Corrupting Dr. Nice Read Free Page B

wadded up the bag. "No more," he said. He felt depressed. Betty let go of him, chirped, turned, and scampered off into the darkness.
    A few minutes later Bill began to pester him. =It's 19:20,= the voice whispered in his ear. =Time to go.=
    "Don't rush me," Owen sub-vocalized.
    =You spend too much time out here alone with these things,= the voice in his head insisted. =One of these days you're going to get eaten by one of your pets.=
    "You'd karate chop them into insensibility before they could get a nibble." Owen muttered aloud this time. "Besides, sauropods aren't meat eaters."
    =The ones that eat them are. A young fellow like you ought to be chasing other kinds of tail.=
    Owen stood up, slung his rifle over his shoulder. The soles of his mood boots, currently pea green, had picked up a coating of mud. "All right." He clumped back toward the glow of the research station's lights on the hill.
    =You've packed your iguana up nice and tidy?= Bill asked.
    "She's no more an iguana than you are."
    =I bet she tastes like iguana.=
    "Well, we'll never find out, will we."
    The wind rustled a copse of fan palms down the watercourse a hundred yards to Owen's right, and despite his bravado to Bill he hoped a pair of raptors weren't watching him from the cover. He unslung the rifle and slipped off the safety.
    But the predators seldom came this close to the station's floodlights. He reached the top of a little swale and followed the jeep track toward the compound's gate.
    Vannice Station consisted of five prefabricated buildings, the largest of them housing the labs and the time travel stage, set down on a leveled hillock. It was the highest ground around in the mosaic of lakes, rivers and the vast floodplain that would one day become the arid Great basin of Nevada, Arizona and western Utah, but now was a Serengeti-like plain. A great number of ferns, conifers and cycads crowded around the watercourses, and herds of sauropods followed the rains to root out new plant growth. Only in nesting season did they stop long enough to produce a flock of young.
    Owen passed through the electrical fence that surrounded the station. Both of the jeeps were in the garage. The lights were on in the abbatoir, and Owen detoured over to the opened corrugated-metal door.
    The concrete floor was smeared with mud and drying blood from the corpse of the adolescent Bactrosaurus Fiona O'Connor had dragged in with the bobcat. Fiona had on a virching helmet and was directing a couple of robot moles she had inserted into the carcass to orbit around the animal's internal organs doing CAT scans. The place reeked of rotting dinosaur, but when it came to devotion to her work the Fiona had a cast iron stomach.
    When Owen tapped her on the shoulder she jumped a foot. She flipped up the helmet's visor and took off the gloves. "Owen! What do you want?"
    "I'm leaving now. Did you forget?"
    Fiona was a thin woman, her straight dark hair cut very short. She turned from him and picked up an electric saw. She flicked it on the and began to assault the back of the dead dinosaur's thigh. "Have you seen these dorsal ligaments?" she said above the saw's whine.
    Owen put his hand on her arm. "Don't you have anything to say?"
    Fiona turned off the saw. She looked at her shoes. "Owen, it was fun. But I'm a scientist first."
    "And I'm not?"
    "I didn't say that. You've done excellent work here. Without your support--"
    "Without my father's money."
    "I didn't say that, either."
    "You didn't have to."
    "I like you Owen. You are a scientist. I look forward to seeing the results of your experiment. When I get back to Boston I'll be sure to look you up."
    Owen should have known better than to try to say goodbye; Fiona had more than once made it clear that his leaving was a matter of indifference to her. "Sure," he said. "Well--goodbye, then."
    She pecked him on the cheek and turned on the saw again. "Goodbye. Have a safe trip back. Don't forget the shower."
    Owen fled the building.
    The rest