He was already rolling his cuffed sleeves in anticipation when he noticed the objects on his desk, which certainly hadn't been there the night before, as it was a rare occasion when he wasn't the one to turn off the lights on his way out.
He leaned forward and inspected the objects. Three feathers had been precisely laid out on his blotter in a clover formation, the calamuses meeting to form a single point. They were remiges, the stiff contour feathers of the wing suited for flight. The base color was mud brown with an extraordinary green iridescence that shifted as it reflected the overhead light.
'Pretty impressive, aren't they?' a voice asked from the doorway.
Galen flinched at the sound and dropped the feathers to the desktop. There was never anyone in the building for at least another half-hour. He looked up to find a tall, wiry man with short, spiked black hair and an expensive suit appraising him through steel-gray eyes. The man raised an eyebrow.
'You...you shouldn't be back here,' Galen stammered. He cleared his throat and tried again with more authority. 'This is a restricted area. I'm going to have to ask you to leave or I'll be forced to call the police.'
The man merely shrugged, and entered the office.
Galen reached for the phone, but the man's words stopped him short.
'I don't think you can tell me which species those feathers belong to, can you?'
The man was right, but Galen was loath to admit it. They were obviously from a species of raptor, of that much he had no doubt. The brown coloration was an expression of melanin, but he had no idea where the strange green iridescence might have originated. The refraction of light on yellow carotenoid pigments like parrots have, possibly? Raptors didn't showcase the flashy colors of smaller birds, even during mating season. They were predators, which meant the last thing they wanted was for their prey to see them coming. The length of the remiges placed this animal's size at that of a condor, but these definitely weren't from a condor as their feathers were nearly universally black. So what did that mean? Had these feathers been doctored in some fashion, or was he looking at some rare genetic mutation? Maybe a new species entirely?
He looked up at the man, who watched him with a curious expression. What did he know that he hadn't shared? Galen decided to play it cool and buy himself some time with the feathers to do some research. Preferably alone. This guy had no business being in here anyway. Come to think of it, how
'I'll hold onto these feathers for a couple days and try to match them against one of our databases. Every species of raptor is catalogued in there somewhere.'
'You'll find that this one isn't, but I have a hunch you already know as much.'
'I can run a mass spectroscopic analysis to determine where they originated. It evaluates the ratio of stable hydrogen ions---'
'They were recovered in the Andes Mountains of Northern Peru.'
'Impossible. That's the range of the Andean condor. There's only so much room in any ecological niche for predators and scavengers. And condors definitely aren't the kind to share their niche.'
'That's your area of expertise, Dr. Russell. I'm only telling you what I know.'
'What I know is that you're about two minutes from being manhandled by campus security.' He picked up the handset and dialed.
The man casually crossed the room, sat on the edge of the desk, and depressed the button on the phone to disconnect the call before it even began to ring.
'Perhaps I should have started with an introduction.' The man smiled, though he still held his finger in place. 'My name is Marcus Colton. I work for Leonard Gearhardt and Advanced Exploration Associates International. These feathers
'What does this have to do with me?'
'We don't know precisely where the feathers of this particular species might have been found.'
'Why not ask the
'Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. He died before he could share this knowledge with anyone.'
'That still doesn't answer my question. What do you want from
'Dr. Russell, from 1985 through 2001, you worked extensively in the field tracking and studying birds in the wild. Thanks in large measure to your efforts in conservation, nearly a half dozen species of raptors have been placed on the Threatened Animals List and significant portions of their natural habitats declared preserves and conservatories. You understand these creatures: their behavior patterns, their relationships to their environment, their lifecycles. Your knowledge would be invaluable in helping us find the proverbial needle in the haystack. We're looking for one specific location in the middle of a vast section high in the unexplored Peruvian Andes, and being able to identify the natural range of this species will significantly shrink the amount of ground we need cover. You will be very generously compensated for your expertise, but more importantly, when you eventually admit what we both already know, you'll be the first to classify and study this new species. You'll have the opportunity not only to publish potentially revolutionary findings, but you'll also be able to
'I can't just up and leave my post. The university---'
'We've already made arrangements with the university to secure your services.'
'I haven't worked in the field for close to a decade...'
'It's in your blood, Dr. Russell.'
Galen felt himself waffling. The prospect of actually working in the field again was both exciting and mortifying. What if his skills had atrophied? What if he traveled halfway around the world and couldn't help them find what they were looking for? He locked eyes with the man across the desk, whose expression betrayed nothing. If there was a chance of discovering a new species that had somehow existed in complete isolation without being found for thousands of years, then he owed it to himself to take it. Even more exciting was the prospect that this could be a recent evolutionary offshoot of an existing species. If he could somehow identify the environmental factors that had triggered such a change and localize the genetic factors that facilitated it, he could advance evolutionary theories that would surpass anything Darwin had even dreamed of.
'Did I mention there will be a film crew tagging along to document our journey?' Colton asked. 'Hence the necessity to involve only the leaders in their respective fields.'
Galen ran his fingers through his hair.
Colton smiled like a cat that had finally cornered a mouse.
'I'm going to need time to procure the proper supplies.'
'You have until tomorrow morning,' Colton said. He reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket, extracted a blue pamphlet, and tossed it down on the desk.
Galen opened it and examined the contents: roundtrip airline tickets from LAX to Lima, Peru.
'I can't possibly be ready in so little time,' he said, but when he looked back up, Colton was already gone.
IX
Leo opened the file and perused the images for the thousandth time. They had cost him a pretty penny, and the only life that had mattered to him other than his own. The ultimate price had been so steep that to walk away now would be sheer stupidity. Hunter's posthumous message confirmed that he had found what they had known would be there all along. Now it was simply time to claim it as his own.
Satellite prospecting. That's what he called it. Soon there wouldn't be a single inch of the planet left
