The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  every Wednesday and Friday, right

  before his class at 6. This is not by his

  plan or mine. It’s a promise he made to

  my mother, I happen to know, right

  before she died, but that’s okay with me.

  No friends at all would be too few, and

  more than one, too many.

  “What is this?” he asked, when he

  finished reading the printout.

  You oughta know, I said, raising my

  eyebrows in what I hoped was a

  suggestive manner. In accord with my

  own promise to my mother, I practice

  these displays in front of the mirror,

  and for once it seems to have paid off.

  “You think I wrote this?”

  I nodded, knowingly I hoped, and listed

  my reasons: who else knew that I was

  studying Neanderthal bones? Who but

  he and I had savored the story of the

  Utah dude so long ago? Who else wrote

  sci-fi?

  “Science fiction,” he said grumpily

  (having made that correction before).

  While we waited for his burger and my

  buttered roll, he listed his objections.

  “Maybe it’s a mistake, not intended for

  you. Lots of people knew about the

  Utah dude; it was a national story. And

  I am a little insulted that you think that

  I wrote this.”

  Huh?

  “It’s crude,” Ron said. “He, or maybe

  she, uses ‘oddly’ twice in one

  paragraph; that would never get by

  me. And the time line is all wrong. The

  escape comes before the danger, which

  deflates the suspense.”

  You didn’t send this, then?

  “No way. Scout’s Honor.”

  And that was that. We talked, or rather

  he talked, mostly of his girlfriend Melani

  and her new job, while the people

  walked by on Sixth Avenue, only inches

  away. They were hot, and we were

  cold. It was like two separate worlds,

  separated by the window glass.

  Thursday morning I went in eagerly,

  anxious to get back to my bones. I

  scanned the Foundation’s newsgroup

  first (rumors about a top secret new

  project) before opening the latest

  message.

  THURSDAY

  Sorry about that. I stopped transmitting yesterday because “my” NT woke up, and I didn’t want to alarm him. Since my last truncated message, we’ve been snowed in. He watched me build a fire with a sort of quiet amazement. God knows what he would think of this thing I’m talking into. Or of the talk itself. He only makes three or four sounds. I wait until he’s asleep to use the com. After the NT freed me, he followed me up the hill. It was clear that he didn’t intend to harm me, although it would have been pretty easy. He is about six feet tall if he stood straight up, which he never does. Maybe 250 lbs. It’s hard to judge his weight since he’s pretty hairy, except for his face and hands. I was in a big hurry to dress my leg, which was bleeding (okay after all). We found the cleft very different from the way I had left it. Something had gotten into my food. A bear? The follow box was smashed and half the KRs were gone. Luckily the space blanket had been left behind. I spread it out, and he laid his stuff beside it: a crude hand axe, a heavy, stiff and incredibly smelly skin robe, and a little sack made of gut, with five stones in it: creek stones, white. He showed them to me as if they were something I should understand. And I do: but of that later. He’s starting to stir.

  On Fridays I skip lunch so I will have

  an appetite in the restaurant. I wasn’t

  surprised to find yet another message,

  and I printed both Thurs. and Fri. to

  show to Ron. At the least, it would give

  him something to talk about. I think

  (know) my silences are awkward for him.

  FRIDAY

  It’s snowing. The stones are his way of counting. I watched him throw one away this morning. There are three left: like me, he’s on some kind of schedule. We’ve been eating grubs. Seems the NTs hide rotten meat under logs and stones and return for the grubs. It’s a kind of farming. They’re not so bad. I try to think of them as little vegetables. Grub “talks” a lot with his hands. I try to reply in kind. When we are not talking, when I do not get his attention, he is as dead, but when I touch his hands or slap his face, he comes alive. It’s as if he’s half asleep the rest of the time. And really asleep the other half; the NT sleep a lot. His hands are very human, and bone white like his face. The rest of him is brown, under thick blond fur. I call him Grub. He doesn’t call me anything. He doesn’t seem to wonder who I am or where I came from. The snatch point is still 2 days away (-46), which means that I get him to myself until then. An unexpected bonus. Meanwhile, the weather, which was already fierce, is getting fiercer, and I worry about the com batteries, with no sun to charge them. More later.

