Cretaceous Sea

by Will Hubbell

  Rick stared silently at Ann with an expression of dis-belief. She read his thoughts, and said, "You're not the only candidate. If you're not willing to listen, then I'm wasting my time." She shut off the viewer, put it away, and started walking for the door.

  Rick watched her with a perplexed expression on his face. As she reached for the knob, he called out,

  "Wait. Wait!"

  "Why? You obviously think I'm a charlatan."

  "Look, you appear out of the blue and tell me my wild-est fantasy has come true. Of course I'm skeptical. Who wouldn't be? If you were in my place, would you believe it?"

  "Maybe not," admitted Ann, "but I'd keep an open mind."

  Rick looked at her with indecision, as hope battled with skepticism. When he spoke again, it was as if he were pleading on behalf of hope. "All I think about is fossils. Searching for them ... imagining the animals that made them. Can I really visit their world?"

  "Yes," said Ann.

  "Why are you offering this?"

  "We need a naturalist on our project."

  "A naturalist?"

  "That's what we're calling the position. Someone who is knowledgeable about the animals and plants of the area."

  "The Upper Cretaceous, judging from what you showed me."

  "Correct."

  "Why me? Surely there are more qualified people."

  "This is a commercial venture, not a scientific one. I think you meet our requirements perfectly. To be frank, we're looking for a tour guide, not a researcher. Someone with personality. Professor Harrington assures me you have one ... when your nose isn't in a rock."

  Rick smiled at her remark. "Assuming that I don't wake up and find I've been dreaming, what kind of tours are you talking about? Aren't you afraid of having your clients eaten?"

  "Of course, that's why we have a special aircraft for sight-seeing and our base is on an island. You'll be point-ing out the sights from a safe distance."

  "Can I see that disk again?"

  I've got him, thought Ann. "On one condition," she said, knowing she had gained the upper hand. "My client insists on strict confidentiality."

  "Sure," said Rick, reaching for the disk.

  "I'll need that agreement in writing. You must keep our discussion strictly confidential, regardless of whether you accept our offer or not." Ann produced some legal documents from her suit pocket.

  "Where do I sign?" asked Rick.

  "Read them first," insisted Ann. "There are severe sanctions for violating its provisions. This is a serious document."

  Rick took the document and quickly skimmed through text specifying the damages should he ever mention someplace called Montana Isle, its physical or temporal location, or the means of traveling there without the ex-plicit permission of... Rick stopped reading and quickly scrawled his signature on the page. There was a faraway, eager look in his eyes as he said, "Okay, show me the dinosaurs again." PETER GREEN HAD listened to Ann's report about her meeting with Rick Clements and grudgingly conceded that he would do. Afterward, he had abruptly terminated the call. He did not wish Ann to feel comfortable about the situation. He certainly was not. He was already upset about that girl, Greighton's daughter. Now this naturalist, Clements, added another factor to his plans. Still another person he would have to include in his calculations.

  Green paced about with an anxious restlessness. Then, for the third time that day, he left his office and entered the fenced area behind the building to check the time machine. It stood there looking almost exactly like the twentieth-century conception of a flying saucer. Just as in the old movies, the saucer stood on three legs with an open panel on its underside, which functioned both as door and staircase. Only the black solar panels on the saucer's upper surface marred its resemblance to the fic-tional spacecraft.

  It was these panels that were Green's concern. The short, overcast winter days and the high fence cut down on their input. He climbed the stairs into the machine and went to the controls to check the charge. Little had changed; the machine would not be fully powered for another week. Damn! he cursed to himself, another week of exposure. If Greighton comes in on this, that's the first thing I want to change.

  At least, Green thought, a* soon as the machine's ready, we can go. Part of the sales pitch for the resort was that, from the perspective of the present, a trip there would seem almost instantaneous. "Just think," ran the sales script, "you'll leave for a two-week vacation and return, rested and relaxed, only a few seconds after you departed." Such a getaway was easy to fit into anyone's busy schedule. It was a great selling point, and Ann had used it very effectively, all the more so, because she didn't know it was a lie. Green believed in telling the truth only when it was useful. By the time it was neces-sary to tell Greighton the truth, Green hoped that Greigh-ton would be on his side. As for the others, he would find new lies for them.

