Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

23

From the top of the knoll she had climbed, Karla could see that Ivory Island was not the arctic desert she had first assumed it to be. The tundra was treeless, but it was thick with low-lying, dwarf shrubs, grasses, mosses and sedges that formed a muted carpet. Dandelions, buttercups and fireweed created vibrant splashes of color. The morning sunlight glittered on distant lakes and rivers. Noisy seabirds wheeled overhead.

In her mind's eye, she pictured the rugged landscape as verdant grassland, the steppes teeming with vast herds of woolly mammoth. There would have been bison and woolly rhinos, giant ground sloths, all stalked by predators like the scimitar or saber-toothed cats. She could almost smell the musky animal odor and feel the ground shake from the passage of thousands of huge animals.

Somehow, as if an evil sorcerer had waved a magic wand, the mammoths and the other creatures had became extinct. The question of extinction had intrigued her as far back as she could remember. Like many children, she had been fascinated by dinosaurs and the great mammals that succeeded them as the earth's masters.

Her grandfather was the only scientist she knew, so of course she went to him and asked what had caused these magnificent creatures to die. She had listened wide-eyed as he explained how the world had shifted, and asked him if it could happen again. He had said yes, and she had been unable to sleep. Seeing her fear, a few nights later he had taught her a nursery rhyme that would make the topsy-turvy world right again. She was trying to dig the rhyme from her memory when she heard someone shout.

"Karla!"

Maria Arbatov was waving her arms at Karla. The expedition was ready to get moving again. Karla started walking back to rejoin the others. It was time to return to the task at hand. She knew it would not be easy. The discovery of the baby mammoth carcass had been an astounding stroke of luck. But Ivory Island was a rich trove of the ancient past. If she couldn't find what she wanted here, she should forsake field trips forever and stick to cataloging museum specimens.

Fortified by a hearty breakfast, the expedition got off to an early start that morning. Ito and Sato were ready before anyone else. They were dressed identically in warm-weather clothes, from their boots to their hats. Sergei was grumpier than usual, and even Maria's lovely smile couldn't dispel his sour mood, so she just ignored him.

They had shouldered

their packs and headed into the interior of the island, using the river as a guide. They made good time across the flat tundra. By midmorning, when they had taken their first break, near Karla's knoll, they had trudged several miles.

As she hoisted her pack to resume the trek, Karla said: "I've been wondering. How did you transport the specimen all the way back to the camp? It must weigh hundreds of pounds."

Ito smiled and pointed to the packs he and Sato were carrying. "Inflatable rafts. We got the specimen to the river and floated all the way back to camp."

Ito smiled and bowed politely when Karla congratulated them on their ingenuity.

Sergei took up the lead, followed by the two women with the Japanese men taking up the rear. They struck off inland, away from the river. The topography changed from flat tundra to rolling hills and valleys, and eventually they were on the edge of the rolling foothills that ringed the base of the volcano. As they drew closer to it, the black, truncated mountain that they had seen in the distance began to loom above their head like an altar to Vulcan, the lord of the underworld.

They hiked along the shores of several small lakes and made their way around tussocks of cotton grass that marked boggy areas teeming with migrating birds. The temperature rose to around thirty degrees, but a breeze coming off the Arctic Ocean created a windchill factor that halved that, and Karla was glad that she was wearing her down parka.

The cold wind was no longer a problem, once they had descended into a ravine about thirty feet wide. Twenty-foot banks hemmed them in on both sides. A narrow stream a couple of feet deep ran down the middle, with plenty of room for walking on either side. They traveled along the winding gorge for two hours, and the composition of the banks began to change. Soon it became apparent that the ravine was an ancient mortuary. The river that had created the ravine had cut through layers of time to reveal scores of bones that protruded from the sand under their feet.

Karla stopped and picked up a bison leg bone that fitted perfectly into the socket of another bone she found a few feet away. The other scientists were not impressed. They barely gave the find a second look, and she had to drop the bones and hurry to catch up.

She was annoyed and frustrated at their indifference, but the reason for their casual attitude soon became apparent. As they rounded a bend, she saw that the low cliffs were composed almost entirely of bones of every size and species cemented together by the permafrost. She quickly identified pygmy horse and ancient reindeer fossils, ribs and femurs, along with massive mammoth bones and tusks. The graveyard went on for at least two hundred yards.

With great fanfare, Sergei announced that they had reached their destination. He dropped his rucksack on the ground next to the blackened ashes of a fire. "This is our base camp," he said.

The others left their bags as well, and continued along the ravine carrying only camera equipment and a few hand tools. As they trekked along, Karla thought about the baby mammoth back at the base camp. She was dying to test it. From its tissue and cartilage, they could perform radiocarbon tests to determine when it lived and died. The tusks would provide growth lines, like those in a tree, that would reveal seasonal differences and metabolic rate and migratory patterns. Seeds and pollen in the stomach contents would tell much about the biological world that existed thousands of years ago.

After hiking along the ravine for another ten minutes, they came to a section where there was a shallow cave in the wall of the gorge.

"This is where we found our little baby," Sergei said.

The ragged cavity was several feet across and about a yard deep.

"How did you get it out of the permafrost?" Karla said.

"Unfortunately, we had no water hose to melt the permafrost," Maria said. "We relied on hammer and chisel to extract the specimen."

"Then it was partly exposed?"

"Yes," Maria said. "We had to chop a little around the edge of the carcass before we could pry it out." She explained that they had rigged up a crude travois from mammoth tusks and dragged the frozen specimen to the river. It was floated back to the base camp and moved into the shed, where the temperature was below freezing even in the daytime.

Karla examined the hole. "There's something strange here," she said.

The other scientists clustered around her.

"I don't see anything," Sergei said.