Cryptozoica (9 page)

May 10
th

The C-21 Learjet knifed through the sky, following the corridor designated for commercial aircraft over the South China Sea. Looking out the window at the limitless expanse of the blue Pacific far below, Honoré Roxton reflected that only a few years ago the ocean would have been filled with rescue and relief craft, steaming toward tsunami devastated coastlines.

Now she saw only scraps of clouds and white-capped waves. A sense of the enormity of the world filled her, yet she still felt disoriented by the speed with which the far corners of the planet could be reached. Less than twelve hours before she had been washing Patagonian dust from her hair in a Buenos Aires hotel room.

The roomy cabin of the jet was decorated in beige trimmed with black. The front panel of the wet bar was engraved with the monogram of Howard Philips Flitcroft. Aubrey Belleau sat on one of the four stools, carefully mixing a Singapore Sling from the ridiculously well stocked liquor cabinet.

“Are you sure I can’t tempt you, Honoré?” he asked, pouring a dash of Benedictine into the glass. “You’re supposed to keep hydrated on these long transcontinental flights, you know.”

“Alcohol actually dehydrates,” Honoré drawled. “You’ll be far thirstier after you imbibe that poison.”

“Really?” Belleau flashed her an impish smile. “Chemistry isn’t my field, you know.”

Honoré gestured to the rear of the cabin. “Perhaps your chauffeur will join you.”

Oakshott, impassive in his grey uniform, sat strapped into a very wide upholstered chair, hands resting upon his knees. His great bulk made it seem like a child’s bolster seat at a barbershop.

“Oakshott is teetotaler,” replied Belleau, mixing in a teaspoon of grenadine. “Aren’t you, old darlin’?” Oakshott did not reply.

“I’m sure Howard Flitcroft was happy to give you the loan of his jet,” Honoré said, “but do you think he’ll appreciate you draining his liquor cabinet? Or will that lighten the load?”

“The load?”

“I noticed at the airport that the cargo hold is filled to bursting…mainly with camera equipment.”

Belleau sipped at the drink and smacked his lips appreciatively. “It could use a thimbleful more pineapple juice.”

“You’re tart enough, Aubrey.”

Belleau angled his eyebrows in an exaggerated leer. “Look who’s talking.”

Honoré sat up straighter in her seat. “What's
that
supposed to mean?”

Belleau laughed self-consciously and climbed down from the stool, ice tinkling in the fluted glass. “No need to go all stiff and proper on me. We have both been through the broken marriage mill, so we should commiserate. We’re both professionals, colleagues and adults, are we not?”   

“That last part remains to be seen,” Honoré countered, her voice cold but her cheeks flushed with hot anger and humiliation.

Belleau tipped the glass toward her in sardonic salute. “Adult colleagues can engage in adult pursuits, can they not? Why can't you join me in a drink?”

Honoré refused to acknowledge the inquiry, suspecting that Belleau already knew the answer and enjoyed baiting her. She had first met the little man nearly seven years ago at a faculty party, shortly after separating from her husband Lucien.

He had first complimented her on her doctoral thesis, then on the plunging neckline of her dress. Although she found his intellect intriguing, Belleau’s presence always made her distinctly uncomfortable. His high, refined forehead was that of the aesthete, the philosopher, but his eyes and the set of his jaw bespoke a ruthless nature. That, combined with his short stature, always reminded her of the so-called Napoleon complex.

As the man settled into the seat opposite her, Honoré said, “I agreed to all of this, leaving my dig and meeting you in Buenos Aires to fly to the Tamtungs, because your story interested me.”

“Not to mention the inducement of five thousand pounds,” Belleau retorted silkily. “Let’s not forget that.”

“The money made the proposition a little more attractive,” she admitted, “but it wasn’t the primary lure.”

“Of course not. You and I are two of a kind, Honoré, even if you are loath to recognize it. We’re hands-on scientists, not academics. We respond best to the scent of a mystery, to the bugle call of adventure—”

“—Speak for yourself,” Honoré broke in impatiently. “I want to know what I’m getting into before I get into it.”

