only chest-deep.
Jamal was nowhere to be seen.
He took a deep breath and plunged beneath the water again. He swam with his arms outstretched in the direction he thought he had last seen Jamal.
He kept his eyes open, but he saw nothing.
The water moved by slowly, and more slowly, and stopped. He burst through the surface again, gasping for air. His lungs burned and his chest ached. The river stretched to infinity to either side of him.
It was hopeless. There was not a chance in hell of finding Jamal in all this water.
One more time, he thought bleakly. One more dive, and I’ll know for sure he’s not going to be found.
He dove.
The brown water swam past him, as before. Then, abruptly, there was a darkness at its heart. His arms touched something soft, and at that same instant his face collided with Jamal’s body.
Jamal wasn’t moving.
He put his arms around the man’s chest and strove for the surface. Almost instantly, his feet touched bottom and his head was in the air.
Suddenly, miraculously, the body in his arms shuddered.
Water exploded from Jamal’s mouth, and he gasped for air. He began to struggle. Leyster found himself in danger of being fought down beneath the surface.
“You’re okay!” he shouted. “You’re fine! Just let me walk you to shore!”
Jamal twisted in his arms. “I’m what?”
“You’re okay!”
Jamal stopped moving. Then, with enormous effort, he said, “You’ve got one hell of a strange idea of okay.”
Laughing and gasping, they stumbled to the shore. Daljit appeared under Jamal’s other arm, and together they carried him in.
“I’m fine!” Jamal protested weakly. “I’m fine, really.”
Tamara appeared, carrying a wet pack. “I managed to save one.” She held up the pack, looking embarrassed and wild. “But the others are lost. I’m sorry.”
Leyster thought of all that had gone down to the bottom of the river: the two cell phones, both axes, all their shoes. So much of it was irreplaceable. But he couldn’t manage to feel the loss.
He still had one arm around Jamal’s shoulders. Now he lifted the other and Tamara, dropping the pack, slipped under it. They all four of them gathered together in one hug, then, teary and unashamedly sentimental. “We got off easy,” Leyster said. “We got off easy.”
So they had. He knew in that instant that he would have given every axe they had to keep Jamal alive.
And in that same instant, he mentally added to the abstract:
It is possible that by its very success, this cooperative behavior contributed to the extinction of the non- avian dinosaurs at the K-T boundary.
19. Lazarus Taxon
The Old Man sat in a dark room, alone.
The world outside was arguably the most interesting time in all the Mesozoic, an age when dinosaurs were challenged from a surprising direction, almost lost their place in the ecosystem, and then successfully fought their way back to dominance again. He did not give it a thought. All his attention was focused on the visions he called up, one after another, in the air before him. He had been given tools that were inexplicable in their effects. The one he was using now enabled him to eavesdrop on select events that were, to him, of particular interest. It was like owning God’s own television set. So far as he knew, he was the only human being who had one.
Half a billion years in his future, Griffin and company were finally about to meet their sponsors. They stepped through a gate and onto the same grassy sward where they had first set foot in the Epimethean.
He leaned forward, and all his surroundings vanished as his identity dissolved into theirs.
Jimmy’s “climbing trees” were further from the gates than any of the party had thought. The tangle was as tall as a cathedral, and as complexly buttressed. The closer they got, the more elaborately structured it appeared, and the less like anything they had ever seen before.
The Unchanging led the company into the shelter of the trees. They walked down twisty pathways into ever-deepening shadows. There were rustling noises and furtive movements all about them. A great many living things dwelled here.
“I can’t decide if this is natural or artificial,” Molly Gerhard said, gesturing toward a splay of branches that spiraled up one trunk like a staircase. Water dripped down from above to fill a basin that grew out from another trunk, level with her chin. A drinking fountain for very tall children? “Or whether that’s even a valid distinction here.”
“What’s that smell?” Jimmy asked.
The tree was permeated with a sweet and sick-ish stench, reminiscent of theropod hatchlings before they’ve lost their down, of maple syrup on sweaty flesh, of zoo cages never perfectly cleaned. It was an uneasy- making smell.
Something dropped from an opening above, and stood before them for the briefest of moments.
It was humanoid only by the most generous reading of the term: bipedal, upright, with two arms, a trunk, and a head, all in the right places. But the arms folded oddly, the trunk canted forward, the legs were too short, and the head was beaked.
It favored them with an outraged stare, stamped its spurred feet, and screeched. Then it was gone.
“Dear God!” Molly Gerhard gasped.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Avihomo sapiens,” Salley said. “The second intelligent species ever to arise on this planet. Gertrude calls them Bird Men.”
“Birds,” Griffin said flatly. “They’re descended from birds?”
“Yes. I’m afraid we mammals have been relegated to the evolutionary fringes once again.”
The Unchanging gestured toward an arched cleft. “This way,” it said.
They stepped through and the tree opened up. Branches intertwined overhead to create a high ceiling. Soft globes of light floated among them, gently illuminating the space below. At the center of the room was a table. Behind it, their hosts stood waiting.
There were three Bird Men, ungainly and proud. The least of them was half again as tall as the humans. They were covered with fine black feathers that rose to a spiky crest at the backs of their commodious skulls. Their beaks were white as sun-bleached bone. Their eyes were stark red.
Their arms, scrawny and oddly jointed, were much like those of mantises but with the long hands bent
