“Okay, and ranching?”
“Ranching is the set of behaviors by which it cares for the herds—moving them between pastures, keeping away rival predators, and so on.”
“Well, you’ll have to make sure that’s spelled out clearly in the paper.”
“Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
They tied up for the night to a sandbar island overgrown by a snarl of young tanglewoods. Tamara waded ashore and chopped clear a section of the island to make a fire. She began to brew them some sassafras tea.
The phone rang.
“I’m not here,” Leyster said. “If anybody asks, I’m at a meeting and you don’t know when I’ll be back in the office.”
Daljit picked it up. She listened briefly, then put her hand over the receiver. “It’s a boy!” she shouted.
Whoops and cheers.
Leyster took the phone. “So, does he look like anyone in particular?” he asked. Feeling a strange mixture of hope and apprehension.
“What does it matter?” Katie said. “We all love the little brat. You will too, as soon as you see him.”
“I know it doesn’t matter, I’m just curious. Come on, you’d ask the same question yourself, if you weren’t there.”
“Well… judging by the color of his skin, I’d have to say the father was either Jamal or Chuck.”
“The father is either Chuck or Jamal,” Leyster said, hand over the receiver.
“I’m a father?” Jamal said.
‘’Maybe a father,“ Leyster said.
“You’re half a father,” Daljit elaborated.
“I’m a fath!” Jamal said. “I’m a ther!”
He danced a clumsy little jig that made Daljit snap, “Watch the damn splint!” Tamara seized him, and kissed him deeply.
Leyster found that, for all he was happy for his friend, he felt a pang of jealousy as well. That could have been his son. The thought of what might have been stirred complex emotions within him.
The next morning, they cast off and headed downriver again. It was another beautiful day. Leyster felt alert and invigorated, and he had the paper pretty much whipped into shape by lunchtime.
Last of all, he composed the abstract:
Field observations reveal that major dinosaur groups in the late Maastrichtian communicated both intra– and interspecifically via infrasound. Communications between species are of particular note since they suggest cybernetic feedback loops operating within and helping to shape the ecosystem. Domestication and “ranching” behavior were observed. The advantages of this cooperative behavior to the predators are self-evident. Benefits to the prey species, though less obvious, are postulated to be equally compelling. It was a complex system working to the maximum benefit of all.
“I’m done,” he said.
Jamal applauded. “Well, let’s hear it!”
“No, I should give the first full reading to everyone. That’s only fair.”
Groans.
“You told us what you had yesterday,” Daljit pointed out.
“Yes, but yesterday we were nowhere near our destination. Today we’re—how far is it we have yet to go?”
The mapping satellite was low in the sky, but they were just able to get a location from it. Daljit and Jamal huddled briefly over the maps, argued, then concluded that they’d reach the confluence of the Eden and Styx rivers sometime in early afternoon.
“Well, that settles it. With any kind of luck, we should be home by nightfall. We can have the inquisition then, with everybody present.” Leyster stood. “My turn at the sweep, I think.
Within the hour, the bioregion along the river was looking familiar. The land opened up. The towering forests retreated to the far distance, and the rich soil was overgrown with shrubs, ferns, and cycads, dotted with the occasional copse of hardwoods.
They were back in the farmlands.
It was this very familiarity, perhaps, which made them overly confident. Leyster was holding the raft steady in the gentle currents of the Eden, staring alertly ahead for shallow water, when Daljit said, “Uh-oh.”
They had seen the triceratopses from a distance, studding the landscape like huge, placid cattle. It was only when they got close that the number of them registered, and they were able to see how restless the creatures were.
They were getting ready to ford the river.
Crossing water was not something that triceratopses did happily or often. They were afraid of the stuff, so they milled about, advancing and veering away, feinting at the river and then retreating from it, until they’d worked themselves up into such a frenzy of hysteria that they plunged into the river in a torrent of flesh, smashing anything unfortunate enough to be in their way.
Such as the raft.
“Maybe we’ll slip past them,” Jamal suggested quietly. Daljit put her hand over his mouth. When the brutes were in this state, they were easy to spook.
Silently the raft floated down past the herds. The river was straight here, and the current steady. It took the lightest of touches on the sweep to keep the raft on course.
It would have been bucolic, if it hadn’t been for the terror they all shared.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. At last they could see the end of the herds. They were almost out of danger now.
There was a noise behind them.
Daljit sucked in her breath.
Turning, Leyster saw a white spume of water, as the first stream of triceratopses plunged into the river. Galvanized, the body of the herd streamed up the bank to follow. Below them, a second stream of bodies entered the river. A third.
At the very end of the herds, just parallel with the raft, a fourth stream of triceratopses hit the water.
“Oh, fuck,” Tamara said.
Briefly, there were horned dinosaurs all about them. Their massive bodies churned the water, rocking the raft. One of the brutes bumped against one side, making them all stagger. A second barely missed them on the left, brushing gently against the logs as it swam by. Then, because it was just the tag end of the herd and thus the smallest of the streams—two dozen, possibly three, of the beasts—it was over.
Except for one final triceratops.
The very last of the herd was too confused to veer away from them. It plunged straight ahead of itself, smashing into the raft and lifting one side up into the air.
The raft leaned, hesitated, and flipped over.
Everything was in flight. With what seemed to be excruciating slowness, Leyster saw their baskets and knapsacks, axes and smoked meat, tents, blankets, and cooking gear, all raining down into the water. Daljit had scrambled across the moving deck and launched herself into the river with a fast, flat dive. Tamara followed less surely, with her spear in one hand and a backpack in the other. Jamal went over in a tangle of limbs. Leyster saw him look astonished as his head struck the edge of the raft. He disappeared into the water.
“Jamal!” Leyster heard himself scream, and then he was in the water too.
Choking, he fought his way to the surface. There were logs everywhere, moving as if alive. Triceratopses splashed and surged, churning up the mud, and he discovered when his feet touched the bottom that the water was
