Species (7 page)

“No
way,”
one of the students in the front row said. She cocked her head to one side, but Arden wasn’t convinced; there was too much intelligence in her dark eyes to pull off this calculated dumb-blond routine. “If they know this can happen, why do they still go in the river?”

“Because, Miss . . . ?”

“Teale.”

“Because, Miss Teale,” the professor continued, “the Orinoco River basin impacts significantly upon their lives. While they earn quite a bit of their livelihood from agriculture, they also depend upon the river for food, not to mention crop irrigation. This, you see, represents a fundamental difference in cultures, in the way—”

A noise to the left made Arden stop in midsentence and look around. He frowned when he saw Richard Jarelstein, one of his colleagues in the anthropology department, making his way toward the podium. When he reached the spot where Arden waited, Jarelstein nodded at the students. “Excuse us for a moment, please.” He turned his back to the class and the microphone and leaned over and whispered in Arden’s ear for a moment. Arden’s eyes widened and he nodded, handing over the pointer. His class forgotten, he gathered up his papers and briefcase and walked out without further explanation.

Behind him, much to the dismay of the female students in the front row, Jarelstein pressed a button and the slide projector went dark. Jarelstein’s voice, coarser than Arden’s, rasped through the speakers as he stepped up to the podium.

“That will be all for today’s lecture. Professor Arden has been called away unavoidably on business and this class has been canceled until further notice. If this class is part of your anthropology curriculum, please keep an eye on the schedule board. If it does not resume by Monday, consult your course adviser for alternate methods of credit in the interim between now and Professor’s Arden’s return. Good day.”

W
hen the group had started the trip at Lees Ferry, the Colorado River had been clean and cold, the water strained by the Glen Canyon Dam to a sparkling navy blue beneath the high morning sun. Now, muddied miles ago from the juncture of the Little Colorado running in from the Painted Desert, the turbulent, tan-colored rapids at Bright Angel Falls made the river more gorgeous because of its wild glory and return to its natural color. Laura Baker wanted to see everything at once, and she twisted to the right to watch as the thirty-seven-foot silver raft shot past a multicolored outcropping of rock, layers of strata spotted with tenacious clumps of greenery on its steepest face. Her balance on the right tube was precarious and more than a little daring, but she wasn’t stupid—besides, their guide would order them all to sit in if necessary. Like the other women on the rafting trip, she was strapped firmly inside a more-than-ample life jacket, and there was nothing at all scrawny about her arms as she gripped the ropes and held herself in place when the raft bucked atop the rapids. The front of the raft dipped, went back up on a particularly large swell, then dropped a good three feet. Laura and the other women screamed with exhilaration, laughing and whooping as the raft plunged through the last of the rapids and slowed, thrown into the calmer waters by the rapids’ final push.

Soaked through her T-shirt and cutoffs, Laura grinned as brownish river water ran into her eyes and mouth. She whipped the wet strands of her hair out of her face with a laugh and glanced to the back of the raft, where the hefty, dark-haired guide expertly steered toward the river’s center and away from the jagged rocks at the sides of the canyon. Her hands were rope-burned and she was peppered with bruises from being knocked off the side and onto the floor of the raft by a larger set of rapids earlier in the day, and she was having the time of her life.

“That was great, Guida! How far before the next one?” Shouts of agreement from the other women followed her question and made Laura’s smile widen.

Guida’s hair was plastered to her head like a dark, shining cap. A large Italian woman, her skin was tanned and glowed with an attractive outdoorsy health that Laura—who had red hair and fragile, fair skin that had to be lathered constantly with sunblock-—envied. Her return smile showed teeth that were a perfect, bright white against the bronzed skin of her face. “About two miles,” she called. “You folks’ll have time to relax and you’d better appreciate it. The next set’s a big one, with three smaller ones right after.” She laughed heartily and swung the raft around until the front followed the Colorado’s gentle curve to the west. “After we get your stomachs all shook up, we’ll break for lunch along a nice little stretch of beach. Be nice to the sand, ’cause if Glen Canyon Dam keeps running as a peaking unit, there may not be any beaches left pretty soon.”

The woman seated behind Laura started to ask a question about Guida’s statement, but her shouted words were cut off, swallowed abruptly by a thunderous chopping. The water around them grew turbulent again and Laura saw Guida’s face turn toward the sky; she scowled helplessly with the rest of the women at the Huey helicopter descending skillfully toward them, deftly lowering itself between the jutting walls of the canyon. Dismayed, Laura saw a flock of frightened birds take flight from the foliage spreading up the rock face to the west; so much for the undisturbed tranquillity of her vacation. The whole thing was starting to give her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The sleek black copter now hovered close enough above the raft for the women to see the helmeted face of the pilot and copilot. As they watched, the latter leaned out of the open door and hung over the water, pressing a loudspeaker to his mouth. Laura thought sourly that he looked like a monkey, dangling in the air with a misshapen banana.

