Bones of the Earth (38 page)

There were people everywhere about him, hands grabbing at him, voices making demands on his attention. It was hard sorting them all out. Somebody thrust a pen and an open copy of
Science
at him, and it was only after several had been signed and snatched away that it registered on him that he was autographing copies of the infrasound paper.

He needed air.

“Excuse me,” he said, moving toward the hall. “Excuse me, please. Excuse me.” He'd always hated crowds; how had he gotten away from them in the past? “I need to use the men's room.”

“End of the hall to the left,” somebody said.

“Thanks.”

He fled.

There were people in the hall too, though not nearly so many as in the ballroom. Most were strangers. One, however, he recognized.

Salley.

He walked straight toward her, heart pounding, not knowing what he was going to do when he arrived. She stared at him, her eyes stricken, fearful, like a sacrifice waiting for the knife, or a woman who knows that someone is about to hit her.

Wordlessly, he took her hand and led her away.

They went into a blind fuck on the floor of the hotel room, just inside the door. It was fast and hard, and when they were done, their clothes were in tatters and Leyster realized that the door was not entirely closed. He kicked it shut, and in so doing found that he still had his shoes on.

So they untangled themselves and began removing those items of clothing that had been pushed out of the way rather than removed or (in some cases) ripped to shreds. “My poor blouse,” Salley said. She wriggled out of the panties that Leyster, too impatient to wait, had ripped down the crotch. “I'll have to send out for new clothes.”

“Don't do it for my sake,” Leyster said. “I like you just fine the way you are.”

“Beast,” she said lovingly. “Brute.” She picked up the complimentary newspaper they'd kicked aside on their way in, and aimed a swat at his head.

Leyster wrestled the paper from her hand, kissed her, kissed her again, kissed her a third time. Then he glanced at the paper and burst out laughing.

“What's so funny?”

“The date. It's only been five days since the first time I was here. That first conference after I was recruited, when Griffin explained about time travel.” He stood. “You gave the keynote address. Of course, you were older then.”

“Hey. Where are you going?”

“To do the
other
thing I've been thinking about every day of my life for the past two-and-a-half years.”

Leyster ran a bath, while Salley pretended to sulk. Then, as he lay soaking, she climbed in after him. By the time they were done screwing, there was more water on the floor than in the tub. After which, they dried each other off with the thick hotel towels, and finally made it all the way to the bed.

There, at last, they made love.

Afterwards, Leyster said, “Now I feel complete. All my life, I've had a kind of tension. A feeling that there was something I really ought to be doing but wasn't. Now … well. I guess I'm finally happy.”

Salley smiled lazily. “You were waiting for me, dear heart. You and I were fated to be together from the beginning of time, and now here we are.”

“That's a pretty thought. But I don't believe in fate.”

“I do. I'm a Presbyterian. Predestination is dogmatic.”

He looked at her curiously. “I didn't know you were religious.”

“Well, I don't knock on people's doors and give them pamphlets, if that's what you mean. But, yeah, I take my faith pretty seriously. Is that a problem?”

“No, no, of course not.” He took her hand, kissed the knuckles one by one. “Nothing about you is a problem for me.”

She drew her hand away. “There's something you have to know. I've been putting off telling you. But now it's time.”

Leyster listened patiently, while Salley told him about the Bird Men's decision, and all that had led up to it. When she was done at last, she said, “You don't look surprised.”

“Of course not. I've known from the beginning that none of this was possible. The numbers never did add up on the whole time travel thing. Maybe the others could kid themselves about it. Not me.”

“Then why did you go along with it? Why didn't you just refuse to play?”

“And miss out on seeing dinosaurs?” He laughed. “I've lived my life as I wanted, I've gotten answers to questions I thought I'd never know, and now I've had your love and known your body. Why should I want more? Why should I … say. Whose room is this, anyway? Yours or mine?”

“It's yours.”

“Then my things should be in here somewhere, right?” He began opening drawers, rummaging through piles of clothes. “And if my things are here, then there ought to be … Aha! Here it is!”

An opened drawer yielded up his volume of the collected Shakespeare. He picked it up, leafed rapidly through its pages. “This is from
The Tempest
.”

He read:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors
,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air
;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision
,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces
,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself
,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded
,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

He put down the book. “That pretty much says it for me.”

Salley smiled again, not at all lazily. “Come here, you. We've got things to do before we fall asleep.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Not long. A few hours, subjective time.”

“Time enough.”

Griffin
stayed after everybody else to see the rescue team off through the gate. Immediately after which, because the team had already returned safely with the lost expedition, the soldiers in the support crew began dismantling the equipment.

It was all over.

He had decided at the last minute not to say anything about the Bird Men's decision to the returning paleontologists. What could they do with their remaining time better than what they were doing now? They were all happy. Let them be happy.

Their generous patrons from Ultima Pangaea had granted him the boon of one last passage through time. He went to the front entrance, and found a limo waiting there for him.

It was time for his final trip to the Pentagon.

