Bones of the Earth (5 page)

“What do you know about the afternoon speaker?”

“Gertrude Salley? Oh,
she'll
put on a show. What a character. Brilliant in some ways, but … well, she likes to take chances. Willing to publish her findings before they've been entirely found. She's a splitter—never met a taxon she didn't like. If she could, she'd assign her right and left hands to different species. And not too careful about where she gets her data, if you catch my meaning. You have to keep a sharp eye on your specimens when Rude Salley's around.”

“I never heard of her. Where's she from?”

“About thirty-forty years forward. I don't know the exact date. She must be in grammar school or maybe junior high right now. She works a generation or two ahead of us.”

“Um. Then we're not supposed to be talking about her in this kind of detail, are we? Griffin said …”

“They can't stop gossip! They make a token attempt, but let's get real. It's tolerated. So long as no hard data get passed along with it. The impulse is too deeply embedded in human nature, hey?” Without pausing, he said, “Well, I could listen to you forever, Dick, but I've got a career to think about. People to suck up to and serious ass to kiss. Take care, okay? All right.”

And he was gone.

The Metzgers had come up to Leyster sometime during the encounter, and stood listening in silence. Bill stared wonderingly after him. Cedella shook her head. “Wow.”

“He's mellowed,” Leyster said. “You should have seen him back in college.”

Gertrude Salley was a strikingly handsome woman. She wore a Nile green silk outfit with mid-length skirt and buttons up the side. Leyster had never seen clothes of quite that cut. But he didn't need the string of pearls about her neck to tell him that they were, for her time, impeccably conservative. They just had that look.

Her address was entitled “The Traffic Moves the Policeman,” and according to the
Proceedings
it was about the coevolution of the super-sauropods—the seismosaurs and titanosaurs of such tremendous size that they made a camarasaur look dainty—and the Mesozoic forests. Leyster didn't think much of the topic.

But then she began to speak.

“I know so much you need to know,” she said. “So very much! I've read all your books, and thousands of your papers, and in the forty-five minutes allotted to me, I have no doubt whatsoever that I could drop enough information to save you all decades of effort.

“But I am not allowed to do so, and even if I were, I wouldn't. Why? Because so much of what I know is based on basic research that you yourselves will do. Good science is hard work, and everything we in generations two and three have achieved is built upon your efforts. If I told you your discoveries, would you be willing to sink half your life into verifying them? Or would you simply initial the data and pass 'em forward? We'd end up with one of Griffin's paradoxes … information that comes out of nowhere. And information that comes out of nowhere is not reliable, for it doesn't connect anywhere with the facts.

“What can I offer you, then? Not facts, but modes of thinking. I can lay out for you a few theories I have which are, alas, unprovable, and through them, perhaps, indicate a few fruitful ways of looking at things.

“Consider the Titanosauridae. They were by far the predominant sauropods of the Late Cretaceous, and so ecologically pivotal that in their time a forest could be defined as a body of trees surrounded by herbivores …”

And she was off, leaping like a salmon from idea to idea. Hers was the kind of fast and playful intellect that enjoyed tossing a stone into the pond of received wisdom, just to see the frogs jump. And speaking, as she did, from a vantage of fifty years, it was impossible to tell which of her notions were crazy, and which were the result of radical new discoveries. When she spoke of mountains dancing to the music of sauropods, Leyster was positive that was metaphor at best; when she claimed that ceratopsians were farmed by their predators, he was not so sure. That guff about birds he didn't buy at all.

Leyster was riveted.

Too soon, she finished, saying, “But if I can tell you nothing else, I can tell you how valuable your work is—or rather, will be. Sir Isaac Newton said,
If I have been able to see farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
Well, today I have the rare opportunity of standing in the presence of giants. And the even rarer opportunity of being able to thank them. Thank you. Thank you for all you will do.”

She stood down to tumultuous applause, and did not stay for questions.

