Tales of Old Earth

by Michael Swanwick

  “What?” he demanded, angrily.

  “You should have killed him.”

  “Three handfuls of gold nuggets, babe. I dug ’em out of the Yukon with my own mitts. That’s enough money to keep anybody’s mouth shut.”

  “Oh mercy God! Not one of Eric’s men. Depend upon it, yon whoreson caitiff was on the phone the very instant you were out of his sight.”

  “You don’t know that kind of cheap-jack hustler the way I do—” Crow began. Which was—he knew it the instant the words left his mouth—exactly the wrong thing to say to Annie. Her lips went thin and her eyes went hard. Her words were bitter and curt. Before he knew it, they were yelling at each other.

  Finally he had no choice but to pull over, put the truck in park, and settle things right there on the front seat.

  Afterwards, she put on a CD she liked, old ballads and shit, and kept on playing it over and over. One in particular made her smile at him, eyes sultry and full of love, whenever it came on.

  It was upstairs downstairs the lady went

  Put on her suit of leather-o

  And there was a cry from around the door

  She’s away wi’ the raggle taggle gypsy-o

  To tell the truth, the music wasn’t exactly to his taste. But that was what they liked back where Annie came from. She couldn’t stand his music. Said it was just noise. But when he felt that smile and those eyes on him it was better than three nights in Tijuana with any other woman he’d ever met. So he didn’t see any point in making a big thing out of it.

  The wheel was starting to freeze up on them again. Crow was looking for a good place to pull off and dump in a few cans of fluid, when suddenly Annie shivered and sat up straight. She stared off into the distance, over the eternal mountains. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I have a premonition.”

  “Of what?” He didn’t much like her premonitions. They always came true.

  “Something. Over there.” She lifted her arm and pointed.

  Two Basilisks lifted up over the mountains.

  “Shit!”

  He stepped on the gas. “Hold tight, babe. We’re almost there. I think we can outrun ’em.”

  They came down the exit ramp with the steering column moaning and howling like a banshee. Crow had to put all his weight on the wheel to make it turn. Braking, he left the timeless lands.

  And came out in Rome.

  One instant they were on the exit ramp surrounded by lifeless mountains. The next they were pushing through narrow roads choked with donkey carts and toga-clad pedestrians. Crow brought the truck to a stop, and got out to add fluid.

  The truck took up most of the road. People cursed and spat at him for being in their way. But nobody seemed to find anything unusual in the fact that he was driving an internal-combustion engine. They all took it in their stride.

  It was wonderful how the timelines protected themselves against anachronisms by simply ignoring them. A theoretical physicist Crow had befriended in Babylon had called it “robust integrity.” You could introduce the printing press into dynastic Egypt and six months later the device would be discarded and forgotten. Machine-gun the infant Charlemagne and within the year those who had been there would remember him having been stabbed. A century later every detail of his career as Emperor would be chronicled, documented, and revered, down to his dotage and death.

  It hadn’t made a lot of sense to Crow, but, “Live with it,” the physicist had said, and staggered off in search of his great-great-five-hundred-times-great-grandmother with silver in his pocket and a demented gleam in his eye. So there it was.

  Not an hour later, they arrived at the Coliseum and were sent around back to the tradesmen’s entrance.

  “Ave,” Crow said to the guard there. “I want to talk to one of the—hey, Annie, what’s Latin for animal-wrangler?”

  “Bestiarius.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Fella name of Carpophorus.”

  Carpophorus was delighted with his new pets. He watched eagerly as the truck was backed up to the cage. Two sparsores with grapplinghooks unlatched the truck doors and leaped back as eleven nightmares poured out of the truck. They were all teeth and claws and savage quickness. One of their number lay dead on the floor of the truck. Not bad for such a long haul.

  “What are they?” Carpophorus asked, entranced.

  “Deinonychi.”

  “‘Terrible-claws,’ eh? Well, they fit the bill, all right.” He thrust an arm between the bars, and then leaped back, chuckling, as two of the lithe young carnivores sprang at it. “Fast, too. Oh, Marcus will be pleased!”

