Knocking on Heaven's Door

by Sharman Apt Russell

  So this is the strange story I heard. Two hunters in one of our tribes recently returned from the eastern coast where they went walking along the beach. They claim they saw a mammoth there walking across the wet sand. As you know, the southern edge of the mammoth range is just south from where you live and does not extend all the way to Costa Rica because it is so hot and humid here. Of course, we have our Paleos like glyptodonts and giant sloths and teratorns and even some of the earlier species like the dawn horse and small hippo, which aren’t true Paleos since they came from the Eocene. Also they aren’t very interesting because they aren’t telepathic. But we don’t have mammoths or mastodons or some of the bigger mammals like giant beavers and giant sloths. But these hunters said they saw a mammoth, and they are both reliable men. I think the story would end here except the hunters went to look more closely at the mammoth and they noticed it wasn’t leaving footprints in the sand.

  The elders in my tribe are not sure what to do now. They don’t want to call these men liars, but they don’t believe them either. The men are upset that people do not trust them now. They say that the mammoth didn’t pay any attention to them and the thoughts and feelings they heard from the mammoth were quite calm and ordinary. Finally they say that the animal turned and walked into the ocean. They never saw it come back out.

  This story has caused quite a lot of tension in my tribe. My thought is similar to the one I had when I was angry at you. We cannot change what has happened. Either these hunters saw this mammoth or they did not. But we can choose to believe them or not believe them. If we don’t believe them, then they are unhappy and we are unhappy. If we choose to believe them then they are content, and we are left with a feeling of trust and wonder. I am wondering then why so many people don’t believe them. Why don’t we just choose to be happy that a mammoth has come to our land at last even if it did walk into the ocean?

  This is the kind of philosophical question I have sometimes written to you about before. Sometimes I have written papers that I didn’t send because I didn’t want to burden you with too much work and because I didn’t think they were good enough. I am going to be honest again: I have actually written a lot of papers I didn’t send. I guess I felt shy sometimes. But now I have decided to keep believing in you as my teacher. Now there is no reason for me not to show you all my work and no reason not to send you all my thoughts. I send them out into the wide web bathing us at all times, “washed in the web,” as we say, and I can only believe that you will someday see them. This is my choice.

  I’m Confused, submitted by Alice Featherstone

  If you are not our teacher anymore, I am wondering if we will be getting someone new. Who will that be? When will you let us know? I feel like we’ve been abandoned like baby coots.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DOG

  Dog wanted to be alone and that was unusual. Most of the time, he wanted to be with Elise and Lucia and Brad and Clare. When he was younger, he had wanted to be with his brothers and sisters and parents. He was a sociable direwolf, touching and being touched, his neurons happiest in a crowd. Now, however, he wanted to be alone so he could think about what he really wanted, who he really was, and the answer was clear. He was Dog, the same Dog as before he lost his physical body. The same personality. The same habits.

  He wanted to think about that. He was the habit of Dog. Just as his switched-on DNA had been able to resurrect the holo-form of paws and muzzle and teeth and flank, so the same DNA had resurrected a holo-personality, the Dog he knew and others knew. Brad and Luke had helped remember him into being Dog, as he and Clare had remembered Elise into being Elise, as he had remembered the golden animals into being horses and black bears and mice—although not all the mice, Dog remembered, not the one he had deliberately let go.

  Dog knew that he could also let go. He could let the edges of himself slip away and dissolve. Briefly, if he wished, he would know everything that had ever happened or ever would happen. The African tribes. The moons of Jupiter. He could know the future. Would the Council punish Brad? Would Jon find them? Would Clare survive the day?

