Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

He saw this remark was not appreciated, and went on hurriedly, ‘Bernie, honestly, I’d be happy if I could swallow all this. Seeing orthodoxies overturned is my kind of meat. But you don’t stand a chance on this one. Go back to the goddamned Escalante, find a second grave in that same stratum. Then I’ll take you seriously.’

‘You will? Okay.’ He paused dramatically and gestured towards the table. ‘Take a look at the photos. You’ve scarcely glanced at them. You’re like the Italian authorities, refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. You’ve taken it for granted you know what the photos are all about. These are shots of a second grave, Joe. We struck it even when you were leaving to get your plane.’

Bodenland gave his friend one baffled look, then peered at the plates.

The grave much resembled the first, which was why he had hardly bothered to look at the photos. The remains were enclosed in a similar coffin, with the same mysterious sign on the lid. In this case, the lid had been removed with little damage.

The skeleton, sunk in red ochre, lay on its side, in the same position as the first skeleton. Distance shots showed that this grave was no more than fifty metres from the first, still just below the K/T boundary, but deeper into the hill, where the strata curved inward.

‘You observe,’ Clift said, now using his voice of icy calm. ‘The second grave. There are two significant differences compared with our first discovery. In this case, the skeleton is of a female. And she lies with a wooden stake through what was her heart.’

‘I’m sure your beautiful young daughter-in-law would tell you that you know nothing about human nature, Joe,’ Clift said, as they walked through the building. ‘I can’t keep this secret. I’m bursting with it. There’s the scientific aspect, and that’s predominant. This is something that is going to cause shock waves. It’ll be hotly contested. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition and I know it. I also know I can defend my case.

‘But there’s more to it than that. You’ve had plenty of publicity in your time, what with your association with Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelley and all that. I also want publicity. I want recognition, as every man does, if he’s honest. Publicity will give me the funding I require.

‘Millions of dollars are needed. Millions. The whole Iron Hills area must be torn apart. We’ve got a new civilization to explore – beyond our dreams. Imagine, civilization started here, in the USA, long before apes came out of the African jungles!’

‘Yes, and when this hits the media, you’re going to have the whole universe invading your pitch. You’re not going to be able to work. The site will be ruined. And I won’t be able to chase that phantom train.’

‘That’s where you can help. If your organization will back me, I want you to get an army of security personnel down at Old John straight away.’

‘Do you want a bed for the night? I’ll ring Mina, if she isn’t twenty thousand feet up.’

‘I’ll ring her, Joe, thanks. And Joe – thanks a million. I know you’ll be in the hot seat too. One day, I’ll return this favour.’

They shook hands.

Joe said, ‘Mina will take care of you. I may be a little hard to contact, just for a while.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Never mind. Up guards and at ’em, Bernie. Shake the world! I’m on your side.’

The great green-and-white waves of the Pacific came curling into Hilo Bay, Hawaii. The foam scattered in the sunlight, the water lost its power, crawled up the volcanic sands, sank down again, and miraculously revived, to make another assault on the beaches.

Larry and Kylie came out of the ocean shaking the water from their hair.

‘I just know something is wrong, Larry. Please let’s get back to the hotel,’ she said.

‘Nothing’s wrong, sweetie. Forget your intuitions. It’s something you ate. How can anything be wrong? We’ve only been down on the beach an hour.’

‘I’m sorry, Larry,’ Kylie said, reaching for a towel. ‘I just feel kind of edgy inside. I need to get back to the hotel to see if there’s a message or something. You don’t have to come. I can go on my own.’

‘Oh, shit, I’ll come. You’ll be making me nervous next.’

Back in the Bradford Palace, where they had now been staying for three days, everything was normal. Phoning down from their room to Reception revealed no message. Nothing had happened.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Kylie said, nuzzling him. ‘I just had that silly feeling. You want to go back to the beach?’

‘No, I don’t want to go back to the beach. Supposing you get another funny spell directly we’re down there. We could be bouncing back and forth like yo-yos all day. I’m going to drag a six-pack on that balcony and tan. Forget it.’

‘Don’t be like that, Larry. I wish you wouldn’t drink so much.’

He turned and grinned as he headed for the fridge. ‘You got some religious objections or something?’

She stood in the middle of the room, nibbling an index finger. She said nothing to him when he returned, switching on the TV too loud on his way to a cushioned lounger on the balcony of the suite. She looked out past him, through the tall palms, past the busy road and the other hotels and the whole vulgar commercial razzmatazz of Hilo Bay, to where there was the green line of the ocean, beyond the shallows where the swimmers and surfers sported, a line that offered at least the prospect of infinity.

Sadly, she turned away, changed into a loose caftan, and took a copy of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula over to a side-sofa to read, out of range of the TV screen.

She had marked her place with the wrapper of a Hershey bar.

With a part of her mind, Kylie was aware of a commercial on television for the local Hedge’s Beer. It’s slimming, it’s trimming – get a Hedge against inflation. A news bulletin followed.

Absorbed in her reading, she hardly took it in until Larry yelled from the balcony: ‘Bernie Clift!’

There was Clift’s face on the screen.

Against library pictures of desert, the announcer was speaking. ‘The scientific world – or at least that part of it meeting yesterday at a conference in Houston – was in uproar over a statement made by famous palaeontologist, Bernard Cliff. Cliff claims he has discovered a race of human-like beings who lived millions of years before the Stone Age, in the time of Ally Oop.’

Clift was seen at a microphone, brushing back a lock of hair from his forehead and speaking above a hubbub. ‘On the evidence of a pair of graves in Utah we cannot generalize too freely. But the workmanship of the coffins, which is surprisingly modern in technique, suggests a high degree of culture. Dating methods indicate beyond doubt a date of some 65.5 million years ago. This clearly places the coffins and the bodies they contain back at a period when the tyrannosaur and other giant dinosaurs were still roving the continents.’

The clip ended. Back came the announcer, saying, ‘Later, Cliff revealed that a preliminary analysis of the two fossilized bodies indicates strong shoulder development with much enlarged shoulder blades. Which leads to the hypothesis that Cliff’s new discoveries could possibly have evolved from a flighted species, such as the pterodactyl or pteranodon. As shown in this artist’s impression.’

Over the sketch, his voice continued, ‘A natural wave of scepticism greeted the Utah announcement …’ By this time, Larry and Kylie were arm in arm before the TV set, exclaiming in excitement.

‘Scepticism!’ Larry exclaimed. ‘What else?’

‘… and it’s not from the Bible Belt only that these protests have come. Within the last hour, Professor Danny Hudson of the Smithsonian Institute has issued a challenge to Bernard Cliff to put up or shut up. He is reported as saying he expects the evidence to become available to quote unbiased scientific examination unquote.’