“I don’t even know if they can do that kind of thing,” said Axworthy.
“Find out, damn you. What the hell am I paying you for?”
* * *
The rex danced to the side, moving with surprising agility for a creature of its bulk, and once again it brought its terrible jaws down on the ceratopsian’s shoulder. The plant-eater was hemorrhaging at an incredible rate, as though a thousand sacrifices had been performed on the altar of its back.
The Triceratops tried to lunge forward, but it was weakening quickly. The tyrannosaur, crafty in its own way despite its trifling intellect, simply retreated a dozen giant paces. The hornface took one tentative step toward it, and then another, and, with great and ponderous effort, one more. But then the dinosaurian tank teetered and, eyelids slowly closing, collapsed on its side. Cohen was briefly startled, then thrilled, to hear it fall to the ground with a splash—he hadn’t realized just how much blood had poured out of the great rent the rex had made in the beast’s back.
The tyrannosaur moved in, lifting its left leg up and then smashing it down on the Triceratops’s belly, the three sharp toe claws tearing open the thing’s abdomen, entrails spilling out into the harsh sunlight. Cohen thought the rex would let out a victorious roar, but it didn’t. It simply dipped its muzzle into the body cavity, and methodically began yanking out chunks of flesh.
Cohen was disappointed. The battle of the dinosaurs had been fun, the killing had been well engineered, and there had certainly been enough blood, but there was no terror. No sense that the Triceratops had been quivering with fear, no begging for mercy. No feeling of power, of control. Just dumb, mindless brutes moving in ways preprogrammed by their genes.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
* * *
Judge Hoskins looked across the desk in her chambers at the lawyer.
“A Tyrannosaurus, Mr. Axworthy? I was speaking figuratively.”
“I understand that, my lady, but it was an appropriate observation, don’t you think? I’ve contacted the Chronotransference people, who say they can do it, if they have a rex specimen to work from. They have to back-propagate from actual physical material in order to get a temporal fix.”
Judge Hoskins was as unimpressed by scientific babble as she was by legal jargon. “Make your point, Mr. Axworthy.”
“I called the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller and asked them about the Tyrannosaurus fossils available worldwide. Turns out there’s only a handful of complete skeletons, but they were able to provide me with an annotated list, giving as much information as they could about the individual probable causes of death.” He slid a thin plastic printout sheet across the judge’s wide desk.
“Leave this with me, counsel. I’ll get back to you.”
Axworthy left, and Hoskins scanned the brief list. She then leaned back in her leather chair and began to read the needlepoint on her wall for the thousandth time:
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time—
She read that line again, her lips moving slightly as she subvocalized the words: “I shall achieve in time ...”
The judge turned back to the list of tyrannosaur finds. Ah, that one. Yes, that would be perfect. She pushed a button on her phone. “David, see if you can find Mr. Axworthy for me.”
* * *
There had been a very unusual aspect to the Triceratops kill—an aspect that intrigued Cohen. Chronotransference had been performed countless times; it was one of the most popular forms of euthanasia. Sometimes the transferee’s original body would give an ongoing commentary about what was going on, as if talking during sleep. It was clear from what they said that transferees couldn’t exert any control over the bodies they were transferred into.
Indeed, the physicists had claimed any control was impossible. Chronotransference worked precisely because the transferee could exert no influence, and therefore was simply observing things that had already been observed. Since no new observations were being made, no quantum-mechanical distortions occurred. After all, said the physicists, if one could exert control, one could change the past. And that was impossible.
And yet, when Cohen had willed the rex to alter its course, it eventually had done so.
Could it be that the rex had so little brains that Cohen’s thoughts could control the beast?
Madness. The ramifications were incredible.
Still...
He had to know if it was true. The rex was torpid, flopped on its belly, gorged on ceratopsian meat. It seemed prepared to lie here for a long time to come, enjoying the early evening breeze.
Get up, thought Cohen. Get up, damn you!
Nothing. No response.
Get up!
The rex’s lower jaw was resting on the ground. Its upper jaw was lifted high, its mouth wide open. Tiny pterosaurs were flitting in and out of the open maw, their long needle-like beaks apparently yanking gobbets of hornface flesh from between the rex’s curved teeth.
Get up, thought Cohen again. Get up!
The rex stirred.
Up!
The tyrannosaur used its tiny forelimbs to keep its torso from sliding forward as it pushed with its powerful legs until it was standing.
Forward, thought Cohen. Forward!
The beast’s body felt different. Its belly was full to bursting.
Forward!
With ponderous steps, the rex began to march.
It was wonderful. To be in control again! Cohen felt the old thrill of the hunt.
And he knew exactly what he was looking for.
* * *
“Judge Hoskins says okay,” said Axworthy. “She’s authorized for you to be transferred into that new T. rex they’ve got right here in Alberta at the Tyrrell. It’s a young adult, they say. Judging by the way the skeleton was found, the rex died falling, probably into a fissure. Both legs and the back were broken, but the skeleton remained almost completely articulated, suggesting that scavengers couldn’t get at it. Unfortunately, the chronotransference people say that back-propagating that far into the past they can only plug you in a few hours before the accident occurred. But you’ll get your wish: you’re going to die as a tyrannosaur. Oh, and here are the books you asked for: a complete library on Cretaceous flora and fauna. You should have time to get through it all; the chronotransference people will need a couple of weeks to set up.”
