Abby Maitland's new job
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
Shovelling elephant... excrement (but think, rather, of a four-letter word that isn't often used in polite conversation) wasn't the best job in the London zoo, and Abby Maitland... most definitely didn't grow to love it. On the contrary, it was only the lack of any alternatives that kept Abby going at it.
"I really must get myself a new resume," Abby mused, as she arrived for her seventeenth day of work at the elephant house. "Before I just go mad and become a housewife or something along those lines."
"Ah, Abigail!" Tim, Abby's work superior, made an appearance, startling her. "And I was planning on phoning you right now!"
"What's wrong?" Abby asked suspiciously.
"On the contrary!" Abby's boss told her brightly. "I just had a chat with one of my acquaintances at the Home Office: he needs a biologist who specializes in reptiles on his team and I thought of you."
"Me? Why?" Abby suspiciously asked. "You want to get rid of me that badly?"
"What? No!" her interlocutor shook his head. "I was actually thinking that it's a good thing: you're a good herpetologist, Abby, and you're wasted doing shovelling in the elephant house."
"And working in the Home Office?" Abby asked, unwilling to argue what was basically true.
"Come on! It's the Home Office! They're not going to have a crocodile, and you're good with the other reptiles," Tim replied firmly. "We both know that it is only your lack of seniority caused you to be reassigned in the first place! So, what do you say?"
"I'll give it a try," Abby nodded, giving Tim his point. "But I'm not quitting my work here right away either!"
/
Over two hours later Abby was standing in front of the Home Office building, looking vaguely nervous. Her uncertainty suggested that she might dress up a bit for the occasion – it was the Home Office after all – but her instincts told her not to, so she compromised: she wore practical clothing, but also more make-up than she usually wore, as well as earrings. Judging from the looks given to her by the somewhat odd couple standing before her, she did the right thing: fancy clothing would've been right over the top.
"Hi!" she said with more cheer than she felt. "I'm Abigail Maitland; I'm the biologist that Home Office was asking for?"
"Great!" the young man of the couple replied. "I'm Connor, a palaeontology student, this is Helen, technically she is an anthropologist-"
"-but in reality I'm more of the one who handles the practical end of things and Connor does the theory," Helen added with a slight smile.
Abby blinked. "Palaeontology? Anthropology? What Home Office is running here?" she asked.
"It's a weird tale," Helen explained, even as Abby became aware that another couple was approaching them, "and it began-"
"Helen! Connor! No time!" the other woman interrupted the anthropologist. "And who're you?"
"Abby, this is Claudia Brown and captain Tom Ryan – the other members of our team," Helen said smoothly. "Claudia, captain – this is Abby Maitland, our new biologist."
"Pleased to meet you!" captain Ryan said cheerfully. "Glad to have you on our team!"
"What he said," Claudia Brown nodded, smiling slightly, before turning back to Helen and Connor. "We need to go. There's been another weird death, and the police haven't forgotten our involvement with the mosasaur situation – Connor, that's the right name?"
"Pretty much," Connor nodded, "only, Ms. Brown, Abby wasn't briefed yet about what we do, so you might've come onto her a bit strongly."
"Oh. Sorry," Claudia coloured. "Uh, Abby, why don't you ride with me and I'll explain what we do?"
"Guess that means that I'm riding alongside you today," Helen turned to Connor. "Captain, think you can fit in another passenger?"
"Er," Connor looked a bit like Abby's brother Jack after she caught him reading magazines of a certain kind. "Can't she ride in the back with you?" he plaintively asked Claudia.
"Of course she can!" Claudia said cheerfully. "In fact, she's welcome to! I mean," she blinked, "that the guys-"
"-will be talking about manly things," Helen rolled her eyes. "Fine. Claudia Brown, you sweet-talked me into riding with you. Miss Maitland, come along. We've got quite a bit of information to share with you on this ride."
"Of course," Abby nodded gratefully, "and please – call me Abby."
"Very well. Sorry about dropping you off into the deep end so unexpectedly, Abby."
/
By the time they arrived at the golfing course, to see the golfer's corpse, Abby fell like screaming and running away – almost. The entire time anomaly situation seemed insane, and dangerously so. But conversely, shovelling elephant dung was sane: so mind-numbingly sane, that even insanity – no way people and prehistoric animals can travel in time – appeared to be quite attractive.
But then there was the corpse. There was nothing insane or unbelievable about it.
"Well, as a biologist who specializes in reptiles I can tell you that I don't know if reptiles have killed him, but they certainly ate him," Abby was the first one to break the silence and almost regretted it, as everyone else stared at her – not condemning her, more like... encouraging her?
"Go on," Claudia said kindly, when it became obvious that Abby was rather embarrassed to continue of her own volition. "Why reptiles?"
