Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 4

by Eric Flint

  Edward M. Lerner has degrees in physics and computer science (and, curiously enough, an MBA). Now writing SF full-time, Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years (including seven years as a NASA contractor), as everything from engineer to senior vice president. That experience includes techie havens (such as Bell Labs and Northrop Grumman), an Internet company, and a software start-up. It all shows up in his fiction.

  His books include Probe, Moonstruck, and the collection Creative Destruction. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Artemis, and Jim Baen's Universe magazines, on Amazon Shorts, and in the anthologies Year's Best SF 7 and Future Washington.

  In the pipeline are Fool's Experiments and two "Known Space" novels in collaboration with Larry Niven: Fleet of Worlds (October 2007) and Juggler of Worlds.

  Fish Story, Episode Ten: The A-Team

  Written by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis, Dave Freer

  Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

  "Who's from the future?" I demanded. "I'm from the present!"

  Cthulhu eyed me, perhaps a bit sardonically. It was hard to tell, since I'm not an expert on interpreting the expressions of ammonite monster-gods. Stephen Speairs made a production out of returning his identity papers back into his jacket pocket, thereby avoiding both my gaze and the monster's.

  "Besides," I said firmly, "time travel is impossible."

  Cthulhu's vast body seemed to jiggle, his tentacles writhing a bit. That might be laughter.

  Dann Douglas shook his head. "You're both right and wrong, I'm afraid. It is indeed true that you are from the present. But your apparent conceit that the present and the future and the past are all neatly divisible is quite mistaken."

  "Positively idiotic. All time is one, fractally speaking," said the ammonite monster-god. Three or four of his tentacles waved about. "But enough of this!"

  He didn't exactly rise, since that motion is more or less precluded for one of his vast bulk still furthered encumbered by a coiled shell. Nonetheless, in whatever manner he managed the business, he suddenly looked quite threatening.

  "I had you brought here for a purpose, and now that I've confirmed my suspicion it is time we got about it. Enough idle chitchat! Dann, explain to these gentlemen the facts of life."

  Douglas cleared his throat. "Well. As it happens, lads, my master has need of your skills for a special mission."

  "What mission?" I asked suspiciously.

  Dann clapped his hands. "Later, for the details! For the moment, it's time for you to make the acquaintance of your companions in the enterprise."

  He rose to his feet and seized a tube sticking out of a post on the dock, which looked vaguely like one of those speaking gadgets you see in old time movies about warships. Then, bellowed into the mouthpiece.

  "A-Team! Front and center!"

  After relinquishing the tube, he shrugged. "Silly way of putting that, I admit. 'Front and center' doesn't really catch the essence of the business."

  It certainly didn't! Not two seconds later, the leaden water of the harbor surged and veritable monsters clambered onto the pier.

  Five monsters, to be precise. It might be better to say, three MONSTERS, one Monster, and one really weird-looking creature whose claim to the title "monster" rested in its bizarre appearance more than its size.

  Being as I am an ichthyologist, albeit defrocked, and one with a longstanding interest in paleontology, I had no trouble recognizing the MONSTERS and the Monster. The three huge creatures were a variety of mosasaurs, the marine reptiles who were the top predators of the world's oceans toward the end of the Cretaceous Period. Most laymen familiar with the beasties think they were a variety of sea-going dinosaurs, but they weren't. Mosasaurs were lepidosaurs—reptiles with overlapping scales—far more closely related to snakes and lizards than to dinosaurs proper.

  If I wasn't mistaken, in fact, these three belonged to the species Tylosaurus proriger, the largest of the mosasaurs. Great fearsome things, fifteen meters long and weighing God knows what.

  Tons. Carnivorous tons, you understand.

  The Monster was equally familiar. A genuine plesiosaur, another type of ancient marine predator—also often mistaken as dinosaurs, but actually a different order of reptiles altogether. Plesiosaurs originated in the Triassic, but, like the mosasaurs, survived until the end of the Cretaceous.

  If it hadn't been for the three mosasaurs who accompanied it, I would have labeled the plesiosaur a MONSTER in its own right. It was some sort of thalassomedon, closely related to the elasmosaurs, and one of the plesiosaurs that dated to the late Cretaceous.

  It was almost as long as the three mosasaurs, but half of that length was made up of a long and sinuous neck. It probably weighed something like three tons in its own right, but it was still dwarfed by its tylosaur companions.

  That left the little beastie. Well, little in comparison to its mates.

  I was pretty sure it was a Pterygotus, one of the class of eurypterids, although I wished my mate Kevin Bagust was there to confirm my guess. A veritable sea scorpion.

  Talk about ancient! The eurypterids evolved during the Paleozoic Era. None of them were known to have survived the Permian extinction, which happened somewhere around two hundred and fifty million years ago. One of them certainly had no business prancing around on a dock with late Mesozoic mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

  Or, now that I thought about it, with a very very very late Cenozoic hominid like myself, as disreputable as I might otherwise be in certain quarters.

  "As I said," spoke Cthulhu, sounding smug. "All time is one, for those who understand the fractal nature of things."