* * *
As the prehistoric evening turned to night, Cohen found what he had been looking for, cowering in some underbrush: large brown eyes, long, drawn-out face, and a lithe body covered in fur that, to the tyrannosaur’s eyes, looked blue-brown.
A mammal. But not just any mammal. Purgatorius, the very first primate, known from Montana and Alberta from right at the end of the Cretaceous. A little guy, only about ten centimeters long, excluding its ratlike tail. Rare creatures, these days. Only a precious few.
The little furball could run quickly for its size, but a single step by the tyrannosaur equaled more than a hundred of the mammal’s. There was no way it could escape.
The rex leaned in close, and Cohen saw the furball’s face, the nearest thing there would be to a human face for another sixty million years. The animal’s eyes went wide in terror.
Naked, raw fear.
Mammalian fear.
Cohen saw the creature scream.
Heard it scream.
It was beautiful.
The rex moved its gaping jaws in toward the little mammal, drawing in breath with such force that it sucked the creature into its maw. Normally the rex would swallow its meals whole, but Cohen prevented the beast from doing that. Instead, he simply had it stand still, with the little primate running around, terrified, inside the great cavern of the dinosaur’s mouth, banging into the giant teeth and great fleshy walls, and skittering over the massive, dry tongue.
Cohen savored the terrified squealing. He wallowed in the sensation of the animal, mad with fear, moving inside that living prison.
And at last, with a great, glorious release, Cohen put the animal out of its misery, allowing the rex to swallow it, the furball tickling as it slid down the giant’s throat.
It was just like old times.
Just like hunting humans.
And then a wonderful thought occurred to Cohen. Why, if he killed enough of these little screaming balls of fur, they wouldn’t have any descendants. There wouldn’t ever be any Homo sapiens. In a very real sense, Cohen realized he was hunting humans—every single human being who would ever exist.
Of course, a few hours wouldn’t be enough time to kill many of them. Judge Hoskins no doubt thought it was wonderfully poetic justice, or she wouldn’t have allowed the transfer: sending him back to fall into the pit, damned.
Stupid judge. Why, now that he could control the beast, there was no way he was going to let it die young. He’d just—
There it was. The fissure, a long gash in the earth, with a crumbling edge. Damn, it was hard to see. The shadows cast by neighboring trees made a confusing gridwork on the ground that obscured the ragged opening. No wonder the dull-witted rex had missed seeing it until it was too late.
But not this time.
Turn left, thought Cohen.
Left.
His rex obeyed.
He’d avoid this particular area in future, just to be on the safe side. Besides, there was plenty of territory to cover. Fortunately, this was a young rex—a juvenile. There would be decades in which to continue his very special hunt. Cohen was sure that Axworthy knew his stuff: once it became apparent that the link had lasted longer than a few hours, he’d keep any attempt to pull the plug tied up in the courts for years.
Cohen felt the old pressure building in himself, and in the rex. The tyrannosaur marched on.
This was better than old times, he thought. Much better.
Hunting all of humanity.
The release would be wonderful.
He watched intently for any sign of movement in the underbrush.
A Word on Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer—called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by the Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there" by the Denver Rocky Mountain News—is one of eight authors in history to win all three of the science-fiction field's highest honors for best novel of the year: the Hugo Award (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula Award (which he won for The Terminal Experiment); and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan).
Rob has won Japan's Seiun Award for best foreign novel three times (for End of an Era, Frameshift, and Illegal Alien), and he's also won the world's largest cash-prize for SF writing—the Polytechnic University of Catalonia's 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficcion—an unprecedented three times.
In 2007, he received China's Galaxy Award for most favorite foreign author. He's also won twelve Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras"), an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, Analog magazine's Analytical Laboratory Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and the Science Fiction ChronicleReader Award for Best Short Story of the Year.
Rob's novels have been top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada, appearing on the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s bestsellers' lists, and they've hit number one on the bestsellers' list published by Locus, the U.S. trade journal of the SF field.
Rob is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, teaches SF writing occasionally, and edits his own line of Canadian science-fiction novels for Red Deer Press.
His novel Flashforward (Tor Books) was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name. He enjoyed spending time on the set and wrote the script for episode 19 "Course Correction."
His WWW trilogy, Wake, Watch, and Wonder (Ace Books), is all about the World Wide Web gaining consciousness.
For more information about Rob and his award-winning books, check out his web page: http://sfwriter.com.
Shades
by Lucas Bale
“THIS IS THE MONEY CARD. All you have to do is find this card.”
Some too-trendy jazz from the bar behind me skitters through an open window and into the summer evening heat. Bleecker Street hums and a handful of New Yorkers have stopped to watch me take this guy’s money. One of them scrolls idly through his iPod.
“That’s all you have to do. You find this, and you get whatever’s in your hand doubled.”
