End of an Era

Countdown: 5

My Radio Shack homing device guided me through the Mesozoic heat back toward the Sternberger, an arrowhead on the unit’s LCD showing the direction from which it was receiving radio beeps. It wasn’t taking me along the same route I’d used going out, meaning, I guess, that I hadn’t ambled in a straight line. No matter. I didn’t mind cutting through the forest, since the shade shielded me from the inferno of the late-afternoon sun.

Klicks and I both carried portable radios, of course, but what I had to discuss with him required a face-to-face meeting. Even then, it would be hard to convince him of the incredible spectacle I’d just witnessed.

And yet, exactly what had I seen? A fight involving animals? They still allow bullfights in Spain, and just the week before we’d left, I’d read about a dog-fighting club in Oakville being charged by the local police. If the Hets had stumbled onto humans involved in those cruel sports, what would they have made of us?

But no. What I’d observed was clearly something more, something on a grander, sicker scale.

War games.

But who could they be fighting? What kind of squat, low foe had those mechanical-tank doorways originally been designed to accommodate? That the beetle-like vehicles weren’t of Martian manufacture I felt sure. Captured war machines, then—spoils of some previous skirmish, now used to train living armored vehicles. The triceratopses were clearly expendable.

Het slimeballs rode within them, jerking the dinosaurs’ strings like dragon marionettes.

Was there another civilization on Earth at this time? Had the Hets come here to invade this planet? My sympathies immediately went to the beleaguered Earth beings, a knee-jerk reaction. But it all seemed so incredible, and so unlikely. In China, in Russia, in Australia, in Italy, in England, in the United States, and in Canada paleontologists had examined rocks from the end of the Mesozoic, painstakingly sifting for even the smallest bone chip. It was inconceivable that the remnants of a large-scale technological civilization could pass unnoticed through such scrutiny. But, then, who were the Hets fighting?

I was having trouble thinking clearly—my head pounded with an ache brought on by the heat. The backs of my hands were tingling and I realized too late that they, the only exposed skin on my body, had been sunburned. The presence of all these deciduous trees seemed clear evidence that seasons were well established by this point in Earth’s history, but we must have arrived in high summer. To make matters worse, somehow an insect had gotten under my cheesecloth face mask and bitten my neck, the puncture swelling and itching.

As I made my way back, I came across a couple of wild hadrosaurs, spatulate bills nipping in and out of clusters of pine needles, the horny sheaths impervious to the sharp jabs. Their up-and-down chewing, so unlike a cow’s, made sounds similar to wood rasps as the batteries of thousands of flat molars ground the foliage and small cones. This was the closest I’d come to any large living dinosaurs outside of the protection of the Jeep. I could hear their stomachs rumbling and was made woozy by the pungent methane wind they gave off.

I also ran into my first mammal, a chocolate-colored furball with long limbs, a naked rat-like tail, and an inquisitive chipmunk face, complete with little triangular ears on top. Mammalian paleontology wasn’t my field, but I fancied that this little beast might even have been Purgatorius, the first primate, known from a lot of Paleocene material from nearby Montana and from one admittedly contested tooth from the very end of the Cretaceous.

We regarded each other for thirty seconds or so, the mammal’s quick black eyes locked with mine. For me, it was a special moment, meeting my great-to-the-nth grandfather, and I kidded myself that the little proto-monkey sensed our kinship, too, for he didn’t scamper away until one of the hadrosaurs let out a multi-toned bleat. I watched him scurry off into the undergrowth, feeling both sad and proud that soon he would no longer have to peep around the legs of the mighty colossuses that now strode the land. The meek shall inherit the Earth…

The little arrow on my homing device told me that I should go straight ahead, but the forest looked dense that way, with thick vines and foliage like cooked spinach draped from the branches. If I veered to the east, perhaps that would—

Claws dug into my right shoulder.

My heart skipped several beats. I jumped forward and twisted around, fumbling for the rifle in my backpack. A troodon stood there, its drawn-out head tilted to one side, great unblinking eyes regarding me. Was the beast Het-ridden? Or was it wild? I rested the butt of the rifle against my shoulder and the two of us continued to stare at each other. This troodon was smaller than the ones Klicks and I had encountered earlier, and its face was freckled with brown spots. Probably a male.

“No.”

