Hot Times in Magma City, 1990-95

  “Hello,” he says suddenly. “Who the hell are you?”

  In the midst of his imaginings a genuine horror has presented itself, emerging suddenly out of a grove of tree ferns. It is a towering bipedal creature with the powerful thighs and small dangling forearms of the familiar tyrannosaurus, but this one has an enormous bony crest like a warrior’s helmet rising from its skull, with five diabolical horns radiating outward behind it and two horrendous incisors as long as tusks jutting from its cavernous mouth, and its huge lashing tail is equipped with a set of great spikes at the tip. Its mottled and furrowed skin is a bilious yellow and the huge crest on its head is fiery scarlet. It is everybody’s bad dream of the reptilian killer-monster of the primeval dawn, the ghastly overspecialized end product of the long saurian reign, shouting its own lethality from every bony excrescence, every razor-keen weapon on its long body.

  The thinko scans it and tells him that it is a representative of an unknown species belonging to the saurischian order and it is almost certainly predatory.

  “Thank you very much,” Mallory replies.

  He is astonished to discover that even now, facing this embodiment of death, he is not at all afraid. Fascinated, yes, by the sheer deadliness of the creature, by its excessive horrificality. Amused, almost, by its grotesqueries of form. And coolly aware that in three bounds and a swipe of its little dangling paw it could end his life, depriving him of the sure century of minimum expectancy that remains to him. Despite that threat he remains calm. If he dies, he dies; but he can’t actually bring himself to believe that he will. He is beginning to see that the capacity for fear, for any sort of significant psychological distress, has been bred out of him. He is simply too stable. It is an unexpected drawback of the perfection of human society.

  The saurischian predator of unknown species slavers and roars and glares. Its narrow yellow eyes are like beacons. Mallory unslings his laser rifle and gets into firing position. Perhaps this one will be easier to kill than the colossal sauropod.

  Then a woman walks out of the jungle behind it and says, “You aren’t going to try to shoot it, are you?”

  Mallory stares at her. She is young, only fifty or so unless she’s on her second or third retread, attractive, smiling. Long sleek legs, a fluffy burst of golden hair. She wears a stylish hunting outfit of black sprayon and carries no rifle, only a tiny laser pistol. A space of no more than a dozen meters separates her from the dinosaur’s spiked tail, but that doesn’t seem to trouble her.

  He gestures with the rifle. “Step out of the way, will you?”

  She doesn’t move. “Shooting it isn’t a smart idea.”

  “We’re here to do a little hunting, aren’t we?”

  “Be sensible,” she says. “This one’s a real son of a bitch. You’ll only annoy it if you try anything, and then we’ll both be in a mess.” She walks casually around the monster, which is standing quite still, studying them both in an odd perplexed way as though it actually wonders what they might be. Mallory has aimed the rifle now at the thing’s left eye, but the woman coolly puts her hand to the barrel and pushes it aside.

  “Let it be,” she says. “It’s just had its meal and now it’s sleepy. I watched it gobble up something the size of a hippopotamus and then eat half of another one for dessert. You start sticking it with your little laser and you’ll wake it up, and then it’ll get nasty again. Mean-looking bastard, isn’t it?” she says admiringly.

  “Who are you?” Mallory asks in wonder. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing as you, I figure. Cretaceous Tours?”

  “Yes. They said I wouldn’t run into any other—”

  “They told me that too. Well, it sometimes happens. Jayne Hyland. New Chicago, 2281.”

  “Tom Mallory. New Chicago also. And also 2281.”

  “Small geological epoch, isn’t it? What month did you leave from?”

  “August.”

  “I’m September.”

  “Imagine that.”

  The dinosaur, far above them, utters a soft snorting sound and begins to drift away.

  “We’re boring it,” she says.

  “And it’s boring us, too. Isn’t that the truth? These enormous terrifying monsters crashing through the forest all around us and we’re as blasé as if we’re home watching the whole thing on the polyvid.” Mallory raises his rifle again. The scarlet-frilled killer is almost out of sight. “I’m tempted to take a shot at it just to get some excitement going.”

