Bones of the Earth

by Michael Swanwick

  “If we’re going to talk, let’s not pretend you just happened to wander by, okay?”

  Molly Gerhard grinned. “Can’t put anything over on you, can I? Jimmy thought maybe you’d be a little more comfortable talking things over with me.”

  “Just us gals, huh?”

  “Jimmy can be a real jerk,” Molly Gerhard said. “Griffin too. I know I’m not supposed to talk about my boss like that.”

  “Not unless you want to establish rapport with his girlfriend, no.”

  “But we really do need to talk. Come back to the village. I’ll make you a pot of tea.”

  “I was going to go upstream and…” Salley began. But suddenly she didn’t want any such thing. “Oh, all right.”

  * * *

  So far as Salley knew, nobody had bothered to give the village a name. It was a scattering of cottages with thatched roofs, indoor plumbing, and several appliances she couldn’t figure out. She’d seen motels that were bigger. “We have conferences here sometimes,” Griffin had explained.

  “How come I’ve never heard of this?” she’d asked.

  “They’re for government types—planners, bureaucrats, politicians. Not paleontologists.”

  “Why is that?”

  “To be perfectly frank, you’re not important enough.”

  Upriver from the village loomed Terminal City, looking for all the world like a cliff of solid gold. When first she’d seen it from a distance, she’d thought it was two sea stacks miraculously stranded far inland, separated by a razor-straight line of sky and river. The color, she’d assumed, was reflection from the setting sun. Then that it was a structure built in imitation of eroded geological forms, rather like one of Ursula von Rydingsvard’s sculptures, only of yellow bricks.

  But no. It really was made of gold.

  “You know what?” Molly Gerhard said, breaking into her thoughts. “This would be the perfect place for a honeymoon.”

  Salley snorted.

  “Wrong thing to say, huh?” Molly Gerhard said quietly.

  “There’s my cottage. Let’s go in. I’ll make the tea.”

  * * *

  Salley had just put the kettle on when she heard a familiar noise outside. She hurried to the ice box. “Here. Watch this,” she said, and went to the back door with a cabbage in each hand.

  Something big was moving out in the bushes. She underhanded the cabbages lightly in that direction. Molly Gerhard came up behind her and waited.

  They didn’t have to wait long before a glyptodon came lumbering out of the underbrush and onto the lawn.

  Glyptodons were charming creatures, as armored as a turtle and as large as a Volkswagen. Their backs were covered with a pebbled shell that looked like a bowl turned upside down. They had matching armored yarmulkas atop their heads.

  “Now that,” Molly Gerhard said, “is one ugly critter.”

  “Are you nuts? It’s gorgeous.”

  The glyptodon slowly approached the cabbages and examined them critically. Then it crunched first one and then the other in its beaked mouth, tossing its head as it ate. After which, it waddled away again. They were grouchy creatures, glyptodons were. They reminded her a lot of ankylosaurs.

  And a little of Griffin.

  The water was ready then, so she poured two cups and carried them to the kitchen table. “So,” she said. “How are the talks?”

  Molly Gerhard looked discouraged. “They talk. But they won’t negotiate.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “How so?” Molly Gerhard leaned forward. “What have you figured out?”

  “Nothing you wouldn’t have learned if you’d been paying attention.”

  “What? What? Tell me.”

  Salley sipped her tea, and said nothing.

  Molly Gerhard changed tactics. “Listen to me. We’re running out of time. Our operational schedules are divided into cells, with an administrative intercept point for each one. We’re in a Priority D era, so the op-cell we have to work with is eight days long. Are you with me so far?”

  “I loathe bureaucratic jargon. Give it to me in English.”

  “We’ve been here six days. Two more, and the Old Man finds us and shuts us down. Come with me to Terminal City. Help us find an answer.”

  “There’s nothing to be learned there.”

  “And there is out here?”

  “Yes,” Salley said. “Have you taken a close look at the waterbushes?”

  “Those things that clog the river? No.”

  “I have. They’re an entirely new plant form. I think they’re derived from kelp, believe it or not. Forget about the glyptodons. Waterbushes are much more important.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Let me put it this way. The biggest difference between the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic is not the absence of dinosaurs, but the presence of grass. Grass changed everything. It has amazing powers of recovery, which made large-scale grazing possible for the first time. Which in turn made animals like bisons and water buffalos possible. And therefore made predators like lions and tigers possible. Theoretically, birds could have evolved to fill the niches their bigger cousins vacated. How come mammals managed to make an end run around birds? Grass! It changed the rules. It made it impossible for the dinosaurs to come back.”

  “Oh-kaay. I think I’m following this. So what’s the application to our present situation?”

  “The waterbushes are something new. They change the rules. I want to see what they’ve made of the local ecosystem.”

  “It’s a pretty dull ecosystem, I gather,” Molly Gerhard said. “Lots of drab little birds. A few lizards, and I think I saw some crawdads. I don’t see why you’d care, when you’ve got all these terrific mammals to look at. You’ve never seen them before, right? I’d think you’d be excited.”

