Warren Fahy - Fragment

Otto spread the largest intact animal out on its belly. He washed the blue gore from its velvetlike fur, which turned out to be coffee-ground brown with black and white stripes on its haunches. Strips of iridescent fur radiated over its softball-sized head. The head of the second rat made a bulge in its throat the size of a baseball.

As the last blue liquid was rinsed off, everyone gasped at the impossible specimen.

“OK, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.” Otto’s voice cracked. His hands were shaking.

“Steady now,” Nell said.

Quentin moved the video camera across the top of the chamber until it was directly over the subject, and then zoomed in, providing an enlarged view on the plasma screens above the trough.

Otto placed his gloved left hand over the specimen’s head and blocked throat.

Nell perched on one of the high stools next to Otto and opened her sketchpad. “Just take it easy now,” she said calmly. She started to sketch a diagram. “The fur coloration on its haunches looks like an okapi.”

“Yeah.” Andy nodded, frowning at the captured specimen. “People thought okapis were a hoax when they were first discovered. They thought they were giraffes, zebras, and buffalo stitched together…”

“They’d never believe this freaking thing.” Quentin gawped at the red-furred chimera.

“The stripes must confuse predators,” Nell theorized.

“Come on, this thing is a predator,” Otto said.

“I think it’s probably both-predator and prey,” she said. “The front looks fierce and the back says ‘I better hide my ass with camouflage while I run the hell out of here.’”

“Hunters that are hunted?”

“That hunt each other,” said Andy.

“Check out that tail.”

“Are we sure it’s dead?”

“Let’s find out,” Otto said. “Beginning narration of dissection at…” He consulted his watch. “… three twenty-two p.m. This is the first dissection of a Henders specimen. It is a fur-bearing, eight-legged animal, about thirty-five centimeters long, with okapi-like zebra stripes on its haunches, reddish-brown fur of the texture of really plush velvet or velour on its back, and bright stripes of fur around its face that change color at different angles.”

He twisted its round head. They could see iridescent stripes radiating around its toothy mouth.

“Good God,” Andy said. “It has crab claws on its face!”

“The specimen appears to have four front legs that may function more like arms,” Otto continued. “The first pair is connected to its lower jaw and is furless. These seem to be chelate appendages with slender pincers that are white in color…very strange. They emerge from a wide lower jaw of an almost frog-or birdlike hinged mouth with long teeth that are packed close together and seem to be rather sharp. The teeth are extremely hard and dark gray. The mouth has dark blue lips drawn back that can apparently close over the teeth.”

“What is that, a skullcap?” Nell’s pencil flew as she sketched the outlines of the animal. “On top of its head?”

“The subject appears to have a light brown, furless cranial cap of some sort,” Otto said.

“Jesus,” Quentin said. “Either I’m dreaming or we are making history here, folks.”

“You aren’t dreaming,” Nell told him.

The scientists clapped and whooped, finally releasing their anxiety and exhilaration.

Nell quickly penciled in the snaggle-toothed mouth in the creature’s round head, her face frozen with grim concentration.

Henders Rat

Rodentocaris hendersi ( after Echevarria et al, Proceedings of the Woods Hole Scientific Meetings , vol. 92: 87-93)

This animal looked like a miniature version of the deadly lunging animals she had seen on the beach, except that its jaws were horizontal instead of vertical like the ones that came from the crevasse.

“It looks like a deep-sea angler,” Andy said.

“Like a cat crossed with a spider.” Nell carved its outline deep into the sheet of paper with her pencil.

“Right, like the spigers you mentioned,” Quentin said.

“Right.” Nell nodded.

“The specimen has a pair of large green-red-and-blue eyes with three optical hemispheres,” Otto narrated, and he tested the flexibility of the creature’s eyes with a poking index finger. “The eyes are mounted on short stalks that pivot or swivel inside a socket in its head. They also toggle in a socket at the end of the stalks, apparently, having a very ingenious mechanism.”

“I sure hope that thing’s dead,” Andy said.

Otto ignored him and wiggled the forelegs behind the head to see how they bent. “The large legs behind the head are very muscular and have spines at the end. They are fur-bearing, but the heavy spikelike spines are hairless, hard black exoskeleton or horn, and they seem to have a very sharp edge.”

“They look like praying mantis arms.”

“Yeah, that’s how they fold,” Otto agreed. “They may be able to act as shears or vises, too.”

“Or spears,” Nell suggested, shivering as she thought of what the others must have faced inside the crevasse. “The spigers speared the sand in front of them to back away from the water.”

Otto continued. “These mantislike subchelate arms are articulated to a bony ring under the skin, from which the neck musculature also extends. The next pair of limbs appears to be true legs. They resemble a quadruped’s forelegs…with one extra joint… and they seem to be attached to a broad central ring of bone that can be felt under the dermis and which forms a medial hump on the dorsal surface of the animal.”

“Those are eyes!” Nell exclaimed.

“Huh? Where?” Andy said.

“See, on top of that hump on its back, Otto?”

“Oh,” Andy said.

“There are eyes on the medial hump,” Otto confirmed, rinsing off more blue blood. “Which are similar to the eyes on the head.”

“Do you think it has a second set of optic lobes in its back?” Nell asked. “I mean, look, they’re image-forming eyes, not just light-intensity receptors.”

“Either there’s a brain under there or they have ridiculously long optic nerves,” Andy continued.

Otto continued his description. “There are three eyes on the central hump, reminiscent of the eyes on a jumping spider. One eye looks directly behind and one to each side. They each toggle inside a socket. I think you’re right, Nell. There could be some kind of ganglion structure under this hump. There’s a cranial cap on top of it similar to the one on the head of the animal.” As Andy winced, Otto tapped the brown chitinous cap on the hump between the eyes, testing to see if there was any reflex action left in the animal. There wasn’t.

Otto picked up a pair of dissection scissors and cut carefully along the mid-line of the cranial cap. He pulled each half apart with forceps. “Yep, it’s got a second brain.” He looked up at Nell. “This isn’t just some enlarged ganglion.”

“It’s got eyes in the back of its head,” Quentin said.

“And a head in the back of its eyes,” added Andy.

“See that pair of nerve cords running forward to the head?” Nell pointed at the close-up on the drop-down screen.

“Yeah, and here’s another pair that run toward the posterior of the animal. See there?” Quentin pointed. Two white twines of fine string stretched from the brain to the posterior of the animal like jumper cables.

“It may control the locomotion of its hind legs remotely with the second brain,” Nell theorized.