"I'll do my best," Ray said.
Anthony nodded to Peter, his face solemn.
The struthios came next. Shellabarger released them from the enclosure and they took dancing steps past him, swayed their heads back and forth on their long necks, gawked at the mestizos, the film crew, Ray and his camera, and the bridge. Their eyes locked on the bridge and the plateau beyond.
"Come on, pretties," Shellabarger said. He tapped them on their upper thighs with his prod. They looked at him with affronted dignity, then loped ahead, weaving across each other's path, stopping on the roadway just before the ramp to the bridge.
OBie's crew pushed the dolly forward to the end of its rails. The shiny black eye of the camera lens followed the struthios closely. Ray carried his camera to another mark, just out of OBie's shot. Anthony waited until OBie gave him the signal, then moved in closer.
Billie stood with hat in hand, ten yards from the bridge, brow deeply wrinkled. He scratched behind his jaw with a persistent finger. Dona Mendez and her twin brothers stood beside Billie. Again, the workers and roustabouts had stopped their labor. The colonel and his soldiers came no closer than the front of their tent.
The struthios showed little sentiment for their past. Shellabarger, the circus, the captivity, had no hold on them. As soon as they figured out that the bridge would return them to El Grande, they leaped forward, running as fast as their long legs could take them, over the bridge and down the road. They veered sharply right, skirting the boulders, and blended into a wind-ragged stand of trees and bushes where the old plateau road had once passed, on the east side.
Shellabarger beat his hat against his pants, replaced it on his wispy gray hair, and said, "Next."
The Aepyornis had watched the other animals over the wall of her enclosure. As soon as Shellabarger opened her gate, she leaped out, knocking him on his rear, and dashed for the bridge. Then, abruptly, she turned and emitted a heartfelt screech of alarm. She ran back, stopped by the enclosure, then tried to run south. The roustabouts gave chase and caught up with her only because she hesitated before the soldiers and the tents.
Colonel de Badajoz remained seated, but gripped the arms of his camp chair firmly.
Waving their hats, Keller and Kasem herded her back toward Shellabarger. She looked at him indignantly, as if betrayed.
"It's your home, dammit," Shellabarger said to her. "You have to go home."
Mrs. Birdqueen lifted her left foot as if to strike out at the trainer, but then lowered it, and dropped her head as well. She squawked plaintively, then gave several melodious, fluting calls.
Shellabarger approached slowly. She lifted her long neck and ruffled her body feathers. Shellabarger gave a signal and she dropped her head down from its queenly altitude of twelve feet. She stared him straight in the eye with her round, blinking orb, beak agape.
Then she shook herself vigorously and backed away. With great dignity, head held high and neck curved like the body of a question mark, she walked with elegant, high steps up to the bridge, stopped, and called again, sounding like the alto pipes on a pump organ.
The avisaurs trilled back at her from their cage.
Shellabarger ran past Peter and said, "I'm changing my plans. Help me grab the avisaurs. They'll hang around here all day if we let them loose by themselves, but they'll follow Mrs. Birdqueen anywhere."
Peter helped Shellabarger remove the toothed birds from their cages. The trainer handed Keller and Peter leather pads to protect their skin from flexing talons. The trainer carried two of them on his shoulders, where they flapped and screeched loudly. Peter held two more, feeling their sharp claws dig in even through the leather, and Keller the remaining two.
Mrs. Birdqueen had waited patiently for her circus mates. Now, she started across the bridge. Released directly behind her, the avisaurs hopped and ran along the bridge, alternating between roadrunner gait and bird gait, tail feathers spread wide, wings extended. For a moment, Peter was afraid one of the toothed birds might jump off the bridge, but for all their clownish darting, they stayed on the span.
Mrs. Birdqueen reached El Grande, turned, and rose to her full height. She stretched her stubby flightless wings. Two of the avisaurs ran around her and flapped a dozen yards across the grass and broken macadam. One made it to the top of a wind-polished rock and called to the others from its perch. The Aepyornis shook her body and head one final time and followed the same route the struthios had taken, into the brush.
