Chapter Text
Monday, October 1st, 1990
It was barely 6 am in on a Monday morning when Alan entered the dining hall of the Lutheran Guest House in Arusha, Tanzania. Only three of the maybe twenty or so plastic tables were occupied by what looked like local businessmen.
He eyed the meager breakfast buffet, if you could even call it that, consisting mostly of toast, margarine, and a basket containing some hard-boiled eggs, but he didn't mind. He didn't eat breakfast anyway, except for a cup or two of coffee. Nor was this his first time in Tanzania, or Africa in general, and he had stayed in far less pleasant places.
At the buffet, Alan took one of the plain white mugs and poured hot water from a thermos into it. Then he began to spoon some of the brown powder-like instant coffee from a tin labelled AfriCafe into the steaming liquid. He’d never wrap his head around why they served this stuff instead of a decent brew of coffee when they grew some of the best coffee in the world right here at the slopes of Mount Meru, Alan thought.
"You'd think they'd serve real coffee, this being a coffee-growing country," he heard a woman’s voice beside him then, speaking with a familiar accent and as he turned his head, his eyes were met by two bright blue eyes looking curiously at him. They belonged to a young woman, early to mid-twenties maybe, blonde curls tamed into a short pony tail.
Alan remembered her; she had flown the same route as he, Newark-Heathrow-Nairobi-Arusha. She had first caught his eye because of her outfit when they had both waited in line for boarding in Newark. Like him, she’d been wearing hiking pants and boots, plus a backpack as carry-on luggage. Only researchers, backpackers and aid workers traveled this way. He assumed she was one of the latter. Probably a Peace Corps volunteer. A young, idealistic college graduate seeking to save the world by spending a few months in any Third World country.
"Come on, Alan, don't always be so judgmental," his friend Annika's voice echoed in his head.
"May I have that coffee tin? When you're done?" The young woman's slightly impatient voice snapped him out of his thoughts and Alan felt his cheeks grow warm. "Oh, I’m sorry, of course," he said, handing her the can.
Her fingers brushed his as she took it from him and when she thanked him with another bright smile, he felt a tingle in his stomach. Then he watched as she prepared her coffee. Just like he did she took two spoons of powder, no sugar, no milk.
Next, both sat down at separate tables. While Alan slowly sipped his coffee and browsed through the day-old edition of the Sunday Times he’d picked up the day before at Newark, he stole occasional glances at the young woman who was immersed into reading pages of a notebook filled with what he presumed was her neat handwriting.
Alan noticed that she wasn't eating either, even though it was breakfast time. Another thing they seemed to have in common.
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Sometime later, after he’d had another cup, Alan grabbed his bag and headed outside. It was 6:30 a.m., the agreed-upon pickup time. The morning air was a little cool, which he appreciated about this part of Tanzania, thanks to the altitude. It would, however, be hot in a few hours as they were just south of the equator. Alan watched a white Land Rover pull up at the parking lot in front of the guest house. He glanced over his shoulder, frowning when he did not see anyone else around. He was supposed to be riding out to the field site together with a paleobotanist, but he was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't stand when people were late.
Alan was here as a favor to his friend Peter who had originally been invited as a consultant to assess some findings at a paleoanthropological dig site but then had to back out on short notice because his partner Annika’s father was terminally ill.
When Peter had asked him to fill in Alan had initially hesitated. The area wasn’t known for dinosaur fossil findings, and there likely wasn’t much to discover. Also, he hadn’t been in Eastern Africa since the late seventies and the area held some bittersweet memories for him. But once Peter had mentioned the sum that would be paid this was the deal breaker. He still wasn’t too excited to spend five days out in the dust, but he desperately needed more funding for his current dig in Montana. Five days would pass quickly, he thought.
The Land Rover parked near the entrance, and a smiling young man got out and approached Alan. "Good morning," he greeted him. "Are you waiting for the car to Makuyuni? To Dr. Hughes’ research site?"
Alan nodded. "Good morning. Alan Grant," he introduced himself and held out his hand.
"I'm Richard," the driver said as he briefly shook Alan’s hand before reaching for Alan's bag to stow it in the trunk of the car. Then he looked at Alan and asked, "Where is the second person?"
