“It had no arms.”
Ludlam looked at Jacobs, then back at the injured man. Jacobs lifted his hands, palms up, in a this-is-news-to-me gesture. “No arms at all?”
“None, ” said Kowalski. “It had kind of reared up on its legs, and was holding its body like this.” He held an arm straight out, parallel to the floor.
“Did you see its eyes?”
“Christ, yes. I’ll never forget ’em.”
“What did they look like?”
“They were yellow, and—”
“No, no. The pupils. What shape were they?”
“Round. Round and black.”
Ludlam leaned back in his chair.
“What’s significant about that?” asked Jacobs.
“Alligators have vertical pupils; so do most snakes. But not theropod dinosaurs.”
“How do you possibly know that?” said Jacobs. “I thought soft tissues don’t fossilize.”
“They don’t. But dinosaurs had tiny bones inside their eyes; you can tell from them what shape their pupils had been.”
“And?”
“Round. But it’s something most people don’t know.”
“You think I’m lying?” said Kowalski, growing angry. “Is that what you think?”
“On the contrary,” said Ludlam, his voice full of wonder. “I think you’re telling the truth.”
“ ’Course I am,” said Kowalski. “I been with the City for eighteen years, and I never took a sick day—you can check on that. I’m a hard worker, and I didn’t just imagine this bite.” He gestured dramatically at his bandaged leg. But then he paused, as if everything had finally sunk in. He looked from one man to the other. “You guys saying I was attacked by a dinosaur?”
Ludlam lifted his shoulders. “Well, all dinosaurs had four limbs. As you say, the one you saw must have been injured. Was there scarring where its forearms should have been?”
“No. None. Its chest was pretty smooth. I think maybe it was a birth defect—living down in the sewer, and all.”
Ludlam exhaled noisily. “There’s no way dinosaurs could have survived for sixty-five million years in North America without us knowing it. But…” He trailed off.
“Yes?” said Jacobs.
“Well, the lack of arms. You saw the T. rex skeleton we’ve got at the AMNH. What did you notice about its arms?”
The surgeon frowned. “They were tiny, almost useless.”
“That’s right,” said Ludlam. “Tyrannosaur arms had been growing smaller and smaller as time went by—more-ancient theropods had much bigger arms, and, of course, the distant ancestors of T. rex had walked around on all fours. If they hadn’t gone extinct, it’s quite conceivable that tyrannosaurs would have eventually lost their arms altogether.”
“But they did go extinct,” said Jacobs.
Ludlam locked eyes with the surgeon. “I’ve got to go down there,” he said.
Ludlam kept searching, night after night, week after week.
And finally, on a rainy April night a little after 1:00 a.m., he encountered another piezoelectric phenomenon.
The green light shimmered before his eyes.
It grew brighter.
And then—and then—an outline started to appear.
Something big.
Reptilian.
Three meters long, with a horizontally held back, and a stiff tail sticking out to the rear.
Ludlam could see through it—see right through it to the slick wall beyond.
Growing more solid now…
The chest was smooth. The tiling lacked arms, just as Kowalski had said. But that wasn’t what startled Ludlam most.
The head was definitely tyrannosaurid—loaf-shaped, with ridges of bone above the eyes. But the top of the head rose up in a high dome.
Tyrannosaurs hadn’t just lost their arms over tens of millions of years of additional evolution. They’d apparently also become more intelligent. The domed skull could have housed a sizable brain.
The creature looked at Ludlam with round pupils. Ludlam’s flashlight was shaking violently in his hand, causing mad shadows to dance behind the dinosaur.
The dinosaur had faded in.
What if the dinosaurs hadn’t become extinct? It was a question Ludlam had pondered for years. Yes, in this reality, they had succumbed to—to something, no one knew exactly what. But in another reality—in another timeline—perhaps they hadn’t.
And here, in the sewers of New York, piezoelectric discharges were causing the timelines to merge.
The creature began moving. It was clearly solid now, clearly here. Its footfalls sent up great splashes of water.
Ludlam froze. His head wanted to move forward, to approach the creature. His heart wanted to run as fast as he possibly could in the other direction.
His head won.
The dinosaur’s mouth hung open, showing white conical teeth. There were some gaps—this might indeed have been the same individual that attacked Kowalski. But Kowalski had been a fool—doubdess he’d tried to run, or to ward off the approaching beast.
Ludlam walked slowly toward the dinosaur. The creature tilted its head to one side, as if puzzled. It could have decapitated Ludlam with a single bite, but for the moment it seemed merely curious. Ludlam reached up gently, placing his flat palm softly against the beast’s rough, warm hide.
The dinosaur’s chest puffed out, and it let loose a great roar. The sound started long and loud, but soon it was attenuating, growing fainter—
—as was the beast itself.
Ludlam felt a tingling over his entire body, and then pain shooting up into his brain, and then a shiver that ran down his spine as though a cold hand were touching each vertebra in turn, and then he was completely blind, and then there was a flash of absolutely pure, white light, and then—
—and then, he was there.
On the other side.
In the other timeline.
Ludlam had been in physical contact with the dinosaur as it had returned home, and he’d been swept back to the other side with it.
It had been nighttime in New York, and, of course, it was nighttime here. But the sky was crystal clear, with, just as it had been back in the other timeline, the moon perfectly full. Ludlam saw stars twinkling overhead—in precisely the patterns he was used to seeing whenever he got away from the city’s lights.
This was the present day, and it was Manhattan Island—but devoid of skyscrapers, devoid of streets. They were at the bank of a river—a river long ago buried in the other timeline as part of New York’s sanitation system.
The tyrannosaur was standing next to Ludlam. It looked disoriented, and was rocking back and forth on its two legs, its stiff tail almost touching the ground at the end of each arc.
The creature eyed Ludlam.
It had no arms; therefore, it had no technology. But Ludlam felt sure there must be a large brain beneath that domed skull. Surely it would recognize that Ludlam meant it no harm—and that his scrawny frame would hardly constitute a decent meal.
The dinosaur stood motionless. Ludlam opened his mouth in a wide, toothy grin—
—and the great beast did the same thing—
—and Ludlam realized his mistake—