Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

He had not been heard from since.

Due to the elevated earthquakes in the area and the resultant social unrest, travel to Ecuador and the Galapagos had since become restricted by the U.S. military, the airports closed off to civilians. The scientists, like everyone else, were fleeing the Galapagos, leaving behind antiquated equipment that yielded low resolution data. What little information the New Center now received came in from what remained of the Charles Darwin Station in Puerto Ayora.

As the New Center's remaining field ecotectonicist, Rex needed to lead an expedition to Sangre de Dios, to complete the survey Frank had presumably begun, and to outfit the island with Global Positioning Satellite units. These would allow the New Center to monitor coseismic and crustal deformation on Sangre de Dios from afar.

As the westernmost island in the archipelago, Sangre de Dios held a vital geographic position-it stood to be the first and most accurate bearer of bad news concerning earthquakes along the East Pacific Rise. Getting the proper geodetic equipment in place to measure its surface deformation would enable the New Center to predict earthquakes within the entire tectonic regime-both on the mainland and the islands-sometimes as much as forty-eight hours in advance. Rex and Donald could alert the government leaders down there, evacuate communities, and save lives.

However, without a trained military team to escort and protect him, Rex couldn't so much as board a plane headed for Ecuador. He'd spent weeks sifting through mountains of red tape, trying to secure military support before the December 24 departure. A few days ago, realizing he'd been making little progress, he'd finally forgone the bureaucratic route and called in an enormous favor from Secretary of the Navy Andrew Benneton.

"I told you I could get it done," Rex said as he crossed the front lawn, heading for his mailbox. "Did you doubt me?"

"Well, our correspondence with that captain last week wasn't so promising."

It was true. The Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group One had rejected their request in an e-mail, describing the new riots sweeping through Quito, the organized crime in Guayaquil, and how American troops were already overextended dealing with social deterioration and natural destruction throughout South America and domestically. He'd closed by stating he saw little reason "to drop everything to lend out a squad of highly trained, high-demand operators to transport scientists interested in secondhand reports about minor rumblings on a barely populated island in the middle of the Pacific."

"He changed his tune rather quickly once Benneton got involved." The boa nosed its way up into Rex's crotch, and he shoved its head away. His was one of the larger boas around, even bigger than the behemoth the receptionist kept in her desk drawer at the vivarium in Quito. "'Preemptive' is a term largely missing from jarhead terminology. The military gives no consideration to how we could alleviate potential political or social problems down there. Always running around expending all their energy on secondary effects."

In the house across the street, a middle-aged woman watched Rex through the kitchen window, one soapy dish frozen midway to the sink. Rex waved and she turned away in horror. He glanced down and noticed that the boa's head was protruding from between his legs like a living penis. He opened the mailbox, but it was empty. The boa tightened around Rex's leg until it started to tingle. "How do you like those myths coming back from Sangre?"

Donald laughed. "I suppose it makes sense. In hectic times, people are more prone to project the uncertainties of the world onto something tangible."

"Monsters."

"Indeed. The Galapagos are a land of strange creatures to begin with. It's already in the cultural unconscious."

"Darwin's backyard," Rex proclaimed melodramatically.

"Indeed. Don't underestimate how much people love to believe that creatures dark and dreadful evolve there on a daily basis."

Rex snorted. "What we shouldn't underestimate is people's ignorance."

Donald sighed. "You rarely do."

The boa eased around Rex's stomach, sliding its tail up over one shoulder. It tensed and relaxed, an orange-spotted band of black moving about him like a pulse. Rex stopped in the middle of his lawn, turning his face to the rising sun. The boa wrapped a coil around his throat, and he felt the firm edges of its skeleton beneath the sleek surface. A minivan drove by, five faces peering at the window. It drifted to the side of the road, then veered sharply to avoid hitting a telephone pole. Rex did not notice.

"I'm just eager to throw down permanent benchmarks and get the continuous GPS units up around Sangre," Rex said. "It's about time we got more concise data on the rates of deformation and reduced the guesswork. In fact, that's what Frank should've been doing down there-scouting equipment locations. I bet he wasted his time collecting butterflies. Like when he spent two days observing that strain of mutated frogs outside Cuyabeno. He was so distracted he barely got the geochemical sensors in place."

"The ecos versus the tectos. Like the raging geology-geophysics rivalry when I was coming up. And I thought the Center was too young to be divided by factions."

"It's no longer divided," Rex said, "now that Frank has been sensible enough to pass on." There was a long silence and Rex glanced at the phone to make sure it hadn't cut out. "Just a little humor, Donald. Don't be a bore."

"Frank is a great loss," Donald replied defensively. "Aside from you, he was the nation's most prominent field ecotectonicist."

"Oh, come on, Donald. Frank wasn't prominent. Just loud and fortuitously published."

Donald heaved another deep sigh. "Some things…"

"And all that referring to himself in the third person. God that was awful. 'In attempting to witness the tireless mastications of the Rhicnogryllus lepidus, the author found himself in the middle of a magnificent rain forest glade.'" Rex groaned. "His phrasing was second only to that stupid Gilligan's Island fishing cap he wore everywhere like a yarmulke."

"Well," Donald said, a note of offense in his voice, "he's gone now."

"The fact that he's dead does not raise him in my professional estimation. But that's neither here nor there. What time are we meeting with the GI Joes Monday?"

"Nine o'clock."

The boa stretched itself out in the air, then swooped back toward Rex. He kissed it on the face. "I'll be there with bells on."

Cameron regarded the large wicker cornucopia bulging with plastic fruit that sat on the glass table smack in the middle of the waiting room. The cornucopia had stubbornly remained through her six years of checkups, gathering dust, the reds and oranges fading on the waxy peels. Particularly unsubtle decor for an OB/GYN's office, she mused.

Spread on a stand to her left were all the magazines that people only read in doctors' offices-Redbook, Psychology Today, Prevention. And on the lowest part of the rack, accessible to little hands, a neat row of Highlights for Children. How she hated that magazine. Along with crayons, decorative Band-Aids, and minivans, Highlights for Children was beyond Cameron's domain; it belonged to that vast and clanish group of people she had always regarded with something more than curiosity, something bordering on irritation. Some envy as well, perhaps.

The clicking of a woman's footsteps approached, and Cameron waited to see which door concealed them. Justin leaned forward and coughed uncomfortably as the door to the right of the waiting room opened. A girl, who couldn't have been older than sixteen, came out, a nurse trailing her by a few steps.

The nurse was a short, stocky Italian woman with the darkest rings around her eyes Cameron had ever seen. She was always there, that nurse, behind the door, escorting them in, escorting them out. Her back was humped with age, and when she smiled, her teeth protruded at all angles.