Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Then something strange happens.

Four boys are sitting on a log nearby, tossing knives at a circle drawn in the dirt in a game Paha Sapa knew well as a boy, when suddenly there are soft musical notes in the air.

One of the boys excuses himself from the game, reaches into a pocket on his deerskin trousers, and answers something that must be a telephone but that is no larger or thicker than a playing card. The boy speaks for a minute—still in smooth Lakota—then folds away the impossible phone, returns it to his pocket, and comes back to the game.

— Have you seen enough to understand, Paha Sapa? It took us years before we understood that the ecosystem of the Pleistocene Megafauna Rewilding Project would be worthless unless we rewilded the most central of all the late-Pleistocene megafauna predators—man. But this time, there will be no mass extinctions because of our presence. Herd population management applies not just to the four-leggeds. And Connie was the first among us to see who deserved the choice—the right—to live in the PMRP Reserves, as long as they did so by the rules of the epoch they had come to live in. The children’s phones… well, some things cannot be denied, in any culture, and it was agreed that they were an important safety feature. Adults may choose to live among jaguars, lions, and grizzly bears, but children should be able to phone for help. Even so, the phones work only within the confines of the preserve and the children must give them up when they turn fifteen if they want to remain living in the preserve.

Paha Sapa knows that he’s dreaming now but it’s all right. Like Hamlet, what he always feared most about death was the possibility that one might still dream.

But this is all right.

The raven launches itself into the air and flaps for altitude, circling first to gain height and then heading southwest.

Once airborne, Paha Sapa sees something to the northeast that he missed before. A ribbon of silver steel running along the east-west river valley and silver-and-glass glinting carriages moving slowly beneath the ribbon.

Paha Sapa knows at once what it is. He has seen pictures of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn —the monorail in Wuppertal, Germany, built and opened sometime around 1900. Just as with that Schwebebahn , he can see the sleek carriages hanging under the thin rail line here, the view unimpeded from the mostly glass-walled cars. With his raven-vision, he can see the silhouettes of the passengers even from miles away and from thousands of feet higher. Some are seated; some are standing. It reminds Paha Sapa of the joyous passengers in the 1893 Ferris Wheel.

— Three hundred trekker permits and a few commercial safari camps, of course, carefully regulated, but more than forty-two million people a year—tourists—pay to ride through all or part of the Great Plains Pleistocene Megafauna Rewilding Preserve. It’s become North America’s preeminent tourist attraction. But it’s time for you to go home, Paha Sapa. As much as we hate to see you go.

Paha Sapa feels right now much as he felt that day on the Ferris Wheel on the Midway of the Great White City—the first hours he spent with Rain.

He thinks— I don’t need to go. I’m already in a better version of Heaven than my people or Rain’s father could ever concoct. But if it’s time to go to Heaven, I’m ready.

The voices’ collective laugh sounds a bit like Robert’s, much like Rain’s, only a little like Limps-a-Lot’s, some like a lady’s he’s never met, and not at all that much like the Six Grandfathers’. The last words they will ever say to him are odd.

— Go to Heaven? Like hell. That baptism went to your head, Paha Sapa. There’s too much work left undone.

THE RAVEN FLIES DUE WEST and then north by west.

The ocean of time flows in, covering everything below like low clouds, and the shafts of sunlight on the water seem to move with the flying bird. Paha Sapa tries to remember the sentence he likes from Bleak House , but he is not able to form coherent thoughts.

The sea of time ebbs away. The low, rolling hills below are brown and tan and brown again, the only green in the meandering river valley with its picket line of old cottonwoods.

The raven does not swoop this time; it drops in a near-vertical high-speed dive that terrifies Paha Sapa.

No… I cannot… I’m not ready… I don’t…

Ravens listen to no one. It does not slow as it continues its mad dive toward the brown hill with its high brown grass.

The impact is terrible.

THEY LIED.

As much as they love him—and he knows they do—they lied.

This is Heaven.

Paha Sapa is lying on the top step of the stairs leading down to the Great Basin near the Columbian Fountain in front of the main Administration Building in the White City, with his head in Rain’s lap and with Rain looking down at him with concern. He does not even care that other people have gathered around.

His lips are dry, but he whispers up to his concerned darling— Tokša ake wancinyankin ktelo.

“I will see you later.” It’s the phrase he taught her just two hours ago in the Ferris Wheel and it is their bond of betrothal. Both know it. Neither have acknowledged it yet.

— Oh, Monsieur Slow Horse, we are so relieved.

It is not Rain speaking but the older woman. The mother.

His daughter-in-law. Madame Renée Zigmond Adler de Plachette. (How strange to meet someone with his darling’s last name.)

And the woman on whose lap his head is resting is not twenty-year-old Rain but his seventeen-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, the only-just-pregnant and engaged-to-be-married Mademoiselle Flora Daelen de Plachette.

Paha Sapa tries to sit up but three pairs of hands push him back down.

The mustached chauffeur—Roger—has joined them, Paha Sapa realizes. Roger has brought water in—amazingly—a crystal pitcher. He offers a crystal glass with—more amazingly, impossibly—real ice in it and Paha Sapa obediently sips the iced water. It tastes wonderful.

Roger helps him to a sitting postion, and while the ladies are standing and brushing off dried grass and briars, the chauffeur whispers something in French or Belgian or, more likely, Irish, and surreptitiously hands Paha Sapa a small silver flask. Paha Sapa drinks.

It is the first whiskey he has drunk since he was seventeen years old, and it is by far the best he has ever drunk.

Roger helps him to his feet while both the ladies ineffectually paw and push and pull at him with their little white hands. Paha Sapa sways but, with Roger’s help, stays standing.

— I was sure I was dead. Certain I’d had a stroke.

Roger says in an American-enough accent now—

— Sunstroke, more likely. Better get in out of the sun.

Paha Sapa can hear the unspoken “old timer” at the end of that. He just nods.

His son’s strangely middle-aged wife, Renée (he hopes to God that they’ll be on a first-name basis soon), says—

— Monsieur… I am sorry, I must become used to the American expression… Mister Slow Horse…

— Please call me Paha Sapa. It means Black Hills, and it’s my real name.

— Ah, oui… yes… of course. Robert did tell me this. Mr. Paha Sapa, we are staying at the… oh, I can’t think of the name of it, but it appears to be the only decent hotel in Billings… Roger knows the name… and if we leave now, we could have lunch together in the dining room there. We have much, I think, to talk about.