  Ron and I always meet at the same

  place, which is the booth by the

  window in the Burger Beret on Sixth

  Ave at Tenth St. Ron shook his head as

  he read the messages. That can mean

  lots of different things.

  He said, “You astonish me.”

  Huh?

  “Don’t huh me. You wrote it. It’s very

  clever, considering.”

  I couldn’t say huh again, so I was just

  very still.

  “The vegetarian business is what tipped

  me off. And no one else knows that

  much about Neanderthals. Their

  counting, the limited speech. It’s what

  you told me.”

  That was common theory, I said. There

  was nothing new in it. Besides, I don’t

  make stories. I write reports.

  Even I could see that he was

  disappointed. “Scout’s Honor?”

  Scout’s honor, I said. Ron and I went to

  Philmont Scout Ranch together. That

  was years ago, before he had entered

  the world and I had decided to keep it

  at arm’s length. But the vows still hold.

  “Well, okay. Then it must be one of your

  colleagues playing a joke. I’m not the

  only one who knows you do research.

  Just the only one you deign to talk to.”

  Then he told me that he and Melani

  were getting married. The conversation

  sort of speeded up and slowed down at

  the same time, and when I looked up,

  he was gone. I felt a moment’s panic,

  but after I paid the bill and went up to

  my apartment, it gradually dissipated,

  like a gas in an open space. For me a

  closed space is like an open space.

  The newsgroup was silent for the

  weekend, but the scrambled-header

  messages kept coming through, one a

  day, like the vitamins I promised my

  mother I would take.

  SATURDAY

  The KRs are gone, but Grub drags me with him to look under logs for grubs. He won’t go alone. Third day snowed in. One more to go. I have to conserve our wood, so we stay huddled together against the back wall of the cleft, wrapped in my space blanket and Grub’s smelly robe. We sit and watch the snow and listen to the booming of the icefall – and we talk. Sort of. He gestures with his hands and takes mine in his. He plucks at the hair on my forearms and pulls at my fingers and sometimes even slaps my face. I’m sure he doesn’t understand that I am from the far future; how could he even have a concept of that? But I can understand that he is in exile. There was a dispute, over what, who knows, and he wa
s sent away. The stones are his sentence, that I know: Grub feels that about them. Every morning he gets rid of one, tossing it out the door of the cleft into the snow. His sense of number is pretty crude. Five is many, and two – the number left this morning – is few. I assume that when they are gone, he gets to go “home,” but he’s just as desolate with two as he was with five. Perhaps he can’t think ahead, only back. Even though I’m cold as hell, I wish the snatch point wasn’t so near. I’m learning his language. Things don’t have names, but the feelings about them do.

  Saturday and Sunday I spend at the

  lab, alone. What else would I do? When

  else could I be alone with my bones? I

  am the only one who has access to the

  Arleville Find, which is two skeletons,

  an NT and an HS found side by side,

  which proves there was actual contact.

  The grubs confirmed my study of the

  NT teeth. Of course, this was just a

  story, according to Ron. Or was it?

  Sunday I found this:

  SUNDAY

  Change in plans: I want to alter the snatch point, put it back one cycle. I know this is against the protocols, but I have my reasons. Grub is desperate to get rid of the stones and return to the site and his band. These creatures are much more social than we. It’s as if they hardly exist, alone. I’m getting better at communicating. There is much handwork involved, gesture and touch, and I understand more and more. Not by thinking but by feel. It’s like looking at something out of the corner of my eye; if I look directly, it’s gone. But if I don’t, there it is. It’s almost like a dream, and maybe it is, since I am in and out of sleep a lot. My leg is healing okay. Grub is down to one stone, and he’s happy, almost. I am feeling the reverse: the horror he would feel at being separated from his band forever. Are we going to create an Ishi? What desolation. I am convinced we will wind up with a severely damaged NT. So we start our count at 144 again. Some peril here, since the com is getting low. But I have a plan –

