Douglas Preston: The Ice Limit

After the fourth pass, he began talking to himself in a low, rapid monotone. Veering back toward the mules, he dropped the tomographic sounder on the drysack and untied the second mule's pack with trembling hands. In his haste, one of the panniers fell to the ground and split open, spilling picks, shovels, rock hammers, an auger, and a bundle of dynamite. Masangkay scooped up a pick and shovel and jogged back to the center of the flat. Flinging the shovel to the ground, he began feverishly swinging the pick, breaking up the rough surface. Then he scooped out the loosened gravel with the shovel, throwing it well to the side. He continued in this fashion, alternating pick and shovel. The mules watched him with complete impassivity, heads drooping, eyes half-lidded.

Masangkay worked as the rain began to stiffen. Shallow pools collected at the lowest points of the graveled flat. A cold smell of ice drifted inland from Franklin Channel, to the north. There was a distant roll of thunder. Gulls came winging over his head, circling in curiosity, uttering forlorn cries.

The hole deepened to a foot, then two. Below the hard layer of gravel, the alluvial sand was soft and easily dug. The hills disappeared behind shifting curtains of rain and mist. Masangkay worked on, heedless, stripping off his coat, then his shirt, and eventually his undershirt, flinging them out of the hole. Mud and water mingled with the sweat that ran across his back and chest, defining the ripples and hollows of his musculature, while the points of his beard hung with water.

Then, with a cry, he stopped. He crouched in the hole, scooping the sand and mud away from a hard surface beneath his feet. He let the rain wash the last bit of mud from the surface.

Suddenly, he started in shock and bewilderment. Then he knelt as if praying, spreading his sweaty hands reverently on the surface. His breath came in gasps, eyes wild with astonishment, sweat and rain streaming together off his forehead, his heart pounding from exertion, excitement, and inexpressible joy.

At that moment, a shock wave of brilliant light burst out of the hole, followed by a prodigious boom that rolled off across the valley, echoing and dying among the far hills. The two mules raised their heads in the direction of the noise.

They saw a small body of mist, which became crablike, broke apart, and drifted off into the rain.

The tethered mules looked away from the scene with indifference as night settled upon Isla Desolación.

Isla Desolación,

February 22, 11:00 A.M.

THE LONG bark canoe cut through the water of the channel, moving swiftly with the tidal current. A single figure, small and bent, knelt inside, expertly feathering a paddle, guiding the canoe through the chop. A thin trail of smoke rose from the smoldering fire built on a pad of wet clay in the center of the canoe.

The canoe rounded the black cliffs of Isla Desolación, turned into the smoother water of a little cove, and crunched onto the cobbled beach. The figure leapt out and pulled the canoe above the high tide mark.

He had heard the news, in passing, from one of the nomadic fishermen who lived alone in these cold seas. That a foreignlooking man would visit such a remote and inhospitable island was unusual indeed. But even more unusual was the fact that a month had passed, and the man had apparently not left.

He paused, catching sight of something. Moving forward, he picked up a piece of shattered fiberglass, and then another, looking at them, peeling some strands from the broken edges and tossing them aside. The remains of a freshly wrecked boat. Perhaps there was a simple explanation after all.

He was a peculiar-looking man — old, dark, with long gray hair and a thin little mustache that drooped down from his chin like the film of a spiderweb. Despite the freezing weather, he was dressed only in a soiled T-shirt and a baggy pair of shorts. Touching a finger to his nose, he blew snot out of his nostrils, first one, then the other, with a delicate motion. Then he scrambled up the cliff at the head of the little cove.

He paused at its brink, his bright black eyes scanning the ground for signs. The gravelly floor, dotted with mounds of moss, was spongy from the freeze-thaw cycle, and it had preserved the footprints — and hoofprints — excellently.

He followed the trail as it made its irregular way up a rise to the snowfield. There it followed the edge of the field, eventually cutting down into the valley beyond. At a brow overlooking the valley the prints stopped, milling around in a crazy pattern. The man paused, gazing down into the barren draw. There was something down there: bits of color against the landscape, and the glint of sunlight off polished metal.

He hurried down.

He reached the mules first, still tied to the rock. They were long dead. His eyes traveled hungrily across the ground, glittering with avarice as they registered the supplies and equipment. Then he saw the body.

He approached it, moving much more cautiously. It lay on its back, about a hundred yards from the mouth of a recently dug hole. It was naked, with just a shred of charred clothing clinging to the carbonized flesh. Its black, burnt hands were raised to the sky, like the claws of a dead crow, and its splayed legs were drawn up to its crushed chest. The rain had collected in the hollow eye sockets, making two little pools of water that reflected the sky and clouds.

The old man backed away, one foot at a time, like a cat. Then he stopped. He remained rooted to the spot, staring and wondering, for a long time. And then — slowly, and without turning his back on the blackened corpse — he turned his attention to the trove of valuable equipment that lay scattered about.

New York City,

May 20, 2:00 P.M.

THE SALE room at Christie's was a simple space, framed in blond wood and lit by a rectangle of lights suspended from the ceiling. Although the hardwood floor had been laid in a beautiful herringbone pattern, almost none of it was visible beneath the countless rows of chairs — all filled — and the feet of the reporters, latecomers, and spectators who crowded the rear of the room.

As the chairman of Christie's mounted the center podium, the room fell silent: The long, cream-colored screen behind him, which in a normal auction might be hung with paintings or prints, was vacant.

The chairman rapped on the podium with his gavel, looked around, then drew a card from his suit and consulted it. He placed the card carefully at one side of the podium and looked up again.

"I imagine," he said, the plummy English vowels resonating under the slight amplification, "that a few of you may already be aware of what we're offering today."

Decorous amusement rippled through the assembly.

"I regret that we could not bring it to the stage for you to see. It was a trifle large."

Another laugh floated through the audience. The chairman was clearly relishing the importance of what was about to happen.

"But I have brought a small piece of it — a token, so to speak — as assurance you will be bidding on the genuine article." With that he nodded, and a slender young man with the bearing of a gazelle walked out onstage, holding a small velvet box in both arms. The man unlatched it, opened the lid, and turned in a semicircle for the audience to see. A low murmur rose among the crowd, then fell away again.

Inside, a curved brown tooth lay nestled on white satin. It was about seven inches long, with a wickedly serrated inner edge.

The chairman cleared his throat. "The consigner of lot number one, our only lot today, is the Navajo Nation, in a trust arrangement with the government of the United States of America."

He surveyed the audience. "The lot is a fossil. A remarkable fossil." He consulted the card on the podium. "In 1996, a Navajo shepherd named Wilson Atcitty lost some sheep in the Lukachukai mountains along the Arizona-New Mexico border. In attempting to find his sheep, he came across a large bone protruding from a sandstone wall in a remote canyon. Geologists call this layer of sandstone the Hell Creek Formation, and it dates back to the Cretaceous era. Word got back to the Albuquerque Museum of Natural History. Under an agreement with the Navajo Nation, they began excavating the skeleton. As work proceeded they realized they had not one but two entwined skeletons: a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Triceratops. The Tyrannosaurus had its jaws fastened about the Triceratops' neck, just beneath its crest, virtually decapitating the creature with a savage bite. The Triceratops, for his part, had thrust his central horn deep into the chest of the Tyrannosaurus. Both animals died together, locked in a terrible embrace."