Lex pointed at a young man and woman in the front row. The two wore black fleece jackets emblazoned with logo patches of various outdoor and high-tech gear manufacturers, including the bright red logo of a company called AeroDrone. The woman, petite with long, ebony hair, straightened in her chair. Even so, her head barely reached the shoulder of the man seated beside her. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and clean-shaven, his head enveloped in a fluffy cloud of red curls.
“The fact of the matter is, if it weren’t for the work of our Drone Team, we’d have conducted no backcountry research at all last summer.” Lex inclined his head toward the two. “Thank you, Kaifong, Randall.”
The woman looked at the floor while the puffy-haired man lifted a hand and turned to face the others with a broad smile.
Lex addressed the room: “One of several new faces with us tonight I’d like to introduce is Keith Wilhelmsen.”
A young man in jeans and a plaid shirt twisted in his second-row seat to acknowledge those around him. His thick, black beard was untrimmed, his wavy, shoulder-length hair corralled into a ponytail by a braided leather cord.
“Keith is a Ph.D. candidate out of Cornell. He constitutes the human half of the park’s latest research addition, our Canine Team. He and the second member of his team—his tracking dog, Chance—will work out of Turret camp this summer. Like all of you in your specialties, Keith is a top dog in his field—pun intended.” Lex’s joke drew a handful of chuckles. “He’ll be conducting leading-edge work in a new field of inquiry: the use of service canines to track other mammals. I know it’s unusual to use a domesticated animal in the course of backcountry field work in the park. It’s unprecedented, in fact. But the potential to expand upon our abilities to track and survey predators in the backcountry makes this new option one we have deemed worth exploring this summer. Keith and Chance will provide us with a new and, dare I say, revolutionary tool as we continue to pursue the grizzly involved in the attack on the Wolf Initiative’s Territory Team.”
A number of scientists seated ahead and to the right of Chuck—clearly the wolfies—shifted in their seats.
“Please understand,” Lex said in response to the show of unease, “we have no indication the bear we’ve come to call Notch is anywhere in the vicinity of Turret Cabin. Keith will spend the coming weeks testing and refining Chance’s ability to track other grizzlies whose territories include the Thorofare region. The goal is for Keith and Chance to be prepared to help in the pursuit of Notch when the bear is spotted—something we are convinced will eventually happen.”
A woman two rows ahead of Chuck raised her hand. Her hair was shaved close on both sides of her skull. Half a dozen hoop earrings dangled from piercings in each of her ears. A blond mohawk rose from the top of her head and swooped down the back of her neck to the collar of a vibrant pink down vest over a skin-tight top. The nylon top hugged her wide shoulders and muscled arms. She spoke before Lex acknowledged her. “All this talk about Notch, and the humiliation you put the Grizzly Initiative through last year. I, for one, am getting pretty tired of it.”
The researchers seated around the woman nodded their approval. After a second’s hesitation, Justin followed suit.
Lex crossed his arms, his face immobile, giving the woman the floor.
She shifted in her seat. “I know you’re trying to do what’s best. But I lost an entire year on my whitebark pine nut ingestion study because of your decision to pull everyone out of the field last summer, and the twelve-month gap in my data set has forced me to recast my entire dissertation. At this point, I’m not even sure my thesis committee will accept the changes I’ve had to make. It’s not only me, either. Everyone who was here last year, and that’s just about all of us, is faced with the same kind of problems—research screwed up, theses delayed—because of what I would argue was an overreaction on your part.”
Lex grasped the sides of the podium and leaned forward. “We pulled you and everyone else out of the field last year for good reason, Sarah. We lost two of our people the previous fall. A terrible, terrible tragedy. The entire Yellowstone research community was, and remains, devastated by what happened.”
“Understood,” Sarah said. “Much as I continue to disagree with it, my point is not to rehash last year’s decision. Rather, I’m speaking up now because those of us on the Grizzly Initiative—” she looked to her right and left “—believe your forcing all the park’s backcountry science teams to work together out of Turret Cabin this summer will severely limit our opportunities to conduct decent research again this year, just like your roadside-only decision hurt us so much last year.”
Lex released the podium and folded his arms across his chest as Sarah continued.
“Forty people working out of the same base camp? With that kind of crowd around, all of us involved in mammalian studies will have a tough time collecting meaningful data. The only team that’s sure to get any decent work done is the Archaeological Team. It’s not like anything they’re here to study will be going anywhere.”
Clarence dug his elbow into Chuck’s side.
“As for the Grizzly Initiative,” Sarah went on, “we’re studying real, live grizzly bears. We have to go deep into the backcountry on our own in small teams to assure our presence doesn’t alter the bears’ behavior patterns. We’re trying to study their natural movements and traits, free of human interference, not their response to the crowd you’ve got heading across the lake to the Thorofare region tomorrow.”
Lex’s steel-gray eyes glinted behind his glasses. He touched his upper lip with the tip of his tongue before he spoke. “I’ve acknowledged the difficulties inherent in last year’s decision, Sarah. Moreover, while your concerns are duly noted, I stand by this year’s determination that all backcountry teams will do the best they can while performing their summer research out of, and spending every night at, Turret Cabin base camp—which, I might add, park staffers have spent the last two weeks working long and hard to set up on your behalf.”
“It was a grizzly bear,” Sarah said. “A grizzly bear doing what grizzly bears do.” She turned in her seat to face the Wolf Initiative team members on the opposite side of the room. “I feel for you guys. I really do. I can only imagine how hard it’s been for you after what happened to your Territory Team. But you’ve got to understand. Our two teams are studying different creatures with different study protocols, different needs.”
“Sarah,” Lex warned.
She continued to face the wolf researchers. “I don’t think you people can really comprehend the risks those of us with the Grizzly Initiative take every single day we’re in the field. Remember, it was a grizzly that attacked your team, not a wolf. Do you know the last time a wolf attacked a human? I’ll tell you when: never. But grizzlies? They attack. It’s what they do. They defend their young, their food, their turf. Learning what we can about their natural behavior by studying them in the backcountry is the best way we have of determining how best to keep people safe around them—and keep what happened to your team from ever happening again.” She turned to Lex. “You already cost us a year of critical research, along with the knowledge advancement that would have come with it. Now, with this group-camp requirement of yours, you’re about to cost us another year of legitimate, backcountry-based research.”
“That’s enough, Sarah,” a male voice said from among the wolf researchers.
Sarah spun in her seat, her mohawk swinging with her. “What was that?”
Silence.
“Too chicken to show yourself?” she challenged.
“No,” the voice came again.
A head turned, revealing the profile of a man with a long, sloping ski jump of a nose. A brown beard hid his chin, and a thick mustache, big as a cigar, ran around his face, almost connecting with his long sideburns.
“No, I’m not chicken,”