One avisaur stayed on its rock perch, watching them. The other toothed birds disappeared without a backward glance.
Shellabarger walked slowly away from the bridge. He idly patted his pockets for nonexistent cigarettes, then looked at Peter and gave him a smirk. One animal remained: the venator.
Catalina said to the trainer, "Congratulations, senor. Your big animals have made it."
"One more to go. The venator's no lightweight," Shellabarger said.
The woman turned to Anthony. He raised his camera and took her picture. She smiled. Everyone's spirits seemed raised by the sight of the animals set free. Peter was too exhilarated to feel even a twinge of concern.
"Sammy's going to miss us," he told Shellabarger, following him toward the venator's cage.
Shellabarger grunted and told Billie to bring Dagger's truck around to the bridge. The venator lurched a few inches as the truck started, but remained squatting. "I hope he hasn't got sores and blood poisoning, sitting like that," the trainer said.
The truck rolled to within ten feet of the concrete ramp.
"All right, let's get that runway built," Shellabarger said. The workers and roustabouts gathered around the pieces of cage and began to move them into place.
Catalina and her brothers approached OBie and Ray. "You may shoot from the other side, if you wish," she said. "It is permitted for a brief time." She gave Anthony a look that Peter was all too familiar with. His father attracted the looks of many women. "You should get pictures from El Grande, too."
OBie looked up from the big camera to Ray. "You go," he said. "I've been on the plateau before."
Ray and Anthony moved toward the bridge. Peter looked at Shellabarger. The trainer cocked his head to one side. "Your work's done here," he said. "Go on across and get your fill. It may be the last time for any of us."
Peter ran, then caught himself, slowed, and walked quickly to the ramp to join his father and Ray on the ramp before the bridge. "May I go, too?" Peter asked.
Anthony faced the length of the bridge, one hand on his Leica, the other stuck firmly in his pocket. "Looks pretty safe from here. We'll only be there for a few minutes."
Peter grinned.
"It'll look better in the magazine, with your picture, standing on El Grande," Anthony added. They started across the bridge.
Ray carried the portable camera on his shoulder. "A few panicky shots to complete the effect," he said. "Lord, my hands are trembling."
They walked down the ramp on the opposite side. Black clouds flowed overhead, threatening more rain. Across the chasm, on Pico Poco, the milling people seemed incredibly far away. The rushing updraft muffled the clanging and hammering of the cage pieces being assembled for Dagger's runway.
They stopped. Peter scuffed his boot in the loose gravel and mud covering the sandstone surface.
"It feels pretty sacred, doesn't it?" Anthony asked.
Peter nodded. His palms were sweaty even in the cool air.
"Glad you came?"
He nodded again. Words would not come easily.
Ray dutifully recorded the people on the opposite side, then framed the venator. "I'd love to get a shot of him walking right by here," he said, swinging his hand to the foot of the ramp.
"Pretty expensive shot," Peter said.
"No doubt," Ray murmured, one eye in the viewfinder, panning the camera slowly, the other eye half open and unfocused. "Nooo-o-ooo doubt."
Peter studied the rocky mounds. This end of El Grande sank slowly into a shallow bowl filled with rock-str
ewn jungle. The rocks between the edge of the chasm and the bowl formed a difficult maze almost a mile wide, with some open areas of as much as an acre; but mostly the maze consisted of tight little passageways, wandering in twisted confusion for hundreds of yards. Unless one knew a secret path or hacked through the thick patch of jungle growing over the old road on the eastern side, it could take days to get to the bowl.
Not that Peter was considering such a thing.
He looked across the chasm at the workers. They had erected the cage runway and were now wiring and cabling it to the bridge. Shellabarger stood with his back to them. OBie and the film crew were rearranging the tracks and dolly.
Peter wondered what it would be like to be alone on the Grand Tepui, on Kahu Hidi, as Billie's father had been.
Ray set the camera down and flexed his shoulders. "All my life, this place has haunted me. Nobody wanted my space creatures and mythical beings . . . They kept saying, 'Look, we have all the monsters we want right here and now. Why make 'em up?'" He shook his head. "For OBie and me, El Grande has been the bane of our existence. But you know what?"
