The Transmigration of Souls

by William Barton

  Once, they’d seen something that looked like a tarantula. Where there are spiders, there ought to be wasps. Bees? Not a damned flower in sight. Some trees around that little stream they’d followed for a while before going up onto high ground, heading for the vistas. Mostly scruffy little pine trees. Conifers, at any rate. Unfamiliar things with broad, waxy leaves. Once, something Ling swore was some unknown species of ginkgo.

  And that other thing. That other fleck of light, twinkling like a star, but too... big to be a star. What could that be? I could swear it’s moving...

  “Inbar!” Hoarse whisper. Alireza.

  The four of them clustered round a small depression. They had a fire going now, but... all looking away from it. Ling on his knees, binoculars pressed to his face. A gesture from Alireza, pointing, down into the shadows, a depression where a small pool, possibly a slow-bubbling spring lay.

  Something moving. Something big. Can’t quite make it out... He walked down to where Ling crouched. Ling, whispering, “Look at those teeth...”

  Inbar kneeled down, reached out and gently took the binoculars, unfamiliar, old fashioned, Chinese characters glittering dim red on the internal displays. Adjusted the traditional knurl...

  No more than a gasp as the image jumped up at him.

  Something big. Smaller than a camel, maybe the size of a pony. Dark, gray-green, it was hard to tell in the failing light. Big eyes, glittering with sunset red. Demon’s face turning toward him... Slanted eyes, like a Chinese dragon, long, narrow muzzle full of... teeth! Long buck teeth, crushing, crunching... Eating a tumbleweed? You could hear the dry stuff crackle. See the big head dip down, see the fat front limbs paw at the ground, uprooting something. Crackle. Crunch.

  “What is it?” whispered Rahman.

  Inbar thought, It’s not a moschops. It can’t be. I’m dreaming all this. In just a minute I’m going to wake up in my bed at Hammaghir Cosmodrome, safe in Maghreb, wake up and hear the muezzin calling the Faithful to prayer. I’ll get up, snug in my robe, look down on them and smile, glad I’m Jew. Then I’ll look up into the sunrise and see al-Qamar waiting to take me to Geologist Heaven...

  Alireza said, “Tomorrow, I guess, we should go back to the Stargate and try again. This isn’t Earth, no matter how familiar looking...”

  Omry Inbar took the binoculars away from his eyes and sat down suddenly on the hard, dusty ground. Sat down and started to cry, sniffling softly, big tears rolling across his cheeks, dropping down onto his coverall, the others turning to stare at him, astonished.

  o0o

  Two-hundred-fifty million years. On the nose. A sharp look through the Gate, at the big, old Moon. Hmh. Even without binoculars or altered vision, you could see Tycho was missing. Not to mention Copernicus...

  PeeWee Roth whispered, “Where’s this, Sarge?”

  Where indeed? She stood, going around the console, and stepped through the Gate, knees locking for a moment as the increased gravity clutched at her, curtainfield hardening gently as it reacted to the changing atmosphere. Stood, staring at the sky, sky of a hundred thousand stars, or so it seemed, sky with a bright Full Moon. Spun, looking at the world around her. Two-hundred-fifty million years!

  Remember the first time? Not here and now, no, but...

  We should have known it was possible, given the nature of the quantum-holotaxial universe the Scavengers described, given the hints we got from what little we could decipher of Colonial records. We? The scientists should have known, the physicists, the cosmologists. Hell, even I should have known.

  Dale knew. Suggested it in a meeting, suggested it, looking up from his notepad. Scientists staring at him. Then smiling at each other. Time travel? Impossible. But. But what? Tipler? Derisive grins. Tipler. Sheesh. Go write your article, journalist. Go write another fantasy epic for your legions of fans. Ain’t no such thing as time travel, Mr. Millikan.

  Until, one fine day, we stepped through a freshly tuned Stargate, a recently refurbished Scavenger Stargate, one the Scavs had apparently rebuilt from some old Colonial junk. Stepped through, me and my troopers, Dale, with camerakit, Dr. Beasley, Professor Wingmann...

  This is the forest primeval...

  What the Hell are these funny-looking plants? Look like ferns, for goshsakes...

  Well. Convergent evolution?

  Then.

  A soft growl.

  Soft. But... big. Yes. Big. Deep. Nearby.

  Slowly I turned...

  Jesus. Professor Wingmann’s scream was almost ultrasonic, looking at a head the size of a small car, teeth like... Steak knives? Hell, no. Teeth like God damned fucking railroad spikes!