  The idea of an instantaneous vacation had another ben-efit—no one would feel the need to explain where they were going. Everyone involved with the trip had agreed not to talk about it and probably wouldn't—for a while. It was the long term that bothered Green. He had little faith in nondisclosure agreements. It was his experience that people talked; a piece of paper wouldn't stop that. In the end, there was only one way to assure silence.

  3

  CON FULFILLED THE NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT UNTIL

  it came time to pack. There were strict weight limitations on what she could bring, and her frequent trips to the bathroom scales caught her mother's attention. She looked into Con's room and saw small piles of clothing spread over her bed next to a duffel bag.

  "Con, what's going on?"

  "Nothing, Mom." Con put the stack of underwear she was about to weigh down on the bed.

  "It looks like you're going somewhere."

  "I'm just sorting through my things."

  "I don't believe you. You're up to something."

  "Daddy said that I couldn't tell anyone. I had to promise in writing that I wouldn't." The suspicion on her mother's face changed to alarm. "Not even me? What are you two up to?"

  "It's just a trip, a little vacation."

  'To where? For how long? Why the secrecy?"

  Con sighed. "It's nothing to worry about, Mom. I'll be gone less than a day. If you hadn't caught me, you'd have never missed me."

  Con's mother looked dubious. "That's a lot more than one day's worth of clothes." She picked up a sleeveless top from off the bed. "It looks like you're going someplace warm."

  "It's some new hush-hush technology. We all had to prom-ise to keep it secret, even Daddy. It's like an instant vacation. I'll be gone only seconds, literally. I wasn't even supposed to tell you this much."

  "That's nonsense. Don't lie to me."

  "I'm not," said Con. "I know it sounds crazy. I have a hard time believing it myself. Look, if it's going to be a hassle, I'll just stay here. This was all Daddy's idea."

  "Then you should go," said Mother.

  "But I thought..."

  "It's important to maintain good relations with your father. You're his only child. You should be his heir."

  "Don't start, Mom."

  "He owes you that! Besides, I only want what's best for you."

  "I don't care about being an heiress, I just want to be myself," said Con.

  "And you will be. But to the world, you'll always be John Greighton's daughter. You can't escape that, so you might as well benefit from it. It won't compromise you to accept your due."

  "I don't need anything."

  "Not even a new face?"

  "Mom! We've been through this before. My face is fine."

  "It's not very fashionable. Why seem common? All your friends..."

  "All my friends look the same now!"

  "Stylish," retorted Con's mother, "that's what they look. I told your father when he named you

  'Constance' it would make you old-fashioned."

  "You used to tell me it'd make me rich, like my ancestor that discovered all that gold." />
  "Oh yes," said Mother, "the family legend. Well, you don't have to look like a nineteenth-century woman, just because you're named after one."

  "Mom, could we stop this. If you want me to go, I need to weigh these so I can finish packing." Mother held up a swimsuit, saying, " This certainly isn't going to put you over your limit."

  "We're going to an island, there'll only be the three of us."

  'The three of you?"

  "He's taking Sara," said Con.

  "The new one? What's she like?"

  "We didn't talk much. She seems fairly young. She looks a lot like Daddy's last wife."

  "The next one will probably be younger than you," said Mother.

  "Maybe there won't be a next one," said Con.

  Her mother's face colored at that remark. 'There's always another one. But I gave him his only child," she said with fierce satisfaction. "Take that trip and have a good time. I'll leave you to finish packing."

  "Don't let Daddy know I told you about it."

  "Small chance of that," said Mother as she left the room.

