Corrupting Dr. Nice

by John Kessel

  "The name is Vannice," Owen said. "Dr. Owen Vannice."

  Ms. Toppknocker ignored him, and cruised into the room. Wilma was locked in the bathroom with the oatmeal and bananas. Owen had cleaned up the dinosaur droppings as best he could, and moved most of the wreckage out of the way, but the hotel manager's calm survey of her debilitated luxury suite made him cringe anyway. "I have checked your credit rating and am sure you will cover these damages," she said. "It does not concern us at the Herod Palace how you spend your spare time. But we cannot tolerate an animal in the guests' rooms."

  "This isn't an animal, exactly. It's a valuable specimen."

  "What, exactly, is it?"

  "It's an Apatosaurus megacephalos."

  "Which is . . .?"

  "A dinosaur."

  For a moment she looked impressed. But the veil of the hotelier dropped immediately into place. "We operate an extensive kennel service. You can keep this creature in the kennel and we'll guarantee its safety. We are used to transporting livestock."

  "This is not livestock. It is the rarest of dinosaurs."

  =Perfect, Dr. Einstein,= Bill sighed.

  Owen ignored him. "Is the time travel stage back in service?"

  "Technicians are still testing the momentum compensator."

  He thought for a moment. "I'm not about to let this creature be endangered."

  =Tell her that we don't wanna see filet of dinosaur on the menu tonight.=

  "--and I don't want to see filet of dinosaur on the menu tonight."

  "This is a four-star hotel, Dr. Vannice. It's true we serve dodo au vin on our menu, but I'm sure we would not know how to prepare a dinosaur."

  Owen pondered. "Do you have any atmosphere-controlled cages in this kennel?"

  "We do."

  "If you'll make one available and ensure security, I'll bring Wilma down there."

  "I'll have the hotel AI programmed to keep a twenty-four-hour watch on her," Ms. Toppknocker said. "But these room damages--"

  "Will be paid in full. You've heard of my family?"

  "Of course--assuming you are really Owen Vannice. We've seen plenty of genetically altered impostors before."

  "I'm aware of such impersonators. I can supply my genetic bona fides."

  The manager's tone improved markedly. "Of course, Dr. Vannice, we trust you to do the responsible thing."

  "I'll move Wilma down within the hour, Ms. Toppknocker."

  =Wait a minute, boss.=

  "Good day, Dr. Vannice."

  "Good day." Owen closed the door before Bill could get them into further trouble. "I'll take her down to the kennel myself," he said. "She may be better off there anyway."

  =So we're going to stay longer?=

  "Do you want to take a chance on a faulty momentum compensator? We could take the next jump and end up in outer space. We’ll wait a couple of days. Meanwhile, the hotel room isn't doing her any good. In a controlled atmosphere cage I can boost the carbon dioxide level to Cretaceous levels, control the temperature. Wilma'll be feeling better in a day or so."

  =Something's fishy here. Yesterday you couldn't wait to get her back uptime. Now you want to be a tourist. Something tells me this change of heart has something to do with that microwave soufflé you chased around Rome.=

  "I wish you wouldn't use that kind of language."

  =I don't know any other languages. This Faison woman figured out you had a dinosaur mighty quick. Given the fact that your father invested a billion dollars in setting up your dinosaur station, you ought at least to protect his investment. I told you not to admit anything to her.=

  "Yes. You almost shouted a hole in my cerebrum. My ears are still ringing."

  =I can't make your ears ring. I'm in your head.=

  "Well what was I supposed to do, lie?"

  =Yes. You don't even know what her game is.=

  "She doesn't have any game. She's just interested in paleontology."

  =Spelled M-O-N-E-Y.=

  "You know that’s not true. Her father owns a villa in Provence and a plastic farm in Southeast Asia."

  =To hear her tell it.=

  "Bill, I can take care of myself. Not that I'm going to need to, with Genevieve. You ought to give me more credit."

  =Just as long as you don't give her any. Naked bed men love screaming wicked sex women!=

  "Which makes about as much sense as everything else you've told me today. Oatmeal in the bathtub!"