  Monday is my least favorite day, when

  I have to share the lab (but not the

  bones) with others. Not that they don’t

  leave me alone. I scrolled down past

  the newsgroup, looking for the daily

  message and found it like an old

  acquaintance:

  MONDAY

  Made it. I am speaking this amid a circle of hominids, not humans, squatting (rather than sitting: they either stand, lie, or squat but never sit) around a big smoky fire. I quit worrying about what they would think of the com; they don’t seem curious. Since I arrived with Grub, they have accepted me without question or interest. Maybe it’s because I have picked up Grub’s smell. They lay or squat silently a lot of the time, and then when one awakens, they all awaken, or most, anyway. There are twenty-two altogether, including Grub: eight adult males, seven females, and five children, two of them still nursing; plus two “Old Ones” of indeterminate sex. The Old Ones are not very mobile. The NTs grab hands and “talk” with a few sounds and a lot of pushing and pulling, plus gestures. Their facial expressions are as simple and crude as their speech. They look either bored or excited, with nothing in between. Lots of grubs and rotten meat get eaten. They put rotten meat under logs and rocks, and then come back for the grubs and maggots. It’s a kind of farming, I guess, but it has all but spoiled my appetite. Perhaps any kind of farming does, seen up close.

  All of this was interesting, but none of

  it was new. Any of it could have been

  written by my colleagues at the lab, but

  I knew it wasn’t. They’re in another

  world, like the people on Sixth Avenue

  on the other side of the glass. Most of

  them didn’t even know my name.

  TUESDAY

  Something is happening tomorrow. A hunt? I sense fear and danger, and lots of work and lots of food. All these imprecise communications I got from the group as a whole. This afternoon they burned a bush of dry leaves and inhaled the smoke, passing it around. It’s some kind of herb that seems to help in NT communication. Certainly it helps me. Between the “burning bush” and the grunts and pulling of hands, I got a picture (not visual but emotional) of a large beast dying. It’s hard to describe. I’m learning not to try and pin things down. It’s as if I were open to the feelings of the event itself instead of the participants. Death, defeat, and victory; terror and hope. A braided feeling, like the smoke. All this was accompanied, I might even say amplified, by one of the Old Ones (more mobile than I thought!) spinning around by the fire, brandishing a burning stick. Later I amused the little ones (more easily amused than their elders) by cooking some grubs on a stick. Like cooking marshmallows. They wouldn’t eat them though, except for one small boy I call “Oliver” who kept smacking his lips and grinning at me as if it were me he wanted to eat. Even the little NTs have a fierce look that belies their gentle nature. The men (Grub, too) have been sharpening sticks and hardening the points in the fire. Now they are asleep in a big pile between the fire and the wall, and I am staying apart, which doesn’t bother them. I can take the smell of Grub, but not of the whole pile; that is, band.

  Wednesday was a long day. I printed

  out the last four (including Wednesday)

  to show Ron. For some reason, I was

  eager for a little “conversation.” Maybe

  mother was right, and I need to

  maintain at least one friend. Mother

  was a doctor, after all.

