The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  Lightly, sardonically, Sev applauded. “Next?”

  The Tarbleck-null placed both hands heavily on the table and, leaning forward, pushed himself up. “Does the tiger explain himself to the sheep?” he asked. “Does he need to explain? The sheep understand well enough that Death has come to walk among them, to eat those it will and spare the rest only because he is not yet hungry. So too do men understand that they have met their master. I do not enslave men because it is right or proper but because I can. The proof of which is that I have!

  “Strength needs no justification. It exists or it does not. I exist. Who here can say that I am not your superior? Who here can deny that Death has come to walk among you? Natural selection chose the fittest among men to become a new race. Evolution has set my foot upon your necks, and I will not take it off.”

  To universal silence, he sat down. The very slightest of glances he threw Ellie’s way, as if to challenge her to refute him. Nor could she! Her thoughts were all confusion, her tongue all in a knot. She knew he was wrong—she was sure of it!—and yet she could not put her arguments together. She simply couldn’t think clearly and quickly enough.

  Nadine laughed lightly.

  “Poor superman!” she said. “Evolution isn’t linear, like that chart that has a fish crawling out of the water at one end and a man in a business suit at the other. All species are constantly trying to evolve in all directions at once—a little taller, a little shorter, a little faster, a little slower. When that distinction proves advantageous, it tends to be passed along. The Aftermen aren’t any smarter than Men are—less so, in some ways. Less flexible, less innovative…Look what a stagnant world they’ve created! What they are is more forceful.”

  “Forceful?” Ellie said, startled. “Is that all?”

  “That’s enough. Think of all the trouble caused by men like Hitler, Mussolini, Caligula, Pol Pot, Archers-Wang 43…All they had was the force of their personality, the ability to get others to do what they wanted. Well, the Aftermen are the descendants of exactly such people, only with the force of will squared and cubed. That afternoon when the Tarbleck-null ordered you to sit in the window? It was the easiest thing in the world to one of them. As easy as breathing.

  “That’s why the Rationality can’t win. Oh, they could win, if they were willing to root out that streak of persuasive coercion within themselves. But they’re fighting a war, and in times of war one uses whatever weapons one has. The ability to tell millions of soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the common good is simply too useful to be thrown away. But all the time they’re fighting the external enemy, the Aftermen are evolving within their own numbers.”

  “You admit it,” the Tarbleck said.

  “Oh, be still! You’re a foolish little creature, and you have no idea what you’re up against. Have you ever asked the Aftermen from the leading edge of your Empire why you’re expanding backwards into the past rather than forward into the future? Obviously because there are bigger and more dangerous things up ahead of you than you dare face. You’re afraid to go there—afraid that you might find me!” Nadine took something out of her pocket. “Now go away, all of you.”

  Flash.

  Nothing changed. Everything changed.

  Ellie was still sitting in the Algonquin with Nadine. But Sev, Dun Jal, and the Tarbleck-null were all gone. More significantly, the bar felt real in a way it hadn’t an instant before. She was back home, in her own now and her own when.

  Ellie dug into her purse and came up with a crumpled pack of Lucky Strike Greens, teased one out, and lit it. She took a deep drag on the cigarette and then exhaled. “All right,” she said, “who are you?”

  The girl’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Why, Ellie, dear, don’t you know? I’m you!”

  ***

  So it was that Eleanor Voigt was recruited into the most exclusive organization in all Time—an organization that was comprised in hundreds of thousands of instances entirely and solely of herself. Over the course of millions of years she grew and evolved, of course, so that her ultimate terrifying and glorious self was not even remotely human. But everything starts somewhere, and Ellie of necessity had to start small.

  The Aftermen were one of the simpler enemies of the humane future she felt that Humanity deserved. Nevertheless they had to be—gently and nonviolently, which made the task more difficult—opposed.

  After fourteen months of training and the restoration of all her shed age, Ellie was returned to New York City on the morning she had first answered the odd help wanted ad in the Times. Her original self had been detoured away from the situation, to be recruited if necessary at a later time.

  “Unusual in what way?” she asked. “I don’t understand. What am I looking for?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” the Tarbleck-null said.

  He handed her the key.

  She accepted it. There were tools hidden within her body whose powers dwarfed those of this primitive chronotransfer device. But the encoded information the key contained would lay open the workings of the Aftermen Empire to her. Working right under their noses, she would be able to undo their schemes, diminish their power, and, ultimately, prevent them from ever coming into existence in the first place.

  Ellie had only the vaguest idea how she was supposed to accomplish all this. But she was confident she could figure it out, given time. And she had the time.

  All the time in the world.

  Triceratops Summer

  The dinosaurs looked all wobbly in the summer heat shimmering up from the pavement. There were about thirty of them, a small herd of what appeared to be Triceratops. They were crossing the road—don’t ask me why—so I downshifted and brought the truck to a halt, and waited.

  Waited and watched.

  They were interesting creatures, and surprisingly graceful for all their bulk. They picked their way delicately across the road, looking neither to the right nor the left. I was pretty sure I’d correctly identified them by now—they had those three horns on their faces. I used to be a kid. I’d owned the plastic models.

