Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (5 page)

Indy spilled his coffee.

"Is he sure?" Joan asked.

"There is still much to be done, experiments to perform," Brody said. "It is possible that it is some kind of freak of nature, a kind of cosmic practical joke. But Larson is beside himself. He wants us to come right down, and he wants to talk to Sister Joan about the origin of the horn."

Indy dabbed at the coffee stain on his trousers with his handkerchief.

"If it is authentic," he said, "then it could be the most important scientific discovery of all time."

"And we have it." Brody was beaming. "That is, if Sister Joan would be so kind to loan it to us... I promise we will take excellent care of it and give credit where it is due."

"Certainly," she said. "I must admit, however, that it is all rather hard to believe. And you must remember that my chief concern in all of this remains locating my father."

"Your father? But yes, of course," Brody said.

"Marcus," Indy said softly.

"What is it, Indy?"

Indy rose from his chair and walked over to the window. He shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed eastward through the glass, across Central Park and beyond.

"That bone may merely be the prelude to the biggest scientific discovery of all time," he said. "Somewhere out there, there may be a living triceratops that's missing one of its horns. And even if that animal is dead, there may be others.... Marcus, there may be an entire herd of dinosaurs in Outer Mongolia just waiting for us to discover."

Brody caught his breath.

"You can gather all this from an artifact?" Joan asked.

"No, it's not an artifact," Indy said. "Artifacts are man-made. This is an ecofact, a product of nature. And yes, if the horn is indeed genuine, it could prove to be the Rosetta stone of paleontology. It could lead us to the answers to questions that have gripped our imagination since Sir Richard Owen coined the word
dinosaur
a century ago. Only, we'd have to invent a new word for the study of living dinosaurs."

"Then I gather that locating my father has suddenly assumed some added significance," Joan said.

"And urgency," Brody added. He reached behind him and pulled down a color map of Asia. "This may make the search for Dr. Livingstone seem like a walk around the park...."

"So the museum will launch an expedition?" Joan asked.

"The museum isn't capable of financing a fullblown expedition," Indy protested. "In fact, using museum money for expeditions or fieldwork has been strictly forbidden for the last two years. That's why Marcus has relied on my one-man procural service to keep the collections up to date."

"That's true," Brody said. "The Depression has hit the museum as hard as any other institution, and it is unfortunate that so much museum money was tied up in railroad bonds.... But Indy, this is different. I'm sure that I can convince the old man that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

"The old man?" Joan asked.

"Also, I'm certain that we can rely on private investors."

"Henry Fairfield Osborn," Indy explained. "The museum's president since 1908. If he would agree to fund an expedition to anywhere in the world, Mongolia would be it. For years now he has had a pet theory that humanity evolved in Central Asia, and that the earliest human fossils would be found there."

"The missing link?"

"Something like that," Indy said.

"But we must keep our real reasons a closely guarded secret," Brody continued. "We don't want to have half the world trying to beat us there."

"But Mongolia, Marcus. Think of the difficulty."

"Yes, I know," Brody said, and with his forefinger traced a line from Shanghai in toward the heart of Asia. "An expedition would face some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Temperatures that roast you during the day and freeze you at night. Violent storms and bloodthirsty warlords, and maps that are next to useless. We might as well be launching a journey to the dark side of the moon, so little do we know of the interior. And that's not even considering the attitude of the Russian-controlled government of Mongolia. But then, I didn't say it would be easy."

"You never do," Indy said.

"Well, you wouldn't expect the last living dinosaur to be stamping around some cornfield in Kansas, would you?" Brody lifted the receiver and jiggled the switch hook. "You two go on down and chat with Larson. I'm going to start putting together your expedition."

"My expedition?" Indy asked. "I'm in the middle of a term. I can't leave. Think of the logistics involved—we need trucks and camels and equipment. And that's assuming that the Chinese and the Russians and the Mongols will even let us into the country."