  Owen cleaned out the animal carrier in preparation for the move. The batteries on the lightweight, controlled atmosphere case still carried most of their charge. The message board and security alarm tested out. He turned to the bathroom.

  Wilma lifted her head as soon as he entered. Owen sat down on the ledge of the bathtub, leaned forward and examined her. Why was she so ravenous? He'd expected her appetite to decline as she adapted to the more intense regime of care he was giving her. Perhaps the strangeness of her surroundings made her anxious. In the bright bathroom light the dappled yellow and green markings of her back took on a bluish tinge. As she aged the pattern would darken to a green indistinguishable from that of the conifers and tree ferns that lined the watercourses of her home. From below she was almost pinkish white.

  Wilma sat back on her rump, tail stretched out to curl behind the toilet, her hind legs bent and forelegs stretched out to hold up her shoulders. Her large eyes gleamed up at him, and she lowered her head to focus both of them forward, which emphasized the characteristic higher-domed brain case of the megacephalos.

  Owen could see his own reflection in her eyes. He wondered how he appeared to her. From being her benefactor back in the Cretaceous, had he become her enemy? It was foolish to project such thoughts on an animal hardly as intelligent as a rabbit. Still, he could not help feeling his own betrayal of Wilma, jerking her out of her own time to imprison in this strange space.

  He thought about Genevieve. The excursion with her had left him in confusion. Why had she run away from him? Did she think him a fool? He suspected she did, nattering on about time travel like some grad student. Yet she had not laughed. Even when she had to pull him from the midst of the suspicious Romans, she did not make him feel any less competent for it. She treated him like a complete equal, with no awareness of his money or self consciousness about her beauty. Owen found that powerfully attractive. He cursed Bill for his paranoia. It was like carrying his parents around in his head, questioning his every instinct.

  Owen went to his bag, hauled out his logbook, plugged it into the hotel's system and punched in Genevieve Faison. She and her father were listed as guests, but no further information came up on the screen But they were wealthy people. They had no doubt paid a great deal for their privacy. He ran his hand though his hair and went back into the bathroom, and coaxed Wilma into the carrier.

  "Can you stand a day or two more, Wilma?" he asked.

  The Apatosaurus thumped the side of her box. Owen hoisted it and headed for the door.

  #

  Owen lugged Wilma in the titanium carrier down to the service elevator. A floor down the car stopped and another hotel guest got on. He was a slender man with round face, fair hair, and a calm, open demeanor, pushing a cart with a couple of boxes on it. The boxes were labeled "Transtemporal Music Imports."

  =I know this guy!= Bill said. =He ran guns out of Malasia during the Micronesian revolt! Women think obsessive wicked men are therefore dysfunctional!=

  "Give it a rest, Bill," Owen subvocalized.

  =I'm not making this up. He's a ruthless character. His name is Serge Halam.=

  Genevieve was a gold-digger, this man was a spook. There was only one way Owen was going to get Bill to shut up. "Are you a trader in musical instruments?" he asked the man.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Owen Vannice," Owen said.

  The man looked Owen over, then extended his hand. "Serge Halam."

  Owen tried not to drop his teeth. Bill didn't say anything. If an AI could be smugly silent, Bill was being
smugly silent.

  "Are--uh--the historicals interested in modern instruments?" Owen asked.

  "You'd be surprised what they're interested in."

  "What are these?"

  Halam acted completely calm. "These are harmonicas."

  "Harmonicas?"

  "Harmonicas have certain advantages to the trader with historicals. It's a low tech instrument. It's easy to learn. It's portable."

  "Gosh," Owen said. "That's a clever product to try out in the first century."

  "Thanks. These are very hot items," Halam said quietly.

  When the elevator stopped in the lobby, the acceleration shifted Wilma and she began thumping the carrier. A couple of guests looked in. "Going up?" they asked.

  "Down," said Owen.

  The doors slid closed. Halam looked over. "What do you have in that carrier?"

  =I hope I don't have to remind you--= Bill started.

  "An iguana," said Owen.

  "That's a new one. Why bring an iguana to ancient Jerusalem?"