  WEDNESDAY

  This morning we were awakened by the children pulling at the space blanket. Grub had joined me during the night. Is it me or the space blanket he likes? No matter; I am glad of his company and used to his smell. He was part of the hunt and dragged me along. He understood that I wanted to go. The others ignore me, except for the children. The party consisted of seven men and two women. No leader that I could tell. They carried sharpened sticks and hand axes, but no food or water. I don’t think they know how to carry water. We left the children behind with the Old Ones and the nursing mothers and spent most of the morning climbing up a long slope of scree and over a ridge into a narrow valley where a glacial stream was surrounded by tall grass. There I saw my first mammoth, already dead. It lay beside a pile of brush and leaves, and I “got” that they had baited it into this narrow defile. But something else had killed it. It lay on its side, and for the first time I saw what I thought might be sign of HS, for the beast had already been butchered, very neatly. Even the skull had been split for the brain. Only the skin and entrails were left, with a few shreds of stringy meat. The NTs approached fearfully, sniffing the air and holding hands (mine included). I could feel their alarm. Was it the remnants of the smoke or my own imagination that gave me terrified sense of the “dark ones” that had killed this beast? Then it was gone before I could be sure. The NTs went to work with their sticks, driving away three hyenalike dogs that were circling the carcass. Their fear was soon forgotten with this victory, and they started carving on the carcass, eating as they went. The kill was new, but pretty smelly. The NTs piled entrails and meat in a huge skin, which we had brought with us. By late afternoon we had a skin full, which we carried and dragged over the ridge and down the long scree slope. We were within a half mile of the site when the sun set, but the NTs hate and fear the dark. So here we are holed up under a rock ledge, in a pile. A long, cold, and smelly night ahead. No fire, of course. They whimper in their sleep. They don’t like being away from their fire. Me neither. I am beginning to worry about the com, which is showing a low power (LP) signal every time I log on. Not as much sunlight here as anticipated. None at all, in fact.

  “Scout’s Honor?” Ron asked again after

  he had read the printouts, and I

  nodded. “It must be one of your

  colleagues, then. Who else knows this

  Neanderthal stuff, or calls them NTs.

  Did they re
ally eat grubs?”

  I shrugged. How would I know?

  “Cave men are full of surprises, I

  guess. And I have a surprise of my

  own. Friday’s my last day of class.

  We’re moving to California. Melani has

  an assistantship at Cal State. We’re

  getting married in Vegas, on the way.

  Otherwise I would invite you to the

  wedding. Even though I know you

  wouldn’t come.”

  I stayed home sick Thursday. And so I

  didn’t check my e-mails until Friday

  morning, when I had two, after a lot of

  Foundation Newsgroup gossip about a

  new project, which I skipped. It was

  mostly rumors, and I don’t like rumors.

  That’s why I became a scientist.

  THURSDAY

  Dawn finally came, sunless. Something was wrong. I could feel it as we went down the hill, holding hands. The cave was filled with shadows, as before, but these were different in the way they stood and the way they moved. Then NTs saw them too, and fell to their knees, clutching one another with little cries. I was forgotten, even by Grub. The Dark Ones had come. The fire was less smoky, and the shadows moved like humans, like us, and chattering. Quarreling, too. Many blows exchanged. They were butchering something. I drew closer before realizing, to my horror, that I was alone. The NTs had all fled. Before I had time to look around and see where they were gone, I was noticed by the dogs. The NTs don’t keep dogs, but the HS do. Perhaps they smelled the meat the NTs had dropped when they fled. They were barking all around me, nasty little creatures. Food or pets? Two of the HS came out of the cave toward me. They started to shout, and I shouted back, imitating their sounds, hoping they would perceive that I was one of them. No such luck. They moved closer, shaking their spears, which were tipped with vicious stone points. Shake-spear: they were acting, I realized. They were only interested in scaring me away. I took a step toward them, and they shook their spears harder. They are completely, unmistakably human. Their faces are very expressive. Their skins are hairless and very black. I think they thought I was an NT because I was so white, at least compared to them. Nothing else in my gait or face or speech seemed to matter. I saw over their shoulders what the others were butchering. It was the boy who had dared to eat the cooked grubs, Oliver. His head was laid off to one side, opened for the brains. NTs have big brains, even the kids. I was almost sad, but didn’t have the luxury. The two HS were shaking their spears, coming toward me one step at a time. I stepped back, still trying to talk, hoping that they would recognize me as one of their own, when something grabbed me by the ankle. It was Grub. He had come back for me. Come! Run! I scrambled after him, through the bushes, up the scree, toward the rocks and snow. The humans didn’t follow us.