Belleau nodded. “Rightly so.” He raised his voice. “Oakshott, be a good fellow and fetch my valise.”

Unbuckling his seat belt, the big man stood up and opened the overhead luggage compartment. From it he pulled an old-fashioned black satchel and carried it down the aisle. Honoré winced at the deck vibrations caused by Oakshott’s heavy footfalls. She fancied the entire jet quivered with each of the giant’s steps.

Belleau took the satchel and rested it on his lap. “Thank you, old fellow. As you were.”

As Oakshott returned to his seat, Belleau opened the case and removed a leatherbound book that at first glance reminded her of a standard volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He passed it over to Honoré saying, “Take a look. I’ve arranged the contents in more or less chronological order.”

Frowning, Honoré opened the book. Her frown deepened when she saw a sheet of ragged-edged paper, darkly yellowed with age and covered with copperplate, or English round hand, cursive handwriting. Thumbing through the sheaves, she saw ten sheets were sandwiched between sealed plastic sleeves. From a pocket of her blouse she took out a pair of square-rimmed eyeglasses and slipped them on.

The words, written in very faded ink, acquired a new clarity.
HMS Beagle, Personal Log, C.R. Darwin, 5th May, 1836.

Honoré’s heartbeat sped up and a little electric thrill streaked up her spine, but still her mind filled with a surge of suspicion. Lifting her gaze, she stared challengingly at Belleau. “What is this supposed to be?”

Belleau sipped casually at his Singapore Sling. “Exactly what it looks like.  As you know, Charles Darwin kept two journals, his public ‘A’ and his secret ‘B’. You might consider this to be an excerpt from the ‘B’ or perhaps even his double-secret ‘C’ log.”

Glancing at the page again, Honoré asked skeptically, “You’ve authenticated it?”

“Of course. I know its provenance. It was given to my great-great-grandfather for safekeeping by Darwin himself. Keep in mind this is a copy. I’ll show you the full, untruncated version after you’ve had a chance to think all of this over.”

Squinting, Honoré read the first few lines:
We are now in sight of the Tamtungs. The two islands are thickly forested with tropical jungle, but the larger also exhibits a more mountainous terrain, due no doubt to the extinct volcanic peak. Captain Fitzroy has never visited them and indeed claims that only Malay sailors have ever set foot upon them. They bestowed that name upon the islands because it means soiled or unclean. The Tamtungs are reputed to be the most inhospitable of environments.

However, from a distance, they appear far more inviting than the rugged, lizard-infested shores of the Galapagos. The vegetation is of the type usual to tropical isles. There is noni enata, ironwood, candlenut trees, hibiscus and pandanus. Dr. Belleau is most anxious to go ashore and collect botanical specimens.

Honoré looked up again, marking her place with a finger. “Doctor Belleau?”

“Dr. Jacque Belleau,” the little man replied. “My great-great-grandfather.”

“I don’t associate his name with
The Voyage of the Beagle.
”

“There’s no reason why you should. Like me, great-great-granddad was quite the accomplished arranger. He arranged to keep himself out of the history books.”

“Unlike his more flamboyant descendant,” Honoré observed dryly. “So he had sufficient influence to delete his presence from the journals and logs of the
Beagle
?”

Belleau nodded, smiling crookedly. “You may read on if you like, but the ink has completely faded away on some of the pages. I can fill in the blanks, if you prefer.”

“I do.”

Matter-of-factly, Belleau stated, “Charles Darwin, in the company of ship’s draftsman Conrad Martens, Bosun Samuel Hoxie, Jacque Belleau and two sailors made landfall upon the island of Big Tamtung on the afternoon of May 6th, 1836. Within hours, the party realized that the island might be the most extraordinary place on Earth, harboring as it did dinosaurian survivors from the Cretaceous period.”

Honoré rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Please what?” Belleau asked, face expressing complete innocence.

“I told you before the entire concept is ridiculous. Tales of such an island would have circulated for centuries, become part of folklore.”

“Who is to say they didn’t? Have you ever heard of the Isle of Demons?”

