The crone stabbed a bony finger at Carol’s womb. “Right now your baby is that animal, whether it will ever become human is not mine to say. You want this baby very much, and now it is at risk, even as that little animal is.”
“At risk from what?” The scientist stood up, hands hidden again in her pockets, shivering in the heat.
“Perhaps it is your age, perhaps the fever. I cannot say for you. You must sleep to dream again.”
“I never want a dream like that again.”
Carol left the midwife’s hut feeling weak for even listening to that woman. The old woman had no training, no degrees; nothing to recommend her but the awe and respect of los Indios, nothing but batches of healthy babies delivered in a dirt-poor village. Still that did not make her a doctor. Carol heard the indignant voice of her own mentor, her Herr Doctor, castigating old fables in scornful accents. “Embryology is not evolutionary history. In the last century one could say ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’—but not so today.” Equating growth in the womb with growth of the species was a notion that science had left behind.
She wandered through the afternoon, trying to feel the changes in her body, telling herself that she had a touch of fever, that her hormones were adjusting. Each explanation seemed as silly and puny as the midwife’s. The tracks in the rock were hard evidence that she had seen further into the past than she should; no longer making educated guesses, but knowing things that she had no way of knowing. Rationality battled with despair. She wanted the baby with selfish desperation. Her life had been long and lonely. Inside her was someone who would share it; no more one night loves, no more flying away the next day.
Standing by the dig increased her frustration. The two parts of the dig were clearly converging. The original ceratosaur tracks turned straight toward the area where they mixed with the mammal’s footprints. Frozen in the stone was the record of a few seconds of time, and it was taking hours to unearth it. The upper layers of marine shale were soft, but the workers had to dig slowly so their tools did not smash the older rock beneath. Carol was almost certain that they would find nothing. A simple movement of the shrinking river, or a flaw in the deposit, would hide what had happened eons ago. They should be searching downstream for the bone bed instead.
Night falls fast in the tropics. When it was too dark to dig by natural light, Carol stood over the work with a lantern. She would not let the workers leave until the two sets of tracks had been joined into a single pattern, and the chase was as clear in the rock as it had been in her dream. Science seemed merely to confirm superstition. She told them to quit work, and ordered that mañana they should dig farther downstream and try to find that big bone pile that she so badly needed.
Workers went home to their families, leaving nothing for Carol to do but sit up and wait for dawn. After midnight the village noises died, the last dogs slept silent. Carol sat watching the insects smash and sizzle against her lantern. Still she did not dare sleep for fear of dreaming. Now and again she would look up at the shadows cast on the tent fabric, trying to puzzle out their pattern.
Reaching deep into her pocket she pulled out the unicorn root. Using her bush knife she pared off bits to put in her tea. Science had not helped her. It had only confirmed her fears. Maybe just this once ontogeny was phylogeny, or maybe it was all in her head. None of that mattered. Carol had to get control of what was happening inside her, even if it was only fever, even if it meant giving in to her dreaming.
Carol sipped the unicorn root tea and lay back against her pillow, closing her eyes, too scared to snuff out the hurricane lantern.
###
The race went on under the heavy Jurassic sky. Thick clouds clung to the treetops, hiding a cruel hot sun. Hunter and hunted dripped with moisture as they ran along the sunken river. Carol scampered across the slimy mud and the stream seemed to rise up, blocking her path. Instinctive fear of water brought her little feet to a halt. Though the current was neither swift nor deep, it could sweep her away. She would thrash about with water clinging to her fur until the hunter’s jaws plucked her up and crushed her.
Carol turned. Baring sharp tiny teeth she arched her back, each hair straining to make her look larger. She had let the frightened feet carry her this far. Now she had to take command. Wit and training told her where safety lay. Half-waking, half-asleep, she forced her dream feet to run downstream, straight at the dinosaur.
Rearing up, the startled carnosaur was framed against the dense white sky, forearms raking the steaming air. Carol saw the horned jaws open, and the rows of knife-sized teeth. She dashed past a huge taloned foot. The head came down, ducking after her, jaws snapping; a huge featherless chicken pecking at an ant. Holding its tail high the carnosaur spun around. Carol’s charge had been a surprise, but now it was back to the flat-out chase that only the carnosaur could win.
