Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

“Have a seat, both of you.” Griffin picked up a piece of chalk. Presentation technology shifted so often in the twenty-first century, from electronic whiteboards to interflats, smartboards and body interpreters, that no one person could manage them all. But everybody knew how to use a blackboard.

He drew three parallel lines. “Okay, these are the pertinent segments of the Maastrichtian, the Turonian, and the Carnian.”

Most of Griffin’s publications were in the field of chronocybernetics. All of them were classified, at varying degrees of hardness. Some of them he suspected only he was cleared to read. But his single most useful contribution to the field was the invention of causal schematics. They were rather like a cross between cladograms and Feynman space-time diagrams, and were used to keep cause-and-effect events from becoming entangled.

Briskly, he overlaid the lines with a series of linked circles representing stable areas of operation. Then he cut through them with branching consequence lines. Completed, the schematic showed a major anomaly nested deep within Salley’s actions. Young Jimmy drew his breath in when he saw that. His older counterpart leaned back, looking sour.

“There’s our problem,” Griffin said. “Comments?”

Jimmy eyed Salley coldly. “How the hell did she get into her own history? We have safeguards in place.”

“She… Okay, let’s call the older vector Gertrude, to avoid confusion. And to remind you,” he said to a glaring Salley, “that she is by no means to be mistaken for yourself. Not any longer. Gertrude would’ve needed All Access clearance. Which is obtainable only from the Old Man. How she managed that, we’ll never know.”

“Couldn’t we—?”

“No. We can’t. Gertrude has disappeared on the far side of the anomaly. Any vector of Salley we could reach would be the linear descendant or predecessor of the one here with us, and completely blameless.”

The older Jimmy cleared his throat. “Are you sure?”

“Exactly what,” Salley said, “are you implying?”

Griffin held up a hand for peace. “It’s a fair question. Yes, I’m sure. Gertrude went to a great deal of effort to deceive Salley. Why? We don’t know, and we can’t even guess at her motives. So let’s not waste time trying.”

“What do we do now?” asked the older Jimmy. His younger self leaned forward.

“Whatever else, we’ve got an expedition to rescue. We need to speak with our sponsors.”

“Not possible. Access to the Unchanging is the military’s bailiwick. Even the Old Man has a tough time getting through to them.”

“Then we’ll have to do an end run. Meet them on their home turf.” He paused significantly. “All of us.”

“It’d be easier,” young Jimmy said, “if you didn’t take her.”

“That’s not up for discussion.” It had been a long time since Griffin had done anything that was out-and-out illegal—he preferred to work within the system. If he was going off-track, he wanted Salley with him, and Jimmy as well. Each was cunning in a way the other was not. And he was going to need all the help he could get. “Where do we start?”

Young Jimmy got up and erased everything Griffin had drawn on the board. Then he picked up a piece of chalk and drew a complex series of interlinking up-and-down lines. “The Subway of the Gods,” he said with a sharkish grin. “Local stops. As per your memo, I brought along a list of weak links.”

“Weak links?” Salley asked.

“When we set up security,” Griffin said, “we made sure to stir in a few guards who were less than optimally bright. Just in case. None of them are on duty very long. You’d have to have hired them to know where they were.”

“Now here,” Jimmy tapped a node, “in 2103 is a perfect opportunity. Security officer Mankalita Harrison. Officious, ambitious, bottom of her class. Filling in for Sue Browder for a period of two days. Never met the Old Man. Best of all, we’ve kept those days almost perfectly undocumented. We can insert anything into that silence we want. But you’ll need All Access clearance to pull it off. Is there any way you can get hold of the Old Man’s ID?”

The Old Man was a creature of habit, and had been since he was a teenager. Sharpened pencils always to one side of the top drawer, a ream of cream-colored bond in the middle. Griffin knew where he would keep his authorization papers. He knew what the passcodes would be. “I can do it.”

Old Jimmy cleared his throat. “I notice you assume the Old Man won’t play along?”

“Trust me. He’ll never cooperate on this one.”

“Well, if you can get the ID, I can do the rest. We’ll need documentation from—”

Old Jimmy threw Griffin a look. Griffin, in response, turned to young Jimmy, and said, “Okay. We’ve game-planned this sort of thing out. Take care of the paperwork and get the boys in the shop to build us the crate. We’ll be leaving in fifteen minutes.”

“The crate?” Salley asked.

Griffin ignored her. “Oh, and we’ll need another person on the security team. Any recommendations?”

“I’ve heard good things about Molly Gerhard.”

“Get her. She leaves us at age forty-something to start her own business. Requisition her as close to the end as you can. The older the better.”

“Done.” The young man got up and left.

Griffin turned to the remaining Jimmy. “All right,” he said. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure I should…” He cocked an eyebrow toward Salley.

“I have no secrets from her. Speak openly.”

Jimmy sighed and shook his head. “When you get to be my age, you lose your taste for his kind of games.” He nodded toward the door on his. “Harry, I’m about to retire. I bought a bar on Long Island. Tomorrow is my last day.”

“Then give me your last day. Find the Old Man’s intercept point and keep him away from me until after the travel roster’s been filed. Take him out for drinks. Get him talking about the old days.”

Jimmy looked pained. “I understand how you feel. But there’s no way you can convince me to take sides here.”

Griffin studied Jimmy carefully, making him the focus of all his attention, to the perfect exclusion of everything else. He waited until Jimmy filled the universe, then said, “Do you remember that time in the Texas roadhouse, outside of San Antonio?”

Jimmy chuckled. He remembered, of course. It was a beat-up old redneck hangout with dollar bills stapled to the ceiling for decoration. They were in town for a rock and gem show where a generation-one geologist had planned to sell a fistful of particularly flashy Caudipteryx feathers to a private collector. This was in 2034, a week before Salley’s press conference, and time travel was still a great secret. When the geologist checked into his hotel room, Griffin was there, Jimmy at his back, prepared to put the fear of God into the man. Later, they’d tossed the contraband out the rental car window on their way out of town.

They’d stopped in the roadhouse for a few beers and a game of pool (each played badly and fancied the other played worse), when a drunk came over and tried to pick a fight. “Hey!” he’d said. “Y’all ain’t faggots, are you?” He was an unshaven, sloppy-fat yahoo, who wore a plaid shirt open over a stained tee. But he had the look of someone who worked for a living. Griffin judged there was real muscle under that paunch. “ ‘Cause you sure look like a pair a god-damned faggots!”

“Have a beer,” Griffin suggested. “My treat.”

The drunk stared at him in pop-eyed astonishment. He wove a little from side to side. “Y’all saying that I take drinks from faggots? You must think that I’m a faggot too.”

Jimmy was bent over the pool table, lining up a shot. Without looking up, he said, “I don’t have time for you. But that’s my bottle over there on the bumper. You can cram it up your arse.”