Just as Alan was about to make a biting comment, he heard a familiar voice say, a bit breathless: "Here I am, good morning. Sorry I'm late."
Alan turned around, and the young woman from earlier was standing just feet away, carrying two backpacks, a larger and a smaller one. Her cheeks were red and once more there was that bright smile Alan couldn’t help but notice fondly. The snarky comment he’d been ready to voice died on his lips.
"Is that the car to Dr. Hughes' dig?" Alan could only nod, too perplexed to say anything. Hadn't Annika said that her former colleague Dr. Bob Parker would fill in for her? Had Parker sent a student instead?
"Hello, Dr. Ellen Sattler," the young woman extended her hand to him. "You must be Dr. Eggleston?"
Alan let out a laugh. "Hell, no," he huffed out a sarcastic laugh, but when he saw her astonished face, he immediately backtracked, realizing she missed the context. "I'm sorry, Dr. Alan Grant," he said sheepishly, extending his hand to her. "Dr. Eggleston and I are old friends, I was just teasing. My apologies."
"Oh my God, the Alan Grant?" the woman said. "I was told I would be working with Dr. Eggleston."
Alan raised his eyebrows. "He had to cancel due to a family emergency," he explained.
"Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that," she said, concern washing over her face.
Alan looked at her with narrowed eyes. "And what about you? I was told Dr. Parker was filling in for Dr. Larsen," he said questioningly.
Dr. Sattler laughed. "Yes, such a coincidence. I am a substitute, too. Dr. Parker broke his leg last week and asked me if I could take over."
Alan nodded curtly. Aside from people's tardiness, he hated schedule changes he didn't know about. He had set his mind on working with the burly Bob Parker, not a young woman who looked like she wasn't even old enough to have her PhD yet.
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After a short time, the car had left town and they drove on a road littered with potholes. The drive would be a little over two hours, and this early in the morning, the heat was still bearable. Yet, the red dust of the landscape seeped into the vehicle through all openings, because it was the end of the dry season. But Alan didn’t mind. He normally used a drive like this to mentally prepare himself for the upcoming tasks, but right now he couldn’t stop stealing glances at his intriguing travel companion.
Remembering he could be a gentleman if he wanted to, Alan had offered Dr. Sattler the passenger seat when he learned she had never been in the area. His initial reticence toward her had dissipated after the first few sentences they had exchanged. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old, but she had a doctorate. And from the information about her research, they had exchanged during the first half hour of their ride, he concluded that she was not only knowledgeable in her own field, but also knowledgeable about his recent work and Peter's current research.
Now he looked out the window at the passing scenery and listened as she talked to the driver, asking him all sorts of questions about the red-clad Maasai herders often seen on the side of the road, and about the local history of the area. Her curiosity and enthusiasm knew no bounds, and while Alan often found this annoying in others, he found Dr. Ellie Sattler all the more fascinating the more interested questions she asked.
"Well, too bad for you, Peter," Alan thought, because a colleague like Ellie would be right up his friend's alley, even if Peter had long stopped eyeing other women since he and Anki had become a couple a few years ago.
It was just before nine o'clock in the morning when they arrived at the excavation site in the steppe, half an hour drive outside the town of Makuyuni. They got out of the car and immediately a small group of people approached them. Ahead walked a slim, medium-size, red-haired man in his forties, Dr. Rodney Hughes, the leading paleoanthropologist.
"Grant, what an honor," he said, extending his hand to Alan. "My luck to ask for Eggleston and get Grant in return," he laughed. The men shook hands.
Then he looked at Ellie and eyed her closely.
"Oh," Dr. Hughes said, looking at Alan. "You brought one of your students, huh?"
Ellie noticed Alan frown as he spoke: "This is Dr. Sattler. Paleobotanist. And an expert at that.”
Ellie held out her hand, and they introduced themselves and it did not escape her that Dr. Hughes held her hand in his much longer than was normal for a regular greeting amongst colleagues.
"Ah, my bad. When Parker sent a telegram that he was being represented by a Dr. Sattler I didn't expect -"
"A woman," Ellie completed the older man’s sentence, a forced smile plastered on her face.