  Suddenly, the three gigantic mosasaurs emitted a horrible bellowing din.

  "WHOO-WHOO-WHOO!!!"

  They began prancing back and forth on the dock—fortunately, made of concrete, not wood—like a trio of ungainly dancers on a stage. "Prancing," at least, insofar any multi-ton marine monster can prance on land. It might be more accurate to say they lunged back and forth, their bellies not lifting more than a few inches off the floor of the dock.

  "We're Number One!" bellowed the one on the far left. It—he? she? who could tell?—swept one of its front limbs to the fore, exposing the vast flank of the appendage. (Far more like a flipper than a leg, if you're wondering.)

  I'll be damned it there wasn't a garish tattoo on the thing. Not made of ink, of course—penetrating that hide would have been far beyond any needle—but of what looked like inset semi-precious stones.

  Apex Predator, it read, above the image of two enormous open jaws.

  The one on the far right did a similar forward sweep of a forelimb. There was a tattoo there also.

  The food chain stops here. Above the same unsettling image.

  Marvelous. I eyed the third tylosaur, in the middle, but this one exposed no quasi-tattoos.

  Well, not immediately. Instead it sniffed.

  "You have to make allowances," the monster said. "Males. Crude by nature. Me, on the other hand . . ."

  It twisted around and exposed the mosasaur's equivalent of a buttock. There, etched in some sort of metallic filigree, was a dainty-looking heart. Above it were the words, Flirty Girl. Below it—figure out the logic, if you choose; I shied away from the matter—was the same image of the Maw From Hell.

  The plesiosaur cleared its throat. This took a bit of time, since the throat involved was some twenty feet in length.

  "If the extroverts are quite finished, may we get about the business?" Its sinuous neck reached back and its head—tiny in comparison with the rest of the creature—dug into a very large pouch that was attached to its body by a set of straps. Then, brought forth what appeared to be some sort of tablet. Slate, perhaps. It set the tablet down on the dock. Another quick twisting neck motion brought forth what looked like a scribe of some sort, which it placed on top of the tablet. Then, a final neck-twist brought out a pair of spectacles which it somehow managed to perch on its head with a little flip-and-duck. Given the noseless nature of a plesio
saur's face, the spectacles didn't really cover the eyes that well.

  It scooped up the scribe in its mouth and perched it just above the tablet. "Minutes from the last meeting," it said, mumbling the words because of the scribe in its mouth.

  "Move to dispense with reading of the minutes," said the female mosasaur, sounding bored.

  "Second the motion," said one of the male monsters.

  "Vote," said the eurypterid, speaking for the first time. Its voice was peculiar, sounding more like the scratching of an antique 78 vinyl disk than a living voice. I was pretty sure that the "voice" had actually been produced by rubbing together the chelicerae.

  Sure enough. The two little chelicerae in front rubbed together and out came: "All in favor of dispensing with a reading of the minutes?"

  All three tylosaurs and the plesiosaur lifted a front forelimb.

  "Four in favor. I vote 'aye' as well." The creature gave me and Speairs what seemed to be a stern look. A bit hard to tell, given the compound eyes. Of which there were four, by the way, two huge ones on the side and two little ones in the middle.

  "Are you abstaining?" it demanded.

  "Huh?" I fear I sounded rustic. "Why are you asking us?"

  "You're now part of the A-Team," cheliceraed the eurypterid. "You get to vote, too."

  "Probationary members!" barked the tylosaur on the left.

  "Quite right!" chimed in his male mate. "Their vote is advisory only. Not binding on the team."

  The sea scorpion ignored them. "Your vote, mates."

  "Uh . . ."

  That was Speairs' useless contribution. I, on the other hand, having sat through innumerable academic meetings in times past, knew that the answer was a foregone conclusion. Somewhere, at some time in human history—perhaps a session of Neanderthal hunting analysts somewhere in southwest France—people might have sat through a reading of the minutes of a previous meeting. May even be why they went extinct.

  "Concur with the motion to dispense with a reading of the minutes," I said firmly, figuring that concur couldn't get me into trouble. No, I don't usually parse my words that carefully. But I'm not usually faced with three mosasaur gullets any one of which looked as if it could swallow a locomotive and spit out the wheels.

  Fortunately, Speairs wasn't that slow-witted. "Me too," he added.

  "Motion to dispense with a reading of the minutes passes," mumbled the plesiosaur, scratching with the scribe on the tablet. "Next item on the agenda is a report on our negotiations with the Ichthyosaurid Anti-Defamation League."

  The eurypterid lifted its tail—that was called the telson, technically speaking—and waved it about. There was something vaguely dismissive about the gesture, perhaps even derisive.

  "Not much to report," it scritched. "They're still claiming they hold the rightful title of apex predators and the mosasaurs are taking unfair advantage of evolution."

  The way the three tylosaur maws gaped was definitely derisive. "Let the shrimps come out of hiding and argue the point, then," said one of the males. "Fair and square, in the open sea."

  "I trust you set them straight, Gardner," added the female.