  Another opportunity to pretend. Owen launched into it without hesitating. "I'm headed for Central America. I'm going to breed this one with historical iguanas. I'm an iguana breeder."

  "I didn't know iguanas had breeds."

  "Oh, yes. There are all sorts. There's the highland iguana, the mutant blue iguana, and of course the Malibu Max. This one here's a Nice."

  "A Nice?"

  "Well, it's not really very nice. Your true Nice is prone to losing his tail in moments of anxiety. That's not a show quality iguana."

  =For a guy who wouldn't lie to that dame, you're developing a disturbing flair for this.=

  "You can imagine how bad it looks when your iguana loses its tail in the middle of a judging," Owen continued. "Because an iguana show is really quite anxiety provoking, for the iguana as much as for the owner."

  "I don't doubt it," Halam said.

  "That's why we're hoping to breed with the historical Central American iguana, to see if we can eliminate this undesirable trait."

  The doors slid open.

  =Please get us out of here," Bill said. =But don't run.=

  "Good luck," Halam said.

  "Yes. Well--good luck on your harmonica imports."

  "I hardly need it," Halam said. "Business is booming,"

  SIX: A DAY AT THE PET STORE

  A lot of tourists made no concessions to local customs, but in order to fit in with first century Jerusalem, Genevieve had downloaded Aramaic. It made her brain itch as if an ant colony had taken up residence in her head. Although she did not plait or oil her auburn hair in the fashion of the wealthy women of the times, she wore the traditional shawl to conceal it. Her white linen shift fell to her heels, and over it she draped a rich purple robe. Her sandals were simple soles strapped to her feet. On first glance, someone spotting her in the street might take her for a young Judean wife.

  Her father hummed a tune as he oiled the beard he had grown overnight. Over his own shift he wore an embroidered white robe, with a curiously chased silver belt. Add gloves to keep him from touching anything unholy and he would look every bit the wealthy patriarch.

  "You will dazzle him senseless at the dance tonight," August said. "And tomorrow--tomorrow I will dazzle him dinosaurless."

  Smuggling a dinosaur uptime would be tricky, but aside from the fact that it was alive, it was something they had done many times before. There were the gold artifacts they'd lifted from the Inca Sun temple in Cuzco from under the eye of the Conquistadors, Charlemagne’s sword they’d sold to that meat packer in Des Moines, the Hemingway manuscripts they'd stolen from the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

  "Where are we going to sell it? " Genevieve asked him. "A thing like this has got to be next to impossible to fence."

  "This is the beauty of it, my beauty. We're not going to fence it. Do you remember Lance Thrillkiller?"

  "I thought he went down with the Titanic."

  "Yes. Well, he's up again. He has a new scam going back home, a phony committee to protect the past. When we return to the 21st century, we will donate Wilma to Lance's committee, for her own protection. Think of the contributions a dinosaur will raise for the cause."

  "But she'll be stolen property. Won't that draw a lot of heat?"

  "She's already stolen property. Our friend Dr. Nice had no leave to draw such a specimen from an unsettled moment universe. The audacity of his snatching the first dinosaur out of the Cretaceous will draw the ire of every protect-the-past radical in the Northern Hemisphere. Out of that will arise enough of a legal smokescreen to keep Vannice from reclaiming her. Plus contributions in the millions to Lance's cause--of which we will take our percentage."

  "Seems risky to me."

  "Life is risky. Nothing ventured--"

  "--nothing lost."

  He looked at her, as if trying to make up his mind about something. "Come now, it's time to go," he said abruptly. "We need to buy a dog. A valuable Egyptian saluki. Did you know I was a member of the Westminster Kennel Club?"

  August adjusted his shawl so that the ends dangled down his back and they headed down to the hotel kennel. The kennel was in the basement, next to a large warehouse of stalls and cages that held livestock waiting to be shipped uptime. A window wall in the office opened onto a view of a Galilean valley. A young woman, whose name tag read "Maureen," greeted them at the desk.

  "Good morning," August said. "Can we purchase a dog here?"