He gazed across the rocks. A few drops of rain spattered on the sandstone around them.
"I forgive it," Ray said. "Just being here, I forgive everything."
"Time to come back," Shellabarger called over the wind. "We're going to hook 'er up." Already they had fastened one side of the runway to the cage and slung the ramps from the bed of the venator's truck.
The workers clustered around the cage. Soldiers milled a few yards from the edge of the chasm, rifles slung. Peter saw el Colonel standing with his adjutants near the truck with the broken windshield. He did not understand why he could be here and the Indians could not. It seemed manifestly unfair.
"Let's not overstay our welcome," Anthony said. "Wouldn't want to have to explain to your mom why you were eaten."
Peter saw a man running from the middle of the workers. It was Billie. He jumped through the gap in the cage runway and sprinted across the bridge. The Indians and mestizos scattered in all directions from the bridge, as if to create a diversion. Before the three of them could move, Billie was across. Shots rang out over the chasm.
"Get down!" Anthony shouted, pushing Peter's shoulder. They dropped. Bullets ricocheted from the bridge and pocked the ground around Billie, who passed less than twenty feet from where they lay on the rock. Peter heard voices shouting in Spanish, loudest among them the colonel's. He rolled and twisted to see if Billie would be hit.
Bullets sprayed chips from the grotesque mounds ahead of Billie and the sandstone at his feet, but he seemed to have a charm. Peter started to get up, but Anthony slammed him down again, pressing his cheek into the mud.
"Stay down!" his father ordered. The soldiers on the edge were joined by their comrades, and a forest of rifle barrels contended in the crowd for open space to shoot. Smoke rose in thick puffs as if from a shooting gallery.
In seconds, Billie darted across the macadam and grass and plunged behind a tall pillar wind-carved into the profile of an old man. "He made it!" Peter said.
"Down!" Anthony repeated harshly.
OBie and the camera crew had trained the camera on Billie as he made his break. Now OBie turned the lens on the soldiers. The workers who had scattered had come to a stop well behind the commotion, dropping to their knees or lying flat on their stomachs, as if expecting to be shot at as well. Some soldiers turned as if to do just that, aiming their rifles back toward the end of the road to Pico Poco, but the tall adjutant waved his arm, shouting orders not to fire.
The Mendezes stood in the way. Shellabarger remained by Dagger's cage, but Wetherford, Keller, and Kasem were crawling and running bent over toward the trucks.
"Stop shooting!" Anthony called. "For God's sake, stop shooting!"
Shellabarger walked toward the soldiers near the edge, holding out his hand. They had emptied their clips and now there was nothing worth shooting at. They stood like exhilarated children, some solemnly reloading, others smiling and laughing.
"He must come back!" the tall adjutant cried, his voice dulled by the rising wind. El Colonel was furious. He screamed at the Mendezes. Catalina ignored him and resolutely stalked toward the bridge. Her brothers followed with less conviction. She pushed through the gap between the unfastened side of the runway and the bridge girders, intent apparently on retrieving Billie single-handedly.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw the venator rise from his crouch. Shellabarger turned at the noise.
The venator swung his tail against the cage and tucked his forearms against his chest. With his full weight he slammed into one side, and then back against the other. The truck wobbled. The soldiers crouched, rifles down by their sides, uncertain what to do. Nothing had prepared them for this.
The Mendezes stopped halfway across the bridge. The soldiers on the lip of the chasm crouched and backed away.
Shellabarger approached the cage. Peter could not see his face. The venator slammed back and forth again, making the truck's springs squeal. Part of the cage snapped and sent a piece of metal whizzing.
"Jesus," Anthony said. Peter's father never swore that way.
Ray lifted the camera from the ground with a look of focused concentration. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The Mendezes stopped on the bridge and turned around, as if Billie were no longer important.
The venator's assault skewed its cage on the truck bed. Jorge, who had replaced Billie behind the wheel of the truck, leaped from the cab and stood a few feet from Shellabarger, holding up his hands as if trying to calm the beast. The venator let out a painful, rasping shriek. Jorge, too, broke and ran.
