Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

Nobody said anything.

“Imagine being a teenage girl in a world full of nothing but your parents. No girlfriends. Nobody to confide in. No boyfriends, no dating, no high school prom. This is going to be one screwed-up child. When her sex drive kicks in, she’s going to want to take part in our little physical therapy sessions. What do we tell her then?”

“I really don’t think that—” Patrick began.

“Either we say yes or we tell her she can’t. I don’t know which is going to twist her around more.”

“And I don’t know why you’re being so unpleasant,” Tamara said.

“Okay, she gets through adolescence. Somehow. Now she’s an adult. She’s young and full of beans in a camp full of elders who are starting to slow down. Everything she wants to do is just a little too wild, a little too fast, a little too much for everyone else. Majority rule, of course. She’s outvoted every time.

“Meanwhile, we keep on getting older. More and more of the work of caring for the rest of us falls upon her. She resents it, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Where else can she go? So she drudges away, surly and unhappy. Until finally we begin to die off.

“At first, it’s going to be a relief for her. She’ll feel guilty about that, of course. It’ll warp her even more. But she’s still human. She’ll be happy to see us go. But then as, one by one, the human world gets smaller, she’ll slowly begin to realize exactly how lonely she’s going to get. Until that bright day dawns when she’s the last woman on Earth. Think about that! The last woman on Earth. Perfectly, absolutely, and abjectly alone. With maybe twenty years more left to live.

“Tell me this: Just how sane do you think she’ll be by then? Just how human?”

Patrick slowly sucked in the air between his teeth. “Well, but… what’s the alternative?”

“I’m afraid Lai-tsz’s going to have to—”

To Leyster’s absolute astonishment, Tamara balled up her fist, and hit him in the stomach. Hard.

He doubled over.

She stood over him, her face white with anger, and said, “That’s not an alternative! And if it were, it wouldn’t be your choice to make. ‘Wasn’t she supposed to be on some kind of birth control?’ Jesus Christ, didn’t you give ten seconds thought before sticking your dick into her? There’s no form of birth control that works every time—women always have to take that into account, so why can’t men?”

She snatched up her knapsack and spear.

“Anyway,” she said over her shoulder, “the odds are that we’ll all be dead in five years. So it doesn’t really matter in the first place!”

She strode angrily away.

“Whew!” Patrick smiled embarrassedly. “That was brutal. Even if—forgive me for saying this—some of it was deserved.” He helped Leyster stand up. “You okay?”

Leyster just shook his head.

So they weren’t as careful as they usually were on the trip home. Tamara led, walking fast and staring straight ahead of herself until she was a small figure far ahead of them. Leyster and Patrick followed as best they could.

They walked along the river until they came to Hell Creek, and then turned inland. Leyster was idly watching some faraway troodons cracking open mussels when Patrick said, “Uh oh.”

“What?” Leyster turned and saw a juvenile tyrannosaur—it was Scarface, the one that had wandered away that morning—standing almost motionless in the distance. Only its head moved.

It was tracking Tamara.

“Tamara!” Patrick bellowed, and gestured widely toward the tyrannosaur.

Tamara spun, saw the predator, and then looked wildly about for a place to flee. The land by the river was flat and almost featureless. There were not many natural sanctuaries or hiding places here.

“Thorns! Thorns!” Patrick shouted. He waved both hands upward and then forward, pointing to a distant thicket of thorn trees. If Tamara could reach them, there was a chance she could burrow deep into the center of the tangle, where the young tyrannosaur with its relatively thin hide would not care to follow.

All in one motion, Tamara shed her knapsack and began to run.

Scarface leapt forward, after her.

Tamara had always been a jock. She ran like a sprinter, knees high, her spear flashing up and down with her arms.

She was running, but not fast enough. The juvenile was coming straight toward her. And it was a lot faster than she could ever hope to be.

She couldn’t possibly reach the thorn trees in time.

She wasn’t going to make it.

As if from a great distance, Leyster saw himself race forward to place himself between her and Scarface. It was an instinctive action, one totally beyond his control. He was shocked to realize what he was doing.

When a tyrannosaur charged, he knew, it locked its attention entirely upon its desired prey. The anatotitans might scatter in a dozen directions, but it couldn’t be distracted because it only wanted that hadrosaur which it had fixed upon. Not that one but this one. Nothing else would do.

Still, if he were right in front of Scarface when it reached him, even something as single-minded as a tyrannosaur would gobble him down.

That was Leyster’s theory, anyway.

With a kind of dreamlike wonder, he saw Scarface bear down upon him. The tyrannosaur’s mouth was open, the devil’s own cutlery drawer of sharp, serrated teeth. He came to a halt directly before the brute. He braced his feet.

Leyster’s body trembled with the need to flee. Run! it demanded.

But he stayed there.

The tyrannosaur splashed across the creek in two bounds. It was almost upon him. It grew and swelled in his sight, until there was nothing in the world at all but that enormous, demonic head. He could count all five silvery parallel slashes across its snout.

Then, incredibly, as it reached him, it lifted that great head upward and to the side, and then back again, so that he was effortlessly knocked out of the creature’s way.

It was like being shoved aside by a Percheron. With a slam of pain Leyster stumbled back against Patrick, who was there, somehow, grabbing at his shoulders, trying to pull him away from the charging tyrannosaur.

He fell.

He’d been rejected. Scarface wanted Tamara and no other.

A strange sensation of mingled disappointment and relief flooded Leyster then. It wasn’t his fault now, if Tamara died. He’d done all that was humanly possible.

But even as he fell, Leyster realized that he was still carrying the shovel. In his confusion, he’d forgotten to drop the thing. So, desperately, he swung it around with all his strength at the juvenile’s legs.

Tyrannosaurs were built for speed. Their leg bones were hollow, like a bird’s. If he could break a femur…

The shovel connected, but not solidly. It hit without breaking anything. But, still, it got tangled up in those powerful legs. With enormous force, it was wrenched out of his hands. Leyster was sent tumbling on the ground.

Somebody was screaming. Dazed, Leyster raised himself up on his arms to see Patrick, hysterically slamming the juvenile, over and over, with the butt of the shotgun. He didn’t seem to be having much effect. Scarface was clumsily trying to struggle to its feet. It seemed not so much angry as bewildered by what was happening to it.

Then, out of nowhere, Tamara was standing in front of the monster. She looked like a warrior goddess, all rage and purpose. Her spear was raised up high above Scarface, gripped tightly in both hands. Her knuckles were white.

With all her strength, she drove the spear down through the center of the tyrannosaur’s face.

It spasmed, and died.

Suddenly everything was very still.