He was pretty bad upset. “There’s been an accident – an incident, I mean. At the Institute.” He was talking about the Institute for Advanced Physics, which was not all that far from here. It was government-funded and affiliated in some way I’d never been able to get straight with the University of Vermont. “The verge stabilizers failed and the meson-field inverted and vectorized. The congruence factors went to infinity and…” He seized control of himself. “You’re not supposed to see any of this.”
“These things are yours, then?” I said. “So you’d know. They’re Triceratops, right?”
“Triceratops horridus,” he said distractedly. I felt unreasonably pleased with myself. “For the most part. There might be a couple other species of Triceratops mixed in there as well. They’re like ducks in that regard. They’re not fussy about what company they keep.”
Gretta shot out her wrist and glanced meaningfully at her watch. Like everything else she owned, it was expensive. She worked for a firm in Essex Junction that did systems analysis for companies that were considering downsizing. Her job was to find out exactly what everybody did and then tell the CEO who could be safely cut. “I’m losing money,” she grumbled.
I ignored her.
“Listen,” the kid said. “You’ve got to keep quiet about this. We can’t afford to have it get out. It has to be kept a secret.”
“A secret?” On the far side of the herd, three cars had drawn up and stopped. Their passengers were standing in the road, gawking. A Ford Taurus pulled up behind us, and its driver rolled down his window for a better look. “You’re planning to keep a herd of dinosaurs secret? There must be dozens of these things.”
“Hundreds,” he said despairingly. “They were migrating. The herd broke up after it came through. This is only a fragment of it.”
“Then I don’t see how you’re going to keep this a secret. I mean, just look at them. They’re practically the size of tanks. People are bound to notice.”
“My God, my God.”
Somebody on the other side had a camera out and was taking pictures. I didn’t point this out to the young man.
Gretta had been getting more and more impatient as the conversation proceeded. Now she climbed down out of the truck and said, “I can’t afford to waste any more time here. I’ve got work to do.”
“Well, so do I, Gretta.”
She snorted derisively. “Ripping out toilets, and nailing up sheet rock! Already, I’ve lost more money than you earn in a week.”
She stuck out her hand at the young man. “Give me your car keys.”
Dazed, the kid obeyed. Gretta climbed down, got in the Hyundai, and wheeled it around. “I’ll have somebody return this to the Institute later today.”
Then she was gone, off to find another route around the herd.
She should have waited, because a minute later the beasts decided to leave, and in no time at all were nowhere to be seen. They’d be easy enough to find, though. They pretty much trampled everything flat in their wake.
The kid shook himself, as if coming out of a trance. “Hey,” he said. “She took my car.”
“Climb into the cab,” I said. “There’s a bar a ways up the road. I think you need a drink.”
* * *
He said his name was Everett McCoughlan, and he clutched his glass like he would fall off the face of the Earth if he were to let go. It took a couple of whiskeys to get the full story out of him. Then I sat silent for a long time. I don’t mind admitting that what he’d said made me feel a little funny. “How long?” I asked at last.
“Ten weeks, maybe three months, tops. No more.”
I took a long swig of my soda water. (I’ve never been much of a drinker. Also, it was pretty early in the morning.) Then I told Everett that I’d be right back.
I went out to the truck, and dug the cell phone out of the glove compartment.
First I called home. Delia had already left for the bridal shop, and they didn’t like her getting personal calls at work, so I left a message saying that I loved her. Then I called Green Mountain Books. It wasn’t open yet, but Randy likes to come in early and he picked up the phone when he heard my voice on the machine. I asked him if he had anything on Triceratops. He said to hold on a minute, and then said yes, he had one copy of The Horned Dinosaurs by Peter Dodson. I told him I’d pick it up next time I was in town.
Then I went back in the bar. Everett had just ordered a third whiskey, but I pried it out of his hand. “You’ve had enough of that,” I said. “Go home, take a nap. Maybe putter around in the garden.”
“I don’t have my car,” he pointed out.
“Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”
“Anyway, I’m supposed to be at work. I didn’t log out. And technically I’m still on probation.”
“What difference does that make,” I asked, “now?”
* * *
Everett had an apartment in Winooski at the Woolen Mill, so I guess the Institute paid him good money. Either that or he wasn’t very smart how he spent it. After I dropped him off, I called a couple contractors I knew and arranged for them to take over what jobs I was already committed to. Then I called the Free Press to cancel my regular ad, and all my customers to explain I was having scheduling problems and had to subcontract their jobs. Only old Mrs. Bremmer gave me any trouble over that, and even she came around after I said that in any case I wouldn’t be able to get around to her Jacuzzi until sometime late July.
Finally, I went to the bank and arranged for a second mortgage on my house.
It took me a while to convince Art Letourneau I was serious. I’d been doing business with him for a long while, and he knew how I felt about debt. Also, I was pretty evasive about what I wanted the money for. He was half-suspicious I was having some kind of late onset mid-life crisis. But the deed was in my name and property values were booming locally, so in the end the deal went through.
On the way home, I stopped at a jewelry store and at the florist’s.
Delia’s eyes widened when she saw the flowers, and then narrowed at the size of the stone on the ring. She didn’t look at all the way I’d thought she would. “This better be good,” she said.
So I sat down at the kitchen table and told her the whole story. When I was done, Delia was silent for a long while, just as I’d been. Then she said, “How much time do we have?”
“Three months if we’re lucky. Ten weeks in any case,” Everett said.
“You believe him?”
“He seemed pretty sure of himself.”
If there’s one thing I am, it’s a good judge of character, and Delia knew it. When Gretta moved into the rehabbed barn next door, I’d said right from the start she was going to be a difficult neighbor. And that was before she’d smothered the grass on her property under three different colors of mulch, and then complained about me keeping my pickup parked in the driveway, out in plain sight.
Delia thought seriously for a few minutes, frowning in that way she has when she’s concentrating, and then she smiled. It was a wan little thing, but a smile nonetheless. “Well, I’ve always wished we could afford a real first-class vacation.”
I was glad to hear her say so, because that was exactly the direction my own thought had been trending in. And happier than that when she flung out her arms and whooped, “I’m going to Disneyworld!”
“Hell,” I said. “We’ve got enough money to go to Disneyworld, Disneyland, and Eurodisney, one after the other. I think there’s one in Japan too.”
We were both laughing at this point, and then she dragged me up out of the chair, and the two of us were dancing around and round the kitchen, still a little spooked under it all, but mostly being as giddy and happy as kids.