  “Don’t,” she says. “Unless you’re feeling suicidal. Are you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then don’t annoy it, okay?—I know where there’s a bunch of ankylosaurs wallowing around. That’s one really weird critter, believe me. Are you interested in having a peek?”

  “Sure,” says Mallory.

  He finds himself very much taken by her brisk no-nonsense manner, her confident air. When we get back to New Chicago, he thinks, maybe I’ll look her up. The September tour, she said. So he’ll have to wait a while after his own return. I’ll give her a call around the end of the month, he tells himself.

  She leads the way unhesitatingly, through the tree-fern grove and around a stand of giant horsetails and across a swampy meadow of small plastic-looking plants with ugly little mud-colored daisyish flowers. On the far side they zig around a great pile of bloodied bones and zag around a treacherous bog with a sinisterly quivering surface. A couple of giant dragonflies whiz by, droning like airborne missiles. A crimson frog as big as a rabbit grins at them from a pond. They have been walking for close to an hour now and Mallory no longer has any idea where he is in relation to his timemobile capsule. But the thinko will find the way back for him eventually, he assumes.

  “The ankylosaurs are only about a hundred meters further on,” she says, as if reading his mind. She looks back and gives him a bright smile. “I saw a pack of troodons the day before yesterday out this way. You know what they are? Little agile guys, no bigger than you or me, smart as whips. Teeth like saw blades, funny knobs on their heads. I thought for a minute they were going to attack, but I stood my ground and finally they backed off. You want to shoot something, shoot one of those.”

  “The day before yesterday?” Mallory asks, after a moment. “How long have you been here?”

  “About a week. Maybe two. I’ve lost count, really. Look, there are those ankylosaurs I was telling you about.”

  He ignores her pointing hand. “Wait a second. The longest available time tour lasts only—”

  “I’m Option Three,” she says.

  He gapes at her as though she has just sprouted a scarlet bony crust with five spikes behind it.

  “Are you serious?” he asks.

  “As serious as anybody you ever met in the middle of the Cretaceous forest. I’m here for keeps, friend. I stood right next to my capsule when the twelve hours were up and watched it go sailing off into the ineffable future. And I’ve been having the time of my life ever since.”

  A tingle of awe spreads through him. It is the strongest emotion he has ever felt, he realizes.

  She is actually living that gallant life of desperate heroism that he had fantasized. Avoiding the myriad menaces of this incomprehensible place for a whole week or possibly even two, managing to stay fed and healthy, in fact looking as trim and elegant as if she had just stepped out of her capsule a couple of hours ago. And never to go back to the nice safe orderly world of 2281. Never. Never. She will remain here until she dies—a month from now, a year, five years, whenever. Must remain. Must. By her own choice. An incredible adventure.

  Her face is very close to his. Her breath is sweet and warm. Her eyes are bright, penetrating, ferocious. “I was sick of it all,” she tells him. “Weren’t you? The perfection of everything. The absolute predictability. You can’t even stub your toe because there’s some clever sensor watching out for you. The biomonitors. The automedics. The guides and proctors. I hated it.”

  “Yes. Of course.”
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  Her intensity is frightening. For one foolish moment, Mallory realizes, he was actually thinking of offering to rescue her from the consequences of her rashness. Inviting her to come back with him in his own capsule when his twelve hours are up. They could probably both fit inside, if they stand very close to each other. A reprieve from Option Three, a new lease on life for her. But that isn’t really possible, he knows. The mass has to balance in both directions of the trip within a very narrow tolerance; they are warned not to bring back even a twig, even a pebble, nothing aboard the capsule that wasn’t aboard it before. And in any case being rescued is surely the last thing she wants. She’ll simply laugh at him. Nothing could make her go back. She loves it here. She feels truly alive for the first time in her life. In a universe of security-craving dullards she’s a woman running wild. And her wildness is contagious. Mallory trembles with sudden new excitement at the sheer proximity of her.

  She sees it, too. Her glowing eyes flash with invitation.

  “Stay here with me!” she says. “Let your capsule go home without you, the way I did.”

