Time Travel Omnibus, page 1108
She lets go to look. He keeps pushing. He gets a few steps further up when she lets out a cry. “It’s bones!”
She’s moved the rusty bike. It’s left an orange bike-shaped drawing on the black cloth. A sweater. He’s sees finger bones sticking out from beneath. There’s a lump beneath one end of the sweater.
He pushes at it with his toe and a yellow skull comes out.
“Hey!” he says, jumping back.
The skull seems to look at him, then starts rolling down the stairs.
It makes a fragile tap sound against the bricks.
“Cool,” he says, though he’s more scared than delighted.
She looks at him. Her nose lines have returned. “We can’t go any farther.”
“We’re almost to the top.”
“It’s not safe. People don’t come back from where we’re going.”
“But you wanted to.”
“I changed my mind.”
He looks at her. She’s chewing on her lower lip. She has all her kid’s teeth now. He says: “Maybe I want to keep going.”
“No,” she says. “Come back with me.”
“Why? Why should I?”
“Because,” she says. Then the nose lines go away almost. “Because I’ll let you kiss me again.”
“I could kiss a lizard too,” he says, but he picks up the bike and turns it around.
They take Century north. At 12th Avenue she stops. “I want to look in here.”
It’s an abandoned mud-walled building that had once been covered with colored tiles that made a picture. Now all you can see of the picture is the head of a dog, cocked to one side, and part of a sign above the head. The sign says records an apes.
“I’ll guard the bikes,” Joey says.
The wooden door at the entrance has an oval-shaped hole, which she crawls through. Joey hears her move things inside, watches dust puff out from the dim interior.
He’s rubbing his knee, which is sore from riding or maybe growth pains, when a kid rides up to him.
The kid’s on a tricycle that’s way too small, and he’s wearing a tie and Uppie dress slacks that are way too big.
“Nice wheels,” Joey says.
“Give it to me,” the kid says.
It’s Pony-tail. His long hair’s loose and shiny black, his pudgy face dimpled.
“What’s it to you?”
“You stole it. It’s not yours.”
“Finders keepers.” Joey studies the grease stains on Pony-tail’s slacks. Must have caught them in the chain. “Hard to be a bike-tyke when you’re dressed like a bounder.”
Pony-tail gets off the tricycle. “What did you call me?”
Joey stands. “I didn’t call you anything. But you are dressed like a bounder.”
“I’m dressed like an Uppie!”
“Then you are a bounder!”
Pony-tail punches Joey square in the stomach.
Joey bends over, eyes watering. He regains his breath after a few seconds, sees Pony-tail standing with his hands in fists but waiting, as though it’s Joey’s turn to throw a punch. Instead of obliging, Joey charges, ramming his shoulder into Pony-tail’s chest, knocking him down.
“Stop it!”
It’s the girl. She pulls Joey off Pony-tail.
“What’s going on?” the girl says.
“He hit—” Joey starts.
“He stole—” Pony-tail says.
“Is this about the model?” she says. They both nod. She pulls the Ghengis Khar out of her purse. One wheel is missing. She digs in her purse until she finds it, and pushes it back onto the axle. Then she hands the model to Pony-tail. “You’ll take it back to VLM?”
“Yes.”
“You do that. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job.”
“Did you find what you wanted?”
“Yeah,” she says. “A record.”
“What record?”
“I’ll let you know.”
They eat spare ribs at Minute Steak on 26th Avenue, then ride a tandem bike toward Midtown. She’s riding forward, steering, looking fine. Her sweater looks less ugly in the deep blue light of dusk. She kissed him during dinner, and promised to kiss him once again. Joey wants more, of course. She won’t say where she’s taking him. He’s hoping to her apartment. She lives on 71st, in an apartment with maid-service and a doorman.
He’s at her mercy and riding a rush like he felt going down the beehive.
But she turns way too early, making a right on 35th.
“Hey!” he says.
The Land Yacht has not been towed.
Streetlights are on now. But they don’t explain the brightness of the Yacht. “It’s burning,” she says, but they get closer, and understand. There are candles, dozens, of all colors, fat and skinny, tall and short. They are burning on the car, the hood and top and bumpers mostly, but some are affixed to the windshield, and even a few to the side windows, pointing horizontal, though the flames go up. Rivulets of wax streak the sides. Bouquets of flowers circle the Yacht, piled three-deep on the asphalt. Smells comes in alternating waves, now hot wax, now carnations and gardenias.
“It’s like a shrine,” she says.
“But nobody’s here worshipping,” Joey says. “Maybe it’s a thank you.”
“For what?”
“For changing the model.”