  Bet you didn’t know a dried-up old biddy like that Wingmann bitch could run like an Olympic sprinter, did you Dale? Nope. Can’t say as I did. Credit to Dale, kneeling, shooting video, panting with excitement. Credit to my soldiers, who waited ‘til they had a reason to shoot. Even credit to that old fart Beasley, who’d stood still for a moment, then whispered, “Well no, not Tyrannosaurus rex. But a close relative. Surely a close relative...”

  Surely, Doc. Surely.

  Wonder why it let us walk away like that?

  Hell. Dale grinning, once they’d got safely back through the gate. Hell, maybe it was just a nice guy.

  Or, said Beasley, sitting down now, getting over the shakes, maybe it just had a fat belly full of nice, juicy Maiasaura...

  Then, the arguments.

  Go back through the Gate? You’ve gotta be nuts!

  But... Dale gesturing at marines, with rifles, standing in a neat line.

  Professor Wingmann, looking somberly at Beasley, who was sort of on Millikan’s side. Sort of. Professor Wingmann going, Well? What about causality?

  Beasley nodding. Clearly, something wrong with all the theories. Every damned one of them.

  Millikan staring at them, odd look in his eye. Not all of them, Doc. You know about Bohm’s Alternative. And you know what I think.

  Beasley nodded. Sure, but...

  Wingmann: But we don’t know if it’s right.

  Lying in bed that night, cuddled with my fat, angry old lover. Listening to him mutter and stew. God damn it! The Cretaceous, Astrid. We went to the Cretaceous!

  And now these pitiful scientists are afraid to go back.

  Afraid they might get eaten?

  Nope. Afraid they might come back through the gate with their specimens and find themselves gone. Remember that little mousething you stepped on as you popped through the Gate? Grandpa.

  That’s silly.

  It is, isn’t it? But they can’t be sure you see...

  Kincaid looked back through the dusty old Gate, back into the ruddy light of Mars-Plus. “OK. Fred and Barney on that side...”

  “Shoot, Sarge...” Almost a whine, like a little boy told to clean up his room.

  “Gillis and Honeybee over here. Rest of you saddle up...”

  A fresh breeze was starting up, blowing down off the mountains, cool, invigorating, full of wonderful smells. Christ. Two-hundred-fifty million years! Athelstan will shit. He’ll just shit.

  Then, a colder voice, speaking from within: He’ll shit if you ever get back to tell him about it. And somewhere, back on Earth, techies would be hurrying to outfit another transport. This time, Athelstan would bring the bombs himself. No doubt about it.

  o0o

  Omry Inbar awoke, this time with a little start, crawling sensation in the pit of his stomach, eyes opening on a black night sky speckled all over with bright white stars, luminous band of the Milky Way twisting above, like some impossible, translucent, monochrome rainbow of dust spread across the face of the void.

  Dark.

  Moon is down.

  Wind sighing softly, rustling dry weeds.

  Fire a dim bed of coals now, a smell of woodsmoke in the air.

  Sound of people breathing.

  People around the fire no mare than dark shapes, almost invisible, huddled in on themselves. Who knew, when they stocked al-Qamar, we’d
be needing sleeping bags? If we’d known, we could have taken blankets from the Americans’ bedrooms...

  Cold.

  They all think I’m crazy.

  What do you mean, they’d said, the Permian?

  Just that, he’d said, the Tartarian Age of the Late Permian Epoch. Somewhere between 253 and 248 million years ago.

  Long silence after that.

  Years... ago?

  Quite right, Ling had whispered. The last five million years before the End-Paleozoic Extinction Event.

  A gabble of useless talk after that, people getting mixed up, puzzled, talking about the KT Extinction, Inbar finally rousing himself to point out that the End-Paleozoic Event had obliterated ninety-six percent of the then-extant species...

  Another silence, then, softly, Alireza said, Wait a minute. Are we talking about time travel here?

  Rahman: I thought modern physics finally laid that notion to rest a hundred years ago.

  Ling, thoughtful: Sort of.

  Zeq: Sort of what?

  Inbar: Sort of agreed they wouldn’t worry about it any more.

  And I saw a moschops yesterday. A moschops! Good God.

  He lay quietly, hands linked behind his head and looked up at the sky, at the glittering... pebble that had caught his attention earlier. What if tomorrow’s the day? What if?