  “I was, at first. But there’s no context. It’s like going to the fucking zoo. You see an elephant, some kangaroos, and a pond full of penguins and try to figure out what kind of ecosystem produced them. You know nothing about their behavior. You know nothing about what they’re like in the wild. I want to see the Telezoic. I want to muck about in a functioning wilderness.”

  She did not tell Molly, but it was immediately obvious to her that this could not possibly be the Unchanging’s home time. The environment was simply not damaged enough to be home to a technologically advanced civilization. Even if they’d reached a stage where they could restore the damaged biota, resurrect extinct plants and animals, recreate the delicate webs of interdependence, there was no way they could undo the physical damage—the mountains leveled, the minerals redistributed, pit mines dug deep into the earth.

  There was no way they would.

  “Well,” Molly Gerhard said, “if you want to go look, why don’t you?”

  Salley lifted her chin, to make her torc more prominent.

  With a stricken expression, Molly reached out to touch Salley’s arm. “Oh, Salley. You don’t really think…”

  “Yes. I do.”

  * * *

  The crate had been humiliating enough.

  But when she’d emerged from it into Terminal City, Salley wasn’t expecting to be put on a leash. The Unchanging, however, were astonishingly literal-minded. They had fit the torc around Salley’s neck, and given Griffin the controller. He’d slipped it into his pocket. “I promise you,” he’d said, as soon as the Unchanging were out of earshot, “I will never use it.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Fork it over, and I’ll make damned sure you won’t.”

  Griffin looked pained. “I can’t do that. They’d know.”

  “You like this!” Salley spat. “You’re enjoying it.”

  “Of course I’m not.”

  Arguing, they’d stepped through a transport gate and into the village.

  * * *

  They’d patched things up that night, and slept together, and even made love. But it still rankled. So, after a day’s unhappy thought, she’d gone walkabout.

&
nbsp; The mammals were delightful. She had to admit that. What she had originally thought a game preserve, but eventually concluded must be a quarantine area or holding pens for transshipment, was stocked with marvels. The kyptocerases alone—primitive, deerlike ungulates with two horns over their eyes and another pair on their noses—were well worth price of admission. She broke out laughing every time she saw one. They might have been invented by Dr. Seuss.

  But whenever she’d started to wander away from the river, something had drawn her back. She’d get bored, or tired, or distracted. A pattern began to emerge. So she started observing the animals themselves, to see how their torcs kept them in their designated areas.

  And found that whenever they reached the limits of their range, they’d grow bored, or tired, or distracted, and turn back. Once or twice, she noticed them grow randy and amble off in search of a mate. Never outward. Always inward.

  “Stop beating up on yourself, Salley,” Molly Gerhard said. “Word of honor, Griffin isn’t using the controller. Look. I don’t even particularly like the man. But I swear to you, he wouldn’t do that.”

  * * *

  Salley was a romantic. It almost went without saying. Any person who squandered all her life and intellect on an underpaid career laboriously grinding fossils out of rocks just because these stones had once been the bones of an animal that millions of years ago had kicked Mesozoic butt was of necessity a romantic. It went with the territory. It was why so many paleontologists wore funny hats.

  She wanted to believe Molly Gerhard.

  But she wasn’t about to turn off her brain to do so.

  So, after she’d gotten rid of the woman, Salley went back to her creek and as far up it as she could before feeling so tired and weary that she simply couldn’t go one step further. It was a bright little glen with ferns around the edges, and a clear mossy space under the trees she’d almost reached twice before, but never set foot upon.

  She took Jimmy’s Mont Blanc out of her pocket.

  Then she threw it gently ahead of her, onto a soft patch of moss. It glinted, bright and golden, in the sunlight.

  It would be the easiest thing in the world to walk ahead and pick it up. Yet she did not. Go get it, she thought. Jimmy will be pissed if you lose it. It’s important to him. Walk over and pick it up.

  But she didn’t. She simply didn’t want to. No matter how important the pen was, she wasn’t about to go after it.

  Which was how she knew for sure that Griffin really was controlling her.

  * * *

  On her way back to her cottage, she picked up an axe from the tool shed by the woodpile. Then she went into the bedroom she and Griffin had shared and turned the bed into a pile of kindling. After which she dragged the mattress outside, piled the broken bedframe atop it, and doused it with cooking oil.

  Then she set it afire.

  She wasn’t sure who she was angrier at—Griffin or herself. Griffin had lied to and betrayed her. Gertrude, on the other hand, had as good as made a whore of her. No man who was so afraid of what she might do that he’d use a device to control her could possibly be the great love of her life. She couldn’t love such a man.

  She couldn’t even respect him.

  Why wasn’t the bastard here, so she could take this axe to him? It was typical of Griffin that when the time came to take the heat, he was nowhere to be found.

  Gertrude too, for that matter.

  Seething, she went into the bedroom to pack her few possessions into the travel case. Then she had to get this monstrosity off her neck. There had to be a metal saw or some bolt cutters around here somewhere. She’d…

  She stopped.

  There was an envelope on the dresser. Funny she hadn’t seen it before. She picked it up. Something was written on it, in her own hand.

  It was addressed to her.