  “I’m glad you like ’em. Listen, we got a little trouble here with our steering column …”

  “Down that ramp, to the right. Follow the signs. Tell Flamma I sent you.” He turned back to the deinonychi, and musingly said, “Should they fight hoplomachi? Or maybe dimachaeri?” Crow knew the terms; the former were warriors who fought in armor, the latter with two knives.

  “Horses would be nice,” a sparsore commented. “If you used and-abatae, they’d be able to strike from above.”

  Carpophorus shook his head. “I have it! Those Norse bear-sarkers I’ve been saving for something special—what could be more special than this?”

  It was a regular labyrinth under the Coliseum. They had everything down there: workshops, brothels, training rooms, even a garage. At the mention of Carpophorus’ name, a mechanic dropped everything to check out their truck. They sat in the stands, munching on a head of lettuce and watching the gladiators practice. An hour later a slave came up to tell them it was fixed.

  They bought a room at a tavern that evening and ordered the best meal in the house. Which turned out to be sow’s udders stuffed with fried baby mice. They washed it down with a wine that tasted like turpentine and got drunk and screwed and fell asleep. At least, Annie did. Crow sat up for a time, thinking.

  Was she going to wake up some morning in a cold barn or on a piss-stained mattress and miss her goose-down comforters, her satin sheets, and her liveried servants? She’d been nobility, after all, and the wife of a demiurge …

  He hadn’t meant to run off with anybody’s wife. But when he and some buddies had showed up at Lord Eric’s estates, intent upon their own plans, there Annie was. No man that liked women could look upon Annie and not want her. And Crow couldn’t want something without trying to get it. Such was his nature—he couldn’t alter it.

  He’d met her in the gardens out by Lord Eric’s menagerie. A minor tweak of the weather had been made, so that the drifts of snow were held back to make room for bright mounds of prehistoric orchids. “Th’art a ragged fellow indeed, sirrah,” she’d said with cool amusement.

  He’d come under guise of a musician at a time when Lord Eric was away for a few years monkeying with the physical constants of the universe or some such bullshit. The dinosaurs had been his target from the first, though he wasn’t above boffing the boss’s lady on the way out. But something about her made him want her for more than just the night. Then and there he swore to himself that he’d win her, fair and without deceit, and on his own terms. “These ain’t rags, babe,” he’d said, hooking his thumbs into his belt. “They’re my colors.”

  They stayed in Rome for a week, and they didn’t go to watch the games, though Annie—who was born in an era whose idea of entertainment included public executions and bear-baitings—wanted to. But the deinonychi were by all accounts a hit. Afterwards, they collected their reward in the form of silver bars, “as many,” Carpophorus gleefully quoted his sponsor, Marcus, as saying, “as the suspension of their truck will bear.”

  Marcus was a rich man from a good family and had political ambitions. Crow happened to know he’d be dead within the month, but he didn’t bother mentioning the fact. Leave well enough alone, was his motto.

  “Why did we wait around,” Annie wanted to know afterwards, “if we weren’t going to watch?”

  “To make sure it actually happened. Eric can’t come in
now and snatch back his dinos without creating a serious line paradox. As I read it, that’s considered bad form for a Lord of Creation.” They were on the streets of Rome again, slowed to a crawl by the density of human traffic. Crow leaned on the horn again and again.

  They made a right turn and then another, and then the traffic was gone. Crow threw the transmission into second and stepped on the accelerator. They were back among the Mountains of Eternity. From here they could reach any historical era and even, should they wish, the vast stretches of time that came before and after. All the roads were clear, and there was nothing in their way.

  Less than a month later, subjective time, they were biking down that same road, arguing. Annie was lobbying for him to get her a sidecar and Crow didn’t think much of that idea at all.

  “This here’s my hog, goddamnit!” he explained. “I chopped her myself—you put a sidecar on it, it’ll be all the fuck out of balance.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope you enjoy jerking off. Because my fucking ass is so goddamn sore that …”

  He’d opened up the throttle to drown out what she was about to say when suddenly Annie was pounding on his back, screaming, “Pull over!”

