Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (18 page)

"The horn," Indy said. "The horn was from the mother."

"Yes," Starbuck said. "I sent it to Joan at the newspaper before fully realizing where the adventure was to lead me. I knew it was a triceratops horn, of course, and I knew that it was from a living animal. Doubtless you surmised the same, Dr. Jones, or else you wouldn't be here."

"Why did you send it?"

"I was so excited that I wanted Joan to share in the find, although I dared not include a written explanation of its significance. Besides, I knew she would be able to deduce that for herself. Only later did I realize that it was a mistake to send such bait to the world, so a couple of the brothers brought it back. I'm sorry that we were too late to keep you from wasting your time."

"Wasting our time?" Granger asked. "We have living dinosaur eggs. I would hardly say we have wasted our time getting here."

For the first time Indy detected a sense of wonder in Granger's voice.

"And they are going to stay here," Starbuck said. "We are desperately trying to keep them alive. But we don't know what temperature is correct, or how often to turn them, or anything really besides keeping them moist. We brought the eggs here so that we could tend them around the clock and so that they would be safe from predators. These eggs, you see—these eggs represent the last of the kind. We knew of no other such living animal besides the mother."

"I don't know whether leaving them here would be a good idea," Granger said. "They must be studied. They belong in a museum, and we should take them back to New York without delay."

Indy was alarmed at Granger's sudden passion.

Starbuck was about to argue with Granger when Indy, alerted by a sound outside, went to the tower's narrow window.

"I'm afraid there is one other predator that you won't be able to avoid, and I'm afraid we have led him straight to your door," Indy said. "General Tzi. He's out there on the plateau now, planning to lay siege to the lamastery."

Starbuck joined Indy at the window.

"We'll have to get the eggs out of here," Starbuck said.

"Good God," Granger said. "They're unlimbering a howitzer down there. Tzi means business."

"I'll alert the brothers," Starbuck said.

"Professor," Indy said. "Just one more question. I thought I heard you say that you sent the horn to Joan's paper, but that couldn't be right. Didn't you mean you sent the horn to her order?"

"Her order? Order of what?" Starbuck asked as he opened the trapdoor and began to climb down. "Joan is a reporter for the
Kansas City Star
."

"Sorry," Joan said. "I've been meaning to tell you, but I just didn't know how."

"I think I'll see if Professor Starbuck and the brothers need any help," Granger improvised. "It seems you kids have a few things to work out."

He left the tower also.

"Why the masquerade?" Indy asked.

"Well, if I had told you I was a reporter, would you have taken me as seriously?" Joan asked. "I wanted to find my father, and I knew you were the right man to help me do it, but I didn't have the kind of resources necessary to mount such an expedition. I figured I had to get the resources of the museum behind me, so I just played dumb and made it seem like yours and Brody's idea."

Indy's face was red with rage.

"The fact that you knew you were onto the story of the century—no, of the
millennium
—probably didn't hurt, either," he said. "How could I have been so stupid? The constant questions about this or that, your demand to accompany us all of the way... it all makes perfect sense, now."

"He is still my father," Joan said. "And I had a desperate desire to find him. And I didn't lie when I talked about my family's belief in the basic goodness of humanity. But my editors at the
Star
laughed at me when I suggested they send me to Mongolia, so I had to come up with something to get here. The habit was a Halloween costume I had worn to a party earlier in the week, so I decided to use it. I can see now how wrong that was, but it made sense at the time."

"It's called rationalization," Indy said.

"I know what I did was wrong," she said.

"And you seemed to enjoy it," Indy said. "You played the slutty nun to the hilt. You seemed to like it so much that I'll bet it was hard for you to leave the costume behind."

"I was lonely and I was scared much of the time," Joan said. "I'm just human, you know."

"Oh, you're something more than human. Were you going to tell me that you weren't really a nun before or after you got me into the sack, Sister?"

She looked at him.

"Sorry, it's a hard habit to break." She laughed in spite of herself.

"Look, Dr. Jones. We both know you would have gone on this expedition whether I was a nun, a newspaper reporter, or had two heads and purple hair. So what's the damage?"

She took off his fedora, draped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Hard.

Indy pulled himself away.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't give my heart to liars. Besides, I'm in love with somebody else."

"You mean that witch who dumped you?"

"Did you say witch or—"

"You heard me," Joan said. "I can't believe you're carrying a torch for her after all she's put you through, and obviously I don't know the half of it. But I can gather enough from the conversations you've had with Brody and Granger that you're way too good for her."

"You don't understand," Indy protested.

"And what is it that I need to understand about Indiana Jones?" she asked.

"That I'm a hopeless, raving romantic," he said. "That I keep my word to my friends. That I don't sleep around when I'm in love with somebody else. That I don't lose my values just because I'm a few-thousand miles from home. That there are things in this world which science can't explain but which just maybe the human heart can. And that I would never, ever date a girl who dresses like a nun."

The first shell from the howitzer blasted a hole in the wall of the lamastery the size of a bushel basket.

"Time to abandon ship," Indy said. "We can't hold off Tzi's army with one machine gun and five rounds of ammunition."

"If only we had more weapons," Granger said.

"We don't, so we'll have to make a run for it," Indy said.

"Even if we had weapons," Starbuck said, "I would not resort to killing. That would make us no better than the animals beyond the gates."

"Sometimes it's better to be a living animal," Granger said, "than a dead philosopher. If you find some guns, you let me know."

"Professor," Indy said. "I'm sorry, but I think that Tzi is going to blow this monastery to bits. You need to tell the brothers to come with us."