Carol ran downstream searching for the soft bog. Half her life had been spent looking for bone traps, and she needed one now like never before. The stream widened. The ground quaked as the carnosaur’s heavy steps caught up with her. She felt the shudder of a great clawed foot skidding into the mud.
Carol turned again. The carnosaur teetered on the edge of the bog, one leg sinking, three birdlike toes clawing at solid ground, sliding toward the muck. Carol forced her little feet back toward the monster, dancing on thin slime, daring the carnosaur to take another snap at her.
Ancient hatred gleaming in its eyes, the horned head lunged at her. Overbalancing, the huge beast fell fully onto the bog, splattering mud in all directions. Carol stepped back. The struggling wreck tipped slowly over, sinking feet first, tail following. Watching the carnosaur twist and founder, Carol started to lick at her fur coat. The big surging ripples stilled. Buried up to its shoulders in the muck, the horned mask glared back at her. Carol finished cleaning her fur and skipped off across the swampy surface, so happy to be little and alive.
###
She awoke to find the hurricane lantern burning uselessly in daylight. Insect bodies lay in a circle of death around the lamp. Her head felt stuffed and she could still taste the terror of her dream. With clothes wrinkled and hair wild Carol stumbled out of the tent. It was already noon, and a mob of happy workers were waiting outside, cheering her emergence, plucking at her sleeves. With broad gestures and broken Spanish they led their disheveled gringa down the packed earth trail, past the women patting tortillas, past the rows of decayed coffee plants, into the forest.
The workers would not say what they had found. Confused by their good humor, her questions produced only wide smiles and secreted laughter. Stopping at the edge of the dig, she looked into the rock and saw why they were so happy. There was the bone pile she had hoped to find, a reef of dinosaur bodies mixed together in the fossil mud.
From atop the pile a hideous horned mask glared up at her out of the newly opened shale. Trapped in a distorted dance of death lay the stone skull and twisted neck bones of a huge Ceratosaurus. The beast had surely lost its footing and sank into the river mud, sliding down under its own great weight. Kneeling at the edge of the newly opened sepulcher, Carol’s body felt at peace; her stomach hungry instead of hollow. After all, there was a baby growing inside her. Young men slapped her back, cracking ribald jokes about spending the money that would come pouring down from el norte. Triumphant little omnivores are always so ready to crow over a tall carnivore smothered in dust.
TREMBLING EARTH
Allen Steele
Allen Steele made his first sale to Asimov’s in 1988. It didn’t take him long to follow it up with a string of sales to the magazine that quickly established him with the readership as one of its most popular new writers. In 1990, he published his critically acclaimed first novel, Orbital Decay, which subsequently won the Locus Poll as Best First Novel of the year, and soon Steele was being compared to golden-age Heinlein by no less an authority than Gregory Benford. His other books include the novels Clarke County, Space; Lunar Descent; and Labyrinth of Night. His most rece
nt books are a novel, The Jericho Iteration, and a collection, Rude Astronauts. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Here he gives us a taut and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful story of a close encounter with a savage pack of killer dinosaurs, not in the distant past, but in present-day Florida . . .
* * *
“Okefenokee Swamp, also spelled Okefinokee, primitive swamp and wildlife refuge in southeastern Georgia and northern Florida . . . The swamp’s name probably is derived from the Seminole Indian word for ‘trembling earth,’ so called because of the floating islands of the swamp.”
—Encyclopedia Britannica
1. The Mesozoic Express
A high-pitched chop of helicopter rotors from somewhere high above the treetops, the faint invisible perception of drifting on still waters, hot sunlight on his face and cold water on his back. An amalgam of sensations awakened Steinberg, gradually pulling him from a black well. Awake, but not quite aware; he lay in the muddy bottom of the fiberglass canoe and squinted up at the sunlight passing through the moss-shrouded tree branches. His clothes were soaked through to the skin and even in the midday sun he was chilled, but somehow that didn’t register. All that came through his numbed mind was the vague notion that the canoe was drifting downstream, bobbing like a dead log in the current of the . . .