  Maybe Clare would not survive the day. Mothers died giving birth. This birthing had started in the early morning, a few hours into their third day of walking. First Clare made a noise as liquid spotted her leather skirt and dripped onto her legs and feet. Then she lay down in the tall yellow grass and wouldn’t get up but only held her stomach. The group was close to a series of pools in an ephemeral stream. They knew this from the maps on Brad’s solarcomp, and also some of the golden animals could almost-smell the fresh water. But Clare didn’t want to walk even that short distance. In any case, birthing too near a source of water wasn’t always a good idea. So Brad had begun to build a shelter under a juniper, rearranging branches and using yucca stalk and grass against the wind. Lucia began to organize her supplies. Elise began to fret at her mother’s odd behavior. Everyone was busy. No one was paying any attention to Dog. No one watched him wander off in his holo-form from the juniper that had become a birthing bed.

  Dog didn’t mind. He could wait to find out what happened to Clare. He wanted to think about being Dog. He didn’t want to dissolve or know the future. He remembered his mother’s teeth in the back of his neck. It was better to be like everyone else.

  Where-are-we-going? The saber-toothed cat suddenly paced beside him. In his past life, Dog would have been terrified with such an animal at his side, a predator four times heavier than a direwolf, stronger and meaner. Now he felt comforted if also a little sorry that the other golden animals had found him so quickly, the black bears shambling close together, the camel mingling with the horse and deer. Still this was to be expected. They were a herd now, a pack. And he was their leader.

  Where-are-we-going? the saber-toothed cat repeated and shook her blocky head with almost-irritation. Days ago, Dog had stopped her from chasing the Round River people too far past the campsite. Let them go now, he had said. We don’t want to frighten them more than necessary. Dog wondered now if the saber-toothed cat was still sulking about that. She had also kept her personality, like Dog, like the other animals—although it was hard to tell with mice. The habit of being themselves.

  Nowhere, Dog said. We’re waiting.

  The saber-tooth had a short stumpy tail, which she bobbled now. Feel-that? the saber-tooth asked.

  Dog sent out a tendril of consciousness, not too much. He didn’t want to spread himself out too much. Yes, he felt another one, another golden animal coming into existence, and he yearned toward it even though the giant sloth was far away in the radioactive west. The sloth had died and then returned because she couldn’t bear to leave her babies behind, because her love was so great. The babies would still die, suckling fruitlessly at her decaying breasts. The sloth had known that. She had just wanted to be with them.

  Yes, Dog thought. Yes, yes. This was not the first golden animal he had sensed dying of disease or violence or accident, speared or clawed, head crushed, heart stopped, an animal who at the moment of death, all alone, without Dog’s numbers or Brad’s radios, had turned on its own DNA. Its unique consciousness reanchored! Reassembled! Re-formed.

  Dog had a theory about why this was happening. A hole had opened in the universe. The thirteen sunflowers, Dog, the golden animals, Elise—especially Elise, the universe reflecting on itself—had opened a hole. What Dog knew, what Brad could do with his transmitters and solarcomp, unconscious consciousness now also knew. Water poured through the hole. Dog liked this metaphor. Water enlarged the hole and flowed into the den. Claws did the same thing, scrabbling out the entrance to a gopher’s burrow or a badger’s home. The world breached, boundaries broken.

  Dog didn’t know why only some animals could turn on their own DNA or why some of those animals then chose to dissolve and some to keep the habit of themselves. As he sent out a tendril, sensing the ground sloth, he felt the presence of a human being—across the ocean, on another continent—who had also died and returned, turning on
that switch, the water rushing in. He yearned to be with the sloth. He yearned to be with the human.

  The hours passed. The golden animals were careful to stay in their shapes, walking the plain and following game trails as though they were ordinary physical animals. But no longer looking for other predators or prey, no longer worrying about any of that.

  At some point, the saber-toothed cat spoke again, I-miss-the-girl.

  The others agreed, the small cat, the grumpy camel. They missed Elise.

  Dog heard the swoosh of wings overhead. A raven flew low and fast, black feathered in the blue sky, dark and light. It seemed to Dog that every day he felt more keenly the beauty of the world. He recognized beauty wherever he went. Beauty behind him. Beauty before him. Beauty all around him. Perhaps that was Brad’s influence. The raven cawed, and Dog remembered Jon. Dog had seen Jon, too, when he had uncurled a tendril and seen the ground sloth. Dog quickened their pace back to the juniper tree that was also Clare’s birthing bed. Jon would probably be there by now.

