Iterations and other stories (collection)

“This alligators-in-the-sewers nonsense has been floating around for years,” said Chong. “The story is that kids bring home baby gators as pets from vacations in Florida, but when they grow tired of them, they flush ’em down the toilet, and the things end up living in the sewers. ”

“Well,” said Jacobs, “that sounds reasonable.”

“It’s crap,” said Chong. “We get calls here at the Herpetology Department about that myth from time to time—but that’s all it is: a myth. You know how cold it is out there today?”

“A little below freezing.”

“Exactly. Oh, I don’t doubt that some alligators have been flushed over the years—-people flush all kinds of stuff. But even assuming gators could survive swimming in sewage, the winter temperatures here would kill them. Alligators are cold-blooded, Dr. Jacobs.”

Jacobs reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the tooth. “We extracted this from the man’s thigh,” he said, placing it on Chong’s cluttered desk.

Chong picked it up. “Seriously ?”

“Yes.”

“The herpetologist shook his head. “Well, it’s not a gator tooth—the root is completely wrong. But reptiles do shed their teeth throughout their lives—it’s not unusual for one or more to pop loose during a meal.” He ran his thumb lightly over the edge of the tooth. “The margin is serrated,” he said. “Fascinating. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Ludlam went down into the sewers again the next night. He wasn’t getting enough sleep—it was hard putting in a full day at the museum and then doing this after dark. But if he was right about what was happening…

Homeless people sometimes came into the sewers, too. They mostly left Ludlam alone. Some, of course, were schizophrenics—one of them shouted obscenities at Ludlam as he passed him in the dark tunnel that night.

The water flowing past Ludlam’s feet was clumpy. He tried not to think about it.

If his theory was right, the best place to look would be near the biggest skyscrapers. As he often did, Ludlam was exploring the subterranean world in the area of the World Trade Center. There, the stresses would be the greatest.

Ludlam exhaled noisily. He thumbed off his flashlight, and waited for his eyes to adjust to the near-total darkness.

After about two minutes, he saw a flash of pale green light about ten feet in front of him.

Jacobs left Chong’s office, but decided not to depart the museum just yet. It’d been years since he’d been here—the last time had been when his sister and her kids had come to visit from Iowa. He spent some time looking at various exhibits, and finally made his way into the dinosaur gallery. It had been fully renovated since the last time he’d seen it, and—

Christ.

Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t identical, but it was close. Damn close.

The tooth that had been removed from Kowalski’s leg looked very much like one of those on the museum’s pride and joy—its Tyrannosaurus rex.

Chong had said there couldn’t be alligators in New York’s sewers.

Alligators were cold-blooded.

But dinosaurs—