  But it looked a little smaller now, as if getting farther away. Still, it really was moving. Otherwise it would have set with the Moon. On the horizon, in a direction that most likely was east, the darkness seemed a little less absolute now. A... grayness over there. False dawn maybe.

  o0o

  Subaïda Rahman awoke, fuzzy headed, bright morning sunlight filling her eyes, blue, cloudless sky overhead, right in the middle of one of those dreams. This time it was a dream about a woman, a big, husky woman, clad in black leather, jacket with ragged sleeves cut off, some kind of tattoo on her left shoulder.

  She sat up slowly, looking at the far away mountains. Clouds over them now, obscuring the peaks. Was it snowing up there? Probably.

  More and more, the dreams were about women. Women from movies, of course. I even recognize that one. Some Italian, Mia something-or-other. Right. But now I don’t remember the name of the movie. Just remember going with some of the girls from Mission Control... I enjoyed dreaming about men. I wonder what’s become of those dreams? Maybe the pose is struggling to... Lash of hard anger. Nonsense. But... Softer memories. I wanted to get married. Have babies. And fly to the Moon. Faint, horrible sigh. Despair. Not in the United Arab Republic in the second quarter of the Twenty-Second Century. But a lesbian girl. Why, yes, of course. Almost as good as a man, you see. Almost.

  Not quite.

  And then, a sudden, slight shock. Memory reminding her. It’s been two years since I last snuck off for a date with a man. Someone my cousin Zainab set me up with. Mirth. He was so shocked, when I asked him to...

  Still, he’d done it, startled though he was. And a little grim afterward. Spoiling my delicious feeling of sheer sin as he drove me to Zainab’s house afterward. Silent. Pecking me on the cheek good-bye. Getting in his car and driving away.

  But it was all right. Delicious while we did it. Fun later, sitting up with Zainab, giggling about the silly ways of men...

  “Wish I could offer you coffee.”

  Sudden start, back to reality. Alireza sitting on a rock not far away, next to the ashes of the long-dead campfire. Smiling. Smiling at her. I wonder if I made noises in my sleep... She could feel her cheeks start to heat up a bit. Probably imagines me dreaming about his chubby little wife...

  The bright world forming up like hard crystal all around her. Sun in the sky. Pale daytime Moon, piece of glitter, something, in the sky beyond it. Inbar’s crazy deathstar... Shrouded mountains, rolling plains. A dark speck in the sky, moving, far out over remote, tan hills. Ling sitting on another rock, watching through his binoculars.

  “What is it?”

  He said, “I can’t tell.”

  “What does it look like?”

  Silence, still watching the thing, then: “Well. A little bit like a World War I biplane. Sort of.” They were using that handy English phrase a lot. And that other phrase, a favorite of Inbar’s: We must have been crazy to do this.

  Inbar seemed to be sleeping, still lying on his side, breathing heavily. “Zeq?”

  Alireza said, “Went down to the pond to wash up.”

  She thought about the creature they’d seen down there the previous evening. Moschops, Inbar’d called it. Harmless plant eater. Well. A bull’s a harmless plant eater too... She stood, shaded her eyes, looking down the hill. “Where? I don’t...”

  Alireza stood beside her. “Odd. Maybe I’d better...” He glanced at Inbar. “We need to get started back. It’s a good four-hour walk back to the Gate.”

  She nodded, said, “I wish we’d brought some food from Mars-Plus. I’m hungry.”

  Alireza smiled, nodded. “Thought this was going to be Libya, didn’t we? Stupid. Lot of nasty places to get lost in Libya, starve to death while you wander around, right outside Benghazi.” He kneeled beside Inbar and shook his shoulder.

  Inbar rolling over, looking up at him, bleary-eyed. “Wha...”

  Then, a long, hard scream, a strangled scream, the scream of a man caught, perhaps, in a large piece of industrial machinery. A man being ground away to dust.

  Paralyzed tableau, Ling with his binoculars, Rahman standing, Alireza kneeling, Inbar lying on the ground. Tableau lasting for a just a few seconds, seconds stretching on to eternity, filled by the scream. Then they were up and running.

  o0o

  Alireza whispered, “Wallahil`azim...”

  It looked like some kind of great, thick-bodied crocodile, a little shorter than the surviving Nile crocodiles you saw in the zoo, maybe a little heavier. Bigger legs. Thicker chest. A crest of spines on its back, tall masts of bone webbed by scaly, green-black-pink skin, skin through which the sun could shine. Round head. Face like a tiger...