The word, as before, sounded raw, torn from the animal’s throat. That the reptile was a vehicle for a Het made me no less nervous. In fact, I thought I’d better take some precautions. “Back off,” I said. “I want you to stay at least five meters away from me.”

“Why?”

“So you won’t try to enter me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“What is trust?” said the thing.

“Back off! Now!” I gestured with the rifle.

The troodon hesitated for a moment, then took a couple of steps back.

“Farther,” I said.

It took two more long steps.

I set the rifle on the ground in such a way that I could scoop it up in an instant. I then swung my backpack off my shoulders. Inside I had a bunch of things, including two cans of Diet Coke and our only can amongst all our provisions of diet A W root beer. I grabbed the root beer with my left hand and fumbled for my walkie-talkie with my right. I thumbed the unit on. “Klicks?”

Static for several seconds. Then: “Hey, Brandy—good to hear from you. Listen, I’m finding a dusting of iridium in a recent sedimentation layer, all right—as you’d expect given the impact crater we saw in Mexico—and there’s some shocked quartz, too. But neither are present in the quantities I’d have anticipated based on terminal-Cretaceous samples collected in our time, and—”

“Not now,” I said.

“What?”

“I’ve been approached by another troodon occupied by a Het.”

“Where are you?”

“About ten kilometers west of the Sternberger, I think.”

“I’m at least twenty-five kilometers east,” said Klicks. Probably a couple of hours’ drive for him, given the rough terrain.

“Klicks, I’m holding in my hand a can of A W diet root beer.”

The troodon tilted its head at me oddly.

“Good for you,” said Klicks.

“Shut up and listen,” I snapped. “I’m holding the only can we’ve got of A W diet root beer. I’ve got my finger on the pull-tab. If the troodon gets too close to me, or if I’m attacked in any way, or any attempt is made to enter me, I’ll pull the tab.”

“I don’t—”

“When you next see me, make me show you the can. Make sure it’s unopened.”

“Brandy, you’re paranoid.”

The troodon’s head bobbed. “Un-nec-esss-ary,” it hissed.

“Klicks, I want you to get some object that you can use the same way,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “I want you to have a signal for me.”

“Brandy—”

“Do it!”

Static again. Then: “I’ve got a pen here. I could click it open if I’m entered.”

“No. It’s got to be something that’s not undoable. Something you can do fast. And something that we only have one of.”

More static. “Okay. I’ve got a cellophane-wrapped package with two Twinkies in it.”

“You’ve got Twinkies?”

“Uh, yes.”

“All right. What are you going to do with them?”

“Umm, okay. They’re in the breast pocket of my jacket now.”

“You’re wearing that loose-fitting khaki jacket, right?”

“That’s right. If I’m approached too closely, I’ll squish them.”

“Okay. One more thing, Klicks. How much do you weigh?”

“About ninety kilos.”

“Exactly how much? You had a final physical just before we left. Exactly how much do you weigh?”

“Umm, eighty-nine point five, I think.”

“All right. I’m one-oh-four point nothing.”

“That much? Goodness!”

“Just remember the damn figure.”

“One hundred and four. The number of weeks in two years. Got it. But Brandy—”

He was about to point out that we didn’t have any scales with us, except for a tiny mineralogical one that only went up to two kilograms. “That’s fine,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m heading back to the ship now.”

“I want to finish these core samples,” Klicks said. “I’ll still be several hours.”

“Okay. Just don’t eat the Twinkies. Talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

I returned the walkie-talkie to my backpack and picked up the rifle again.

“About what was all that?” hissed the Het.

I held up the pop can. “Just keep your distance. See this metal tab? If I pull it, it will break the seal on this container in such a way that it can’t be reclosed. It’ll only take me half a second to do that. I doubt you can enter me that quickly.”

“I do not intend to enter you now.”

“And,” I said, “if you do enter me, Klicks knows how much I weigh. The discrepancy caused by your mass within me would be a dead giveaway.” Actually it wouldn’t. Even if we’d had a big enough scale, Klicks’s and my weight would normally fluctuate by more than the weight of a Het glob, depending on how much food and waste we were carrying around. Still, it was a credible-sounding threat.

“You seem concerned about us,” said the Het. “All we want to do is talk.”