  “But the dangers—” he hears himself blurting inanely.

  “Don’t worry about them. I’m doing all right so far, aren’t I? We can manage. We’ll build a cabin. Plant fruits and vegetables. Catch lizards in traps. Hunt the dinos. They’re so dumb they just stand there and let you shoot them. The laser charges won’t ever run out. You and me, me and you, all alone in the Mesozoic! Like Adam and Eve, we’ll be. The Adam and Eve of the Late Cretaceous. And they can all go to hell back there in 2281.”

  His fingers are tingling. His throat is dry. His cheeks blaze with savage adrenal fires. His breath is coming in ragged gasps. He has never felt anything like this before in his life.

  He moistens his lips.

  “Well—”

  She smiles gently. The pressure eases. “It’s a big decision, I know. Think about it,” she says. Her voice is soft now. The wild zeal of a moment before is gone from it. “How soon before your capsule leaves?”

  He glances at his wrist. “Eight, nine more hours.”

  “Plenty of time to make up your mind.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  Relief washes over him. She has dizzied him with the overpowering force of her revelation and the passionate frenzy of her invitation to join her in her escape from the world they have left behind. He isn’t used to such things. He needs time now, time to absorb, to digest, to ponder. To decide. That he would even consider such a thing astonishes him. He has known her how long—an hour, an hour and a half?—and here he is thinking of giving up everything for her. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

  Shakily he turns away from her and stares at the ankylosaurs wallowing in the mud hole just in front of them.

  Strange, strange, strange. Gigantic low-slung tubby things, squat as tanks, covered everywhere by armor. Vaguely triangular, expanding vastly toward the rear, terminating in armored tails with massive bony excrescences at the tips, like deadly clubs. Slowly snuffling forward in the muck, tiny heads down, busily grubbing away at soft green weeds. Jayne jumps down among them and dances across their armored backs, leaping from one to another. They don’t even seem to notice. She laughs and calls to him. “Come on,” she says, prancing like a she-devil.

  They dance among the ankylosaurs until the game grows stale. Then she takes him by the hand and they run onward, through a field of scarlet mosses, down to a small clear lake fed by a swift-flowing stream. They strip and plunge in, heedless of risk. Afterward they embrace on the grassy bank. Some vast creature passes by, momentarily darkening the sky. Mallory doesn’t bother even to look up.

  Then it is on, on to spy on something with a long neck and a comic knobby head, and then to watch a pair of angry ceratopsians butting heads in slow motion, and then to applaud the elegant migration of a herd of towering duckbills across the horizon. There are dinosaurs everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, an astounding zoo of them. And the time ticks away.

  It’s fantastic beyond all comprehension. But even so—

  Give up everything for this? he wonders.

  The chalet in Gstaad, the weekend retreat aboard the L-5 satellite, the hunting lodge in the veld? The island home in the Seychelles, the plantation in New Caledonia, the pied-à-terre in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower?

  For this? For a forest full of nightmare monsters, and a life of daily peril?

  Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  He glances toward her. She knows what’s on his mind, and she gives him a sizzling look. Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  A beeper goes off on his wrist and his thinko says, “It is time to return to the capsule. Shall I guide you?”

  And suddenly it all collapses into a pile of ashes, the whole shimmering fantasy perishing in an instant.

  “Where are you going?” she calls.

  “Back,” he says. He whispers the word hoarsely—croaks it, in fact.

  “Tom!”

  “Please. Please.”

  He can’t bear to look at her. His defeat is total; his shame is cosmic. But he isn’t going to stay here. He isn’t. He isn’t. He simply isn’t. He slinks away, feeling her burning contemptuous glare drilling holes in his shoulder blades. The quiet voice of the thinko steadily instructs him, leading him around pitfalls and obstacles. After a time he looks back and can no longer see her.

