But the men kept shouting, and suddenly there was a roaring sound, and Levine looked up to see flamethrowers igniting, big red jets of flame roaring out in the evening light. He ran around the carcass toward the men, shouting, "No! No!"
But the men paid no attention.
He shouted, "No, this is a priceless - "
The first of the uniformed men grabbed Levine, and threw him roughly to the sand.
"What the hell are you doing?" Levine yelled, scrambling to his feet. But even as he said it, he saw it was too late, the first of the flames had reached the carcass, blackening the skin, igniting the pockets of methane with a blue whump! The smoke from the carcass began to rise thickly into the sky.
"Stop it! Stop it!" Levine turned to Guitierrez. "Make them stop it!"
But Guitierrez was not moving, he was staring at the carcass. Consumed by flames, the torso crackled and the fat sputtered, and then as the skin burned away, the black, flat ribs of the skeleton were revealed, and then the whole torso turned, and suddenly the neck of the animal swung up, surrounded by flames, moving as the skin contracted. And inside the flames Levine saw a long pointed snout, and rows of sharp predatory teeth, and hollow eye sockets, the whole thing burning like some medieval dragon rising in flames up into the sky.
San Jose
Levine sat in the bar of the San Jose airport, nursing a beer, waiting for his plane back to the States. Guitierrez sat beside him at a small table, not saying much. An awkward silence had fallen for the last few minutes. Guitierrez stared at Levine's backpack, on the floor by his feet. It was specially constructed of dark-green Gore-Tex, with extra pockets on the outside for all the electronic gear.
"Pretty nice pack," Guitierrez said. "Where'd you get that, anyway? Looks like a Thorne pack."
Levine sipped his beer. "It is."
"Nice," Guitierrez said, looking at it. "What've you got there in the top flap, a satellite phone? And a GPS? Boy, what won't they think of next. Pretty slick. Must have cost you a - "
"Marty," Levine said, in an exasperated tone. "Cut the crap. Are you going to tell me, or not?"
"Tell you what?"
"I want to know what the hell's going on here."
"Richard, look, I'm sorry if you - "
"No," Levine said, cutting him off. "That was a very important specimen on that beach, Marty, and it was destroyed. I don't understand why you let it happen."
Guitierrez sighed. He looked around at the tourists at the other tables and said, "This has to be in confidence, okay?"
"All right."
"It's a big problem here."
"What is."
"There have been, uh…aberrant forms…turning up on the coast ever so often. It's been going on for several years now."
"'Aberrant forms?"' Levine repeated, shaking his head in disbelief
"That's the official term for these specimens," Guitierrez said. "No one in the government is willing to be more precise. It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans."
"Soy beans," Levine repeated.
Guitierrez nodded. "Apparently these animals are attracted to beans, and certain grasses. The assumption is that they have a great need for the amino acid lysine in their diets. But nobody is really sure. Perhaps they just have a taste for certain crops - "
"Marty," Levine said. "I don't care if they have a taste for beer and pretzels. The only important question is: where did the animals come from?"
"Nobody knows," Guitierrez said.
Levine let that pass, for the moment. "What happened to those other animals?"
"They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today."
"And what was done?"
"The, ah, aberrant forms are always destroyed. Just as you saw. From the beginning, the government's taken every possible step to make sure nobody finds out about it. A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar. Menendez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island - and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference. Stuff like that. I mean, the government's very serious about this."
"Why?"
"They're worried."
"Worried? Why should they be worried about - "
Guitierrez held up his hand, shifted in his chair, moved closer. "Disease, Richard."
"Disease?"
"Yeah. Costa Rica has one of the best health-care systems in the world," Guitierrez said. "The epidemiologists have been tracking some weird type of encephalitis that seems to be on the increase, particularly along the coast."
"Encephalitis'? Of what origin? Viral?"
Guitierrez shook his head. "No causative agent has been found."
"Marty…"
"I'm telling you, Richard. Nobody knows. It's not a virus, because antibody titres don't go up, and white-cell differentials don't change. It's not bacterial, because nothing has ever been cultered. It's a complete mystery. All the epidemiologists know is that it seems to affect primarily rural farmers: people who are around animals and livestock. And it's a true encephalitis-splitting headaches, mental confusion, fever, delirium."
"Mortality?"
"So far it seems to be self-limited, lasts about three weeks. But even so it's got the government worried. This country is dependent on tourism, Richard. Nobody wants talk of unknown diseases."
"So they think the encephalitis is related to these, ah, aberrant forms?"
He shrugged. "Lizards carry lots of viral diseases," Guitierrez said. "They're a known vector. So it's not unreasonable, there might be a connection."
"But you said this isn't a viral disease."
"Whatever it is. They think it's related."
Levine said, "All the more reason to find out where these lizards are coming from. Surely they must have searched…"
"Searched?" Guiiticrrez said, with a laugh. "Of course they've searched. They've gone over every square inch of this country, again and again. They've sent out dozens of search parties - I've led several myself. They've done aerial surveys. They've had overflights of the jungle. They've had overflights of the offshore islands. That in itself is a big job. There are quite a few islands, you know, particularly along the west coast. Hell, they've even searched the ones that are privately owned."
"Are there privately owned islands?" Levine asked.
"A few. Three or four. Like Isla Nublar - it was leased to an American company, InGen, for years."
"But you said that island was searched…"
"Thoroughly searched. Nothing there."
"And the others?"
"Well, let's see," Guitierrez said, ticking them off on his fingers. "There's Isla Talamanca, on the east coast; they've got a Club Med there. There's Sorna, on the west coast; it's leased to a German mining company. And there's Morazan, up north; it's actually owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family. And there may be another island I've forgotten about."
"And the searches found what?"
"Nothing," Guitierrez said. "They've found nothing at all. So the assumption is that the animals are coming from some location deep in the jungle. And that's why we haven't been able to find it so far."
Levine grunted. "In that case, lots of luck,"
"I know," Guitierrez said. "Rain forest is an incredibly good environment for concealment. A search party could pass within ten yards of a large animal and never see it. And even the most advanced remote sensing technology doesn't help much, because there are multiple layers to penetrate-clouds, tree canopy, lower-level flora. There's just no way around it: almost anything could be hiding in the rain forest. Anyway," he said, "the government's frustrated. And, of course, the government is not the only interested party."
Levine looked up sharply. "Oh?"