"They'll be fine," Starbuck insisted as he lifted a dinosaur egg from the bed of straw and slipped it into Indy's satchel. "They are used to playing this cat-and-mouse game with Tzi and his men, and they will scatter when we leave. I am hopeful that it will buy us some time."

"Where are we going?" Joan asked.

"Through a narrow passage in the cliffs," Starbuck said. "There is a valley beyond which has been untouched by time. We must be careful, because the path is perilous, and we must make sure that Tzi's men do not follow us into the valley. I only wish there were another place that we could take refuge, but I am afraid it is our last hope—and the last hope of our three little ones."

Starbuck placed another of the eggs in a straw-filled leather pouch and handed it to Joan, who slung it beneath her shoulder like a purse.

"Let me," Granger offered as Starbuck placed the last egg into a pouch. "I don't have anything to do with my hands, and you're going to be busy leading the way. I promise that I'll take good care of it."

"Hey," Indy said, and whistled at Granger. "Nice purse."

"You should talk," Granger returned. "You've carried that little bag of yours around the world three or four times, I understand."

"This," Indy said, "is a satchel.
That,
however, is a purse."

"All right, then," Starbuck said, taking up his staff. He rapped on the back wall of the tower, breaking away the plaster over a hidden passage. When they were gone, the monks had instructions to patch over the doorway before abandoning the lamastery.

Starbuck took up a bundle of torches, lit one from the nearest brazier, and turned to face the group. "To the promised land," he said, then entered the passage.

"Religion
does
run in the family," Joan snapped as she cut in front of Indy to catch up with her father.

"Apparently so does insanity," Indy muttered.

Granger was the last to file into the passage, and as he did so, a shell from the howitzer hit the tower, blowing the top off and spilling the braziers onto the plank floor. It also drove a splinter from the ceiling into the leather bag that Granger carried, and a trickle of amniotic fluid began to mark the trail behind them.

8
The Happy Valley

"This passage was staked by the ancients, and it is full of traps for the unwary," Starbuck called back. "I'm sure you've experienced nothing like it before."

Indy smiled.

The path led deep into the mountain, and the first obstacle they encountered was a narrow footbridge of natural stone that crossed a gaping chasm.

"Be careful," Starbuck warned as he carefully put one foot in front of the other, like a tightrope walker. "This abyss has no bottom."

"Any chasm that is too deep from one to easily see the bottom," Granger remarked, "is said to be bottomless." He picked up a stone and, when he was in the center of the bridge, let it drop from his outstretched hand. He waited.

Thirty seconds later he was still waiting.

"Let's see," Indy calculated. "Given the law of falling bodies, that rock must have fallen... that would be 16.08 times 30 squared... around 14,400 feet, or nearly three miles by now. I'd call
that
bottomless, wouldn't you?"

"We just didn't hear it," Granger said, and moved on.

The natural bridge ended at a spectacular staircase hewn from the rocks, and the staircase led into the mountain for several hundred feet and then began to serpentine along the rim of a gorge. They could see all the way to the bottom of the gorge, because it was filled with molten lava.

"I didn't think we were near any active volcanoes here," Joan said. The heat had plastered her hair against her face, and the weight of the egg was beginning to make her shoulder ache.

"It is part of the intricate ecological system of the valley where we are going," Starbuck said. "The ground and the water there are warm, defying even the Gobi's harshest winters."

"Sounds like a paradise," Joan said.

"It is," Starbuck concurred. "I hope it stays that way."

The staircase ended at a precipice. A heavy rope was tied around the base of a stalagmite, and the rope disappeared into darkness beyond the edge. The river of molten rock flowed far below.

"Now for the hard part," Starbuck announced.

"It's been easy so far?" Joan asked.

"We must pull ourselves across on this rope."

Starbuck handed the torch to Granger. Then, to demonstrate, he sat on the edge of the precipice, grasped the rope with both hands, and swung out. He swayed there for a moment, then began to swing his legs up, and finally grasped the rope with his ankles.

"This is the best way to cross," he said. "Pull yourself along, hand over hand."

"What do I do with the torch?" Granger asked.

"Give it to me. I'll carry it in my teeth," Indy said.

Joan was next. She looped the bag containing the egg around her neck, then confidently grasped the rope. She swung her legs up, and began to pull herself across.

"My hands hurt," she complained halfway across.

"Keep going, Sister," Indy said behind her.

"They're bleeding."

The blood on her palms made the rope dangerously slick, and Joan's pace slowed to a few inches each stroke. But when she tried to hurry up so the ordeal would be over with and the pain in her hands would end, she lost her grip on the rope entirely.

She bobbed upside down by her ankles, the leather pouch hanging by her chin.

"The egg!" Indy shouted. His words were muffled because of the torch in his mouth.

"What do I do?" Joan mumbled.

"Don't talk," Indy ordered. He looped an arm around the rope and took the torch out of his mouth. "Everybody, stop. Don't bounce the rope. Joan, can you reach the egg?"

"No," she said. "The strap's too long."

"Okay, listen carefully," Indy said. "I want you to very gently reach down and grasp the strap. Firmly. You got it?"

"Yes," Joan said. "But the blood is rushing to my head and I'm getting really dizzy."

"Slowly, raise the pouch."

"Okay," she said.

"Slowly!"

"I am!"

"Stop there," Indy said. "With your fingertips, try to tuck the egg back into the pouch. It's on the edge, so don't jostle it."

"All right," Joan said.

Her fingertips touched the leathery surface of the edge. Just as she nearly had the girth of the egg safely pushed back over the lip of the pouch, the rope jerked as several of its strands separated.