Minutes to Burn

"I don't know. I'll find something." Ramon took a deep breath and sat down at the table, sliding his hands along the rough, wooden surface. "There are things that matter and things that don't." His eyes traced over his wife lovingly-her crow's feet, the dark wave of her hair, her full stomach. "It's simple."

Cameron started to sit down, then decided not to. "Well, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're taken care of," she said.

Floreana's smile was beautiful. She noticed Cameron's eyes drop to the baby quilt. "Do you have children?"

"No," Cameron said. She smiled curtly, backing up to the door. "No," she said again.

"Perhaps you could stay for some-"

"That's all right," Cameron said. "I really should get back." She nodded once and left before Floreana could protest.

Chapter 37

Derek walked down the two-hundred-yard stretch of dirt road toward the watchtower, the sturdy balsas rising overhead, the forest looming behind him like a broad, slumbering beast. He climbed the makeshift ladder and reached the top of the wobbly structure, a decrepit open shack with an overhang about fifty feet up.

He faced south toward the darkening blue of the ocean, leaning heavily against one of the shack walls, which groaned under his weight. A big wave rolled in, disappearing from view beneath the cliffs of Punta Berlanga, and then he saw the five distinct sprays of the blowholes shooting up in the air. They misted, dissolved. He wondered if the slight moisture he felt against his cheeks was the water from the blowholes reaching him up here, kilometers away.

His eyelids felt heavy, almost leaden. He fought them open, and his vision blurred. He let it, taking in the island like an Impressionist land-scape. Since the mission's start, he'd hardly slept at all. He nodded off and almost toppled from the tower, awakening at the last moment and grabbing the wall. Adrenaline pounded through him.

He needed to sleep. Climbing slowly down the ladder, he headed back to base and ducked into his tent early.

The humble fire fought the dusk. The larva rustled in the grass, no longer needing to seek shade. Rex and Diego had been analyzing its movements, seeing how it responded to light and touch. They'd already grown accustomed to its gentle, lethargic movements-there was some-thing almost hypnotic about them.

Savage dumped an armful of firewood near the pit. He noticed Szabla way off down the dirt road, staring at something against the base of a tree at the forest's edge. He ducked through the alley of balsas onto the road and walked up to her.

"Look," she whispered, pointing. "A praying mantis." The mantid was about eight inches tall, standing in a patch of weeds by a thick gnarled root. "She's a big one, huh? I almost didn't see her there. I was just watching these finches."

A few finch chicks hopped among the rocks, searching for grubs and beetles. The mantid regarded them with interest.

"Growing up, we called praying mantises 'soothsayers,'" Szabla said. "My mother said they point the way home for lost children."

One of the finch chicks hopped close to the patch of weeds. With a movement too quick to see, the mantid lunged forward, crushing the chick in its front legs.

Szabla's smile faded.

The mantid's head lowered beneath the squawking beak and the chick was still. The mantid continued working on the chick, turning it with its legs. It pulled back into the weeds on its spindly legs.

"Back home," Savage said, letting his hand come to rest on Szabla's shoulder, "we called them 'Devil Horses.'"

The dirt around the fire pit was growing scorched, dark sediment set-tling over it like snow. Cameron toyed with the ring around her neck, rubbing the top of the sapphire with a fingernail. Tank tried to stretch his lower back, then sat on the log next to her and rested a heavy forearm across her shoulders.

The larva munched the back of the log on which Diego sat. The harsh, steady sounds of its mandibles grating the wood filled the air.

Szabla, Savage, and Tucker sat across the fire from it, clearly uncomfort-able. The base of the log between Diego's feet splintered, then gave way, and the larva's head poked through, its jaws working around a mouthful of wood. Diego reached down and gently stroked its head.

Its appetite seemed nearly insatiable-Diego and Rex had been experimenting with it for the past hour, feeding it everything from cac-tus pads to palo santo branches. They still had not determined whether it was carnivorous, but it had shied away from a full-grown land iguana, which Rex had attempted to feed it despite Diego's protestations. Now, swollen with food, the larva sprawled along the edge of the rainwater-filled cruise box near Tank's tent.

Derek emerged from his tent into the dark tropical night, rubbing his jaw. His eyes were bloodshot, the rims red.

"Thought you were trying to get some sleep, LT," Cameron said.