Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

“How many of them do you think there are?”

“Here in the City? Maybe a hundred thousand? Two?”

“That’s just a frazz on the high side.” Salley was openly smirking now. “In my humble opinion.”

They came to a five-way splitting of the corridor that didn’t look familiar. Molly Gerhard paused to work it out. Two of the corridors were too narrow for the kind of traffic that the time funnel generated. A third led upward. She listened to the fourth: Silence. Down the fifth, she could hear the scuff of footsteps.

That was the one.

“You’re not going to explain yourself, are you?” she said when they were underway again. “You’re just going to keep making cryptic little comments and laughing at me when I can’t decipher them.”

“Yep.”

“I begin to see why so many people find you irritating.”

Salley stopped. “Irritating?” she said. “Just what do you mean by that?”

Another Unchanging emerged from the darkness, leading something that was Percheron-tall, fifteen feet long, and obviously a predator. It was black-lipped, hyena-ugly, and possessed of the longest jaw, sharpest teeth, and pig-stupidest eyes Molly had ever seen in her life. That great head rolled around to look down at her as it went by, and she shrank back against the wall.

In a flash of fear, she saw herself as that thing saw her: as meat. To it, she was nothing but a small monkey, two bites and gone, something it would gladly have snatched up and eaten if it hadn’t been controlled by its torc.

The acrid stench of it lingered in its wake.

“My God!” she gasped. “What was that?”

“Andrewsarchus,” Salley said impatiently. “Late Eocene, from Mongolia. The largest known terrestrial carnivorous mammal. It could eat lions for breakfast.” She gazed solemnly after it. “Wasn’t it lovely?”

“That’s… one term for it.” Repulsive son-of-a-sea-cook being another. Then, figuring Salley was now in as good a mood as she was ever going to be, she said, “What you want me to see—is it something about the Unchanging?”

“Oh, yes.” Again, that superior look. “It took me a while, but I’ve finally got them figured out. I know what they are now. And if you’re a patient little girl for just a few minutes more, I’ll prove it, okay?” The corridor ended in a cavernous darkness. “Hey, is this the place?”

They’d reached the heart of Terminal City.

Here, deep below the river, were the endless arrays of openings that served as the confluence of every branch of the time funnel in existence. Here, she could feel the power that the city contained, the living pulse so low and deep that the world hummed to its vibration. Gates crashed open and shut in the darkness as the Unchanging came and went. The din was astonishing.

Salley inhaled deeply. “Now this is more like it!”

Everything that had come through this dull granite-and-brushed-steel space had left its trace: Fusel oil and forsythia. Creosote and brine. Uin-tatherium dung and primate musk. Salley was waving another clue under her nose. Of all things that had passed this way, only the Unchanging had no smell.

It was obviously significant. But of what, she had no idea.

They stood at the end of the hallway, just outside the open space. The nearest funnel was only a few steps distant. The way to it was blocked by a single Unchanging. It studied them alertly, incuriously.

There were many entrances, but only theirs was guarded. To Molly, who had put in decades working the predestination game, this was a far more effective deterrent than any show of force would be. Its mere presence said that they had no chance of getting past it.

“Okay,” she said. “This is as far as we can go. What was it you wanted to show me?”

“This.” Salley reached up to her neck and then dumped something in Molly Gerhard’s hands. Her mutilated torc. Molly looked up just in time to see Salley flash a piece of paper at the Unchanging guard and stride past it.

“Hey!” Molly Gerhard started after her.

But her way was barred by the Unchanging. “You cannot pass without authorization,” it said.

“That woman has no right to use the time funnel,” she said quickly. “You’ve got to stop her.”

“You cannot pass without proper authorization.”

“But she doesn’t have proper authorization! Whatever she showed you was either forged or stolen.” Briefly, she considered trying to shove her way past. Then she remembered how easily the two Unchanging had carried that cruiser motorcycle between them, and decided it was wiser not to try.

“You cannot pass without authorization.”

“You’re not listening!”

“You cannot pass without authorization.”

Salley seized the iron gate of the nearest funnel entrance. It crashed open. She stepped within, turned to face forward.

“Wait!” Molly cried after her. “Where are you going?”

“Someplace more interesting than this.” Salley waggled her fingers. “Toodles.”

The gate slammed shut.

“Damn,” Molly Gerhard said.

Whatever it was that had just happened, she knew that Griffin was going to be pissed.

Griffin stood out front of his cottage, staring at a smoldering trash fire. There were charred box springs at its center. Molly Gerhard recognized the stench of burning mattress stuffing. Beside her, Jimmy wrinkled up his nose.

Griffin did not look up at their approach. “She’s gone,” he said.

“I know,” Molly Gerhard said. “I was just at the time funnel. I saw her leave.”

Griffin grunted.

“Maybe she’ll come back,” Jimmy suggested. “Women have been known to change their minds.”

“She’s not coming back. I’ve been through two divorces. I know the signs.”

Griffin was holding his wrist in one hand. Slowly, he forced the hand open and moved it away, so he could stare down at his watch. By the look on his face, it told him nothing.

“Well?” he said at last.

Molly, unsure what he wanted, didn’t respond.

“Where did she go? Why did she go there? What does she know that we don’t?”

“I really don’t—”

Jimmy squinted up at the sun. “It’s too hot out here for this kind of conversation,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

They talked in the village pub. It was, Jimmy had firmly pointed out to them, not a reproduction of a real pub, but rather a reproduction of an American imitation of one. Molly Gerhard didn’t care. She’d been in phonier. At least this one didn’t have cardboard leprechauns taped to the mirrors.

Griffin sat hunched over the bar. He looked like he could use a drink. She’d heard he had a problem there. In all her years working for him, she’d never actually seen Griffin with an alcoholic beverage in his hand. That could just be discretion, though.

She sat at a table, and Jimmy lounged by the window.

It seemed to Molly Gerhard that Salley would be pleased by how she dominated their thoughts in her absence, as she never had while she was here. She was one of those people who discredited their own ideas by the force with which they argued them. With her gone, they were able to give her speculations the serious consideration they deserved. They were able to admit that she might well be right.

“Salley’s the key to everything,” Molly said.

“How so?” Jimmy asked coolly.

“She’s figured it all out. Exactly what’s going on. Why we haven’t gotten anywhere in our negotiations. Everything.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes. She as good as said so any number of times.”

Griffin sighed, straightened, turned. Tick-tock, Molly thought. Like a machine resuming its function. This was one of the reasons she was leaving for the private sector. She didn’t like what manipulating destiny did to people, how it coarsened them. He took up the reins of the discussion. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s begin by establishing the precise order of events.”