“Yeah, you just show me the money, man,” the guy says, and his crew, rich-kid bridge and tunnel boys, double over. He’s hilarious. They love him. I love him. He’s perfect.
“Show me the money,” he says again, this time a pastiche of Cuba in Jerry Maguire. It’s only just come to him. Like I said, he’s hilarious. You think I haven’t heard that one before?
I love three-card monte. It plays on machismo. That I’m cleverer than the next guy thing every schmuck seems to have in this city.
I flip the outer card a couple of times to show there’s nothing else concealed in my hand, but really it’s all about drawing the eye. Each time I do something with a card, I flick my hand away. The eye follows it, of course—it’s only natural to be attracted to the movement—so I get a half-second to work the other cards. That’s where I keep the double-facer, joker and ace, the middle card. I keep talking too, so they have to concentrate on my face and my words. They love the banter. There are guys who do this with shills who bet and lose, then bet and win to make it look like the tide is turning. I hate that. I don’t work with others out here on the street. I don’t have friends. There’s no point. I don’t stay in one place long enough.
Some guys use a table—I don’t. It’s restrictive and cheap. Those guys, they got no class. A guy with a table is a small-time hustler. Not me. I got class. I got game.
I always put the card in the mark’s hand. They can feel it there, a friend. No way a card they’re holding can betray them, right? I mean, they can see it, right there. It’s face down, but I don’t have it—they have it. What could I do when it’s in their hand?
The guy tosses me a look. “Forty dollars.”
He’s confident. He thinks he knows where the ace is. He thinks he can outsmart me, believes it completely. These bridge and tunnel jerks always do; that’s why I set up near one of their Village dives. And always early evening. A few beers and they’re jazzed up, ready to party. Full of testosterone. I love these guys, all Breitling watches and sun-white teeth—real dicks. It’s the alpha dog upbringing.
“Sure,” I say. “You wanna bet forty, that’s cool.” I smile and nod. It’s all about encouraging him, but I don’t need to. He’s already there. “Turn the card.”
The guy grins to his buddies, then looks at me. He’s got this. No way he’s going to be duped by some street punk like me. He turns the card and the smile vanishes. I’ve seen that look a thousand times. Disbelief.
Now it’s game time. The real deal. This is where I really take his money, because right now I know he isn’t going to give it to me. He can’t believe this happened. He’ll get angry, hold it back and accuse me, so I need this final stage to make him give me the money. It’s all about psychology.
“Hey, man,” I say. “Look, maybe that was too fast, okay.” Hands up all the time, showing him the cards. Drawing him in. “We’ll do it with two cards, okay? Make it easier. I’ll put the ace in my pocket.” Of course, I put one of the jokers there instead. This is the crux move. The one I have down, and sweet as hell. I show him the jokers, although since I’m using a double-facer he’s not seeing what he thinks he’s seeing. He’s following the ace, so I do it real quick, and he doesn’t see the truth behind the lie.
In the end, it’s too easy. It’s not even down to my sleight of hand; it’s who he is, his own bullshit, that lets me beat him.
He hands me the money, but I can see it in his eyes. The hate fuelled by shame—failure is not an option drilled into him since he was a boy. If I was smart, I wouldn’t play this corner again for a while. Let him and his kind c
ool off a little.
But I’m not.
That’s why, when I come again the next night, he’s waiting for me with his track-star cronies. They wait until I’m done, until it’s dark and I’m packing up. They take my winnings as a lesson to me; at least that’s how they see it, because they don’t really care about the green. They’re new money, old money—it doesn’t matter which, they don’t need it. Their parents front the Mustangs and Beamers and the Gucci loafers they wipe off on my jacket. When they’re finished, they toss me into an overspill of trash bags next to a dumpster and I lie there for a while, the tang of copper in my mouth all too familiar.
There’s only one place I can go, messed up like this, though maybe this time she really will slam the door in my face. I go there anyway. It’s late and I’m broke again, just like always. She’ll be pulling an all-nighter at the diner and her boss will give her shit for me being there, but there’s a chance she won’t turn me away.
I stagger through the door after a half hour of people crossing the street to avoid me. Amy’s behind the bar, pulling hot glasses from the washer. She’s willowy and small, and struggles with the steaming, heavy tray. A drop curl of her honey blonde hair tickles her cheek and she blows it away out of the side of her mouth. I’m reminded that it won’t be long before I never get to see her again, and there’s nothing in the world I can do about it. There’s a kick in my stomach that hurts like hell.
“Jesus, Will,” she hisses as she sees me and comes around the bar. “I said no more.” She doesn’t mean it. It’s in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I offer. “I wanted to buy you something, but I got jumped.”
“Yeah, sure you did,” she says thinly, but looks away to hide her pain. She hooks an arm around my back and tries to help me. From the cash register, Luanne throws me a look. I wave to her and she gives me the finger. She’s a fox, that Luanne, quite the gal. Amy sees all this and rolls her eyes. Luanne’s hated me since the day she met me. Amy spent the next eleven months telling her what a good guy I am, if she’d just get to know me.
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