  Clare was still alive, and Dog was happy about that. The golden animals stayed behind while Dog went into the shelter of branches and yucca stalk under the tree, almost-smelling the blood and sweat. Clare had birthed one twin but the second seemed to be causing a problem. Lucia looked at Dog, her face hollowed and strained, a baby in her arms. Dog noticed that this infant girl was a receiver, while the boy still in the womb was a mute. For the second time that day, Dog sent out a tendril of consciousness, peeking into the boy’s mind and then quickly withdrawing, momentarily blinded by the neural blooms.

  A good distance from the tree, in the direction of water, Brad was on the ground and Jon stood above him holding a spear. The men had fought. Dog could see signs of broken grass and scuffed dirt, a bit of blood on rock. The spear pressed into Brad’s chest, and the muscles in Jon’s arms tensed. Elise floated nearby, sparking and spinning in a full-scale tantrum. It was too much, her mother in pain, this strange man. Elise cried without tears, hysterical and unable to stop. Jon looked up at Dog’s approach but didn’t move the spear. Still, he recognized Dog and came as close to snarling as a human face could.

  The hunter looked exhausted. Dog guessed that he had been running hard, pressing himself, forcing himself faster and faster to find Clare and Brad. If he had started as soon as the Round River people sent out their emails, then he had taken only days to travel what Dog and the others had done in weeks. Had the tribe approved his pursuit? Dog wondered—because Clare would wonder that, too. Or was Jon acting alone without the elders’ guidance?

  “Dog, help me!” Brad said but not out loud. As well as a spear pressed to Brad’s heart, Jon also had a foot on the lab rat’s throat.

  “What can I do?”

  “Scare him? Rush him? No, wait. Don’t do that.”

  Dog didn’t think so either.

  “Take away Elise.”

  Dog understood. Jon had begun to scream at Brad, berating him for ignoring the Council, for insulting the elders, for interfering in the world. Yes, Jon screamed, they had found his computer. They knew everything. Brad was a monster! Like the monsters who had created the supervirus! Brad was just like those people! Brad was responsible for everything! The guilt pressing down on them! The grief everywhere!

  “Blahblahblahblahblah,” the hunter screamed and pressed his spear into Brad’s chest—all the while, looking secretly at Elise, horrified by the ghost of the little girl he had known six years ago when she was a child of the Rio Chama people. Perhaps Jon had once played with Elise. Carried her when she was tired. Felt sorry for her as the sick baby of deluded parents. “Blahblahblahblah,” Jon screamed, terrified, while Elise’s hair twisted into snakes and she floated a meter off the ground, a golden glimmer crying without tears.

  Dog couldn’t do anything to stop Jon from pressing on the spear or stepping on Brad’s throat. But if he took Elise away, maybe the hunter would calm down.

  Naturally, Elise didn’t want to go. A gust of dry wind swirled through the yellow grass, rattling seed heads, and Jon’s foot slipped down harder, perhaps harder than he realized. Brad, at any rate, was losing consciousness.

  So Dog tried something he had been playing with, a new trick not yet perfected. He created a bubble outside time. This had to do with time at the quantum level and the way it shifted at certain wavelengths. Concentrating, Dog could manage about five minutes.

  Before Jon killed Brad, Dog had five minutes to convince Elise.

  “Elise,” he coaxed, “let me show you something. Come with me.”

  Dog had offered to show Elise things before, about how to be like him, for example, solid to touch. He had tried to teach Elise how she could have her hair combed, how she could make footprints in the sand, how she could sit nicely on a rock. But the little girl had never been interested. She would rather float and be invisible and startle people and make them jump. She didn’t want to return to what she had been before, when she had gasped for breath, when she was sick and weak.

  Dog had an inspiration. “Elise,” he asked, “remember food?” He took a second to steal some memories from Brad. What did humans like about eating? Fat, of course. And sweetness. Ascorbic acid. Ripe berries. Prickly-pear fruit. That brightness in the mouth, the quick energy. “Remember honey?” he asked.