  On the way back to the capsule he passes a pair of sauropods mating, a tyrannosaur in full slather, another thing with talons like scythes, and half a dozen others. The thinko obligingly provides him with their names, but Mallory doesn’t even give them a glance. The brutal fact of his own inescapable cowardice is the only thing that occupies his mind. She has had the courage to turn her back on the stagnant overperfect world where they live, regardless of all danger, whereas he—he—

  “There is the capsule, sir,” the thinko says triumphantly.

  Last chance, Mallory.

  No. No. No. He can’t do it.

  He climbs in. Waits.

  Something ghastly appears outside, all teeth and claws, and peers balefully at him through the window. Mallory peers back at it, nose to nose, hardly caring what happens to him now. The creature takes an experimental nibble at the capsule. The impervious metal resists. The dinosaur shrugs and waddles away.

  A chime goes off. The Late Cretaceous turns blurry and disappears.

  In mid-October, seven weeks after his return, he is telling the somewhat edited version of his adventure at a party for the fifteenth time that month when a woman to his left says, “There’s someone in the other room who’s just came back from the dinosaur tour too.”

  “Really,” says Mallory, without enthusiasm.

  “You and she would love to compare notes, I’ll bet. Wait and I’ll get her. Jayne! Jayne, come in here for a moment!”

  Mallory gasps. Color floods his face. His mind swirls in bewilderment and chagrin. Her eyes are as sparkling and alert as ever, her hair is a golden cloud.

  “But you told me—”

  “Yes,” she says. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Your capsule—you said it had gone back—”

  “It was just on the far side of the ankylosaurs, behind the horsetails. I got to the Cretaceous about eight hours before you did. I had signed up for a twenty-four-hour tour.”

  “And you let me believe—”

  “Yes. So I did.” She grins at him and says softly, “It was a lovely fantasy, don’t you think?”

  He comes close to her and gives her a cold, hard stare. “What would you have done if I had let my capsule go back and stranded myself there for the sake of your lovely fantasy?”

  “I don’t know,” she tells him. “I just don’t know.” And she laughs.

  A LONG NIGHT’S VIGIL AT THE TEMPLE

  The rainy season in California, where I live, usually begins in late October and runs to March or early April, and since it would take me five or six months to write a nove
l and I generally wrote one every year, it was my custom, in the years when I was an active producer of novels, to write my annual novel during our annual spate of wet months. But in 1990, as it happened, the novel that I began at the usual autumn date was the collaboration with Isaac Asimov that is known as Child of Time in England and The Ugly Little Boy in the United States, and—with Isaac’s existing novella already in hand to give me a tremendous boost into the story—the job took me about half the usual time. I was done with the book before the rains had fairly begun to fall, which left me with an entire winter free. I could spend it standing at the window watching the raindrops fall, or I could write a bunch of short stories; and it was the latter course that I chose.

  It was just at that time that the formidably productive anthologist Martin H. Greenberg, with whom I enjoyed a congenial friendship and a close professional relationship for more than thirty years, invited me to do a story for a book he was compiling to mark the hundredth birthday of the great fantasist J.R.R. Tolkien. I confessed that I would be under a certain handicap here: although I had read Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit somewhere in the vicinity of my eighth birthday, and some of his philological essays at a rather more recent date, I have never managed to read his celebrated trilogy. I did, I told Marty Greenberg, have a fair idea of what the thing was about, as who could not, after enduring thirty years of Tolkien imitations. I knew it involved a bunch of furry folk going off on a quest for some ring or wand or sword or other maguffin that would save the world from Utter Evil. I knew approximately who Gandalf was, and Gollum, and Frodo, and even Aragorn. But I had never quite brought myself to embark on the first of the three fat volumes and was not in any way a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. Marty urged me to give the story a try anyway. And so I did, in December of 1990, drawing not on my tenuous knowledge of The Lord of the Rings but on my awareness that Tolkien’s intellectual interests had been focused on such things as the origin of religion, the nature of medieval society, and the uses of archaeology in interpreting the past. And thus I came up with what may very well be the only science-fiction story ever written as an homage to J.R.R. Tolkien, and certainly the only one written by someone who has no first-hand knowledge of the famous trilogy. It made its first appearance in print in the Greenberg-edited anthology After the King in January, 1992.