"What phenomenon is that?"
"Gender transition," Grant said. "Actually, it's just plain changing sex." Grant explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life-orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males. They first adopted the fighting stance of males, they developed the mating whistle of males, they stimulated the hormones and grew the gonads of males, and eventually they successfully mated with females.
"You're kidding," Gennaro said. "And what makes it happen?"
"Apparently the change is stimulated by an environment in which all the animals are of the same sex. In that situation, some of the amphibians will spontaneously begin to change sex from female to male."
"And you think that's what happened to the dinosaurs?"
"Until we have a better explanation, yes," Grant said. "I think that's what happened. Now, shall we find this nest?"
They piled into the Jeep, and Lex lifted the raptor from the cage. The animal seemed quite calm, almost tame in her bands. She gave it a final pat on the head, and released it.
The animal wouldn't leave.
"Go on, shoo!" Lex said. "Go home!"
The raptor turned, and ran off into the foliage.
Grant held the receiver and wore the headphones. Muldoon drove. The car bounced along the main road, going south. Gennaro turned to Grant and said, "What is it like, this nest?"
"Nobody knows," Grant said.
"But I thought you'd dug them up."
"I've dug up fossil dinosaur nests," Grant said. "But all fossils are distorted by the weight of millennia. We've made some hypotheses, some suppositions, but nobody really knows what the nests were like."
Grant listened to the beeps, and signaled Muldoon to head farther west. It looked more and more as if Ellie had been correct: the nest was in the southern volcanic fields.
Grant shook his head. "Not much about nesting behavior is clear," he said. He found himself explaining about the modern reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. Even their nesting behavior wasn't well understood. Actually, the American alligator was better studied than most, and in the case of alligators, only the female guarded the nest, and only until the time of birth. The male alligator had spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her checks and providing her with other signs of masculine attention designed to bring her to receptivity, causing her finally to lift her tail and allow him, as he lay beside her, to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. And although the female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high mud nest ferociously, her attention seemed to wane with time, and she generally abandoned her eggs by the time the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells. Thus, in the wild, a baby alligator began its life entirely on its own, and for that reason its belly was stuffed with egg yolk for nourishment in its early days.
"So the adult alligators don't protect the young?"
"Not as we imagine it," Grant said. "The biological parents both abandon the offspring. But there is a kind of group protection. Young alligators have a very distinctive distress cry, and it brings any adult who hears it-parent or not-to their assistance with a full-fledged, violent attack. Not a threat display. A full-on attack."
"Oh." Gennaro fell silent.
"But that's in all respects a distinctly reptile pattern," Grant continued. "For example, the alligator's biggest problem is to keep the eggs cool. The nests are always located in the shade. A temperature of ninety-eigbt point six degrees will kill an alligator egg, so the mother mostly guards her eggs to keep them cool."
"And dinos aren't reptiles," Muldoon said laconically.
"Exactly. The dinosaur nesting pattern could be much more closely related to that of any of a variety of birds-"
"So you actually mean you don't know," Gennaro said, getting annoyed. "You don't know what the nest is like?"
"No," Grant said. "I don't."
"Well," Gennaro said. "So much for the damn experts."
Grant ignored him. Already he could smell the sulfur. And up ahead he saw the rising steam of the volcanic fields.
The ground was hot, Gennaro thought, as he walked forward. It was actually hot. And here and there mud bubbled and spat up from the ground. And the reeking, sulfurous steam hissed in great shoulder-high plumes. He felt as if he were walking through hell.
He looked at Grant, walking along with the headset on, listening to the beeps. Grant in his cowboy boots and his jeans and his Hawaiian shirt, apparently very cool. Gennaro didn't feel cool. He was frightened to be in this stinking, hellish place, with the velociraptors somewhere around. He didn't understand how Grant could be so calm about it.
Or the woman. Sattler. She was walking along, too, just looking calmly around.
"Doesn't this bother you?" Gennaro said. "I mean, worry you?"
"We've got to do it," Grant said. He didn't say anything else.
They all walked forward, among the bubbling steam vents. Gennaro fingered the gas grenades that he had clipped to his belt. He turned to Ellie. "Why isn't he worried about it?"
"Maybe he is," she said. "But he's also thought about this for his whole life."
Gennaro nodded, and wondered what that would be like. Whether there was anything he had waited his whole life for. He decided there wasn't anything.
Grant squinted in the sunlight. Ahead, through veils of steam, an animal crouched, looking at them. Then it scampered away.
"Was that the raptor?" Ellie said.
"I think so. Or another one. juvenile, anyway."
She said, "Leading us on?"
"Maybe." Ellie had told him how the raptors had played at the fence to keep her attention while another climbed onto the roof. If true, such behavior implied a mental capacity that was beyond nearly all forms of life on earth. Classically, the ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings. Now there was the possibility that a dinosaur might be able to do such a thing, too.
The raptor appeared again, darting into the light, then jumping away with a squeak. It really did seem to be leading them on.
Gennaro frowned. "How smart are they?" he said.
"If you think of them as birds," Grant said, "then you have to wonder. Some new studies show the gray parrot has as much symbolic intelligence as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees can definitely use language. Now researchers are finding that parrots have the emotional development of a three-year-old child, but their intelligence is unquestioned. Parrots can definitely reason symbolically."
"But I've never heard of anybody killed by a parrot," Gennaro grumbled.
Distantly, they could bear the sound of the surf on the island shore. The volcanic fields were behind them now, and they faced a field of boulders. The little raptor climbed up onto one rock, and then abruptly disappeared.
"Where'd it go?" Ellie said.
Grant was listening to the earphones. The beeping stopped. "He's gone."
They hurried forward, and found in the midst of the rocks a small bole, like a rabbit hole. It was perhaps two feet in diameter. As they watched, the juvenile raptor reappeared, blinking in the light. Then it scampered away.
"No way," Gennaro said. "No way I'm going down there."
Grant said nothing. He and Ellie began to plug in equipment. Soon he had a small video camera attached to a hand-held monitor. He tied the camera to a rope, turned it on, and lowered it down the hole.
"You can't see anything that way," Gennaro said.
"Let it adjust," Grant said. There was enough light along the upper tunnel for them to see smooth dirt walls, and then the tunnel opened out-suddenly, abruptly. Over the microphone, they heard a squeaking sound. Then a lower, trumpeting sound. More noises, coming from many animals.
"Sounds like the nest, all right," Ellie said.
"But you can't see anything," Gennaro said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
"No," Grant said. "But I can hear. " He listened for a while longer, and then hauled the camera out, and set it on the ground. "Let's get started." He climbed up toward the bole. Ellie went to get a flashlight and a shock stick. Grant pulled the gas mask on over his face, and crouched down awkwardly, extending his legs backward.