"So I'm actually very cutting-edge New Age," she said. "Do you have anything like that? A rabbit's foot or a lucky squeezed penny with a picture of something on it?"
"No, but my father used to have this little ritual he did. He drove a bus in Los Angeles and every time he got in, he'd step up with his left foot first. When I asked him why he did that, he said the left was his heart side and it always made him think of life, his family, and how precious both of them were."
Hannah looked at him. "Now that's sweet."
"My father's a great guy," Grand said. "He used to love talking to the regulars on his route. He's totally outgoing. My mother liked staying home, taking care of the house, and listening to opera. But as different as they were, somehow they just fit together."
"And they love you."
He nodded.
"What was the best thing they ever did for you?" she asked.
He looked at her. "That's an odd question. It's a good one, but strange."
"So what's the answer?"
He smiled. "The best thing they ever did was to take me to the Grand Canyon when I was six years old," he said. "When I was a kid I loved to collect comic books. I loved the art and I couldn't get enough of the most dramatic characters: Thor, the Spectre, the Flash, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man. Other kids were into kickball and dodgeball, but I was overweight and I didn't enjoy them."
"You were overweight?" she said.
"Yeah."
"My God," she said. "You could be a poster child for fitness."
"That also came from what my folks did for me," he said. "The kids at school started calling me Grand Canyon because I was so fat. So I just shut myself off from everyone. Comic books became my universe and my mother and father decided that probably wasn't a good thing. So during the summer between first grade and second, my parents decided to show me that the Grand Canyon wasn't just big, it was majestic and wonderful. They packed me and my younger sister Victoria in a car and we drove out there. I'd grown up knowing the mountains and the ocean but I have never imagined actually seeing anything like the awesome alien worlds and colorful subterranean realms I'd read about in comic books."
"That must have blown you away."
"Completely," he said. "Not only that, but the people who lived there loved the same things I did. They made animal fetishes-dolls of frogs, turtles, bears, and other creatures that were supposed to have magical powers. They made little corn maidens-witches that lived since the beginning of time. And some of the inhabitants even carved and painted their own forms of comic books on cave walls and mountainsides, pictures of great hunters and extraordinary animals. I came home from there with a new sense of my name." He smiled. "I also came back with an armload of books, postcards, Brownie Starflash photographs, and a purpose. The mythology of ancient peoples-the stories of real superheroes-became my new passion. I got my pilot's license years later, but I never flew as high as I did on that trip."
Hannah was smiling. "Thanks for telling me that."
Grand smiled back. "Thanks for asking. I didn't mean to get carried away."
"You didn't. And I liked it. Do you still see your folks much?"
"On Christmas and their anniversary, mostly," Grand said. "They moved to Cornwall, England, which is where my sister lives and my mother's family came from. They have a little farmhouse there. They don't raise anything but they love it there. What about you? Do you see your parents?"
Hannah's smile twisted. "I'm expected to make the pilgrimage back to Rhode Island every few months. My mom keeps setting me up with this yacht-guy and that stock broker-guy because she's the only one at the club who doesn't have grandchildren and I don't have any siblings. My dad wants to make sure I'm still alive and that the newspaper isn't being printed in red ink."
"Is he one of your investors?" Grand asked.
"No, he's my only investor," Hannah said. "Nineteenth-century railroad money is underwriting my-"
Hannah stopped speaking as the computer pinged. Grand swung to the keyboard.
"What happened?" Hannah asked.
"I'll be damned, it found a match," Grand said.
"After just eight minutes?" She jangled the dog tags. "Thanks, Dad. What is it?"
Grand stopped the search and clicked on the highlighted file.
"It's in paleoanthropology, my department," he said. "That's why it came up so quickly."
"Doesn't your department only deal with ancient things?" Hannah asked. "Extinct races and animals?"
"Yes," Grand said.
The file opened and the database DNA map was displayed side by side with the original DNA fingerprint that Grand had given the computer. The database map was from a sample that Grand had discovered himself in Mexico, the only fossil minutely detailed enough to yield a complete DNA fingerprint.
He stared at the two sets for a second, the stacks of horizontal dashes that signified genetic sequences. The loci-the individual patterns-were identical in both samples. Everything was right.
Yet everything was wrong.
The sea seemed louder, the air somehow different as he tried to process what the search had turned up. Even the suggestion of it being true did, for an instant, make Grand feel as though two points in time had somehow folded back on themselves, like a ribbon being twisted round. The campus, thousands of years, all of human knowledge seemed to vanish for that instant.
The moment itself passed quickly, though the aftershocks stuck in his mind like the remnants of a nightmare.
Or a vision?
"So what is it?" Hannah pressed. "What does it say?"
What does it say? Grand thought. No one would play a trick like this and risk expulsion. And though he'd have tests run again, they were rarely wrong.
"Jim?" Hannah pressed.
"According to this, the hair I found belongs to a living animal that's been extinct for at least eleven thousand years."
"What animal?"
"Smilodon fatalis," Grand said. He looked at her. "A saber-toothed cat."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The sun had gone down, the moon was rising, and the wind and currents were finally cooperating to bring the Hobie Cat almost within "walkin' distance" to shore. At least, that's how Patrick Vlaskovitz described where they were-six fathoms from the bottom at roughly a quarter of a mile out, which the young student knew he could swim if he had to. Whether Tim Douglass and Pancho d'Escoto could swim it, he didn't know.
Vlaskovitz also didn't care. After a shitload of hours just drifting out here, with the Cat's tail busted and d'Escoto not having remembered to bring the freaking phone, which was his responsibility, they were lucky to be within sight of shore at all. Only Vlaskovitz's skill with the sail had kept them from heading out to Japan or frigging Tonga on currents that were slightly stronger than the wind. At least Douglass had stuffed some Twix bars under the seat pad, so they had something to chew on while they waited for the tides and currents to become more favorable and help them toward shore.
In a way, as d'Escoto had lamely pointed out, it was a good thing they hadn't sailed shoreward sooner. When it was still daylight the southbound coastwise traffic lane-which was farthest out-and the northbound coastwise traffic lane were clogged with big motorboats going way too fast to watch out for stranded Hobie Cats. Hell, they'd almost gotten clocked by a weather buoy, and that sucker was standing still. Douglass didn't share his enthusiasm. The navy's Pacific Missile Range was located just north of San Miguel Island and they could easily have drifted into that. None of them had bothered to check in with the twice-daily radio warnings because they didn't expect to be stranded the hell out here.
But stranded they were, so the three young men just sat on the teal trampoline slung between the peapod-shaped blue pontoons, getting colder and colder and waiting-as Douglass put it-"for air and water to return us to the earth."