Iterations and other stories (collection)

“What?”said Jacobs. “What’s really there?”

Kowalski’s grip tightened. He must have been in excruciating pain. “Gators,” he said at last through clenched teeth. “Gators in the sewers.”

Around 2:00 a.m., Ludlam decided to call it a night. He began retracing his steps, heading back to where he’d come down. The sewer was cold, and mist swirled in the beam from his flashlight. Something brushed against his foot, swimming through the fetid water. So far, he’d been lucky—nothing had bit him yet.

It was crazy to be down here—Ludlam knew that. But he couldn’t give up. Hell, he’d patiently sifted through sand and gravel for years. Was this really that different?

The smell hit him again. Funny how he could ignore it for hours at a time, then suddenly be overpowered by it. He reached up with his left hand, pinched his nostrils shut, and began breathing through his mouth.

Ludlam walked on, keeping his flashlight trained on the ground just a few feet in front of him. As he got closer to his starting point, he tilted the beam up and scanned the area ahead.

His heart skipped a beat.

A dark figure was blocking his way.

Paul Kowalski was in surgery for six hours. Dr. Jacobs and his team repaired tendons, sealed off blood vessels, and more. But the most interesting discovery was made almost at once, as one of Jacobs’s assistants was prepping the wound for surgery.

A white, fluted, gently curving cone about four inches long was partially embedded in Kowalski’s femur.

A tooth.

“What the hell are you doing down here?” said the man blocking Ludlam’s way. He was wearing a stained Sanitation Department jacket.

“I’m Dr. David Ludlam,” said Ludlam. “I’ve got permission.” He reached into his raincoat’s pocket and pulled out the letter he always carried with him.

The sanitation worker took it and used his own flashlight to read it over. “‘Garbologist,’” he said with a snort. “Never heard of it.”

“They give a course in it at Columbia,” said Ludlam. That much was true, but Ludlam wasn’t a garbologist. When he’d first approached the City government, he’d used a fake business card— amazing what you could do these days with a laser printer.

“Well, be careful,” said the man. “The sewers are dangerous. A guy I know got a hunk taken out of him by an alligator.”

“Oh, come on,” said Ludlam, perfectly serious. “There aren’t any gators down here.”

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Professor Chong,” said Jacobs. Chong’s tiny office at the American Museum of Natural History was packed floor to ceiling with papers, computer printouts, and books in metal shelving units. Hanging from staggered coat hooks on the wall behind Chong was a stuffed anaconda some ten feet long.

“I treated a man two days ago who said he was bit by an alligator,” said Jacobs.

“Had he been down south?” asked Chong.

“No, no. He said it happened here, in New York. He’s a sewer worker, and—”

Chong laughed. “And he said he was bitten by an alligator down in the sewers, right?”

Jacobs felt his eyebrows lifting. “Exactly. ”

Chong shook his head. “Guy’s trying to file a false insurance claim, betcha anything. There aren’t any alligators in our sewers.”

“I saw the wound,” said Jacobs. “Something took a massive bite out of him.”