  "I'm afraid we aren't in the business of sales. But I can give you the addresses of several reputable dealers in the city."

  "How about an animal carrier?"

  "You can purchase that there as well. Here at the kennel we only take care of animals prior to shipment."

  "Very good," August said. Under the pretext of getting a look at the kennel where they intended to keep this valuable dog they were planning to buy, August made the woman show them down the aisles of cages in back. Gen examined the security setup. The usual camera midges, hooked into the hotel's AI, hovered in the corners of the rooms. There were ways of disabling them. But they needed some information on the hotel personnel routines.

  "Father, do you think we could get someone to come with us to purchase this dog?" Gen asked.

  "If you're worried about security in the city, it's really not that dangerous," the woman said.

  "Don't a lot of the historicals resent us?"

  "Only a radical minority. Most of them are happy we're here. Here's Simon, for instance. Excuse me, Simon?" the woman called to a small, dark man wheeling a cart of food down one of the aisles.

  "Yes?"

  "Simon, I want you to help these guests go out and purchase a dog."

  The man's brow furrowed. "Mr. Callahan told me to clean out the large cages."

  “I’ll speak to Mr. Callahan,” Maureen said. "Go now."

  "We will pay you handsomely for your help," August said.

  "There's no need for that," Maureen said. "We pay you quite enough already, don't we, Simon."

  Simon was silent. He looked at Gen for the first time, then did a barely noticeable double take. "I will take you," he said.

  Despite Maureen's assurances, Gen had no doubt that Simon had seen enough of tourists to get tired of them. Working in the hotel, he would have become familiar with their condescension. The very fact that he had to take orders from a woman must at the very least gall any man of this time period, and at worst humiliate him.

  "Shalom, Simon," Gen said, bowing her head.

  The historical looked at her for a moment with open astonishment, then ducked his head and began to set out a bowl of food for the mewling cat inside the next cage. "Go to the hotel lobby. I will meet you there in five minutes."

  A moment after they got to the hotel entrance, Simon approached from a service door, still in his hotel coverall but wearing a shawl and headband. The day was bright and hot, the cloudless sky above the busy plaza a depthless blue. The upper market filled the area just outside the palace walls below M
ariamme's tower. Since the upper city had largely been taken over by the time travelers, most of the shops were electrified and bore signs in English as well as Hebrew. It was the hottest spot in Judaea for legal trade. Shadier dealings tended to go on in the lower city: the plaza near the Hippodrome was a notorious black market for currency, condoms and antibiotics.

  A fishmonger hawked his wares from a polyfoam cooler. Outside a wine merchant's shop hung skins of wine like the bellies of pregnant women. An old man with a barrow scraped up the leavings of donkeys and horses to keep the pavements clean for the tourists. Simon led August and Genevieve across the plaza and down a narrow side street. The street climbed up a hill between two-story stone buildings. They turned a couple of times and ended up in a still narrower street of shops close to what had once been Herod the Great's magnificent stables. From down the way Gen smelled fresh bread from a bakery, heard the barking of dogs from an animal wholesaler's.

  Genevieve had owned a pet only once in her life. She and her mother were living in a run-down house west of Dufferin Grove, in what had been an Indian section of Toronto. Her mother worked a doubles scam above a microrganic cleaners on Bloor Street, selling bereaved people the chance to retrieve their loved ones by stealing their doubles from recent moment universes. Most of their marks were retirees or parents who had lost children. To kidnap a real duplicate required access to a time machine; about the only ones who could do that were the mob. The outfit Ivy Faison worked for had no time machine, so they just sold the promise.

  Ivy didn't seem too worried about crossing the mob, or the cops. At nights she would come home with one or another of her men friends, or lie on the sofa in her VR suit embracing phantom lovers, picking up objects that weren't there. Gen was alone a lot. She got the idea that if they had a dog, it would give her somebody to talk to, and keep her safe. One of her friends at school got her a full-grown German shepherd named Max. Max's right ear had a notch in it from some old fight, and he had fleas and smelled bad. A bath got rid of the fleas, but Max never was much of a watchdog because he never, under any circumstances, would bark. Gen loved him immediately.