"The teeth marks," Abby continued, still slightly self-insecure. "Mammals and reptiles have different teeth and jaw musculature. In particular, the teeth marks here are uniform, there's no difference between various sorts of teeth – that's the mark of the reptiles. The bones were gnawed on, but not bit in two or anything like that – that's another mark of reptiles; well, some of them..."
"And how big would they say they were?" captain Ryan asked curiously, as he began to examine the corpse with a greater attention than before.
"Judging from the size of their bite marks – they're no bigger than my hand, or rather yours," Abby explained. "I am rather on the petite side, you know?"
"Fair enough," captain Ryan nodded in agreement. "At least now we know the size of the thing that we're looking for-"
"And the time," Helen said suddenly. "Connor, look in the sky, over that copse. I don't think that this is the Jurassic, either."
Instinctively, everybody grabbed the binoculars and looked in the direction pointed at by Helen. There, up in the sky, a huge flying reptile was soaring majestically.
/
"So," captain Ryan was burst to break the silence, "is that the guilty party here?"
"No!" Abby said urgently. "It's way too big! And it's toothless!"
"Too true," Connor echoed her. "This is a pteranodon. These flying reptiles were toothless!"
"And which ones weren't?" Helen asked suddenly. "I didn't see any tracks or blood spatters – whoever killed it flew away. Connor?"
"I don't know!" the latter shot back. "All of the pterosaurs from the Cretaceous were toothless! This must be a new species! Neat!"
"No, not neat!" Claudia shot back. "There are flying monsters in the sky, and how shall we catch them? With another bait ball?"
"I don't think so," Helen shook her head. "If this flying reptile is anything like its' smaller cousins from the Jurassic, it won't land, not even to feed on fish. We might need to deal with it in the air." A rather dreamy smile came onto her face. "I always wanted to fly an ultralight, you know?"
"But you don't know how to fly an ultralight!" Claudia said, almost shouting.
"But I always wanted to try!"
"That sounds like the beginnings of a plan," captain Ryan said thoughtfully. "Tell you what. I and Claudia will go and get us an aerosphere."
"Say what?" Connor's eyes budged.
"I meant an autogiro," the older man explained sheepishly. "I often get these words confused, sorry. Anyways, the two – sorry, the three of you find the time anomaly and the other flying lizard that killed that guy, while Claudia and I go and get the autogiro."
"What for?" Connor asked.
"Noise! And size!" Ryan said proudly. "We'll scare the flying reptiles back into their time. How that sounds?" he asked, slightly more nervously than before.
"Let's keep it a plan A," Helen replied kindly, "and get to work instead."
Everyone – including Abby – agreed.
/
As she and Connor walked through the golfing grounds, with Helen trailing behind (perhaps to give them some room), Abby finally mastered her courage – or rather, found her ground – to start talking to Connor directly.
"So," she asked carefully, "how does this organization work?"
"We're hardly an organization," Connor said with a grin. "It's just the four of us – well, five, now that you're here – and sir Lester who is our superior back in the office. Or is he a peer? He's a knight, you know, so does that make him a peer?"
"I don't know," Abby said, feeling like grinning herself – for the first time in a long while too. "So, that's how you work?"
"I suppose so," Connor said, toning down his enthusiasm a bit. "You should've seen us riding that hydrofoil before! It was awesome!"
"Connor, please! Not so loud!" Abby wasn't sure where that had come from but it sounded rather like an appropriate thing to say.
"Loud? I'm not loud! It's the neighbourhood that is quiet!" Connor protested and stiffened, when he realized just what he had said.
Slowly, Abby and Connor looked around. They were standing in a copse that was full of small, black-skinned pterosaurs that were staring back at them with something suspiciously like hunger in their small, cold, bead-like eyes.
"Okay," Connor gulped. "This is bad."
/
As the two of them made their way to their car, the feeling in Claudia's stomach had intensified into something rather like certainty, even if there was nothing for her to be certain about – or was there?
"Ryan," she said firmly, "stop."
"Excuse me?" the latter asked, startled slightly. "Stop what?"
"I don't know how to say it – just stop!" Claudia said, sounding almost desperate in her urgency. That was actually something new, never before Claudia Brown had sounded anything resembling urgency, so captain Ryan stopped, almost instinctively.
"Okay, we've stopped," he said quietly. "Now what?"
"I don't know!" Claudia said desperately, "there's just a feeling in my stomach, and it's coming from over there..." she trailed away. A time anomaly, suspended in mid-air this time, was twinkling in that direction.
"...Okay," Ryan exhaled. "That does alter things somewhat: it might be hard, using an autogiro, to drive several flying reptiles through here-"
"No," Claudia shook her head. "It sounds stupid and unreasonable, but we're not going to get ourselves an autogiro. I don't know why, but we're not!"
Ryan opened his mouth, caught the resolute and desperate look on Claudia's face, and fell silent.
"Besides, we still haven't heard from Helen and Connor – and also Abby, I guess," Claudia added sheepishly.