  My next-door neighbor, Gretta, who was sitting in the cab next to me with her eyes closed, said, “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “Dinosaurs in the road,” I said.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said.

  Then, before I could stop her, she leaned over and honked the horn, three times. Loud.

  As one, every Triceratops in the herd froze in its tracks, and swung its head around to face the truck.

  I practically fell over laughing.

  “What’s so goddamn funny?” Gretta wanted to know. But I could only point and shake my head helplessly, tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.

  It was the frills. They were beyond garish. They were as bright as any circus poster, with red whorls and yellow slashes and electric orange diamonds—too many shapes and colors to catalog, and each one different. They looked like Chinese kites! Like butterflies with six-foot wingspans! Like Las Vegas on acid! And then, under those carnival-bright displays, the most stupid faces imaginable, blinking and gaping like brain-damaged cows. Oh, they were funny, all right, but if you couldn’t see that at a glance, you never were going to.

  Gretta was getting fairly steamed. She climbed down out of the cab and slammed the door behind her. At the sound, a couple of the Triceratops pissed themselves with excitement, and the lot shied away a step or two. Then they began huddling a little closer, to see what would happen next.

  Gretta hastily climbed back into the cab. “What are those bastards up to now?” she demanded irritably. She seemed to blame me for their behavior. Not that she could say so, considering she was in my truck and her BMW was still in the garage in South Burlington.

  “They’re curious,” I said. “Just stand still. Don’t move or make any noise, and after a bit they’ll lose interest and wander off.”

  “How do you know? You ever see anything like them before?”

&nbs
p; “No,” I admitted. “But I worked on a dairy farm when I was a young fella, thirty, forty years ago, and the behavior seems similar.”

  In fact, the Triceratops were already getting bored and starting to wander off again when a battered old Hyundai pulled wildly up beside us, and a skinny young man with the worst-combed hair I’d seen in a long time jumped out. They decided to stay and watch.

  The young man came running over to us, arms waving. I leaned out the window. “What’s the problem, son?”

  He was pretty bad upset. “There’s been an accident—an incident, I mean. At the Institute.” He was talking about the Institute for Advanced Physics, which was not all that far from here. It was government-funded and affiliated in some way I’d never been able to get straight with the University of Vermont. “The verge stabilizers failed and the meson-field inverted and vectorized. The congruence factors went to infinity and…” He seized control of himself. “You’re not supposed to see any of this.”

  “These things are yours, then?” I said. “So you’d know. They’re Triceratops, right?”

  “Triceratops horridus,” he said distractedly. I felt unreasonably pleased with myself. “For the most part. There might be a couple other species of Triceratops mixed in there as well. They’re like ducks in that regard. They’re not fussy about what company they keep.”

  Gretta shot out her wrist and glanced meaningfully at her watch. Like everything else she owned, it was expensive. She worked for a firm in Essex Junction that did systems analysis for companies that were considering downsizing. Her job was to find out exactly what everybody did and then tell the CEO who could be safely cut. “I’m losing money,” she grumbled.

  I ignored her.

  “Listen,” the kid said. “You’ve got to keep quiet about this. We can’t afford to have it get out. It has to be kept a secret.”

  “A secret?” On the far side of the herd, three cars had drawn up and stopped. Their passengers were standing in the road, gawking. A Ford Taurus pulled up behind us, and its driver rolled down his window for a better look. “You’re planning to keep a herd of dinosaurs secret? There must be dozens of these things.”

  “Hundreds,” he said despairingly. “They were migrating. The herd broke up after it came through. This is only a fragment of it.”

  “Then I don’t see how you’re going to keep this a secret. I mean, just look at them. They’re practically the size of tanks. People are bound to notice.”

  “My God, my God.”

  Somebody on the other side had a camera out and was taking pictures. I didn’t point this out to the young man.

  Gretta had been getting more and more impatient as the conversation proceeded. Now she climbed down out of the truck and said, “I can’t afford to waste any more time here. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Well, so do I, Gretta.”

  She snorted derisively. “Ripping out toilets, and nailing up sheet rock! Already, I’ve lost more money than you earn in a week.”

  She stuck out her hand at the young man. “Give me your car keys.”

  Dazed, the kid obeyed. Gretta climbed down, got in the Hyundai,and wheeled it around. “I’ll have somebody return this to the Institutelater today.”

  Then she was gone, off to find another route around the herd.

  She should have waited, because a minute later the beasts decided to leave, and in no time at all were nowhere to be seen. They’d be easy enough to find, though. They pretty much trampled everything flat in their wake.

  The kid shook himself, as if coming out of a trance. “Hey,” he said. “She took my car.”

  “Climb into the cab,” I said. “There’s a bar a ways up the road. I think you need a drink.”

  ***

  He said his name was Everett McCoughlan, and he clutched his glass like he would fall off the face of the Earth if he were to let go. It took a couple of whiskeys to get the full story out of him. Then I sat silent for a long time. I don’t mind admitting that what he’d said made me feel a little funny. “How long?” I asked at last.

  “Ten weeks, maybe three months, tops. No more.”

  I took a long swig of my soda water. (I’ve never been much of a drinker. Also, it was pretty early in the morning.) Then I told Everett that I’d be right back.

