The seven-year-old girl's eyes looked as wide as saucers. "You promise you won't hurt him?"
Esther Hu stooped and took Linda May Tucker's little hands in her own, which weren't all that much bigger. She didn't have to stoop much, either. The paleontologist was a very small woman.
"Linda May, believe me, the very very very last thing we're going to do is hurt the little fellow. He's more precious than gold."
The girl stared at her, for a bit. "Well, okay, then. I guess."
"And you can come visit him any time you want to, just to make sure he's all right." Esther glanced up at the girl's parents. "We'll be glad to pay the cost of the trip, folks."
The mother nodded. The father just looked relieved.
Watching, Margo had to keep from laughing. Quite obviously, the father had heard the same stories about what happens to baby alligators kept as pets that she'd heard.
Linda May Tucker, now satisfied enough, started examining the room curiously. Her eyes fell on a very big, thick book lying on a table nearby, kept under glass. "What's that?"
"That?" Esther straightened up and studied the book for a moment. "We call it Exhibit A. What it is, though, is a very old Bible. Really old."
"Can I touch it?"
Margo stepped forward. "Better not, honey. It might get damaged. It's really, really old."
She was fudging, actually. True, looked at from one angle, the Bible was slightly over four hundred years old. But, measured from the likely date of printing, it was no older than some of the books in Margo's own library. And it was very sturdy.
Still, they weren't taking any chances. Not with a German-language Bible, printed in Fraktur typeface, from the last decade of the sixteenth century. There was no date printed anywhere in it, but the expert Nick had brought in said he could place it and date it quite precisely—to the satisfaction of any antique or rare book dealer in the world.
More to the point, he could place it and date it so precisely that not all of the king's men nor all of the king's lawyers nor all of the king's national security experts could deny the fact.
Nick had been right. In less than eight months, they'd turned up seventeen people in the area around Grantville who'd discovered something, before the federal agencies clamped down. The Bible had been among the things they'd found. And then, encountering the blank indifference or even outright hostility of the authorities, had decided to keep those items quietly as a private possession and say nothing further.
Margo still wasn't sure she agreed with Nick's plan, to wait until there was a change of administration before holding the press conference. Somewhere in the darker recesses of her mind, she had a faint lingering suspicion that Nick was trying to avoid embarrassing the current holder of the White House. He admitted himself that he'd voted for the bum, even if she was pretty sure he'd come to regret the fact as time went by.
Still, she understood Nick's insistence that politics be kept out of The Project's policies. And his reasoning was hard to argue with. The election was only a short time away, after all. And a new administration, regardless of which party's candidate won, wouldn't feel compelled to hold the bunker of folly at all costs. Not even the party which now controlled the White House, with a new President.
Not after The Project held the press conference. With—so far—four Nobel Prize winners having quietly agreed to attend and give their support. With—so far—dozens of eyewitnesses who could report things that were completely at variance with the official government line. With—so far—well over two hundred objects of one kind or another that did the same.
All of it backed up by the massive data The Project had collected over the years here in Minnesota. Data, furthermore, that had been duplicated at least in part by more than a dozen research facilities elsewhere in the world.
And they had Exhibit A. Which was now, of course, demoted to Exhibit B.
Margo beamed down at the new Exhibit A, which had just arrived from a farm located three miles from the spot where Alexander Correctional Center had once stood.
The baby velociraptor peered back up at her.
"His name's Chucky," the girl explained.
Esther and the paleontologists swore the critter wouldn't get any bigger than a large turkey. Margo hoped they were right. Even as tiny as it was, those teeth looked sharp—and the big claws on the feet looked even scarier.
There wasn't much question it would grow up, either. The girl who'd found it, just coming out of the egg, had lavished tender loving care on her new pet. It was obviously quite healthy.
"He likes Chicken McNuggets. And french fries. But you gotta break them up into little pieces first. So he doesn't choke or anything."
Linda May leaned over, reached a finger into the cage, and stroked the creature's neck. Margo would swear the little monster arched its neck in response. And it made some sort of noise that sounded almost like a purr.
Couldn't be, of course.