  14. Intraspecific Communication

  Lost Expedition Foothills: Mesozoic era. Cretaceous period. Senonian epoch. Maastrichtian age. 65 My B.C.E.

  With dreamlike slowness, the great beasts browsed in the moonlight.

  Oneirosaurus was the last and largest of the supersauropods. It was a late, final flowering of the Titanosaurinae, rare as rare, and a creature that all logic said properly belonged not in the late Cretaceous, but in the Jurassic, when giant sauropods were common. To see one was to refuse to believe it existed. To see five scattered across the river valley, as now, eating the jungle down to stubble, was a privilege Leyster knew he would cherish for the rest of his life.

  Alone of all the creatures in the valley, Oneirosaurus never slept. It couldn’t afford to. It had to keep eating, moving its little head steadily, monotonously, from side to side until all the vegetation within reach was gone, and then taking a ponderous step or two forward to repeat the process. All day and all night it did this, just to keep alive.

  It was not much of a life, but one they seemed dimly to enjoy. And it was one that could last for centuries. Leyster had heard rumors that individuals had been identified as being over five hundred years old.

  Wonderful as those giant gray shadow-beasts were to look at, though, he knew that Lai-tsz hadn’t brought him out here for esthetic reasons. She was a pragmatist. Her mind just didn’t work that way.

  “So what is it that you wanted me to see?” he asked.

  “Not to see. To hear. To feel.”

  “Then what—?”

  “Shhh. Wait.”

  She wrapped her arms protectively around her swollen belly, and stared out over the land. Prospect Bluff had a view second only to Barren Ridge—and no carnivores nested here. A touch of wind blew her hair forward, and she raised her chin slightly, as if to meet it.

  Leyster found himself wishing he had the skill to paint in oils, so he could capture her as she was then, with the land a symphony of grays behind her, and the River Styx a gleam of silver meandering through it. There was something heroic about a pregnant woman. She carried all the hopes and fears of a new life within her body. Nobody could deny that she was engaged in serious business.

  After a while, Lai-tsz made a face and said, “Little Turok is active tonight.”

  “Have you decided on a name yet?”

  “For the English name, I’m leaning toward Emily if it’s a girl, and Nathaniel if it’s a boy. For the Chinese—there! Listen!”

  At first, Leyster heard nothing. He turned to Lai-tsz to say so, but something about her stance, the way she held her head, told him that she, at least could hear something. Whatever it was, though, had to be subtle and extremely easy to miss.

  He willed himself perfectly still. He quieted all conscious thought.

  He waited.

  Slowly he became aware of a low, pervasive rumbling, like the inaudible undertones produced by the deepest pipes of a church organ. He felt more than heard it, in his chest and the pit of his stomach, a sound so deep into the bass that he had to wonder if he were fantasizing it.

  “I…hear it, I think. Something. But what is it?”

  Lai-tsz shivered in a kind of ecstasy. “Infrasound.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything before I got independent confirmation that there really is something there. They’re speaking to each other infrasonically—with sound waves of such low frequency that you and I can’t actually hear them.”

  “My God,” Leyster said. “You mean they’re communicating with each other?”

  “With each other, with oneirosaurs outside the valley—who knows? Infrasound can travel for miles. They could be speaking with kin beyond the horizon. Elephants use infrasound to communicate with each other over huge distances.”

  “How did you discover this?”

  “It’s Turok’s discovery, actually. The little floater grows very still whenever the oneirosaurs speak. Child-to-be would be bouncing around actively, and then suddenly stop, listening. After a while, I made the connection. Whenever Turok got still like that, there’d be an oneirosaur in sight. Either that, or else a tyran
nosaur.”

  “Tyrannosaurs, too?”

  “Yes, I really do think so.”

  Leyster laughed from sheer joy. “This is wonderful! You’ve made an incredible discovery.” He seized her hand and kissed it fervently. If it hadn’t been for young Turok, he would have picked her up and whirled her around in the air. “This is… it’s important!”

  “Yes. I know,” Lai-tsz said complacently. Leyster understood that she was every bit as pleased as he was. She just didn’t like to show it.

  For a time, they stared after the oneirosaurs determinedly eating their way up the valley, sharing the moment without speaking. The moon shone down hazily through a sky strewn with wisps of cloud. There would be rain in the morning, and re-growth would begin. When the lesser herbivores returned, there would be new food in plenty for them.

  “It’s really quite marvelous,” Leyster said at last, “how everything fits together. The oneirosaurs level and fertilize the valley just at the right time to maximize growth. And then they move on, rather than staying and monopolizing the limited resources.”

  “The herds should be returning soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s funny, though, how the first animals to return from the migrations were the tyrannosaurs. Followed so closely by the oneirosaurs. It’s almost as if the one were leading the other.”

  Leyster was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You don’t really believe that, though.”

  “I don’t know. They both employ infrasound. It’s quite possible there’s interspecific as well as intraspecific communication going on. It’s something we really ought to look into.”

  “How could we check? Could you build a device of some kind?”

  “Oh, yeah, easily. We’ve got a couple of recorders, and all I’d have to do is speed up the playback to bring the ultrasonics up into audibility.”