Ryan just nodded, still looking surprised and worried for Claudia's behalf.
/
"Now what are you two up to now?" Helen said softly, startling Abby and Connor.
"Shh! Don't move!" Abby whispered desperately, thrusting her head upwards, hoping that Helen will see the pterosaurs as well.
She did, but behaved in a rather odd manner. "And what have we here?" she asked, cocking her own head in a manner similar to that of the flying reptiles. "Hmm?"
One of the pterosaurs moved to a closer branch and emitted a harsh, slightly hissing sound. Helen promptly reached into her backpack, pulled up a wrapped-up piece of self-made fish pemmican and threw it at the pterosaur at question.
Immediately several of the black-skinned winged reptiles surged over it, biting it – but with more curiosity than hunger or anger.
"Interesting," Helen said while looking at the pterosaurs with a clearly thoughtful facial expression. "Their Jurassic cousins were clearly fish-eaters. These ones aren't, I guess. Can you tell me their species, Connor?"
As Helen was asking Connor this, Abby realized that Helen was doing something else.
"You're leading us away," she said quietly.
"Yes," Helen nodded dryly. "I am. I'm guessing that they are the ones that ate that poor man back there?"
"They certainly seem to have the right size for it, and their jaws are powerful enough too," Connor nodded. "Shouldn't we be running instead?"
"I got a bad leg," Helen confessed. "Nothing that I can't deal with, but I don't run very well anymore. On the other hand, we're dealing with animals that can fly probably much faster than even the two of you can run, no?"
"Hey, we're not leaving you behind!" Connor said firmly, even before Abby could. "Now all we need to figure out is where to run to..." he trailed away. "Okay, now even I can see why mindlessly running around would not be such a good idea, right, Abby?"
"Yes," Abby nodded thoughtfully, "and you never run around when dealing with wild animals either. It's an invitation for them to attack you, basically." She turned to Helen. "Ms. Brown was telling the truth when she said that you came from the other side, didn't she? You'd been really dealing with these sorts of prehistoric animals?"
"Well, when you add all of these months and weeks and days together, you do get several years," Helen admitted. "Claudia! Captain Ryan! What's going on? Is something wrong?" she asked, sounding worried than she had before.
"Well, we found the time anomaly, and came back to check to tell you that," Claudia replied, looking slightly shifty. Abby remembered that the older woman was supposed to go with the captain and get them an autogiro, but the latter was noticeably absent from the golfing grounds. "Did you find anything else, other than that big bird-lizard creature?"
"It's called a pteranodon," Connor replied, "and yes, we did. More pterosaurs. Small and numerous enough to have gnawed that golfer and with teeth the right size, too."
"I thought that pterosaurs lacked teeth," captain Ryan said, sounding slightly confused, "but never mind. How many of them there are?"
Helen, Connor and Abby looked at each other. "A big flock," Connor finally spoke. "A really big flock. Maybe it's more of a swarm, actually. I don't know. Abby, Helen?"
"What he said," Abby said after exchanging a look with Helen. "And-"
Whatever Abby planned to say remained unsaid, as the pterosaur swarm (or flock) chose this time to break from the copse and swarm them – or approach them with a very rapid speed at the very least.
"Everybody down!" captain Ryan helped, and miraculously, everyone complied – just in the nick of time. Consequently the pterosaurs missed them at their first charge, but they hurriedly regrouped, prepared to swoop down even as captain Ryan and his men were preparing to discharge their weapons... when Helen threw several more of her fish pemmican bars at the swarm (or the flock).
Instinctively, the pterosaurs snatched them and snapped at them, tearing the fish bars into pieces before emitting several loud, creaking, and almost complaining screeches and... flying away.
"That's where the time anomaly is!" cried Claudia Brown. "Maybe they're going home by themselves?"
Maybe, or maybe not. Rather, it appeared that the flock (or the swarm) was conversing within itself about what to do next, even as the time anomaly twinkled enticingly not far away from them...
It was the other pterosaur, the big pteranodon, which settled the matter from them. Like a winged version of the greased lightning, it swooped down at the smaller creatures, grabbed one or two of them with its beak and flew through the time anomaly back to the Cretaceous time period.
Screeching indignantly, the smaller pterosaurs followed their enemy, just as the time anomaly snapped shut.
"Yay us?" Connor said weakly.
"Yay us," Claudia Brown agreed.
/
"So, what do you think?" Connor said sometime later, as Claudia went to give her report, and the others were lounging in the cafeteria, "did you like working here or what?"
Abby Maitland took a deep breath. On one hand, for today she had to deal with a dead corpse, several prehistoric flying reptiles that came through a breach in time and space, and that actual breach in time and space itself. But on the other hand – there were no elephants or any by-products of their life cycle...
"Yeah, I did. Does that mean that I'm hired?" she asked humbly.
The cheering and assuring round of applause and good cheer that followed her decision was a clear yes.
End