  Crow was still braking the Harley when she leaned over to the side and began to puke.

  When she was done, Crow dug a Schlitz out of the saddlebags and popped the tab. Shakily, she accepted it. “What was it?” he asked.

  Annie gargled and spat out the beer. “Another premonition—a muckle bad one, I trow.” Then, “Hey. Who do I have to fuck to get a smoke around here?”

  Crow lit up a Kent for her.

  Midway through the cigarette, she shuddered again and went rigid. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks, and her eyes turned up in their sockets, so they were almost entirely white. The sort of thing that would’ve gotten her burned for a witch, back in good old sixteenth-c England.

  She raised a hand, pointing. “Incoming. Five of them.”

  They were ugly fuckers, the Basilisks were: black, unornamented two-rotor jobs, and noisy too. You could hear them miles off.

  Luckily, Annie’s foresight had given Crow the time to pick out a good defensive position. Cliff face to their back, rocks to crouch behind, enough of an overhang they couldn’t try anything from above. Enough room to stash the bike, just in case they came out of this one alive. There was a long, empty slope before them. Their pursuers would have to come running up it.

  The formation of Basilisks thundered closer.

  “Pay attention, babe,” Crow said. “I’m gonna teach you a little guerrilla warfare.”

  He got out his rifle from its saddle sheath. It was a Savage 110 Tactical. Good sniper rifle. He knew this gun. He’d packed the shells himself. It was a reliable piece of machinery.

  “This here’s a trick I learned in a little jungle war you probably ain’t never heard of. Hold out your thumb at arm’s length, okay? Now you wait until the helicopter’s as big as the thumb. That’s when it’s close enough you can shoot it down.”

  “Will that work?” she asked nervously.

  “Hell, if the Cong could do it, so can I.”

  He took out three Basilisks before the others could sweep up and around and out of range again. It was damned fine shooting if he did say so himself. But then the survivors set down in the distant snow and disgorged at least thirty armed men. Which changed the odds somewhat.

  Annie counted soldiers, and quietly said, “Crow …”

  Crow held a finger to her lips.

  “Don’t you worry none about me. I’m a trickster, babe. I’m archetypal. Ain’t none of them can touch the Man.”

  Annie kissed his finger and squeezed his hand. But by the look in her eyes, he could tell she knew he was lying. “They can make you suffer, though,” she said. “Eric has an old enemy staked to a rock back at his estates. Vultures come and eat his intestines.”

  “That’s his brother, actually.” It was an ugly story, and he was just as glad when she didn’t ask him to elaborate. “Hunker down, now. Here they come.”

  The troops came scattershot up the slope, running raggedly from cover to cover. Very professional. Crow settled himself down on his elbows, and raised his rifle. Not much wind. On a day like today, he ought to be able to hit a man at five hundred yards ten times out of ten. “Kiss your asses good-bye,” he muttered.

  He figured he’d take out half of them before they got close enough to throw a stasis grenade.

  Lord Eric was a well-made man, tall and full of grace. He had the glint of power to him, was bold and fair of face. A touch of lace was at his wrist. His shirt was finest silk.

  “Lady Anne,” he said.

  “Lord Eric.”

  “I have come to restore you to your home and station: to your lands, estates, gracious powers, and wide holdings. As well as to the bed of your devoted husband.” His chariot rested in the snow behind him; he’d waited until all the dirty work was done before showing up.

  “You are no longer my husband. I have cast my fortune with a better man than thou.”

  “That gypsy?” He afforded Crow the briefest and most dismissive of glances. “’Tis no more than a common thief, scarce worth the hemp to hang him, the wood to burn him, the water to drown him, nor the earth to bury him. Yet he has made free with a someat trifle that is mine and mine alone to depose—I speak of your honor. So he must die. He must die, and thou be brought to heel, as obedient to my hand as my hawk, my hound, or my horse.”