  "Certainly," replied the eurypterid. "Fractal time or not, no one denies evolution except religious fundamentalists and they all worship the wrong deity anyway."

  The three mosasaurs raised their heads. "All hail great Cthulhu!" they bellowed. "Bringer of the primordial slime!"

  The huge ammonite monster-god—it dwarfed even the mosasaurs—couldn't actually nod its head in acknowledgment, since what it had wasn't exact a head in the first place. But, somehow or other, it managed to silently convey its satisfaction.

  "New business, then," said the eurypterid.

  "Proposal to enlist two new probationary members," said the plesiosaur. "Hominids. Members of the genus Homo although I can't remember the specific species offhand since the silly buggers produce so many of them. Go by the names of Steven Speairs and Dexter Guptill."

  "Which is the dark one with the funny hair?" asked one of the males.

  "Me," I said, trying not to sound too cross. "And the 'funny hair' is called dreadlocks."

  His fellow male barked what I interpreted as a laugh. "'Dread,' he calls them!"

  "Silly boy," added the female. Her maw gaped wide. "This is 'dread.' But I think you're cute. I warn you, though!" She twisted around and exposed the tattoo on her rear flank. "Flirty or not, I won't tolerate being seduced and abandoned. My name's Rebecca York, by the way."

  It seemed an odd name for a mosasaur, but I refrained from commenting to that effect.

  "Perhaps the rest of the introductions are in order," said Speairs brightly. Probably following the theory that a top predator you know by name is less likely to swallow you whole.

  A flimsy theory, I agree. But I can assure you that any human being in very close proximity to three mosasaurs will be grasping at every flimsy theory known to man. I myself was contemplating instantaneous conversion to Cthulhu-worship, on the theory that fellow-devotees might ignore the usual logic of the food chain.

  Flimsy or not, Steven's hypothesis seemed accurate enough under the circumstances.

  "Good idea," said the male tylosaur on the left. "I'm Dave Pettibone. My mate over there goes by the monicker Lavanya Vijayaraghavan, even though it sounds like a girl's name to me."

  "Might be," grunted his mate. "So what? You heard any dimwit singing a song called 'A Boy Named Lavanya' lately?"

  Its—well, his—maw gaped wider than the female's. Abstractly, I realized that it couldn't really swallow a locomotive whole. But I can assure you that any sentient locomotive who encountered the beast would be hastily trying to go in reverse.

  "I'm Matthew Asnip," mumbled the plesiosaur, still with the scribe in its mouth. "And don't call me 'Matt.'"

  "Wouldn't dream of it," said Speairs smoothly. He looked at the eurypterid. "And you, sir? Or should it be 'ma'am'?"

  "Leave it to a hominid not to be able to tell the difference," scritched the sea scorpion. "Flowers. Gardner Flowers. And of course I'm male."

  It—well, he—lifted one of its middle legs. "See?"

  I nodded sagely, even though I had no idea what I was supposed to be observing. I'm an expert on fish, blast it, not chelicerates, even sea-going ones. I knew that experts on lobsters could distinguish the sexes by looking at the pleopods—swimmerets, to you, and if you don't know what a swimmeret is perhaps you should consider the value of getting an education—since those of males are lobed and those of females are not. Or maybe it's the other way around. And if I remembered correctly, the external openings for the sex organs are located on different pairs of legs—not that that would necessarily apply to ancient eurypterids.

  Being no fool, even if he was occasionally prone to folly, Steven nodded also.

  The sea scorpion lowered his leg. "Is there a motion to accept the hominids going by the names of Steven Speairs and Dexter Guptill as probationary members of the A-team?"

  "I so move," mumbled the plesiosaur.

  "Does anyone second the motion?"

  The three mosasaurs contemplated us doubtfully, for a moment.

  "Sure, why not?" said the one called Dave Pettibone. "I'll second the motion. They're too small to make more than an appetizer anyway."

  "All in favor?" asked Flowers.

  Four ayes came.

  "And it's an 'aye' for me, of course," scritched Flowers. "That's it, then. Welcome to the A-Team, lads. Comrades, I propose we forego the usual initiation."

  The female mosasaur emitted a vast gurgling sound that I took for good humor. "Pretty much have to," she said, "or we'd nullify the vote."

  She surged forward—very alarming, that was—and brought her head within inches of mine. "Unless you'd like to try the initiation, Dexter. You're kind cute, for a flea-bite, though, so I don't recommend it. I don't think you'd survive the first nip. "

  "Ah . . . no, thank you."

  "Any other business?" asked Flowers. Hearing no reply
, after waiting a few seconds, he scritched: "Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting?"

  "So moved," grunted Vijayaraghavan.

  "Second," mumbled Asnip.

  "Vote."

  "Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye."

  After getting another exasperated look from the eurypterid, Steven and I hastily added our own "ayes."

  "That's it, then," said Asnip. The plesiosaur returned the tablet, scribe and eyeglasses to the pouch. Then, brought its head around to face Cthulhu.

  "With your permission, Great One . . . ?"

  "Oh, certainly." The ammonite monster-god waved a tentacle or six. "Be on your way, by all means."