Michael Swanwick - Bones of the Earth

Bit by bit, they were losing their grip on the machine age and sliding back into the stone age. It was a terrifying prospect not only because it was irreversible, but because they lacked the complex mastery of paleolithic technology that a stone age hunter had. Nils had spent most of the rainy season trying to make a bow before giving it up as a bad job. He hadn’t even been able to manufacture shafts straight enough for the arrows.

“Let’s go,” Leyster said, shouldering his pack. “I can tell you about the infrasound on the way.”

Lai-tsz had jury-rigged two recorders to detect infrasound. On their very first day using them, the crew back home had been able to establish that the valley was full of sub-audible communications. More, according to Daljit, the messages were profoundly moving.

“They sing!” she’d told Leyster. “No, not like whales. Much lower, much more vibrant. Oh, it’s exquisite stuff. They played some for us over the phone. Jamal says we should be sure to hang onto the copyright. He says he’s sure a music company would be interested.”

“I was joking,” Jamal said weakly in the background.

“Oh, hush. You were not. Fortunately, our original equipment included directional microphones. Since Lai-tsz rigged up two recorders, it’s possible to point one at a tyrannosaur and another at a herbivore, record both simultaneously, and then play them back to see if you’ve got anything that looks like interspecific communication.”

“So, do they?”

“Well, it’s a little early to say…”

“Don’t be a tease, Daljit,” Jamal said.

“But yes, yes it really does look like there is.”

When Leyster finished relating the conversation, Tamara said, “That is so neat!”

“Aw, c’mon,” Chuck said in a mock-hurt voice. “How can you be so impressed by something we already suspected, and not by my theory? I mean, let’s face it, it’s got the K-T extinction, continental drift, the Chicxulub impactor, and mass dinosaur madness all in one sexy package.”

“Yes, but those are just ideas. Forgive me, Chuck, but anybody can come up with ideas. What the guys back home have done goes way beyond ideas. They’ve established a new fact! It’s like the universe had this secret it’s been keeping since forever, and now it’s been found out. It’s like reading the mind of God.”

“Now who’s being grandiose?”

“Louis Agassiz once wrote that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle,” Leyster said. “I’m siding with Tamara on this one.”

Chuck shrugged. “Anyway, they’ve established that different species talk to one another infrasonically. I consider that step one toward proving my theory.”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah! That’s not the way science works. First you gather the data, then you analyze it, and then you come up with a hypothesis and a plan for testing it. In that order.”

“And yet scientists come up with idiot notions and set out to prove them all the time,” Tamara said. “I could name names, if you want. Your system works fine in theory. But things are different in the real world.”

“I’m going to move to Theory someday,” Chuck said. “Everything works there.”

“Sometimes you guys make me question my ability to teach. You can’t prove a hypothesis in paleontology—you can only test it to see if it can be destroyed. If, over time, a hypothesis resists every attempt made to falsify it, then you can say that it’s extremely robust and would require an extraordinary mass of data to unseat it. The germ theory of disease is a good example of that. The evidence for it is compelling. People bet their lives every day that it’s true. But it’s not proven. It’s simply the best available interpretation of what we know.”

“Well, given what we know, I think my hypothesis is the best available interpretation of the facts.”

“It’s not parsimonious, though. It’s not the simplest possible explanation.”

Arguing and keeping a wary eye out for predators, they made another few miles’ progress through the forest.

They were following an old hadrosaur trail when the woods opened out into a bright clearing. It had recently been browsed almost to the ground, and was covered with new growth, fresh green shoots shot through with white silkpod blossoms and red-tipped Darwin’s broomsticks. A stream ran through it. On the far side of the stream, the woods resumed with a stand of protomagnolia trees in full bloom. Their scent filled the clearing.

Birds scattered as they stepped out of the darkness. They waited cautiously for a moment, then took a step forward. Then another.

Nothing attacked them.

Gratefully, Leyster let his knapsack slip to the ground. “Let’s take a break,” he said.

“Second the motion,” Tamara said.

“Moved and carried.” Chuck plopped to the ground.

They put their packs together, and sat leaning against them with their legs stretched out. Leyster rolled up his pants legs and checked for ticks. Chuck took off a shoe and rubbed his foot.

“Let’s take a look at that,” Tamara said. Then, “The sole is practically falling off! Why didn’t you say something?”

“I knew you’d want to tape it up, and we’ve got so little left.”

Leyster already had the duct tape out of his pack. “What do you think it’s for?” The shoe had been repaired before, but the tape had abraded where the sole met the upper. He rewrapped it with generous swaths of new tape overtop the old. “There. That should hold for a while.”

Chuck shook his head ruefully. “We have got to start making new shoes.”

“Easier said than done,” Leyster said. “We can’t do oak tanning because we haven’t found anything that looks to be ancestral to the oak. And the problem with brain tanning is that dinosaurs have such tiny little brains. We’ll have to harvest a lot of them.”

“Sounds like the pioneer method for making a toothpick,” Chuck observed: “First, you chop down a redwood…”

Everybody chuckled. They were silent for a while. Then Tamara lazily said, “Hey, Chuck.”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t really believe that stuff about the Chicxulub impactor making the Earth ring, do you?”

“What’s so difficult about that? The Earth rings for two to three weeks after a major earthquake, and the force of the collision was six times ten to the eighth power stronger than any earthquake. Now, most of that force went into heat and other forms of energy. If less than one tenth of one percent of that went into elastic energy, as seems entirely plausible, then the elastic wave propagation would be enough to make the Earth ring for a hundred years.”

“Oh.”

“The only question is how much the heat energy changed the properties of the crust. If it became more viscous and less solid, then the more viscous crust would damp out the elastic waves. However, I do not think that happened. Extremely unlikely, in my humble opinion. Though I am open to new interpretations, if the data are there to support them.”

Leyster smiled to himself. Chuck had a good mind. He’d make a fine scientist as soon as he learned to stop jumping to conclusions. He sighed, stretched, and stood.

“Time to go, kids.” Leyster took a reading, pointed toward the protomagnolias. Tamara came after him, and then Chuck.

They splashed through the stream and back into gentle shadow.

“Keep alert,” Chuck said. “Don’t be distracted by how peaceful it all looks.”

He had barely finished speaking when the dromies attacked.

Dromaeosaurs were not particularly large as dinosaurs went. They were the size of dogs, somewhere between knee– and hip-high to a human, but, like dogs, they were nothing you wanted to have attack you. This particular pack was covered in tawny green feathers, all short save for the wrist-fans on the females, which were used to shade their eggs when brooding. The feathers, the savage little teeth in their whippet-narrow heads, and the oversized claws on their hind feet combined to make them look like Hell’s own budgerigars.