Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

Waiters slipped in and out of existence. They’d scurry behind the screen hiding the entrance to the time funnel and then pop out immediately on the other side with heavily-laden trays. Pentaceratopsian steaks smothered in mushrooms for those who liked red meat. Confuciusornis almondine for those who preferred white. Radicchio and truffles for the vegetarians.

All to the accompaniment of music, pleasant chitchat, and a view that could be matched nowhere else.

Gertrude Salley had been assigned a table as far from Leyster’s as Griffin could arrange. The seating plan seemed to be working out well. She certainly was charming her patrons. Right now she was flapping her arms to demonstrate how pteranodons managed to take off from the surface of the ocean. Everyone was laughing, of course, but in a respectful way. Salley knew exactly how far she could go without losing her audience.

Then Griffin’s silent beeper went off, and he had to duck out of the late Cretaceous and back into the kitchen, up home in the year 2082.

Young Jimmy Boyle was waiting for him.

Where the old Jimmy Boyle by his very presence radiated competence and calm strength, his younger version was a real pain in the ass. He had a loud mouth, and a special talent for creating chaos.

This time was no exception. The kitchen was swarming with police. In one corner, a man stood very straight, eyes raised, repeating the Lord’s Prayer while his hands were glue-cuffed behind his back. A woman lay, on the floor, weeping and clutching her leg as a medbot built a stretcher around her. Both the man and the woman were dressed as waiters. Somebody who had to be the chef was saying, “—outrageous! You must get all these people out of my kitchen. I cannot work with them underfoot!”

“Fucking Americans,” Jimmy Boyle said. He meant his two captives. “Think they still own the world.”

“The kids in Bomb Disposal will be wanting these, sir,” an officer said politely. He held several pieces of what had been a coffee samovar. “For analytical purposes.”

“Yeah, right, go ahead.” To Griffin, Jimmy Boyle said, “Almost touchingly old-tech, sir. Gelignite, a wind-up clock, and a friction striker. Still, enough to punch a hole right through every window in Xanadu. If you hadn’t notified me—”

Griffin waved him silent. “Good work, Boyle,” he said, in a voice meant to be heard by everyone in the room. He clapped a hand over the man’s shoulder, turning him away from the others. In a voice so low Jimmy Boyle was forced to bow his head to hear, he added, “You asshole. This isn’t this way it’s done. You were supposed to write up a report afterwards, and forward it to me the day before the Undersea Ball. Then, if I thought it was important to do so, I’d‘ve put in an appearance. It wasn’t your place to make this decision.”

“Well, I thought you’d be wanting to know about this as soon as possible.”

“What I wanted was for you to be capable of taking care of this sort of fiasco by yourself. Now, can you do the job or not?”

Jimmy Boyle stiffened. “By damn, sir, you know I can.”

“Then do it.”

With Griffin looking on, Jimmy Boyle spoke with the chef. First he offered to hire another caterer to finish the supper if she wasn’t up to the job. It would be easy enough for him to go a week or two into her past and have somebody waiting outside ready to take over right now. Then he asked what additional resources would be needed to keep things on track. Finally, he assured her that she’d have replacement waiters in five minutes.

Boyle then signed off with the police and let them take the two creation terrorists away. He called the waitstaff together, and spoke briefly and intensely about what had happened, and the need to maintain their professional standards. Then he routed a call for two replacements several hours into the local past, and had them briefed and on duty within the time he’d promised the chef.

Then, finally, Griffin felt free to leave.

It had been an ugly one. And a close one, too. But he didn’t mention either fact to Jimmy Boyle. The boy had to learn to think for himself, and the sooner the better.

Before going back down the funnel, Griffin dropped into his office and wrote two memos: One was to the woman responsible for the seating arrangements, telling her to shift Leyster to the Borst-Campbell table and Salley to the furthest table from him. The second was to Leyster himself, two days before the Ball, directing him to drop a shark’s tooth in his pocket when he went. A big one. The sort of thing a precocious thirteen-year-old marine biologist wannabe would like.

Then he returned to Xanadu.

He arrived just as the tables were being cleared for dessert and coffee. He nodded to the pianist, who began to play. Another cue, and the lights faded to nothing.

On the surface above, it was bright afternoon. The dinner was an evening function and neatly calculated for a local time when just enough light filtered down this deep into the water to provide a dim, sunset-level illumination.

Griffin took the microphone out of his pocket and moved to the front of the room. “Folks, we just got lucky.” Heads craned.

Outside, a pod of plesiosaurs flew lazily by the window like great, long-necked, four-winged penguins, drawing a murmurous ooh from the diners. They were the most graceful creatures Griffin had ever seen, and that included whales. In his estimation, compared to plesiosaurs, whales were all bulk and no beauty.

“Here before you, we have three adults and five juvenile Elasmosaurus, the largest of the plesiosaurs, and the greatest of the reptiles ever to grace the seas. They’re neither as fast, nor as fierce as the mosasaurs we saw earlier. Yet I think you’ll agree with me that the sight of these animals alone makes tonight memorable.”

He didn’t mention that it was skillful use of the biochipped mosasaurs that had gently herded the plesiosaurs inward, toward the station. The reefs were rich with life here and the mosasaurs were out of sight, so the creatures began to feed. Plesiosaurs had almost no memory. They lived in the moment.

Griffin paused for a count of ten, relishing the beauty of those long, long necks as the plesiosaurs darted about, catching fish. Then he said, “There’ll be dancing soon. In the meantime, please feel free to stand and walk over to the windows. Enjoy.”

Somebody stood, a second and third followed, and then the room was filled with pleasant confusion. Griffin pocketed the microphone and checked his cheat sheet. Then he walked over to Esme’s table.

The adults were gone. Only Leyster and Esme remained. She was speaking to Leyster so earnestly she didn’t even notice his approach.

“But my teacher said that men and women pursue different reproductive strategies. That men try to scatter their seed as widely as they can, but women have more at stake, so they try to limit access to a single male.”

“With all due respect,” Leyster said, “your teacher is full of it. No species could survive very long if the males and females had different reproductive strategies.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s—oh, hello, Mr. Griffin!”

“I was just checking up to make sure our Mr. Leyster wasn’t boring you.”

“He could never do that!” Esme spoke with such conviction that Leyster actually blushed. “He was telling me about Dr. Salley’s work with plesiosaurs. Have you heard of that?”

“Well…” He had, but was surprised Leyster would bring it up.

One of the oldest puzzles in paleontology was whether plesiosaurs were viviparous or oviparous—whether they gave birth to their young alive or laid eggs. Fossil mosasaurs had been found which had died in the act of giving birth. Nothing like that had ever been found for plesiosaurs. Nor had fossilized plesiosaur eggs been found.