Cedella leaned over and said in Leyster's ear, “I just discovered who I want to be when I grow up.”

The afternoon passed in the usual happy blur, moved along by the surge and flow of attendees hurrying from room to room between sessions. There were three tracks running simultaneously and not a single paper that didn't conflict with at least one more that Leyster needed to hear. When the last one ended shortly before five, he wandered out to the lobby, head abuzz with all he had learned, looking for someone to form a dinner party with. The Metzgers, or possibly old Tom Holtz. But when he got there, the lobby was crowded with police and security personnel.

The Metzgers were being arrested.

Cedella held her chin high, eyes ablaze with scornful defiance. Bill simply looked deflated, a little man in a suit suddenly too large for him. Knots of shocked scientists stood in the entryways and watched as the two were led away by state troopers.

“I'm sorry, sir, you can't come in here,” said a young officer when he automatically moved toward his friends. An admonishing hand closed about his upper arm. Turning, he saw Monk.

“What happened?”

“It's called note-passing,” Monk said. “They caught the woman red-handed. Leaned up against the mail slot and slipped the letter in behind her back while her husband pretended to have a heart attack. Sad thing, isn't it?”

There was a brass mailbox built into the reception counter. The manager was unlocking it under the supervision of two FBI agents and a representative of the postal service.

“I was talking to one of Griffin's people. He told me they got the memo a week ago detailing how to set up the sting. What happens is, Griffin will gather everybody's reports, write up a memo summarizing them, and post it back to his people seven days in the past. Pretty slick, actually.”

“I don't understand. They seemed like good people. I just can't picture them doing something like this.”

“Well, that's what makes it so sad. The wife's mother has schizophrenia. Painful case, apparently. Committed suicide eight, maybe nine years from now, just weeks before the new neural mediators came on the market. Ironic, hey? So when they learned they were coming back, the husband got hold of a few pills and the wife popped them into an envelope along with a letter to her younger self, and … well, what you saw.”

Leyster stared hard at Monk. “When did you have the time to learn all this?”

“This isn't my first trip. People gossip. I told you that before.”

“You son of a bitch. You
knew.
You knew this would happen, and you did nothing to prevent it.”

“Hey. I couldn't, remember? That would have created a paradox.”

“You could have told Bill. Just a word in his ear: ‘Griffin knows what you're planning.'”

“Yeah, that would've worked just fine. It would've stopped them and the whole goddamned project as well! Do you want that? I sure as hell don't.”

Leyster spun on his heel, and went into the bar.

The bartender poured him a single malt, and he carried it into a dim booth in the back. He thought about the Metzgers, and he thought about Monk. He thought about his own culpability. Finally, to keep himself from thinking about those things any more, he got out a pen and started to write words on the napkin. Burning Woman. Predators. Cretaceous. Death.

A woman slid into the booth opposite him.

It was Gertrude Salley. She was more than two decades older than he, but he couldn't help thinking what a good-looking woman she was. The gloom was kind to her.

“You're trying to think of a title for your book.”

“How did you know that?”

Her eyes were piercing, flatly lustrous, like a hawk's. Amazing eyes that told him nothing about that hard intelligence burning within her skull. “I know quite a lot about you. I'm not permitted to tell you how.” She put an ironic spin on the word
permitted
, to let him know how little hold such rules had on her. “Nor who we were—or will be—to each other.”

“Who are we, then?”

There was a small silver scar, shaped like a crescent moon, by the corner of her mouth. It rose and fell with her predatory smile. “A week from now you'll go back for the first time. I envy you that. The excitement of starting from scratch, of knowing that everything you see, everything you discover, is new and important.”

“Is it …” He couldn't quite put his question into words. It wouldn't come out right. “… as good as I want it to be?”

“Oh, yes.” She closed her eyes briefly, and when they opened they were amazing all over again. “The air is richer and the greens are greener and at night there are so many stars in the sky that it's terrifying. The Mesozoic
swarms
with life. You can't appreciate how thinned-out and impoverished our time is until you go back. Rain forests are nothing. They're not even in the running. Stretch out your arm.”