  Con sighed and looked at the pile of clothes on the bed. Ten kilograms was not a lot of clothes, especially since Daddy insisted she bring two dinner dresses. She put a light sweater in the duffel bag along with the underwear and made one more trip to the scales. When she took off her shoes and put them on the bag, she was still over. She rummaged through the bag and removed her makeup case. There, she thought as the scale registered ten kilograms, no one will really care how 1 look anyway. If Daddy wants me made up for dinner, I'll borrow Sara's. I bet she didn't have a weight limit. When Con put the makeup case back on her bureau, she saw herself in the mirror. Her short, brown hair framed large hazel eyes, a petite nose and full lips. She would have been considered pretty in earlier times, but the softness of her features ran contrary to current tastes. It isn't a fashionable face, she thought. Con assessed herself critically. My nose is wrong, my mouth's too big and my chest—forget it't Then she stopped herself. It was a stupid game, and she hated when she gave in to it. If I don't like the way I look, Daddy will be glad to pay to change me, Con reminded herself. Then I'd end up looking like Sara.

  TOM CLEMENTS STRUGGLED to hide the disappointment in his eyes as he looked at his younger brother. He failed miserably. "Not going on the dig?" he said incredulously.

  "It's not definite," said Rick, "but something's come up. I may not be available this summer." Ever since their parents had died, Tom, who was twelve years older, had been both brother and father to Rick. The summers they spent excavating fossils together were special times for them both. When they had begun, Tom was a first-year graduate student at the university. Now he was an assistant professor of paleontology.

  "What's come up?"

  "I can't tell."

  Tom's face colored. "You haven't signed on with a commercial collector?"

  "God, no!" said Rick. He hesitated a moment, weigh-ing the hurt in his brother's eyes against all the lawyers' threats. Then, five days after he signed the nondisclosure agreement, he broke it. "I'll be in trouble if this gets out. I've promised in writing I wouldn't discuss it."

  "Discuss what?"

  Rick looked around the faculty dining room nervously and lowered his voice. "Time travel," he whispered.

  "Time travel!" said Tom so loudly it made Rick wince.

  "Keep it down," whispered Rick.

  "This has got to be a joke," said Tom more quietly.

  "No, it's serious," replied Rick, "I've been hired as a guide for a trip to the Upper Cretaceous. I've already received airfare and a five-thousand-Euro advance on my salary. If it were some joke, would they pay me an ad-vance?"

  Tom appeared dumbfounded. After a long silence he said, "We need to talk about this seriously, but I've got a class in a few minutes. Why don't you drop by my apartment this evening? I'll cook dinner."

  "You've got to keep this secret."

  "Don't worry," said Tom, "I've a reputation for sanity. I want to protect it."

  "Okay, I'll see you at dinner." Rick got up to leave.

  "One thing, before you go," said Tom.

  "What's that?"

  "Who invented this..." Tom lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. "... time machine?"

  "Someone named Peter Green. But, Tom, please don't talk . . ."

  "Don't worry, bro, mum's the word."

  TOM'S APARTMENT LOOKED like a stage designer's idea of a bachelor professor's habitat. It was crammed with clutter reflecting his fascination for the past. Books, pa-pers, and maps mingled with geologists' tools, camping gear, fossils, and an extensive collection of toy dinosaurs. When Rick entered the door, he smelled the pungent spices of Southwestern cooking combined with the scent of rock dust. Tom called from the kitchen, "Want a beer?"

  Rick walked to the kitchen and grabbed one from the fridge. "Thanks." Tom threw some chilies in oil. "You're going to miss my cooking this summer. Is that when you're going?"

  "Tomorrow, actually. At least, that's the first trip."

  "At the beginning of the semester?"

  "I'll be gone from the present time frame for less than a minute."

  "Oh ... I forgot. This is time travel."

  "You still don't believe me," said Rick.

  Tom added some chopped onions to the oil and gently stirred them as he talked. "I made some inquiries this afternoon," he said. When he saw the alarm on Rick's face he quickly added, "Don't worry, I've been very dis-creet. I called up David Ross over in the physics depart-ment—said I needed information on time travel for a lecture—and he did a literature search. Rick, there's been almost no research in the area, except Eckmair's work in the thirties. He claimed to have demonstrated it on the subatomic level, but his findings are still in dispute. The rest of the papers were strictly speculative. Most physi-cists believe time only goes in one direction. Those that don't think it might reverse inside a black hole or some other exotic place in the universe, but certainly not inside a man-made machine."