"Indy," Brody said. "We have this one shining chance. Your students can wait. But perhaps there is a living, breathing dinosaur somewhere in Mongolia that cannot."

Dr. Jonathan Larson took a gulp from a beaker of grain alcohol and stared intently at the horn. Then he cleaned his glasses with his shirttail, closed his eyes tightly for a few moments, and snapped them open.

"I keep expecting it to disappear," he told Indy. "I'm still not convinced that I'm not asleep in bed, having a most astounding dream."

"This is no dream," Indy said.

"Are you certain that it's authentic?" Joan asked.

"As certain as anyone can be," Larson said. "We have no type specimen to work from, but it matches in every respect the fossil horns we do have. It is without a doubt from a triceratops and not a rhinoceros."

"Can you tell anything about the age or health of the animal?" Indy asked.

"Some," Larson said. "The tip of the horn, for example, shows the same pattern of wear—from foraging and battle damage, perhaps—that the fossils do, so it would appear to be from a robust specimen. This horn also appears to be from an adult animal, although it is somewhat smaller than many of the fossil pieces. My guess is that it is from a female. But who knows?"

He took another gulp from the beaker.

"This needs to be properly cataloged," Larson said. "First, we need to send it down to photographic. Then we will have to figure out a place to store it."

"You aren't going to put it into one of those awful vats of formaldehyde, are you?" Joan asked.

"No," Larson said. "I imagine the best thing to do would be to store it in one of the coolers in the kitchen and hope one of the cooks doesn't throw it into a stew."

Larson took a wooden specimen box down from a shelf behind him and placed it on the table. Then, with shaking hands, he placed the horn inside and latched the top.

"Would you mind delivering it to photographic?" Larson asked. "I'm afraid I wouldn't trust myself to carry it that far. It's three floors—"

"I know where it is," Indy said, and picked up the box.

"Do you mind if I carry it?" Joan asked. "It's the last tangible link I have with my father, and I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to touch it again for a very long time."

Indy nodded his understanding and handed over the case.

"Go easy on that stuff," Indy said as he shut the door to Larson's laboratory. "You may actually need some of it to preserve a specimen other than yourself."

As they exited the elevator at the third floor and strolled along the gallery toward the photographic department, which was adjacent to public education, Indy noticed a pair of Asian men leaning against the railing. They were apparently deep in a discussion about the blue whale. Both wore saffron-colored robes that identified them as Buddhists, and both of their heads were shaved.

Joan was on the outside, nearest the men. As she passed them one gave a quick nod of the head, the kind of abbreviated bow as common in the East as touching the brim of your hat is in the West, and Joan smiled.

The man then reached out and, quick as a snake, snatched the specimen box from her hands.

"Indy!" Joan screamed.

The monk with the box was a blur of fluttering orange as he made his way toward the stairwell.

Indy chased after him, but the other monk planted himself squarely in his path. He assumed a fighting stance and his bare toes gripped the floor like claws.

He bowed, in preparation for combat.

Indy stomped the toes of the monk's forward foot with the heel of a well-polished wing tip. As the monk instinctively picked up the foot with the throbbing toes, Indy kicked his other foot out from beneath him.

Then Indy jumped over him and raced to the stairwell.

The escaping monk was well ahead of him and was taking the steps two at a time. But he apparently ignored a sign placed on the landing between the second and third floors that warned of a wet floor. A janitor who was wearily mopping up after several members of a second-grade class from Brooklyn became ill following the shrunken-heads exhibit watched in bewilderment as the monk sailed past him on the slick floor and crashed unceremoniously into the wall.

The specimen box fell from his hands as the monk landed in a heap on the floor.

Indy slid past the sign as well, his wing tips scrambling to find purchase, and crashed into the wall beside the monk. He made a lunge for the box, but the monk kicked it out of his reach.

"Grab the box!" Indy shouted.

"Me?" the janitor asked.

The monk had Indy in a headlock now and was attempting to twist his chin back over his right shoulder.

