The errands he sent them on were mysterious, too. Once they went to Stanford and picked up five small squares of plastic from a professor there. The plastic was light, and sort of foamy. Another time they went downtown to an electronics store and picked up a triangular device that the man behind the counter gave them very nervously, as if it might be illegal or something. Another time they picked up a metal tube that looked like it contained cigars. They couldn’t help opening it, but they were uneasy to find four sealed plastic ampoules of straw-colored liquid. The ampoules were marked EXTREME DANGER! LETHAL TOXICITY! and had the three-bladed international symbol for biohazard.
But mostly, their assignments were mundane. He often sent them to libraries at Stanford to Xerox papers on all sorts of subjects: Japanese sword-making, X-ray crystallography, Mexican vampire bats, Central American volcanoes, oceanic currents of El Niño, the mating behavior of mountain sheep, sea-cucumber toxicity, flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals…
Dr. Levine never explained why he was interested in these subjects. Often he would send them back day after day, to search for more material. And then, suddenly, he would drop the subject, and never refer to it again. And they would be on to something else.
Of course, they could figure some of it out. A lot of the questions had to do with the vehicles that Dr. Thorne was building for Dr. Levine’s expedition. But most of the time, the subjects were completely mysterious.
Occasionally, Kelly wondered what the bearded man would make of all this. She wondered whether he knew something they did not. But actually, the bearded man seemed kind of lazy. He never seemed to figure out that Kelly and Arby were doing errands for Dr. Levine.
Right now, the bearded man glanced over at the entrance to the school, ignoring them. They walked to the end of the street, and sat on the bench to wait for the bus.
Tag
The baby snow leopard spit the bottle out, and rolled over onto its back, paws in the air. It made a soft mewing sound.
“She wants to be petted,” Elizabeth Gelman said.
Malcolm reached out his hand, to stroke the belly. The cub spun around, and sunk its tiny teeth into his fingers. Malcolm yelled.
“She does that, sometimes,” Gelman said. “Dorje! Bad girl! Is that any way to treat our distinguished visitor?” She reached out, took Malcolm’s hand. “It didn’t break the skin, but we should clean it anyway.” They were in the white research laboratory of the San Francisco Zoo, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Elizabeth Gelman, the youthful head of research, was supposed to report on her findings, but they had to delay for the afternoon feeding in the nursery. Malcolm had watched them feed a baby gorilla, which spit up like a human baby, and a koala, and then the very cute snow-leopard cub.
“Sorry about that,” Gelman said. She took him to a side basin, and soaped his hand. “But I thought it was better that you come here now, when the regular staff is all at the weekly conference.”
“Why is that?”
“Because there’s a lot of interest in the material you gave us, Ian. A lot.” She dried his hand with a towel, inspected it again. “I think you’ll survive.”
“What have you found?” Malcolm said to her.
“You have to admit, it is very provocative. By the way, is it from Costa Rica?”
Keeping his voice neutral, Malcolm said, “Why do you say that?”
“Because there are all these rumors about unknown animals showing up in Costa Rica. And this is definitely an unknown animal, Ian.”
She led him out of the nursery, and into a small conference room He dropped into a chair, resting his cane on the table. She lowered the lights, and clicked on a slide protector. “Okay. Here’s a close-up of your original material, before we be an our examination. As you see, it consists of a fragment of animal tissue in a state of very advanced necrosis. The tissue measures four centimeters by six centimeters. Attached to it is a green plastic tag, measuring two centimeters square. Tissue cut by a knife, but not a very sharp one.”