“Dr. Laura Baker,”
the loudspeaker boomed,
“please raise your hands.”
Laura jumped and nearly slid off the side of the tube and into the wind-whipped water as the knot in her gut abruptly burgeoned into outright pain.
“I repeat—Dr. Laura Baker, if you are on this raft, please raise your hands. Your expertise is needed immediately in a matter of utmost importance.”

“Crap,” Laura muttered as the annoyed gazes of the other women turned toward her. “Two years of planning to get back to nature, and I still can’t take a decent vacation.” No one else heard her, though, and it was just as well. Resigned, she tightened her legs around the float tube of the raft to brace herself, then raised her hands. It was just too damned sad that she’d told the divisional secretary where she was going on vacation.

“A
re they still teasing you at work, Dan? The men from the passport identification department?”

Dan Smithson smiled softly. The question was a hard one and while he didn’t really want to answer it, he liked the smooth sound of Dr. Roth’s voice and wanted to hear it more. Every time he went in for a session, Dr. Roth made him feel calmer, relieved—like letting out his breath when he’d been holding it too long. He opened his mouth to answer, then felt the muscles in his neck and back tense when someone knocked on the door to the office. It couldn’t be time for the session to end, could it? He’d only been here a few minutes—they’d just started.

“I won’t answer that,” Dr. Roth said evenly, noting the look on Dan’s face. “Whoever it is can come back at the end of the hour.” He paused to reconstruct his thoughts, then continued. “This teasing makes others feel better. If someone else is less, it makes
them
feel more.”

The knocking came again, louder, and Dan felt the answer that had been forming in his thoughts sift away, like the powdered sugar falling off the doughnut he’d had for breakfast. He struggled to answer, to ignore the steady rapping on the other side of the fine wooden door to Dr. Roth’s office. “They aren’t afraid of me. They, uh, they know I won’t fight back.”

“Dr. Roth, please open the door immediately. It’s an emergency.” The words were muffled but understandable; with an apologetic glance at Dan, the doctor rose and turned the lock. A man dressed in a dark suit and tie stood patiently on the other side, holding out a wallet bearing an identification card. Dan could see the gold seal shining underneath the plastic sheeting.

“Sorry I have to interrupt,” the man said levelly. He didn’t bother to introduce himself as he stepped past the befuddled psychiatrist. His face was expressionless but somehow reassuring. “We need your help again, Dan.”

Dan sat up and smoothed his shirt self-consciously, unable to mask his grateful smile. Someone needed
him
for a change, not the other way around.

Boy, that felt good.

“T
hanks for looking after my cat.” Press Lennox dropped his travel bag on the steps and handed his pet to Mrs. Morris, the elderly woman who lived in the town house next door. Mrs. Morris started cooing over Lorca immediately, rubbing the tabby’s neck and ears until it purred with satisfaction. Press had to force himself to smile in her direction as he locked his front door. It wasn’t that he took her pet-sitting for granted or disliked his older neighbor. Quite the contrary—he appreciated the hell out of it every time she watched Lorca, and thought she was charming company on the rare occasions she stopped to chat. He just knew what was coming, and for some reason it drove him nuts every time she did it.

“We’ll take good care of you, won’t we, Lorca?” Mrs. Morris rubbed her cheek against the feline’s ear and Lorca made an odd noise that was half purr and half mewl. The thing was horribly spoiled to begin with and would be impossible for a week after Press got home.

There was a short, double honk from the gray sedan idling at the curb and Press picked up his bag without turning. “I shouldn’t be away long. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.” He strolled to the car and climbed in the passenger side, reluctantly lifting his hand to wave. Now came the part he hated. It just seemed like such a
stupid
thing to have his big, old tabby do, and it mucked up Press’s mood each time he had to watch it happen.

Mrs. Morris smiled cheerily and waved good-bye with Lorca’s paw.

10

D
reaming again, another train station, like but not like the one at Brigham. Not nearly as crowded, and no men at all. Only Sil . . . and several more females, all of whom looked just like her. Were they staring at her? She wasn’t sure. She might be looking at reflections, some kind of multifaceted mirror—that could be why they all seemed to return her gaze so fixedly. It was so strange, like being everywhere at once and seeing where you’d just come from at the same time, instantaneously bouncing around another dimension.