"Get him off me," Indy mumbled.

The janitor flailed at the monk with the rag end of the mop.

"Use the other end," Indy suggested.

"What? Oh."

The janitor turned the mop around and swung the handle like a baseball bat at the monk's bald head. The monk released Indy, caught the mop handle in the open palm of his right hand, and jerked it away from the janitor. Then he snapped the mop end off with a blow from the edge of his foot.

The janitor ran away.

Indy grabbed the specimen box, scrambled across the wet floor, and went back up the stairs with it. Brandishing the mop handle, the monk sprang after him.

The monk caught up with Indy at the top of the stairs and struck him squarely between the shoulder blades with the handle. Indy was driven against the gallery rail and the specimen box flew out of his hands and landed beyond reach on the back of the blue whale.

"Well"—Indy grinned—"what are you going to do now?"

"Hai!"
the monk screamed, and charged at Indy.

Indy ducked.

The monk vaulted over the railing, his arms and legs spinning madly as he sailed through the air like a pole-vaulter. He sank into the back of the whale as the wire mesh buckled, and bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling from the overstressed cable anchors.

The monk plucked up the specimen box and shouted in Mandarin to his partner, who was sitting cross-legged near Joan rubbing his foot. He jumped up and in a limping run made his getaway.

"Get some help. Seal off the museum," Indy shouted as he climbed up on the railing. "And tell Brody I'll buy him a new whale."

Indy jumped onto the back of the blue whale. His right foot drove through the skin. Chunks of plaster trembled down from the ceiling as the cables squealed in protest.

"Didn't think I would do it, did you?" Indy asked his foe.

Two of the cables snapped and the whale listed precariously to starboard. On the second floor, the teacher who was leading the second-grade class could not see the two men on the model's back, and she screamed and pulled the children away as the whale seemed to lurch angrily at them.

The monk smashed a hole with his fist through the papier-mache and wire mesh and descended with the specimen box into the belly of the beast. Indy followed, and as he dropped inside, a piece of wire sliced into his cheek.

"Drat," Indy said, and gingerly touched his cheek.

Then something scurried over his foot and he shook it away. It was a mouse, one of a family of the pesky rodents that had braved the guy wires to make a secret home in the papier-mache belly of the whale.

The monk was making his way along the angle-iron keel of the beast toward the mouth. Then another cable separated, and the flukes came crashing down on the second floor, smashing a glass display case.

The rest of the whale settled heavily onto the floor.

The family of mice scurried in every direction.

"Bully!" shouted one of the second-graders.

The monk rolled backward along the keel toward the tail, and Indy grasped him by the collar of his robe.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

The monk clutched the specimen box and stared at Indy with calm brown eyes. He smiled enigmatically, then apologized in Mandarin, which Indy knew.

"For what?" Indy asked.

The monk pressed his fingers firmly into Indy's solar plexus.

Indy sank to his knees, unable to speak. His right hand gripped the hem of the monk's robe, tearing away an orange-colored swatch.

"It will pass," the monk said.

Then the monk kicked a hole through the belly of the whale and disappeared with the specimen box.

After a few minutes Indy was able to crawl outside. He lay on the floor, attempting to catch his breath. Marcus Brody walked over and stood over him. His arms were crossed as he surveyed the damage to the second floor.

"They got away," Brody said. "With the horn."

"I'm sorry," Indy said.

Brody knelt beside Indy and inspected his cheek.

"There is no time to waste with apologies," he said. "You must leave for Shanghai this afternoon. Can you pack in three hours? I'll call Dr. Morey at Princeton and attempt to explain your absence, and offer to assume your classes until your return. First, though, we need to have a doctor look at your face. It looks as though you need stitches."

"Terrific," Indy said.

A mouse scampered across Indy's badly scuffed wing tips. Then what was left of the blue whale emitted one last tortured squeal of wire and metal and collapsed.

2
Shanghai