Shellabarger stood his ground.
The cage leaned. The venator made a querulous clucking noise, then shrieked again as the cage slid on its bottom plate, caught once more, and toppled from the side of the truck, torquing the runway. Bolts snapped sharply.
Peter opened his mouth, but there was no time to scream.
Shellabarger held up his hands. The cage fell on him with a resounding clangor. The full weight of the cage and the venator covered the trainer and Peter could not see him. He felt his father wrap his arms around him but shook loose, crying out.
Dagger
The venator kicked at the ruined cage with all the might of his powerful feet, snapping more bolts. The beast screamed like a huge woman, voice as big as the sky. The remaining soldiers darted back and forth like frightened mice, then ran for the road.
"My God," Ray said, still filming. "What can we do?"
Anthony looked at the rocks and the brush.
"Nothing," he said. "Not yet." To Catalina and her brothers, he waved and shouted, "Get off the bridge! Come over to this side!"
But the trio seemed frozen, gripping the rails beside the bridge roadway. Anthony snapped two pictures of the mayhem, then handed the Leica to Peter and ran for the bridge.
The venator broke through the top of the cage. He rolled and grunted and kicked free of the entangling bars.
The Mendezes suddenly made their move. They ran for Pico Poco.
"No!" Anthony and Ray cried out simultaneously. "Come back!" Anthony reached the bridge but did not cross.
The woman looked back at them, then darted between the broken pieces of runway, followed by her brothers. They dashed all-out for the closest truck. The workers, Wetherford, the roustabouts, the film crew, all had scattered, leaving only OBie standing by the side of the cliff and Shellabarger beneath the ruins of the cage.
The venator rolled from side to side, kicking out with one leg and then the other, until he came upright, legs drawn up, feet flat against the ground. He pushed with his forelimbs, which hardly seemed strong enough to hold a quarter of his weight, and stood in delicate balance, muscles quivering, tail jerking down behind. He lifted his head to the sky.
The ground shook with his triumphant roar. All of twenty years of rage and confinement, of being enslaved, blew loose in that roar and echoed fro
m the rocks behind them. If ever a sound had a color, that one did, and the color was blood.
OBie backed toward the edge of the cliff. For a moment, Peter thought he might step off.
Catalina and her brothers crowded into the truck's cab. The truck's engine started and thick black smoke shot from its stacks. Gears ground and the truck spun its rear tires and jerked ahead. The venator leaned forward, pivoting on its hind legs, nose pointed straight out at the truck. With a grunt and a deep chirrup, he covered the ground between in four great bounds, claws digging up showers of dust and gravel. With another chirrup Dagger leaped onto the back of the truck. He butted his head against the rear of the cab, denting the metal on one side and shattering the rear window. The truck veered left and then right and Dagger lost his balance and toppled off.
The venator landed on his side and thigh with an awful thump, two tons of flesh hitting hard. He crumpled and lay still for long seconds. From their position, Peter could not see if the animal was breathing.
"He's dead," Ray said.
"He's knocked the wind out," Anthony said. The truck rumbled down the road and below the rise.
Except for OBie, the staging area before the bridge was now deserted. OBie turned. He seemed stunned, his jaw hanging open, arms half extended, as if he expected someone to take his hand.
"Quickâcome on across!" Ray shouted.
OBie jerked as if shocked. "What the hell good will that do?" he called. "We'll be stuck. God only knows what's on that side!" He approached the collapsed cage. Rubbing his hands on his pants, as if expecting some very unpleasant work, he bent and peered at Shellabarger.
"Is he alive?" Anthony shouted.
The venator's upper leg rotated a few degrees in its hip socket. His chest shuddered and rose and fell; dirt fanned from his nostrils.
"He ain't moving," OBie said. "He's pressed pretty tight under there . . . lots of blood on his head."
Peter felt sick. He had never been so afraid; all he wanted was someplace to go where he could throw up. Anthony stepped out onto the bridge. "Peter," he said. "If the venator gets up again, get some pictures. I'm going across to help OBie."