“Hello!” McCauley now yelled.
He heard a hello, but it didn’t sound like his echo. It was higher pitched, and the direction was off.
“Hello!” he called out at the top of his lungs.
“Hello!”
It was a woman’s voice. Definitely a woman and not from the cave.
McCauley held onto rock that jutted out and turned his body. He looked around, then downward.
“Jesus!” he exclaimed. He saw Dr. Alpert at the base of the cliff. “Don’t you ever just announce yourself quietly?”
“Like the scorpion said to the frog, ‘It’s just my nature.’”
“Right. After the scorpion bit the nice frog that had just given him a lift to the middle of the river. Remember, they both sank and died.”
“Whoops, bad metaphor.” She smiled. “I believe you were saying hello to nothing in particular.”
“Yes I was. And if you keep quiet I’ll be able to make a scientific observation.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” she shouted back.
“Later.”
“Me later or whatever you were going to do later?”
“Try both.” He climbed down, brushed himself off and began to walk away. McCauley was not happy. It was going no better than the night before.
“Whoa,” she said, doubling her pace to catch up.
“Dr. McCauley, please.”
He stopped, but kept his back to her. Once by his side she picked up where she left off.
“I’d really appreciate it if you’d make this easier. I’ve come a long way to…”
“To spy. To judge,” he said staring her down.
“To evaluate, doctor. And so far I’ve seen you with golf clubs in a cushy motel room rather than on a cot at your camp like everyone else. Today, you’re off gallivanting, not supervising your students. I just…”
“Came the wrong day,” he interrupted. “How about I give you a call when we discover something worthy of an academician of your stature?”
“I’m a scientist like, you, Dr. McCauley.”
“Well, at last a positive acknowledgment. Will that appear in your evaluation?”
“It will. And if you want to know the truth, I had a really nice summer trip planned. But my dean handed me a ticket to Montana. If you think I’m happy about this, you’re mistaken. I expected time at the ocean.”
“You’re a few million years late.”
“What?”
He gave a sweeping motion across the landscape. “Back in the day, there used to be a great inland sea right here. Perfect for kicking back, putting on a bikini, and soaking in the rays.”
Alpert automatically made sure all the buttons were fastened on her loose white cotton shirt and she was otherwise put together properly. Proper was the right term and the right British term. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore perfectly pressed khaki shorts, a white cotton button down shirt and work boots with a high sheen polish.
He continued walking. She kept pace with him now.
“Dr. McCauley, I’ve read your file. I know your work. You could probably teach until the dinosaurs inhabit the earth again. At issue is your research output. You haven’t made any significant contributions in years. You know that as well as I do. Your department is, shall I say, rethinking your ability to attract serious research funds.”
He stopped again and squarely faced her. “So this is really all about my ability as a rainmaker?”
“Well,” she stuttered, as if thinking about the possibility. “No, the quality of your research. Like everything else, money is attracted to success. Washington, London, Tokyo, Beijing, Yale. It’s all the same.”
“Right,” he replied sarcastically.
“Look, I’m not comfortable with my role any more than you are at being held accountable.”
“So what should we do, Dr. Alpert?”
“We could start over. Let’s have a real conversation instead of sparring like Mothra and Godzilla.”
“They’re not dinosaurs, doctor.”
“And neither are you, Dr. McCauley.”
Minutes later, they were back at base camp. McCauley had waved off his grad students who wanted to know what was happening. At this point he couldn’t objectively or fairly explain.
He held the tent flap open for his visitor, set two folding chairs around a bridge table next to his cot and said, “Let the inquisition begin. Water?” he offered reaching into a small refrigerator powered by a gas generator.
“No thank you.”
He grabbed one for himself. “Can the condemned man have one?”
She laughed. “Help yourself.”
They began to discuss a wide range of issues, avoiding anything personal. The talk moved from recent lackluster government interest to how fewer and fewer corporations and foundations backed paleontological work, and onto the pressure research institutions faced. The deeper the conversation, the more McCauley began to see that Dr. Katrina Alpert was not so different from him. She’d spent years in the field before finally deciding to create a comprehensive dinosaur database going back two hundred years, something sorely missing and uniquely fundable.
“I figured it was where the money was,” she admitted. “And I went for it.”
The dialogue served to reset their relationship which made them both feel better.
After forty-five minutes Alpert ran out of questions. McCauley had one. “So what’s next?”
“I’d like to check out of the motel. Think you can find someplace for me to bunk?”
“Really, with us?”
“Yes.”
“There’s room in the women’s tent.”
“That was what I had in mind. Okay then?”
“Okay, Dr. Alpert.”
“You could try Katrina.”
“Not sure I’m ready to do that.”
“I’d rather be seen as a team member instead of hit man.”
McCauley smiled. He liked that idea a whole lot better, but he just wasn’t sure about her yet.
While Alpert returned to her motel, McCauley spent time with his grad students, examining their cache of fossils that would make them happy but still wouldn’t add to the greater good. Nonetheless, it was important to give them positive feedback to encourage them. More than anything else, he was a great teacher and mentor.
Ninety minutes later, and without telling anyone where he was headed, McCauley returned to the area that had sparked his curiosity. Once up, he crawled through the entrance. It was stinky and sticky, making the on-ground excavations a pleasure by comparison. Four feet into the darkness, he yelled, “Hello” at medium volume. This time his voice echoed back. He wondered why it was always “Hello,” as if someone was going to say, “Yes, I’m here. I’ve been waiting for you. Where the hell have you been all these years?” And when it wasn’t hello, people just tended to yell “Echo.” That was his next call.
“Echo,” This was at the top of his lungs.
This return astounded him. “Echo” bounced off the rock walls changing volume and pitch. With it, the legends of the badlands came to mind again. Lakota storytellers had recounted tales of ancient creatures that roamed the earth and ruled the skies eons before Lewis and Clark explored the area, or discovered a dinosaur skeleton near the Missouri River. How did they know? Faint echoes of the past in the winds?
McCauley crawled further and sat up. He took out his iPhone, engaged the flashlight app and saw what looked to be a faded cave painting on the wall.
Lakota.
He turned off the flashlight, switched to camera, aimed at the rock and took a flash picture.
“Jesus! Are you trying to blind me?”
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. He turned to the silhouetted form of Dr. Alpert, backlit well inside the cave entrance. “There you go again!”