He obeyed.

“With my own eyes, I have seen a plesiosaur give birth. This hand”—she held it up to show him, and then reached out to slowly stroke the length of his arm—“stroked her living neck as she lay quivering in the shallows afterward.” She offered her hand to him, palm upward. “You may touch it, if you wish.”

Almost jokingly, he touched her palm with his fingertips. She closed her hand around them. Her knee brushed against his, and for a second he thought it was an accident.

“Touch my face,” she said.

He touched her face. Her flesh was softer than a young woman's, not near so taut. She raised her chin and moved her head against his palm, like a cat, and he felt himself harden. He wanted her.

Salley smiled. Those wide lips moving up in slow synchronicity with the lidding of her eyes. He felt the passion radiating from her like heat from a flame. He wanted to look away. He could not look away.

“Who are we to each other? Are we—?”

“Shhh.” The sound was so soft and low as to be a caress. “You always ask too many questions, Richard.”

“I need to know.”

“Then find out,” she said. “Come to my room. I know what you like. I know where to touch you. I
know
I can make you happy.”

As if in a dream, he left the bar with her. They went up the elevator together, fingers intertwined, bodies not quite touching. They drifted hand in hand down the hall to her room. The difference in their ages added a touch of perversity to the whole thing which, strangely enough, he found himself liking. Leyster was not a sexual adventurer. He had summer affairs when he was in the field, and videotapes to get him through the winters. This was utterly unlike anything he'd ever done before.

How serious was their relationship, he wondered, in the shared time that lay in his future and her past? It was serious enough for her to go into her own pre-history in search of him. Maybe they were married. Maybe she was his widow. He wanted it to be real. He wanted everything from her.

At the door Salley released his hand to get out her key. He seized her and spun her around. They kissed, his tongue in her, and then hers inside him. Her body was soft and matronly; she ground it hard against his. He touched her face, that magical silvery moon of a scar. She did not close her eyes, not even for an instant.

He saw how she looked at him. It took his breath away.

At last, with a contented sigh, she pulled away. “I have a gift for you.”

“Mmmm?”

“The title for your book. I brought along a copy of it.”

She opened the door.

A small table had been set up so that it would be the first thing he saw on entering the room. A light shone down upon the book set on end upon it.

First he saw his name, and then he saw the strip of black electrician's tape covering the title. Then he saw the man in the chair behind it.

It was Griffin. He looked considerably younger than he had that morning.

Three security men materialized in the hall behind them. Two took Salley by the arms. The third pushed Leyster into the room and pulled the door shut behind them both.

“Once again, Mr. Leyster, you've made a terrible mess of things.” Griffin tipped the book over, and stood. “Leaving it for others to clean up after you.”

Muffled by the door, Salley's angry voice dwindled down the hall. “What are they going to do with her?” Leyster demanded. He made a move toward the door. But the security man stood between him and it, sad-eyed and competent. Leyster had never been much of a brawler. He turned back to Griffin.

“Nothing bad. A limousine has been called to take her back to the Pentagon. They'll return her to her proper time, and that's it. Oh, a reprimand will be placed in her file for trying to leak information back in time. But Ms. Salley doesn't much care about that.”

“You had no right!” Leyster found he was quivering, with shock, with fear, with anger. “No right at all.”

“You, sir, are a fucking idiot.” Griffin reached into his jacket and took out a folded sheet of paper. “A woman twice your age tells you a couple of lies and you waltz right up to her bedroom. You think Dr. Salley is your friend? Well, think again.” He unfolded the paper and thrust it at Leyster. “Read it and weep.”

It was a photocopy of a page from
Science
, dated April 2032. At the top of the page was the title, “A Re-Evaluation of the Burning Woman Predation Site.” The paper was authored by G. C. Salley.