  And Elise did. She stopped crying.

  “Come with me,” Dog said, “and I’ll show you how to taste honey.”

  She floated closer to him. They seemed briefly to tangle together, and in her eager response Dog’s own memories came rushing back, the live rabbit under his paws, that first bite and salty wetness, hot blood … he took the memory and made it almost-real. He felt the gulp down his throat. He shared that first giddy gulp with Elise, and they came together again, closer than before, and surprisingly Elise also began to nose the corpse and wolf down the hot living blood, much too rich for a human. In her enthusiasm, she entered into Dog’s life, pushed right in. She was stronger than Dog in many ways. She pushed right in, and Dog said yes. She could have all his meals, every one. Marrow. Antelope flank. Rotted muscle. Intestines. Elise wanted more. Dog remembered Luke and Lucia and the meals he had shared with them. Rabbit stew, javelina, tubers, onions, sizzling horse meat on the fire. He called up memories that were not his. Sun-ripened grapes juicy and tart. And honey! Honey! Pure glucose, addictive, delicious, dripping from the comb. All she could eat. All Dog could eat.

  Now the golden animals surrounded them, flowing, shimmering, wanting to eat, too, wanting to join the game. Dog knew this would upset Jon even more. The golden animals brought their own memories. Cellulose. Grama grass. Hackberry. A woman’s flesh. They delighted in the irony, cat and mouse, saber-toothed cat and human child, direwolf and deer and horse. At one time, they had eaten each other. They were eating each other again.

  The five minutes were nearly up. “We can keep playing,” Dog said to Elise, “but we have to leave.”

  Elise didn’t hesitate, and Dog led them away from Clare’s birthing bed, from the drama unfolding under a juniper tree, from the hunter pressing his foot on Brad’s throat. Dog hoped Jon would not kill Brad. He hoped the second twin would live. He hoped Clare would live, too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BRAD

  At night, hiding under his bed of animal skins, Brad read that Albert Einstein’s brain was kept in a jar in the basement of the Smithsonian, a major storage unit in what had once been the United States of America. Einstein’s famous biographer said this wasn’t true but then hinted that it was. The storage unit denied the story. So Brad went on a quest to find Einstein’s brain. First he had to walk across Texas, a country pulsing with radiation—the unmanned nuclear plants overheating and exploding. He traveled a hilly landscape of breasts and then started fording rivers: building a raft, fording a river, building another raft, fording a river. The water teemed with carp and alligators. Later there were manatees and flamingos. Finally he came to the major storage unit in what had once been an important c
ity. Calling out for his mentor, he wandered through corridors that resembled the west wing of the lab but were much more grand. There, as it turned out, Einstein’s brain was not hidden in a basement but prominently displayed in a large room on a marble table next to a vase of flowers.

  Nearby stood a statue of Marcus Aurelius.

  Marcus Aurelius, as I live and breathe, Brad thought to himself. In the second century AD the Roman emperor had written, “Everything is interwoven, and the web is holy: none of its parts are unconnected.” He had written, “I am made up of substance and what animates it, and neither one can ever stop existing…. Every portion of me will be reassigned as another portion of the world, and that in turn transformed into another.” He had written, “Nothing can happen to me that isn’t natural.”

  How had the emperor known? How had he known, fighting the barbarians on the northern edge of his empire, coming into his tent filthy with the gore of battle—not literal gore, but spiritual karma from the prisoners he had condemned to death, from the soldiers he had sent to die horribly, from the barbarian men, women, and children he had sent his soldiers to kill horribly? Old Marcus Aurelius: “One world made up of one thing. One divinity, present in them all.” He was not even a great philosopher, just one more king scribbling down his meditations, someone who really had no time to be a philosopher what with constantly going to war to protect and expand his borders, what with ruling over one-sixth of the world’s population, a few free men, their less free families, and many, many, many slaves.