I lowered the gun barrel, but made no move to return the rifle to my backpack. “Very well. What do you want to talk about?”

“Cabbages and kings,” said the beast. That was my taste in literature, not Klicks’s, and this troodon also spoke with what Klicks would call a Canadian accent. Although this wasn’t old Diamond-snout from yesterday morning, evidently its rider was the same Het I had encountered then. Or maybe—it was hard to wrap my mind around these concepts—maybe, as the Het had tried to explain before, individuality meant nothing to them. Did they all know what any one of them knew? How did they communicate?

“Cabbages and kings?” I repeated, then shrugged. “Charles III is king. And I only eat cabbage in coleslaw.”

The dinosaur, still many meters away, cocked its head at me and then digested the information with a measured one-two blink. “Thank you for sharing that,” it said, a vacuous little phrase that I’d picked up from Dr. Schroeder. “You are some considerable distance from your timeship.”

“Humans have to walk for exercise. It—aids our digestion.”

“Ah.”

I regarded the beast. “This isn’t one of the troodons that we encountered before,” I said.

“True.”

“But you are the same Het?”

“More or less.”

“Why did you change dinosaur bodies?”

The troodon blinked. “It’s medium-rare for us to occupy the same vehicle for more than a day or two. We find it…” The rasping voice trailed off as the Het searched for the appropriate term. “Claustrophobic.” It shuffled its feet. “Also, we need to leave our vehicles so that we can interact directly to share memories.”

If that was true, then the Hets vacating Klicks’s and my bodies of their own volition didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t evil. I wondered…

“Tell me,” the thing said casually, “where exactly is asshole Klicks?”

“What?”

“Klicks the bastard asshole. Where is he?”

“Why are you calling him that?”

“Klicks? Ah, is pun. Pun links now. His unique identifying word is Miles, but you call him Klicks, short form for kilometers.” The beast tossed back its long face. “Ho ho.”

“No, why are you calling him names? Asshole, bastard. Why those names?”

“Names you call him. I just—Is usage wrong?” The troodon tipped its head a little. “Your language difficult, imprecise for us.”

“You’ve never heard me call him those things. He’d knock my teeth out.”

“Interesting. But you call him by such words constantly. We absorb that from you.”

Oh, shit. “You mean, that’s what you found in my head?”

“Yess, strong connections. Syllogism, no? All Klickses are assholes, but not all assholes are Klickses. Asshole, bastard, home-wrecker, wife-stealer, shithead, coon—”

“Coon? My God, do I really think that?” I felt my cheeks growing red. “The others are all subjective, at least. But a racial slur … I didn’t, I mean—”

“Coon not good? No, it is—ah, a reference to his skin color. It is darker than yours. That is significant?”

“No. It’s a meaningless difference—an adaptation to more equatorial sunlight, that’s all. Listen, don’t call him that, please.”

“ ‘That’? Why would I call him ‘that’?”

“No, I mean, please don’t call him coon. Or asshole. Or any of those other names.”

“Inappropriate terms? What should I call him?”

“Klicks. Just Klicks.”

“Klicks-just-klicks. Links.”

Racial slurs. I felt ashamed. You think something is dead and buried, but it’s there, all along, waiting for a chance to come back to life.

Still … I was fascinated by what the reptile had said. I knew I should let the matter drop, but I couldn’t resist. “Tess,” I said after a moment. “What words do you—link—to Tess?”

“Tess.” The reptile shifted its weight between its two feet and a nictitating membrane passed over each of its iridescent eyes in turn. “Dear. Honey. Bunny. Sweetheart. Lambchop.” I cringed at the litany of pet names. “Lover. Only-one-for-me. Lost. Stolen. Gone.”

“Okay,” I said quickly. “I get the idea. What about ‘Dad.’”

“Dad?” A moment of silence. “Burden.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

I looked away. I’m sure the alien couldn’t detect or even comprehend my embarrassment, but a wave of guilt washed over me. “What did you really want to talk about?” I said at last.

“Where have you been?”

“Out. Just walking around.”

“Ah, good. Did you see anything interesting?”

“No. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Shall I walk you back to the Sternberger?”

I sighed. “If you must. It’s this way.”

“No. Go this way. Cutshort.”

As in, his life was cut short, no doubt. “You mean shortcut, I hope.”

“Yess.”

We headed off into the woods.