She says nothing to this.
They get off the bike, step across the Police Line tape. He looks at her. This old, the nose-lines are etched permanent, but they get deeper when she’s worried. Not now. Now, she smiles.
She unlocks the passenger door, and tells him to get in and go to the back.
It’s dark in the bedroom. As he steps down from the passenger aisle, Joey trips and falls on the bed. “Can you turn a light on?”
“I want to save the battery.” She draws back the curtain near the vanity. The candlelight colors her gold and shadowy. She opens the vanity’s top drawer, takes out not the negligee or condom that Joey hopes for, but a record player. After setting it on the vanity, she plugs it in, then takes the record she’s found, a 45, out of her purse. “Dance with me.”
“Dance?”
“Yeah. Don’t you like the Bay City Rollers?”
“Not Leif Garrett?”
“Couldn’t find that.”
Hisses and pops as the record starts. The song is “Saturday Night.” Loud and optimistic and as joyfully irresponsible as youth itself. Joey dances with her. They clap with the Rollers, they brush against each other, they shout the chorus. She pushes up the sleeves of her sweater, raises it to show her thighs. Joey’s thrilled, smart like he’s just drunk a single beer, and as he touches her hand, she suddenly makes sense to him. “You know, you only have to take care of yourself!”
“What?” she says.
“You can live without being responsible for everyone!”
She shakes her head as though she can’t hear him, but then she turns the music louder. And they dance, and they dance, and Joey forgets his thought, and in the candlelight the lines along her nose seem to disappear.
THE END IN EDEN
Steven Utley
Phil Morrow looked up from his game of solitaire and said, “Come in,” and the door swung inward to reveal a wizened dungaree-clad woman with close-cropped white hair. She made no move to enter; even by shipboard standards, the compartment was quite small.
“Sal,” said Morrow.
“Phil,” said Sal Shelton, “we’re wanted.”
“Where?”
“Captain’s quarters.”
“Excuse me while I fall over in a dead faint, but how do we suddenly rate? Not just the invitation to the captain’s, but personally delivered. P. A. system on the fritz?”
“They don’t want this broadcast all over.” Sal peered at the array of cards before Morrow. “Are you cheating? Even from here, it looks like you’re cheating.”
Morrow sighed, stood, stretched. “A person never knows what he’s capable of until he becomes desperate—and if I’m not desperate, nobody is.”
“Well, dear, you don’t look desperate.”
“Ah, but I am. Desperate as in bored, Sal.”
Sal gestured at the cards. “I see. A person gets desperately bored, next thing you know, he’s cheating at solitaire.”
“In a nutshell.”
Sal stood back from the doorway to let Morrow step out of the tiny compartment and close the door behind himself. All around them, the ship throbbed with a dull mechanical persistence. “So,” he said, “what’s up?”
“Beats me. Brinkman just told me to get you. But he did say it’s urgent.”
“What could possibly be remotely urgent around here? Somebody misplace a trilobite?”
“Something like that.” Sal made a moue. “From what little I gathered from Brinkman, it’s the biggest crime in four hundred million years.”
They met the grim-faced executive officer coming from the captain’s quarters and found the captain already conferring with two other officers, one each from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The captain barely acknowledged the two civilians with a slight movement of his head, neither a nod nor definitely anything else; he sat at his desk looking perplexed as he turned a clear plastic bag over and over in his hands. Sealed within the bag was a black vial no longer or thicker than his thumb.
“They’d’ve missed it,” said the NCIS officer, “if the carrier hadn’t collapsed in the jump station. He seems to have botched the insertion.”
“Insertion?” said the captain.
“Had it hidden up his, urn, you know.”
The captain quickly set the bag down and regarded it with considered distaste.
“He’s in sick bay now,” said the NCIS officer. “Has he said anything?”
“Not yet. They’re fixing him up. But he knows he’s in a lot of trouble,” and the NCIS officer sent a purposely significant look at the JAG officer. “We’re making formal charges, of course. Starting with smuggling.”
“Yes,” said the captain, “but smuggling what? What’s in that vial? Trilobite larvae, eggs? Seeds?”
“Spores,” said Sal. “Seeds don’t exist here.” The three Navy officers seemed at last to take notice of the two civilians; the NCIS officer gave Sal an irritated look—by association, Morrow also fell under its baleful beam—and said, “Seeds, spores. It’s something, anyway, and contraband no matter what it is.”
The captain looked expectantly at Sal, who spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness and said, “Obviously you’re waiting for the biologists’ report on the contents of that vial. They are working on it, right?”
The NCIS officer blinked at her. “Who are you people?”