Where was he? What was the name of this place? “Suwannee Canal,” a voice from the fogged depths of his mind informed him. Yeah. Right. The Suwannee Canal. How could he have forgotten? “Up Shit Creek and no paddle,” another voice said aloud. It took him a moment to realize that the voice was his own.
The helicopter seemed to be getting closer, but he couldn’t see it yet. Well, if I’m drifting, maybe I need to find a paddle. Steinberg sat up on his elbows and his eyes roamed down the length of the canoe. Muddied backpacks, soaked and trampled sleeping bags, a rolled-up tent, a propane lantern with a broken shield, a black leather attaché case which for some reason looked entirely appropriate for being here . . . but no paddle. Must have fallen out somewhere back there. Yes, Denny, you’re definitely up Shit Creek . . .
“That’s a joke, kid.” The new voice in his head belonged to Joe Gerhardt. “Laugh when the man tells you a joke . . .”
No. Don’t think about Joe. Don’t think about Pete. He shook his head and instantly regretted it; it felt as if someone had pounded a railroad spike through his brain. He winced, gasping a little at the pain. Aspirin. Tiffany has the aspirin bottle . . .
Where’s Tiffany? The thought came through in a rare instant of clarity. Where’s Tiffany? She was right behind me when we were running, she was right behind when . . .
Something bumped the bottom of the canoe, behind his head. He slowly looked around, his gaze travelling across sun-dappled water the color of tea, and saw the long, leathery head of an alligator just below the gunnel of the canoe, slit-pupiled green eyes staring up at him. Startled, Denny jerked upward a little and the gator disappeared beneath the water without so much as a ripple. If his hand had been dangling in the water the gator could have chomped it off, yet somehow Denny wasn’t frightened. Just Old Man Gator, coming by to visit his canoe without a paddle here on Shit Creek . . .
Where’s Tiffany?
Now the sound of rotors was much louder. The exertion and the headache had drained him; feeling as if all life had been sucked from his bones, Steinberg sank back into the bottom of the canoe, the back of his throbbing head finding a cool puddle of water. Mosquitos purred around his ears and before his eyes, but he couldn’t find the strength to swat them away. He stared back up at the blue sky and listlessly watched as the twin-prop Osprey hove into view above the treetops. I know that thing, he thought. I was in it just yesterday. Me . . . and Joe Gerhardt . . . and Pete Chambliss . . .
And now he really didn’t want to think about them. Especially not about what happened to them, because if he did he might remember the sound of jaws tearing into flesh, of screams that go on and on and on . . . and if that happened he might just jump right out of the canoe and take his chances with Mister Old Man Alligator, because even if he didn’t know what happened to Tiffany, he knew what happened to Gerhardt and the senator. And that’s not a joke, kid. That’s not funny at all . . .
He watched as the Osprey grew closer and found to his relief that there was a little mercy to be found in Shit Creek, because his eyes closed and he rediscovered the bliss of oblivion.
###
Transcript of the Kaplan Commission Hearings on the Assassination of Senator Petrie R. Chambliss; Washington, DC, July, 2004. George Kaplan, former United States Attorney General, presiding. From the testimony of Daniel Steinberg, former legislative aide to Sen. Chambliss.
KAPLAN: Thank you for being here with us today, Mr. Steinberg. The Commission realizes that you’re involved in serious litigation in regards to this incident, so we’re especially appreciative of the effort you’ve taken to speak to us.
STEINBERG: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.
KAPLAN: Many of the facts of this case are already known to us, Mr. Steinberg, both from public accounts and from the testimony of witnesses before you. However, there has been a great deal of confusion and . . . might I add for the benefit of the press pool reporters in the hearing room . . . obfuscation on the part of the media. There has also been some lack of corroboration among the testimonies of prior witnesses. It’s important for this Commission to get the facts straight, so some questions we might ask you may seem redundant. So I hope you don’t mind if . . . well, please bear with us if we seem to be beating the same ground that’s been beaten before.
