“What the fuck,” he swore, standing at the edge of the exhibit. “What in hell’s going on here?”
Jennifer squatted in the green underbrush. She felt the heat of the day, the wet air, and smelled the pungent odors of tropical evergreens rotting in the steamy heat of the equatorial jungle, mixed with the sweet smells of fruit and flowers. She could hear the jungle, too, the incessant noise of birds, flying squirrels, and monkeys swinging through the heavy overhang of vines. She saw the hippos wallow in the deep water and a dozen crocodiles slip off the muddy bank and slap the mucky water as they disappeared from sight.
Jennifer was not frightened by the crocodiles or a small herd of woolly mammoths thrashing through the trees and down to the water. She sprang out of the dense wood and, running forward, screeched again at Kathy Dart, startling her.
“Jenny! Jenny!” Kathy screamed, holding out her hands with her palms down, gesturing, whispering, and trying to placate Jennifer. “It’s not me. It’s not me that you want.”
Jennifer bared her teeth, hissed again.
“Jesus H. Christ!” The guard stepped over the low railing and reached for Jennifer.
“Get back!” Kathy Dart told him. “She’s out of control. She doesn’t know where she is.”
“But I know where the fuck she’s going,” the big man mumbled, approaching.
Jennifer hit the guard with her right forearm, knocking the man off his legs and sending him tumbling. He fell backward, hitting one of the poised figures of an early Australopithecus afarensis, knocking the plaster-of-paris hominid into the plastic lake.
In that moment, as she hit him, Jennifer saw Phoebe coming at her from the early morning mist. She had been hurt in a fall from the cliffs and was using now the short branch of a tree to support herself as she dragged her lame leg across the ground. Jennifer spun around to face the other channeler.
“Jennifer, come with us,” Kathy ordered. “We know about Phoebe. We’ve been trying to save you from her. Habasha was there. He knows.”
“Her!” Jennifer thought to herself. “Her!” She did not at that moment remember how to talk, and her anger and anguish came screeching out in the terrified sound of an animal of the jungle. She leaped forward, to the edge of the diorama, and turned on Phoebe Fisher, hooting and screeching, frightened and enraged, inside the prehistoric diorama, in the midst of the jungle heat, Jennifer recalled those moments of her very first life. She knew who she once was, realized, too, what had happened millions of years ago at the dawn of time.
Phoebe raised her steel-tipped cane above her head and rushed Jennifer.
“No!” Kathy Dart shouted, pushing forward and trying to stop Phoebe. The raised cane, like a primitive club, whistled as it cut through the air and struck Kathy Dart. The cane’s sharp point sliced across Kathy’s right cheek and dug itself deep into the thick muscles of her throat. The channeler, gasping for breath, grabbed her own neck in a stranglehold. The blood from her jugular squeezed through her fingers.
A woman screamed. Her screams kept coming and coming. They filled the gallery, echoing, gathering strength, as she ran in hysterical, blind bursts of speed, trying to escape, to flee the gallery like any frightened animal would.
Jennifer remembered. She had come scrambling out of her rubber tree, out of her high nest in the jungle, stirred by the needs of her swollen sex. She had come to mate on the forest floor, followed by the other females of her family, including the mother who had once nursed her from breastless teats, and her own child. She danced off from the first male who came after her, but watched over her shoulder while scrambling quickly on all fours. He kept advancing, screeching and waving his long arms. It was Habasha, Jennifer realized. It was Habasha in his first incarnation, and then, with a speed that she had not anticipated, Habasha mounted her from behind, entered, and ejaculated.
The other males were on her next, fighting with each other to be first. They were screaming, hooting, and dancing in a circle, sniffing her sex. The fig fruit was forgotten as the males kept after her. Pushing and shoving each other, they mounted her again and again, until, exhausted from their efforts, they slipped away into the heavy shade of the trees and slept. They had no fear. They were with their own kind.
None expected that one of their own would attack.
The old female had been chased away from their band for fighting with the others, and now suddenly she had returned. Screeching, she leapt from the tree and landed on all fours. Then, glancing around, she grabbed a mammoth bone and swung it, Jennifer saw again, at her. The bone glanced off her shoulder and hit her face. She howled in pain, and the other females, too, hooted and danced away.
The old female was white haired and smaller than her, less than two and a half feet tall, with a flat, hairy face, and a mouth misshapen by the swat of a saber-toothed tiger’s paw. She kept after her, thumping the long bone on the earth, then raising it up with both arms and swinging wildly. Then without warning, the female turned aside, struck her mother, then killed her child.
She screeched when her child was struck down, and baring her teeth, she charged the cast-off female, knowing in the dimness of her brain that this predator was more dangerous than warthogs or two-tusked deer.
Phoebe Fisher raised her cane to strike. Jennifer screamed, leapt aside, and attacked with her ancient rage. She raked her nails across Phoebe’s face, seized her hair, and jerked the head of the small woman back, exposing her pale white neck.
Her lost spirit possessed her now. She was living out her prehistoric revenge. She screeched and bared her teeth. She would rip out Phoebe’s throat and kill this beast.
“Jenny, no!” Kirk screamed.
He came running through the gallery and lunged at Jennifer, knocking her to the floor. Phoebe Fisher scrambled to her feet, swinging her cane. She caught the black museum guard in the neck. The cane’s sharp tip sliced him like a razor. Without a pause Phoebe stepped over Kathy Dart and lunged again at Jennifer, who was on the floor now and beyond the edge of the water hole diorama.
Kathy Dart stumbled to her feet. She was holding both hands to her cut throat, but the blood kept spreading between her fingers. She reached toward Phoebe, tried to keep her from killing Jennifer.
“Jenny!” she whispered, and her mouth bubbled up a mouthful of blood.
Phoebe struck again, swinging her cane down at both Jennifer and Kirk, who was down on the carpeted floor trying to shield Jennifer. The metal tip of Phoebe’s cane jabbed Kirk’s shoulder. He cried out and rolled away from Jennifer, leaving her momentarily helpless on the gallery floor.
Phoebe, raging, screeching, attacked again, aiming for Jennifer’s face, trying to drive the ice-pick tip deep into her eyes.
Jennifer’s ancient memory summoned their long-ago battle. It was at the African water hole that the first incarnated spirit of Phoebe had struck Jennifer with the mammoth bone, knocking her back into the deep water. She had tumbled and splashed, unable to swim, and then the crocodile had struck, seizing Jennifer’s arm and pulling her deep into the jungle pool.
Jennifer smiled. She knew finally who it was that had been trying to kill her now, before she could remember, before she could gain all of her channeling powers. Jennifer jumped to her feet, avoided a wild swat by the small woman, and seized the cane from Phoebe Fisher, then raised it herself as a weapon. She saw the sudden terror in Phoebe Fisher’s eyes. Jennifer knew that in one swift stroke she could kill her ancient enemy.
Jennifer stood poised, aiming for her mark. The old female had attacked her because she had mated with Habasha, attacked her because the other males had cast her aside. Now Jennifer would avenge the killing of her mother and first offspring.