  She spat at his feet. “Eat shit, asshole.”

  Lord Eric’s elegant face went white. He drew back his fist to strike her.

  Crow’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and he couldn’t free them. So he lurched suddenly forward, catching his captors and Eric by surprise, and took the blow on his own face. That sucker hurt, but he didn’t let it show. With the biggest, meanest grin he could manage, he said, “See, there’s the difference between you and me. You couldn’t stop yourself from hurting her. I could.”

  “Think you so?” Lord Eric gestured and one of his men handed him a pair of grey kid gloves of finest Spanish leather. “I raised a mortal above her state. Four hundred years was she my consort. No more.”

  Fear entered Annie’s eyes for the first time, though nobody who knew her less well than Crow could have told.

  “I will strangle her myself,” Eric said, pulling on the gloves. “She deserves no less honor, for she was once my wife.”

  The tiger cage was set up on a low dais, one focus of the large, oval room. Crow knew from tiger cages, but he’d never thought he’d wind up in one. Especially not in the middle of somebody’s party.

  Especially not at Annie’s wake.

  The living room was filled with demiurges and light laughter, cocaine and gin. Old Tezcatlipoca, who had been as good as a father to Crow in his time, seeing him, grimaced and shook his head. Now Crow regretted ever getting involved with Spaniards, however sensible an idea it had seemed at the time.

  The powers and godlings who orbited the party, cocktails in hand, solitary and aloof as planets, included Lady Dale, who bestowed riches with one hand and lightnings from the other, and had a grudge against Crow for stealing her distaff; Lord Aubrey of the short and happy lives, who hated him for the sake of a friend; Lady Siff of the flames, whose attentions he had once scorned; and Reverend Wednesday, old father death himself, in clerical collar, stiff with disapproval at Crow’s libertine ways.

  He had no allies anywhere in this room.

  Over there was Lord Taleisin, the demiurge of music, who, possibly alone of all this glittering assemblage, bore Crow no ill will. Crow figured it was because Tal had never learned the truth behind that business back in Crete.

  He figured, too, there must be some way to turn that to his advantage.

  “You look away from me every time I go by,” Lord Taleisin said. “Yet I know of no offense you have given me, or I you.”

  “Just wanted to get your attention is all,” Crow said. “Without any of the others s
uspecting it.” His brow was set in angry lines but his words were soft and mild. “I been thinking about how I came to be. I mean, you guys are simply there, a part of the natural order of things. But us archetypes are created out of a million years of campfire tales and wishful lies. We’re thrown up out of the collective unconscious. I got to wondering what would happen if somebody with access to that unconscious—you, for example—was to plant a few songs here and there.”

  “It could be done, possibly. Nothing’s certain. But what would be the point?”

  “How’d you like your brother’s heart in a box?”

  Lord Tal smiled urbanely. “Eric and I may not see eye to eye on everything, yet I cannot claim to hate him so as to wish the physical universe rendered uninhabitable.”

  “Not him. Your other brother.”

  Tal involuntarily glanced over his shoulder, toward the distant mountain, where a small dark figure lay tormented by vultures. The house had been built here with just that view in mind. “If it could be done, don’t you think I’d’ve done it?” Leaving unsaid but understood: How could you succeed where I have failed?

  “I’m the trickster, babe—remember? I’m the wild card, the unpredictable element, the unexpected event. I’m the blackfly under the saddle. I’m the ice on the O-rings. I am the only one who could do this for you.”

  Very quietly, Lord Taleisin said, “What sureties do you require?”

  “Your word’s good enough for me, pal. Just don’t forget to spit in my face before you leave. It’ll look better.”

  “Have fun,” Lord Eric said, and left the room.

  Eric’s men worked Crow over good. They broke his ribs and kicked in his face. A couple of times they had to stop to get their breath back, they were laboring so hard. He had to give them credit, they put their backs into the work. But, like Crow himself, the entertainment was too boorish for its audience. Long before it was done, most of the partyers had left in boredom or disgust.