The captain made an apologetic noise and started to introduce everybody, but Sal cut him short. “Mr. Morrow here,” she said, “is a United States Customs agent, and I the chief civilian liaison—”
The NCIS snickered. “Already everybody and his dog are trying to get in on it. I never imagined we had so many special agents lurking in our midst.”
Sal smiled her blandest smile. “Who do you suppose makes sure subversives don’t get loose here in the Silurian period?”
“Really?” The NCIS officer concentrated his disregard on Morrow. “What do all you people do?”
“Not a whole lot,” said Morrow. “We’ve been pretty underemployed till now. I want to be present when you interrogate your man.”
The NCIS officer and the JAG officer exchanged looks, and the former said, “This is a Navy matter.”
Sal cleared her throat softly and said, “More accurately, it’s a federal matter. It is of course a Navy matter, but, just off the top of my head, it’s also a Customs and Border Protection matter, and also a Disease Control matter, and conceivably also a matter for the NSF, the FBI, and maybe even the BSA.”
“Who? BSA?”
“Boy Scouts of America. Okay, not them, but I hyperbolize to make the point that if this truly is a matter of smuggling Paleozoic biological specimens, you suddenly have a lot of federal agencies involved. This is probably where I come in, because no two of those agencies are really on good speaking terms with one another.”
“Miz Shelby, this is hardly an occasion for—”
“Shelton,” said Sal.
“Doctor,” Morrow put in. “Doctor Shelton.”
“The point is,” Sal said, “there is no shortage of interested parties, and unless some real effort at coordination is made at the outset, they and you going to be tromping all over each other. Obviously NCIS and JAG are involved because the individual actually caught with biological specimens in his intimate possession is a member of the Navy.”
“Thank you for that concession,” the NCIS officer said in a dry tone.
“But that’s just for openers. Are these living specimens?”
The NCIS officer nodded warily. “It’s tissue of some sort. We have been able to figure that out on our own.”
“Living specimens mean Fish and Wildlife gets involved.”
The captain, the NCIS officer, and the JAG officer each looked more or less astonished, and one of them said, “What?”
Sal ignored the eruption. “Specimens smuggled across a border?”
The three Navy officers hesitated, so Morrow said, “The spacetime anomaly does qualify as a sort of a border, does it not?”
Sal beamed at him. “Perfect. I always knew you were clever. Endangered or threatened marine organisms?”
Again the Navy officers hesitated, so again Morrow spoke up. “Well, they are extinct species, back home. Endangered status would seem to be a prerequisite for extinction.”
“Excellent. National Marine Fisheries Service will be interested, then. Just for fun, why don’t we call these specimens pre-endangered species? A classification that can only exist in time travel. Now, Marine Fisheries only becomes involved here if the species is on a marine organisms protected list of some kind. We’ll let that go for the time being, because there are other issues to consider. Such as, whether or not these are specimens of potentially injurious wildlife.”
The captain spread both hands palms down on his blotter and lowered his head as though tensing for a spring over the desk. “Christ, who knows?”
“USDA Animal Health Inspection Service would certainly have to know.”
“This is ridiculous,” said the NCIS officer. “Not in the least,” Sal assured him. “Let’s take a listed living trilobite, genus Phacops. Now, all along, ever since the expedition first established itself in Paleozoic time, we’ve had our proper scientific authorities making recommendations on how to study organisms like Phacops without extending species accidentally into our own dear Holocene epoch. So for legal transport of specimens, you’d have to have pennits from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Our smugglers’, plural, first mistake has been to ignore and thus defy the authority vested in our dedicated wildlife agents.”
“Smugglers plural?” echoed the JAG officer. “Yes, of course. Which means you can add conspiracy to your list of charges. Now, it’s easy to skip Fish and Wildlife’s authorization—whether our smugglers did it knowingly or unknowingly—because nobody, not even wildlife agents, likes to admit that invertebrates are wildlife in the first place. Now let’s assume further that our Phacops can wreak havoc when accidentally released into strange waters. Sort of like snakeheads or zebra mussels. Those were probably before your time.” Sal’s blue eyes twinkled in her seamed face. “Take my word for it. Awful little buggers.”
“Nasty,” Morrow said to the glowering NCIS officer.
“Anyhow,” Sal went on, “your Animal Health Inspection Service must also issue permission for Phacops to be brought in, based on your bona fides and proof that you house and transport them securely. So, our smugglers’ second mistake has been to skip Animal Health. Here is where Mr. Morrow comes in, because either violation gets our smugglers into trouble with Customs. So, to make a long story short—”
“And about goddamn time,” muttered the NCIS officer.