  "What if they're wrong?" replied Rick. "I've got some evidence, five grand and airfare."

  "That's hardly evidence," answered Tom. "This doesn't make sense. A discovery like that doesn't appear out of nowhere. There should be research papers leading up to it. Green would get the Nobel Prize for something like that."

  "There could be some reason why he hasn't published. Maybe he doesn't want the government involved. Maybe the government is involved."

  "There's another thing," said Tom. "Who's this Peter Green? There are only two scientists by that name—one's a botanist and the other's a retired chemical engineer."

  "Dammit, Tom!" said Rick irritably. "If your snooping spoils this for me, I'll never forgive you. You forget, I saw the pictures. I believe they're real. I'll risk being fooled over missing out. This is a dream come true."

  "I'm sorry," said Tom. "It's just seems so improbable."

  He browned some cubed beef among the onions and chil-ies, then began adding spices. Rick silently watched his brother cook, the smells bringing back memories of so many meals together. After a while, he broke his silence. "What's the point in fooling me?" he said. "If this were a hoax, why trick a college student? No one would believe me. You don't. What would they gain?"

  "I have no idea," admitted Tom. "It just bothers me. Are you sure you'll be all right?"

  "Of course."

  "All the same, could you leave me your flight infor-mation and destination? I'd feel better." Rick decided not to tell Tom he didn't know his final destination. "Sure," he said, "I'll leave it in my room. If there's an emergency, you have the key."

  Tom cut open a plastic pouch of tomatoes and another of beans, then added them to the meat. After some more stirring, he turned the heat down and covered the pot. "This can simmer for a while," he said, taking a beer from the fridge and heading out of the small kitchen to-ward the living room. He sat down on the couch, and Rick sat down in an armchair close by. "Okay," said Tom, "I'll stop being a party poop. Tell m
e about this trip."

  Rick's eyes lit up with excitement. "The woman I talked to didn't seem to know a lot about the place we're going to, but she showed me two datacam disks, and I learned a lot from them. The images of the dinosaurs were definitely Upper Cretaceous— Triceratops and the like."

  "Are we talking K-T boundary here?" teased Tom.

  "Come on, they have more sense than that. With mil-lions of years' worth of sites to choose from, do you think they would open their resort at the time of the impact?"

  "A resort!" exclaimed Tom incredulously. "Someone builds a time machine and the best thing he can do with it is open a resort?"

  "If you saw the island, it wouldn't seem so far-fetched. It's beautiful. There hasn't been anyplace like it since the seas rose. Everything's pristine, unspoiled. They're get-ting a million Euros for a reservation." Tom whistled. "That's more than my department's budget. This Green sounds pretty mercenary." Rick shrugged. "He probably has a lot of expenses."

  "Do you have any idea where this island's located?" asked Tom.

  "They say it's in the Montana Sea."

  "Never heard of it. Sounds more like advertising copy."

  "Yeah," agreed Rick. "It's obviously the Interior Sea-way. The island's somewhere on the western side of the seaway, not too far from the coast. There's some moun-tains nearby."

  "The seaway didn't extend as far north as Montana by the Upper Cretaceous," said Tom. "My guess is their 'Montana Isle' is in New Mexico or Colorado. Those mountains must be part of the Sevier Orogeny."

  "They were big," said Rick. "The peaks had snow on them."

  "Not much left of them now," mused Tom.

  Talking about the ancient land drew Tom's imagina-tion toward it. As a paleontologist, he sometimes felt like he had spent his life trying to imagine a grand party by picking through its garbage. Now, Rick had an invitation to that party. Tom started to envy him, as his doubt paled before such a wondrous vision. "The weather should be nice," he said almost dreamily. "Not too hot. There'll be flowers, too ... and birds ..." Tom laughed. "... and poison ivy."