  No. Face like the ghost of a tiger. A tiger’s skull, cheek teeth exposed. Face smeared with bright red blood. Ahmad Zeq lay on the ground under its face, looking up at it, staring, staring, motionless...

  Alireza’s whisper, thing suddenly looking their way, bright yellow eyes ablaze.

  Not the eyes of a tiger, no.

  More like the eyes of an eagle.

  Then Zeq turned his head and looked at them too. Eyes wide, astonished eyes, eyes bright with... something. Some emotion, unreadable. Mouth open, a black hole in his face. Mouthing words.

  Ling muttered, singsong Chinese, went down on one knee, pulled the little pistol from his pocket. Snapped the slide. Aimed, fired.

  The thing jumped a little, snarled, odd bubbly sound, maybe just startled by the bang. It stepped forward and Zeq gargled something, a horrid, wordless shout. The animal was standing on him, left hind leg planted on the great rip in his abdomen.

  Inbar, voice high, babbled, “Not the sail! Shoot him in the eye!”

  Of course, of course. Voice whispering through Ling Erhshan’s head, reminding him to be calm. Focus. Focus now or you die. He took his wrist in one hand, aimed. Squeezed. Bang, and a bullet bounced off the animal’s head, ripping a long, pale furrow, then red blood starting from white meat.

  Another animal sound, half from the thing, tossing its head, cry combining a dog’s yelp and a cat’s snarl of rage. The rest, of course, from Zeq, clawed foot grinding him in the dirt, spreading him open.

  Alireza stepping forward, reaching for the pistol, but... Aim. Squeeze. The left eye vanished in a gout of ichor. Animal screaming now, sound more human than Zeq’s faded cry. Aim. Squeeze. Bang. Two eyes gone now, animal tossing its head, gnashing its teeth, twirling, long, fat tail passing over Zeq once, twice.

  Inbar said, “Now. Behind the left shoulder!”

  Bang.

  Animal bucking, arching its back, spiny sail rippling.

  “Again.”

  Bang.<
br />
  It slumped. Slumped, rolled over on its side.

  Just like that.

  Motionless.

  Ling, staring at the little curl of smoke rising from the stubby barrel of the handgun. Pattern of disbelief forming. This must be a very good little pistol. Inane now: I wonder where they bought it?

  Then, the four of them standing over what was left of Zeq. Shreds of clothing. Tatters of skin. Smears of blood. Assorted things that must be guts. White of bone here and there. Still in one piece, sort of, but...

  He turned and looked at them, eyes open, but blind, looking through them, speaking choppy, truncated Arabic phrases. “Oh, God, Yussûf. Like white light. Like rivers of white light, Yussûf...”

  No transition. But the blind eyes were, suddenly, looking at nothing.

  Alireza said, “Yussûf...”

  Rahman, turning away, looking toward the mountains. “Boyfriend.”

  “Ah. I remember now.”

  Ling went and stood beside Inbar, who was standing beside the animal. “So. What do they call this? Is this a dimetrodon?”

  A loose-shouldered shrug, almost apathetic. “Some kind of sphenacodont, yes, but... It’s very late for those. They should be extinct by now.”

  Alireza said, “How much ammunition do you have?”

  Ling looked at him, not comprehending for a moment, then popped the clip. Counted. “There are four left.”

  Then Rahman said, “We better get back to the Gate.” Very softly now, turning away, just walking.

  Inbar, looking after her, whispered, “Useless. So useless...” Poor damned animal probably just looking for a nice, fat moschops to gobble up.

  o0o

  Kincaid then, under a clear blue sky, walking through the desert scrub country with a handful of soldiers, watching Realmodo en pointe. Holding his M-80 in one hand, like a long, skinny pistol. Ambling away, shoulders rolling, a characteristic three-legged gate. Why would anyone want to look like a damn gorilla?

  Son of a bitch has a nice-looking butt though. Makes me want to run up and... what? Pet him. That’s it. Memories of a puppy she’d had as a kid, a scruffy little terrier whose coloration had been more or less the same, black with a haze of gray. What had the dog’s name been? Jesus. I can picture her plain as day. But... A hundred-twenty years has gone by. Memory of frolicking with the dog, out in the woods. Other memories. Sitting on a rock, out in the woods somewhere, sad for some long-forgotten reason, dog cuddled against her side, soft under her hand.