Brian Aldiss - The Monster Trilogy

‘I’m sorry, Mina.’ He took her hand, looking compassionately into her green eyes. For all his kind of hasty blindness, one of his characteristics, he knew very well what was in her mind at that moment. They had had another son, Larry’s older brother Dick, killed in an automobile crash together with his young wife Molly. Dick had always been his father’s favourite, a brilliant youngster, athletic, and with a deep interest in science, particularly particle physics. Molly too had been clever and high-spirited, a redhead whose body, at the age of twenty-two, had been inextricably merged with her husband’s in the fatal crash. It was Molly, not Dick, who returned to Joe in dreams. Dick had gone beyond recall, leaving no space for his younger brother in his father’s affections.

With the long habit of a couple who have spent years together, Mina understood something of what passed through Joe’s mind. Her mood softened.

She said, ‘Odd how Kylie has the religious impulse, just like Molly.’ It was the first time Molly’s name had passed between them in years. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean …’

‘Molly wasn’t religious. She just had an intense interest in the supernatural.’

‘You’ve forgotten, Joe. Maybe just as well.’ She took his arm. ‘Let’s take a turn outside. It’s not too hot. I’m sorry I flew off the handle earlier. But Larry and Kylie are our only kids now. Let the dead bury the dead.’

As they reached the terrace, he half-turned to her, smiling.

‘That’s kind of a dumb expression, when you think, isn’t it? “Let the dead bury the dead …” What a macabre scene that conjures up! They’d have a problem with the shovels, eh?’

She laughed. The terrace, which overlooked the swimming pool, was roofed over with reinforced glass, the supporting pillars of which were entwined with different colours of bougainvillea. He took Mina’s hand and they began to stroll, happy to get away from the noise indoors.

A phone on the wall rang as Joe and Mina were passing it. She answered by reflex, then passed the receiver to her husband with a wry look. ‘You’re wanted, Joe. The world needs you.’

He stood in the partial shade, gazing at her face, listening to his old friend Bernard Clift speaking slowly to conceal his excitement.

‘Bernie, that can’t be,’ Bodenland said. ‘It’s impossible. You must have got it wrong. You know you’ve got it wrong. Your reputation —’

He listened again, shaking his head, then nodding. Mina watched him with amusement, as his eyes lit up.

‘I’ll be right over,’ he said, finally, ‘and I may bring some of the family along.’

As he hung up, Mina said, ‘Some fresh madness brewing! Whatever it is, Joe, count me out. I want to take part in an air display over Austin tomorrow.’

‘You can freefall any time, Mina. This is terrific. Would you have wanted to have been fishing in Bermuda while the Revolution was going on on the mainland?’

‘It was Bernie Clift?’

‘Clift doesn’t fool around. He’s made a find in Utah.’

He explained that Clift had rung to tell him about the discovery of a human-like skeleton. Clift had subjected fragments of bone to carbon-dating analysis. The remains dated out as 65.5 million years BP, before the present. This checked out with their discovery in late Cretaceous rock. They came from a time over sixty million years before mankind in its most primitive form walked the earth.

‘That doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ Mina said.

‘It’s a revolution in thought. Don’t ask me what it means but this we really have to see. It’s – well, incredible.’ He whistled. ‘Just to prove that Larry and Kylie do mean something to me, we’re going to take them along too.’

He was already moving back into the house. She caught his sleeve impatiently.

‘Joe, easy now. You’re so impetuous. Larry’s off in a couple of hours to honeymoon in Hawaii. They’re not going to want to stop off in Utah, to help us.’

He was looking at his watch.

‘They’ll love it, and so will you. That’s wonderful desert country where Bernie is. Utah’s Dixie, they used to call it. If we move, we can be there by nightfall. And remember, tell no one why we are going. Bernie’s discovery stays under wraps for now. Otherwise the world’s media will be on his back. Okay?’

She laughed, not without a hint of bitterness. ‘Oh, Joe – are you allowing me time to pack?’

He kissed her. ‘Grab your toothbrush. Tell Kylie to shake the confetti out of her hair.’

As the helicopter spiralled downwards over the Escalante Desert, a light flashed up at it, the setting sun reflected from the windscreen of a parked car. Looking down, Joe Bodenland could see cars and trailers clustered round a square of blue canvas. Four minutes later, they were landing nearby in a whirl of dust.

Joe was first from the copter, giving Mina a hand, followed by Kylie, looking around her rather nervously, with Larry, who had piloted them, last. Bernard Clift was standing there, waiting to greet them.

‘There’s an atmosphere of something here,’ Kylie told him, as they were introduced. ‘You must feel it, Bernie. I can’t explain it. I don’t like it. Oppressive.’

Clift laughed shortly. ‘That’s the Bodenland family, Kylie. You have to get accustomed to them. Now listen, Joe, I’m grateful for your prompt arrival, although frankly I didn’t expect you all to show up. We can find a place for you to sleep.’ He ran a hand through his hair in a self-conscious gesture. ‘This discovery is so important – and top secret. I have shut down our one phone line to Enterprise. The students are forbidden to leave the site, at least without my express permission. No radioing or any form of communication with the outside world. I’ve made them all swear to keep secrecy on this one, until I’m ready.’

‘As a matter of interest, Bernie,’ Bodenland said, ‘how did you get them to swear?’

He laughed. ‘On their mother’s virginity. On whatever they took seriously. Even the Bible.’

‘I’d have thought that custom had worn thin by now,’ Joe said.

‘Not with all of us, Joe,’ said Kylie, laughing.

Clift looked at her approvingly, then said, ‘Well, come and see before the light fades. That’s what you’re here for.’

He spoke jerkily, full of nervous energy.

As they followed him along a narrow track among low sage winding up the mountain, he said, ‘Joe, you’re a rational man and a knowledgeable one, I figured you’d know what to make of this find. If it’s what I think it is, our whole world view is overturned. Humans on the planet sixty million years earlier than any possible previous evidence suggested. A species of man here in North America, long before anything started crawling round Olduvai Gorge …’

‘Couldn’t be a visitor from somewhere else in the universe? There’s just the one grave?’

‘That’s why I’m insisting on secrecy. My findings are bound to be challenged. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition and I know it. But if we could find a second grave … So I don’t want anyone interfering – at least for a few days.’

Bodenland grunted. ‘Our organization has its own security unit in Dallas … I could get guards out here tomorrow prompt, if you need them. But you must be wrong, Bernie. This can’t be.’

‘No, it’s like the comic strips always said,’ Larry remarked, with a laugh. ‘Cavemen contemporary with the brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus. Must have been some kind of a race memory.’

Ignoring her son’s facetiousness, Mina said, ‘Bernard, hold it. I’m not prepared for this ancient grave of yours. I’m no dimmer than the next guy, but I can’t attach any meaning to sixty-five million years. It’s just a phrase.’