"Well," Rodney said, emitting a small laugh. "It's my pleasure. Always nice to have a woman on the team for a change to lighten things up a bit," he said, gesturing toward the small group of mostly younger men, probably graduate students.
Alan had to suppress the impulse to point out that Dr. Sattler was here as an expert to contribute her scientific opinion, not to brighten up the mood.
“Maybe not start the gig with offending the guy who’d be paying the fee,” he thought.
_________
Half an hour later, they were at the site, and Ellie was kneeling next to Alan, looking at a small area where three different sized fossilized bone fragments had been partially excavated.
"Wow, these are really well preserved," Ellie exclaimed excitedly, looking at the fossils in front of them. Alan just nodded in concentration. As he had expected, these were not any significantly new findings, but as with any new find, he took his time absorbing what was in front of him and piecing together all the possible information he could with his various senses.
"I'm telling you, it's great to have a woman on site," he heard Rodney say behind him. "They're always so enthusiastic."
"Oh, shut up," Alan muttered so softly that only Ellie could hear, and gave her a furtive sideways glance. She returned his look and bit her lips, which pleased Alan.
"What do you think, Grant? Any dinosaur finds to name after me?" the other man asked after a while. "As soon as we knew they weren't humanoid fossils, we thought we'd let you guys do the digging."
Alan stood up and patted the dust off his pants, which Ellie did. He looked at her and concentrated on suppressing a smile when he saw her disheveled hair and eyes shining with excitement.
"What do you think, Dr. Sattler?" Alan asked.
"It's hard to say. These aren’t dinosaur bones, but we should dig up more to see if we can find more bones, or if we can find out what they are exactly" she said, glancing at Rodney, who looked questioningly at Alan.
"And what does the expert say?" Rodney asked.
Alan grimaced. "The expert just spoke, but I agree with her opinion," he said curtly.
Rodney grimaced and nodded. Then, after a brief pause, he said, "Okay, then I suggest you guys get going after lunch. Marcus will lead you to your tents and we can meet in the mess tent for a brief meeting," Rodney said, waving over one of the students who accompanied him.
_________
The afternoon passed with Ellie and Alan working side by side to uncover more of the fossils they were here to study. If she had been a little nervous at first about working with Alan Grant, one of the most influential and respected scientists in his field, this had quickly subsided. Dr. Grant had a reputation for being aloof and overly critical, but Ellie experienced him as polite and interested in sharing. He explained what he was doing and asked for her opinion every step of the way, so they often interrupted their work to discuss new theories or techniques.
"Here, feel this?" he asked as they continued to uncover the femur they had been working on, and Ellie watched in fascination as he ran his fingertips over the fossil.
Ellie moved closer to him and reached out. She stroked the bone a few times, too, but wasn't quite sure what to feel. When she looked at Alan with a questioning look, he reached for her hand. When his large hand clasped her smaller one, it jolted through Ellie. His hand was warm and calloused, but his grip was gentle as he carefully ran her hand over the petrified find.
"Here, there's a very fine dent in the bone. You can't see it, you can only feel it. It probably indicates malnutrition in the first few weeks of his life," he murmured as his gaze was fixed on her clasped hands. Ellie sensed what he meant, but more than that, she felt the warmth radiating from his hand travel through her entire body.
"Get a grip, Ellie," she thought.
_________
A few hours later, Alan and Ellie sat with Rodney and his team after dinner. Ellie listened as Alan discussed with Rodney and Dr. Bowen, an archaeologist, how difficult it was to get expensive and open-ended research like theirs funded, while Ellie politely but firmly tried to ignore the subtly intended but very obvious advances of the graduate student sitting next to her.
After several glances at her watch, she excused herself, pretending she needed to take some notes. The way back to her tent was illuminated by the nearly full moon, and more than once Ellie stopped and took in the landscape around her, with the hills afar, and a glorious night sky above her head. She was here for work, but she firmly intended to enjoy the rugged beauty of this remote part of the world.
When she arrived at her tent, she went inside to get a blanket against the evening chill, planning to find herself a spot outside to watch the stars. Then she climbed out of her tent again and just when she wanted to spread her blanket, she was stopped by Alan's voice: "Sleeping outside Dr. Sattler?" he asked, his voice amused.