“—our smugglers have ignored the necessity for permits from Fish and Wildlife to take, transport, and possess specimens. Plus they have ticked off Animal Health if the specimens are injurious to native wildlife. Plus Marine Fisheries if there are special concerns re: their wild population. Plus Customs if there are any other problems.”
“Other,” said the captain, ponderously, “problems?”
Sal shrugged. “Let’s say, for example, Phacops smells like drugs. Customs can impound specimens for anything along these lines even if everything else is in order. If wild Phacops carry, say, Ebola, you have to have clearance—not exactly the same thing as a permit—from the Center for Disease Control attesting that your specimens do not carry it. In these matters you are guilty until proven innocent. There is a long list of Select Agents of High Consequence Pathogens and Toxins that we have to fill out every year if we have brought in anything identified as a bioterrorism threat.”
One or more Navy officers yelped, “Bioterrorism?”
“Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Customs and USDA Animal and Plant Health are part of Homeland Security.”
“Sleep well,” said Morrow.
“It isn’t just that we want to discourage a trade in some extremely exotic species,” Sal said. “If this sort of traffic has been going on for any length of time, there’s no telling what may be in private hands back home. And, eventually, perhaps inevitably, either through somebody’s carelessness or even out of maliciousness, Paleozoic organisms will be introduced into Holocene environments.”
“But these Paleozoic organisms wouldn’t pose much of a threat, would they? I mean, they became extinct in the first place because they couldn’t keep up in the race for survival, right?”
“They may just have been unlucky, like the dinosaurs. I don’t know if sea scorpions or trilobites could establish a colony in our own time. I don’t want to find out. No, what disturbs me is the idea that these creatures must come complete with their own complements of viral and bacterial diseases. Organisms in our own time might not have defenses.”
“Wouldn’t advanced organisms in our own time have immunological defenses more than adequate to combat primitive diseases?”
She’s moved the rusty bike. It’s left an orange bike-shaped drawing on the black cloth. A sweater. He’s sees finger bones sticking out from beneath. There’s a lump beneath one end of the sweater.
He pushes at it with his toe and a yellow skull comes out.
“Hey!” he says, jumping back.
The skull seems to look at him, then starts rolling down the stairs.
It makes a fragile tap sound against the bricks.
“Cool,” he says, though he’s more scared than delighted.
She looks at him. Her nose lines have returned. “We can’t go any farther.”
“We’re almost to the top.”
“It’s not safe. People don’t come back from where we’re going.”
“But you wanted to.”
“I changed my mind.”
He looks at her. She’s chewing on her lower lip. She has all her kid’s teeth now. He says: “Maybe I want to keep going.”
“No,” she says. “Come back with me.”
“Why? Why should I?”
“Because,” she says. Then the nose lines go away almost. “Because I’ll let you kiss me again.”
“I could kiss a lizard too,” he says, but he picks up the bike and turns it around.
They take Century north. At 12th Avenue she stops. “I want to look in here.”
It’s an abandoned mud-walled building that had once been covered with colored tiles that made a picture. Now all you can see of the picture is the head of a dog, cocked to one side, and part of a sign above the head. The sign says records an apes.
“I’ll guard the bikes,” Joey says.
The wooden door at the entrance has an oval-shaped hole, which she crawls through. Joey hears her move things inside, watches dust puff out from the dim interior.
He’s rubbing his knee, which is sore from riding or maybe growth pains, when a kid rides up to him.
The kid’s on a tricycle that’s way too small, and he’s wearing a tie and Uppie dress slacks that are way too big.
“Nice wheels,” Joey says.
“Give it to me,” the kid says.
It’s Pony-tail. His long hair’s loose and shiny black, his pudgy face dimpled.
“What’s it to you?”
“You stole it. It’s not yours.”
“Finders keepers.” Joey studies the grease stains on Pony-tail’s slacks. Must have caught them in the chain. “Hard to be a bike-tyke when you’re dressed like a bounder.”
Pony-tail gets off the tricycle. “What did you call me?”
Joey stands. “I didn’t call you anything. But you are dressed like a bounder.”
“I’m dressed like an Uppie!”
“Then you are a bounder!”
Pony-tail punches Joey square in the stomach.
Joey bends over, eyes watering. He regains his breath after a few seconds, sees Pony-tail standing with his hands in fists but waiting, as though it’s Joey’s turn to throw a punch. Instead of obliging, Joey charges, ramming his shoulder into Pony-tail’s chest, knocking him down.
“Stop it!”
It’s the girl. She pulls Joey off Pony-tail.
“What’s going on?” the girl says.