STEINBERG: Not at all, sir . . . I mean, yes, sir. I understand completely.
KAPLAN: Good. To start with, Mr. Steinberg, can you tell us why you and the late Senator Chambliss went to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Reserve last April?
STEINBERG: Well, the senator felt as if he needed to take a vacation, sir. We . . . that’s his staff and the senator, sir . . . I mean, his Washington staff, not the campaign committee.
KAPLAN: We understand that. Please, just relax and take your time.
STEINBERG: Uhh . . . yes sir. Anyway, Pete . . . that is, the senator . . . had just come back from Moscow, after his discussions with the new government regarding the unilateral nuclear disarmament treaty. Everyone had been burning the candle at both ends, both with the Moscow arms talks and the presidential campaign. The campaign for the Super Tuesday primaries was coming up and the Senate had gone into recess, so Pete . . . I’m sorry if I’m so informal, Mr. Kaplan . . .
KAPLAN: That’s quite all right. We understand that you were on a first-name basis with the senator. Carry on.
STEINBERG: Anyway, Pete wanted to take some time off, do something just for fun. Well, he is . . . I’m sorry, he was . . . an avid outdoorsman, and he had taken an interest in the paleontological research being done at the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge because of his position on the Senate Science Committee, so he decided that he wanted to take a canoe trip through the refuge and . . .
KAPLAN: Excuse me, Mr. Steinberg. The chair recognizes Dr. Williams.
FREDERICK WILLIAMS, PH.D., Chancellor, Yale University: Mr. Steinberg, you say the senator wanted to visit the Okefenokee Swamp. I can understand that he might have wanted to take a break by taking a canoe trip, since I’m an aficionado of the sport myself, but I’m still not sure of his intent. Was it because he wanted to paddle where he had not paddled before, or was it because he wanted to see the dinosaurs?
STEINBERG: Well, it was both, sir. I mean, he could have taken a raft trip down the Colorado River, but he had done that a couple of times before already. And he did want to see the dinosaur project and it was going to be in a Super Tuesday state besides, so the exposure couldn’t hurt . . . well, he just came to me and said, “Denny, what do you say to a little canoe trip down South?”
DR. WILLIAMS: And what did you say?
STEINBERG: I said, “Sounds great, Pete. Let’s go.”
DR. WILLIAMS: And you didn’t consider this to
be an unsafe venture?
STEINBERG: No, sir. Not at the time, at least. Why should I?
DR. WILLIAMS: I would think that you would want to ask yourself that question, seeing as how you’re facing a charge of second-degree murder . . .
###
The Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey which had carried them the last leg of the trip, from Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, had barely settled on the landing pad when Pete Chambliss unsnapped his seat harness and stood up in the VTOL’s passenger compartment. “Okay, boys, let’s go!” he yelled over the throb of the rotors.
Before anyone could stop him, the senator had twisted up the starboard passenger door’s locking lever and was shoving open the hatch. Denny Steinberg looked across the aisle at Joe Gerhardt. The Secret Service escort only shrugged as he unsnapped his own harness, then stepped to the rear cargo deck to pick up Chambliss’s backpack. Gerhardt had barely lifted it from the deck when it was grabbed from his hands by Chambliss. Hefting it over his shoulder, Chambliss turned around and pounded Denny’s shoulder with his huge right hand.
“C’mon, Denny!” he boomed. “Let’s go get that river!” Then Chambliss jumped out of the Osprey and was trotting out from beneath the swirling blades of the starboard nacelle. Two officials from the Deinonychus Observation Project, a man and a woman who had come out to the pad to greet their honored guest, seemed unprepared for the sight of Senator Petrie R. Chambliss—dressed in jeans, red flannel shirt, and hiking boots—suddenly appearing in their midst, grabbing their hands and pumping them so hard it seemed as if he were about to dislocate their elbows. Their expressions, to Steinberg’s eye, matched that of the Soviet Foreign Minister’s, the first time Kamenin had met Pete Chambliss in Moscow last week. The senator from Vermont was an awful lot to take in one dose.
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