Ellie turned her head and saw that he was standing outside his tent, right next to hers.
"I, um, well, I wanted to take the opportunity to look at the stars some more," Ellie said slowly. "I've never been to the southern hemisphere, and it is so beautiful to look at."
Alan let out a small laugh. "I was just about to do the same," he said, lifting up a sisal mat he was holding in his hands. Then he looked at it for a while before asking quietly, "Would you like some company?"
Ellie nodded. "Yes, that would be nice," she said.
A short time later, they sat there, side by side, legs stretched, supporting themselves on their arms. Ellie had put her head back to look up at the sky. "Wow, I could look at the sky all night," she said effusively.
"Then you'll have a stiff neck tomorrow," Alan replied dryly.
"Oh, Dr. Grant, don't spoil my fun," Ellie complained jokingly.
Alan laughed. "Old age wisdom," he said self-deprecatingly, before they both lapsed into companionable silence, watching the stars twinkle above them.
"I'm Alan, by the way," he continued after a while. "There's no need for Dr. Grant. We're colleagues, after all. And out here in the middle of nowhere, nobody cares about formalities anyway."
"Ellie," Ellie said, smiling at him.
After a while she said, "When you were talking to Rodney earlier, I heard you've been here before? In the north of Tanzania? But you haven't published anything about that, have you?"
Alan tilted his head. "Someone's been doing their homework, huh?"
Ellie laughed. "Always."
"No, I didn't do any digging here," Alan began, pausing for a while as he gazed into the distance. "I - my wife did her PhD research with Leakey’s team in Northern Kenya in the 1970s," he said quietly.
"Oh, wow, with Leakey? This must have been so exciting. So, your wife is an anthropologist?", Ellie began, but Alan interrupted her, his voice still low.
"Was. She died a few years back."
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, Alan," Ellie stammered, feeling her face grow hot.
But Alan shook his head. "You couldn't have known that. And these things happen. It'll be seven years in July."
He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. "That's all right. Long gone," he added in a whisper, so softly Ellie could barely make out the words.
They were silent for a long time, Alan in thought and Ellie still embarrassed, until Alan said, "Ellie, it really is all right. You couldn't have known. But if you want to know about my research in the area, I spent some time in Tendaguru in the seventies."
The two chatted about Alan's research in southern Tanzania and then his recent research, as well as Ellie's upcoming plans for her postdoctoral research.
"It turns out my plans fell through because Dr. Parker's dig won't be funded next year, so I'll have to find a new project," Ellie sighed. "I guess that's why he suggested I represent him at this consultation. To ease the pain a little."
Alan laughed, but said, "I'm sorry. But I bet you won't have any trouble finding another research position. I've only known you for a few hours, but I'm impressed with your knowledge and skills. You are an asset to anyone who knows anything about science," he said more enthusiastically than he had intended.
When Ellie looked at him again with that radiant smile, Alan felt warmth spread through his body, down to his groin. He cleared his throat and made a move to distract himself from his unpleasant thoughts. Then he glanced at his watch.
"As much as I'd like to continue our conversation, I think it's time for me to go to sleep," he said in a regretful voice, "I'm sorry. We’ll have an early start tomorrow."
Ellie nodded and slowly rose from her sitting position.
"Wait," Alan said, reaching into his tent. "You up for a little nightcap?"
Ellie chortled. "Are you trying to get me drunk?"
Alan laughed. "Oh, no. I'm just following a piece of advice my doctoral advisor gave me many years ago. He advised me to end the day with a drink when in a tropical country. It fights off any sickness you might catch."
He held out a silver flask to Ellie, who drew her brows together. "You know that's nonsense and not scientifically proven, right?" she asked.
Alan shrugged his shoulders. "I don't care, as long as it works," he said, still holding the vial.
Ellie tilted her head and said, "All right, I'll try it."
Alan watched as she took his flask in hand, brought it to her lips and closed her eyes as she enjoyed the burn of the whiskey on her tongue. He was suddenly very much looking forward to spending the next four days in her company.