“No.”

“Check it out on the Internet. The Isle of Demons is a legendary land that began appearing on maps in the beginning of the 1500s, and then disappeared in the mid-1700s. It was generally shown as two islands. It was believed that the islands were populated by demons and wild beasts. They would torment and attack anyone who was foolish enough to wander on to the island.”

Honoré angled an eyebrow. “And the demons were dinosaurs?”

“Look in the back. The volume comes complete with illustrations.”

Eyebrow still angled, Honoré did as he instructed, flipping the pages aside until she reached a black and white rendering of a bipedal, erect-standing dinosaur, with a large cruelly hooked talon on its second toe. “A Deinonychus…judging by the length of the neck, of the dromaeosaurid subgroup.”

“Colloquially known as a velociraptor,” commented Belleau. “If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the paper, you’ll find the signature of Conrad Martens and the date, May 1836. Obviously, he sketched it from life since at that time no fossils of the Deinoncychus had yet been discovered. For that matter, Richard Owen had yet to coin the term ‘dinosaur’.”

Honoré stared at the drawing numbly. She was barely aware of murmuring; “The Deinonychus wasn’t discovered until 1964, in Montana.”

Belleau took another sip of his drink. “Precisely. So the only explanation for Martens’ accurate rendering in 1836 is that he actually saw a living, breathing specimen. In fact, it attacked and nearly killed Samuel Hoxie. Jacque Belleau was instrumental in saving his life.”

Mesmerized, Honoré turned to the next picture, a profile view of the Deinoncychus, with even the pattern of scales that coated the snout sharply detailed. A crest of feathers slanted back from the top of the skull. She studied it, turning the book this way and that. Softly, she said, “The cranial configuration is slightly different than the fossils that have been discovered. The occipital casing seems a bit larger. And are those feathers?”

“It’s been sixty-five million years since they last roamed,” Belleau remarked. “Naturally, there have been a few adaptive changes. Apparently, Ostrum’s work on the Deinonychus and his theory that the smaller theropods developed feathers as insulation has been validated.”

Honoré found herself starting to agree, then as if a cold bucket of water had been dashed into her face, she straightened up in her chair, glaring angrily at Belleau. “This is insane on so many levels I don’t know where to begin!”

Belleau swirled his drink, ice-cubes clinking. “Should we begin with Charles Darwin and why he kept the
Beagle’s
visit to the Tamtungs secret?”

“Actually, we should start with why anybody would believe this rubbish.”

Mildly, Belleau said, “I believe it. I have no reason not to. Many other people believe it too.”

“Name two,” Honoré shot back.

“I could name far more than that, but a head count of believers isn’t relevant at this juncture. Are you familiar with
The Lost World
? The novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?”

Despite herself, Honoré couldn’t help but smile. “Of course. That book was probably the seminal influence on generations of children who became paleontologists.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that Sir Arthur based the novel’s Maple White Land, his ‘lost world,’ on scraps of information that came his way about Big Tamtung?”

“It would indeed surprise me,” Honoré conceded. “I don’t know if I’d accept it as truth.”

“You might recall that Sir Arthur explained the survival of the prehistoric creatures and conservation of the flora due to the extreme isolation of the Amazonian plateau.”

“It sounded semi-reasonable for a book written in 1910, but it’s utterly unbelievable by the scientific standards of the 21st century.”

“Not when judged by quantum evolutionary theory. Are you familiar with it?”

Honoré nodded uncertainly. “Somewhat. According to the foundation of the theory, some lineages in the fossil record evolved with extraordinary slowness, others more rapidly. Most phyletic lines of evolution occurred in a moderate and steady manner, while others showed fluctuating patterns of evolutionary descent.”

“Just so. The most rapid of those patterns was dubbed ‘quantum evolution.’ Proponents believe that major evolutionary transitions arise when small populations—isolated and limited from normal genetic flow—would fixate upon unusual gene combinations. The unadaptive phase would then, by natural selection, drive a population from one stable adaptive peak to another to a final stage.”