  I went out to the truck, and dug the cell phone out of the glove compartment.

  First I called home. Delia had already left for the bridal shop, and they didn’t like her getting personal calls at work, so I left a message saying that I loved her. Then I called Green Mountain Books. It wasn’t open yet, but Randy likes to come in early and he picked up the phone when he heard my voice on the machine. I asked him if he had anything on Triceratops. He said to hold on a minute, and then said yes, he had one copy of The Horned Dinosaurs by Peter Dodson. I told him I’d pick it up next time I was in town.

  Then I went back in the bar. Everett had just ordered a third whiskey, but I pried it out of his hand. “You’ve had enough of that,” I said. “Go home, take a nap. Maybe putter around in the garden.”

  “I don’t have my car,” he pointed out.

  “Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”

  “Anyway, I’m supposed to be at work. I didn’t log out. And technically I’m still on probation.”

  “What difference does that make,” I asked, “now?”

  ***

  Everett had an apartment in Winooski at the Woolen Mill, so I guess the Institute paid him good money. Either that or he wasn’t very smart how he spent it. After I dropped him off, I called a couple contractors I knew and arranged for them to take over what jobs I was already committed to. Then I called the Free Press to cancel my regular ad, and all my customers to explain I was having scheduling problems and had to subcontract their jobs. Only old Mrs. Bremmer gave me any trouble over that, and even she came around after I said that in any case I wouldn’t be able to get around to her Jacuzzi until sometime late July.

  Finally, I went to the bank and arranged for a second mortgage onmy house.

  It took me a while to convince Art Letourneau I was serious. I’d been doing business with him for a long while, and he knew how I felt about debt. Also, I was pretty evasive about what I wanted the money for. He was half-suspicious I was having some kind of late onset mid-life crisis. But the deed was in my name and property values were booming locally, so in the end the deal went through.

  On the way home, I stopped at a jewelry store and at the florist’s.

  Delia’s eyes widened when she saw the flowers, and then narrowed at the size of the stone on the ring. She didn’t look at all the way I’d thought she would. “This better be good,” she said.

  So I sat down at the kitchen table and told her the whole story. When I was done, Delia was silent for a long while, just as I’d been. Then she said, “How much time do we have?”

  “Three months if we’re lucky. Ten weeks in any case,” Everett said.

  “You believe him?”

  “He seemed pretty sure of himself.”

  If there’s one thing I am, it’s a good judge of character, and Delia knew it. When Gretta moved into the rehabbed barn next door, I’d said right from the start she was going to be a difficult neighbor. And that was before she’d smothered the grass on her property under three different colors of mulch, and then complained about me keeping my pickup parked in the driveway, out in plain sight.

  Delia thought seriously for a few minutes, frowning in that way she has when she’s concentrating, and then she smiled. It was a wan little thing, but a smile nonetheless. “Well, I’ve always wished we could afford a real first-class vacation.”

  I was glad to hear her say so, because that was exactly the direction my own thought had been trending in. And happier than that when she flung out her arms and whooped, “I’m going to Disneyworld!”

  “Hell,” I said. “We’ve got enough money to go to Disneyworld, Disneyland, and Eurodisney, one after the other. I think there’s one in Japan too.�
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  We were both laughing at this point, and then she dragged me up out of the chair, and the two of us were dancing around and round the kitchen, still a little spooked under it all, but mostly being as giddy and happy as kids.

  ***

  We were going to sleep in the next morning, but old habits die hard and anyway, Delia felt she owed it to the bridal shop to give them a week’s notice. So, after she’d left, I went out to see if I could find where the Triceratops had gone.

  Only to discover Everett standing by the side of the road with his thumb out.

  I pulled over. “Couldn’t get somebody at the Institute to drive your car home?” I asked when we were underway again.

  “It never got there,” he said gloomily. “That woman who was with you the other day drove it into a ditch. Stripped the clutch and bent the frame out of shape. She said she wouldn’t have had the accident if my dinosaurs hadn’t gotten her upset. Then she hung up on me. I just started at this job. I don’t have the savings to buy a new car.”

  “Lease one instead,” I said. “Put it on your credit card and pay the minimum for the next two or three months.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  We drove on for a while and then I asked, “How’d she manage to get in touch with you?” She’d driven off before he mentioned his name.

  “She called the Institute and asked for the guy with the bad hair. They gave her my home phone number.”

  The parking lot for the Institute for Advanced Physics had a card system, so I let Everett off by the side of the road. “Thanks for not telling anybody,” he said as he climbed out. “About…you know.”

  “It seemed wisest not to.”

  He started away and then turned back suddenly and asked, “Is my hair really that bad?”

  “Nothing that a barber couldn’t fix,” I said.

  ***

  I’d driven to the Institute by the main highway. Returning, I went by back ways, through farmland. When I came to where I’d seen the Triceratops, I thought for an instant there’d been an accident, there were so many vehicles by the side of the road. But it turned out they were mostly gawkers and television crews. So apparently the herd hadn’t gone far. There were cameras up and down the road and lots of good looking young women standing in front of them with wireless microphones.