to defuse the tension between them. She pulled herself around to sit, knees under her chin, still wrapped in her sleeping bag, and watched steam rise from the heating water.
As Steven spooned coffee into the can, she pushed forcefully to her feet, kicked away the bag, and strode to the edge of their campsite terrace. Feeling that she had already failed.

Laura woke to the sound of stones. Saw Barbara's feet stamp past. Kept her eyes half closed. She disliked her nervousness of Barbara, liking Barbara herself, and the sensation of dislocation on these field trips. The scenery and the excitement de-focused her; left her feeling like a half-useful tourist. So she wanted to be back in the lab. However beautiful or awesome the landscape, however exciting their finds, she knew she would be happier immersed in her expertise; weaving her skills into some sort of achievement.  'Ah, the poet awakes,' she thought. 'Get up girl, and make yourself useful.' She grinned secretly at the sight of Steven in his 'Big Game Hunter on Safari' field trip clothing; as he willed the morning coffee to brew by staring it to the boil.
She shrugged her sleeping bag away, swinging her legs round and under, to squat in front of the flames. Returned Steven's automatic smile. And saw the burn of his ambitious hopes behind the pale, steady eyes.
"Specimen number two," he said. "How much better do you think it can be?"
Laura rocked forward. "Better than number one you mean? I don't see how it could be." She tapped a finger to the hanging coffee can. Whipped it away from the heat. "If it's even half as good we'll have enough comparisons to do a full reconstruction first time out."
She looked across at Steven, eyes open to his question; and opening one back to him. He stared through the steaming, swinging can. "What you said last night - Something strange here. I'm supposed to be a scientist. I'm not used to trusting feelings and intuition - But I can't shift the impression that something here is watching. Watching and waiting."
He jerked one hand out. Slopped coffee to a sharp hiss of steam in the fire. "Damn! Body and brain not yet connected." Shook himself to wake up.  "Probably just my overweening ambition. Telling me there's a headline page in 'Nature' for this one - For all of us."
But Laura was staring at him.  Something watching.  She looked sharply out from the terrace; remembering her dream in vivid detail. Almost seeing the thunderous, fume breathing dragon hover level with the rock platform again.
Barbara's voice made her jump.  "How long is a pot of coffee in the morning?" She peered at Laura. "The ghosts of old Indians troubling your path - - ?"
Laura smiled upward. Barbara framed against sunlit rocks and the bright morning sky. "Just dreams. Old demons flying around."
"Jesus - Flying demons for breakfast! What do you do for nightmares in the dark Laura?" But she was smiling; her earlier irritations seemingly smoothed away.
Steven hooked up the coffee can and pushed hot stones inwards; setting the can on the flattest and lifting aside the tripod. He reached backwards for a large skillet, and started hauling tins and packets from the open side of the stores crate.  "What would Mesdames require for petit dejeuner this morning?"  His eagerness to please drew a sharp look from Barbara, and Laura sighed inside. But Barbara relented.  "Allow me Steven - It is my turn to cook, remember. If you can stand the excitement of the menu."

Forty minutes later all three were sitting cross-legged, noisily scraping their retro tin plates, and gulping down the last warm mouthfuls of coffee. A light breeze was whirling dust along the river bank, and cloud shadows climbed the canyon wall above them.
Steven lifted his mug to a toast. "Another good day in the badlands, if we're lucky." He tilted back to drink. Then hurled the last grounds to hiss and spit in the fire.
"Actually, I'll risk the wrath of Gods, and say I don't see how we can lose. Two or three more days and we should be calling in a Disc to haul us out of here."
Barbara responded with unusual indulgence. "They'll think we've had it too easy back at base. We'll get it in the neck for going too quick on ground time - -." She looked over to the stack of specimen boxes. "Our esteemed Deputy Dog will be 'revising his data' on time allowances."
Steven smiled wryly. "Don't worry. I think we're far enough out on the fringe to escape too much notice - As long as we play down what we have here."
He looked to them for agreement, and they both nodded silently. But Barbara was frowning. "That has to be you talking to you - Right Steven?" She saw his expression. "Don't get your hat on backwards - You know I can't agree with what you seem to be suggesting. But I'm in no doubt at all that this species is a major find. I mean major, capital M."
She looked steadily at the younger man, then in enquiry at Laura.
Laura switched her attention back to Steven. "I agree. You know I do - -. However we see it out here, we have to play the whole thing down back home."
She sat up onto her heels, balancing on folded toes. "I'll just rough out some preliminary restorations - Keep the scale small and minimise the details. Then we all act like we don't give too much of a shit anyway - - Right?"
The other two nodded, both surprised by Laura's forcefulness.
Then Steven was on his feet, suddenly galvanised by the new day and a new feeling of unity within the team of three. Barbara rolled her eyes at Laura, who stifled a snort of laughter. "Come on Laura, let's get some light on the subject. Before Captain Elation here burns down the evidence all on his own!"
They walked into the shallow cave, where a small generator was set up to power portable work lights. Barbara checked the gas cylinder and set it running. The lights powered up to illuminate the rear wall. It rose vertically to waist height, then sloped back out, above their heads, towards the daylight.
Steven peered into the shadowed corners. "Apart from the diamond backs, the scorpions, and the black widows, I just love this place - Landscape to break your heart and bones."
Barbara's voice was resonant in the closed space. "Don't forget the brown recluse Steven - One bite, and you'll wish you'd slept with the widow."
"Thank you kindly Ma'am - If I'm bit and frothing, please to put me to sleep with a rock."

As Barbara and Laura set to work on their own sections of the excavation neither noticed that Steven had frozen to silence. He reached down, perceiving himself in slow motion, towards the sliver of crystal that his boot had dislodged the night before. He traced a finger along one thin, bevelled edge; clearing dust from a row of minute golden tabs that lay inset to the dense, dark crystalline material.
His staring eyes seemed to him to be zooming in; to what his astonished mind could only register as a flawless artefact - Freed from its' recess in a seam of rock proven to be at least sixty five million years old.

End - Chapter One

© - John Coppinger 2005

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