Griffin stepped out of the time funnel into a station that had been officially decommissioned the day before. He walked through the silent building and out the door. It was a bright, foggy morning. He could hear dinosaurs singing to one another. In the distance he saw the gray outlines of apatosaurs gently steaming in the mist.

His responsibilities were over now. He had fought the good fight. He had lost. Any second now, he fully expected to be weighed down with the crushing awareness of defeat. Yet, oddly enough, it did not come.

Instead, a great surge of glad emotion rose up within him. God, but he loved the Mesozoic! Particularly here and now. He couldn't think of a time and place he'd rather be.

Griffin was staring out into the dazzling fog when he heard footsteps. He did not turn. He knew who it had to be.

The Old Man came up behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You've done a good job,” he said. “Nobody could have done better.”

“Thank you,” Griffin said. “Now tell me that there was some point to all of this. Tell me I haven't spent all my adult life knocking myself out for nothing.”

For a long moment he thought he would get no response. Then the Old Man said, “Imagine that you've been imprisoned, either justly or injustly, it makes no difference, for the rest of your life. You've been locked in a small room with one tiny barred window. You can't see much—maybe a bit of sky, that's all.

“But one day a bird comes to the window with a bit of straw in its beak. The next thing you know, it and its mate have built a nest right there in your window. Now, there are any number of ways you could respond to this. You could capture the birds and attempt to train them. You could steal their eggs to vary your diet. You could even kill them and smash their nest to punish them for being free when you're not. It's all a matter of temperament.

“What would
you
do?”

“I'd … study them. I'd try to learn everything I could about them. How they mate, what they eat, their resting metabolism, the developmental patterns of their young.”

“If you're never going to get out of that cell, then what the hell good does your study do?”

“I don't have an answer for that. Except that I'd still like to know. Just for its own sake.”

“Knowing is better than ignorance,” the Old Man said.

Griffin weighed the statement judiciously, nodded. “That's true. But is it enough?”

“To justify your life?” The Old Man was silent for a while. Then he said, “I can't speak for anybody else. But for me personally, life doesn't need justification. It just is. And as long as I'm here, I want to know … simply
to know.
Yes, I honestly believe that's enough.”

“How much time do we have left?” Griffin asked.

The Old Man cleared his throat. “I don't think that question has any meaning.”

“I suppose that's so.” He looked down at his watch without seeing it. Carefully, he removed it from his wrist and slipped it into a pocket.

“It's a lovely day, isn't it?” he said.

“Yes,” he answered himself. “Yes, it is. If we've ever had a nicer, I can't remember when.”

Acknowledgments

Special thanks are due to Ralph Chapman, Linda Deck, Tom Holtz, Pete Tillman, and Bob Walters for giving generously of their time and knowledge. They are, of course, not responsible for any errors I may have made, just as I am not responsible for anything rendered invalid by discoveries they or their colleagues may make after this book reaches print. I am also grateful to Harry Turtledove for help with Greek nomenclature, to Suzette Haden Elgin for management strategies of the Lakota Sioux, to Charles Sheffield for the future history of the Earth, to William Gibson for the Rolex Milgauss (nice watch, Bill!), and to my favorite goddaughter in the known universe, Alicia Ma, for naming Lai-tsz. I am most indebted, as always, to the M.C. Porter Endowment for the Arts, most particularly for help writing the abstract for the infrasound paper.

About the Author

Michael Swanwick published his first story in 1980, adding him to a generation of new writers that included Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Connie Willis, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Since then he has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards, and received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years. He also has the pleasant distinction of having lost more major awards than any other science fiction writer.

Roughly one hundred fifty stories have appeared in
Amazing
,
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
,
Asimov's
,
Clarkesworld
,
High Times
,
New Dimensions
,
Eclipse
,
Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Interzone
, the
Infinite Matrix
,
Omni
,
Penthouse
,
Postscripts
,
Realms of Fantasy
, Tor.com,
Triquarterly
,
Universe,
and elsewhere. Many have been reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies, and translated into Japanese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, Czech, and French. Several hundred works of his flash fiction have also been published.

A prolific writer of nonfiction, Swanwick has published comprehensive studies of Hope Mirrlees and James Branch Cabell, as well as a book-length interview with Gardner Dozois. He has taught at the Clarion, Clarion West, and Clarion South writing workshops.

Swanwick is the author of nine novels, including
In the Drift
,
Vacuum Flowers
,
Stations of the Tide
,
The Iron Dragon's Daughter
,
Jack Faust
,
Bones of the Earth
,
The Dragons of Babel
, and
Dancing with Bears
. His short fiction has been collected in
Gravity's Angels
,
A Geography of Imaginary Lands
,
Moon Dogs
,
Tales of Old Earth
,
Cigar Box Faust and Other Miniatures
,
The Dog Said Bow Wow
, and
The Best of Michael Swanwick
. His most recent novel,
Chasing the Phoenix
, chronicles the adventures of confidence artists Darger and Surplus in post-Utopian China. He is currently at work on a third and final novel set in Industrialized Faerie.

He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. In 2016 he will appear as guest of honor at MidAmeriCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Swanwick

Cover design by Jesse Hayes

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3646-7

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.