“He hit—” Joey starts.
“He stole—” Pony-tail says.
“Is this about the model?” she says. They both nod. She pulls the Ghengis Khar out of her purse. One wheel is missing. She digs in her purse until she finds it, and pushes it back onto the axle. Then she hands the model to Pony-tail. “You’ll take it back to VLM?”
“Yes.”
“You do that. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job.”
“Did you find what you wanted?”
“Yeah,” she says. “A record.”
“What record?”
“I’ll let you know.”
They eat spare ribs at Minute Steak on 26th Avenue, then ride a tandem bike toward Midtown. She’s riding forward, steering, looking fine. Her sweater looks less ugly in the deep blue light of dusk. She kissed him during dinner, and promised to kiss him once again. Joey wants more, of course. She won’t say where she’s taking him. He’s hoping to her apartment. She lives on 71st, in an apartment with maid-service and a doorman.
He’s at her mercy and riding a rush like he felt going down the beehive.
But she turns way too early, making a right on 35th.
“Hey!” he says.
The Land Yacht has not been towed.
Streetlights are on now. But they don’t explain the brightness of the Yacht. “It’s burning,” she says, but they get closer, and understand. There are candles, dozens, of all colors, fat and skinny, tall and short. They are burning on the car, the hood and top and bumpers mostly, but some are affixed to the windshield, and even a few to the side windows, pointing horizontal, though the flames go up. Rivulets of wax streak the sides. Bouquets of flowers circle the Yacht, piled three-deep on the asphalt. Smells comes in alternating waves, now hot wax, now carnations and gardenias.
“It’s like a shrine,” she says.
“But nobody’s here worshipping,” Joey says. “Maybe it’s a thank you.”
“For what?”
“For changing the model.”
She says nothing to this.
They get off the bike, step across the Police Line tape. He looks at her. This old, the nose-lines are etched permanent, but they get deeper when she’s worried. Not now. Now, she smiles.
She unlocks the passenger door, and tells him to get in and go to the back.
It’s dark in the bedroom. As he steps down from the passenger aisle, Joey trips and falls on the bed. “Can you turn a light on?”
“I want to save the battery.” She draws back the curtain near the vanity. The candlelight colors her gold and shadowy. She opens the vanity’s top drawer, takes out not the negligee or condom that Joey hopes for, but a record player. After setting it on the vanity, she plugs it in, then takes the record she’s found, a 45, out of her purse. “Dance with me.”
“Dance?”
“Yeah. Don’t you like the Bay City Rollers?”
“Not Leif Garrett?”
“Couldn’t find that.”
Hisses and pops as the record starts. The song is “Saturday Night.” Loud and optimistic and as joyfully irresponsible as youth itself. Joey dances with her. They clap with the Rollers, they brush against each other, they shout the chorus. She pushes up the sleeves of her sweater, raises it to show her thighs. Joey’s thrilled, smart like he’s just drunk a single beer, and as he touches her hand, she suddenly makes sense to him. “You know, you only have to take care of yourself!”
“What?” she says.
“You can live without being responsible for everyone!”
She shakes her head as though she can’t hear him, but then she turns the music louder. And they dance, and they dance, and Joey forgets his thought, and in the candlelight the lines along her nose seem to disappear.
THE END IN EDEN
Steven Utley
Phil Morrow looked up from his game of solitaire and said, “Come in,” and the door swung inward to reveal a wizened dungaree-clad woman with close-cropped white hair. She made no move to enter; even by shipboard standards, the compartment was quite small.
“Sal,” said Morrow.
“Phil,” said Sal Shelton, “we’re wanted.”
“Where?”
“Captain’s quarters.”
“Excuse me while I fall over in a dead faint, but how do we suddenly rate? Not just the invitation to the captain’s, but personally delivered. P. A. system on the fritz?”
“They don’t want this broadcast all over.” Sal peered at the array of cards before Morrow. “Are you cheating? Even from here, it looks like you’re cheating.”
Morrow sighed, stood, stretched. “A person never knows what he’s capable of until he becomes desperate—and if I’m not desperate, nobody is.”
“Well, dear, you don’t look desperate.”
“Ah, but I am. Desperate as in bored, Sal.”
Sal gestured at the cards. “I see. A person gets desperately bored, next thing you know, he’s cheating at solitaire.”
“In a nutshell.”
Sal stood back from the doorway to let Morrow step out of the tiny compartment and close the door behind himself. All around them, the ship throbbed with a dull mechanical persistence. “So,” he said, “what’s up?”
“Beats me. Brinkman just told me to get you. But he did say it’s urgent.”
“What could possibly be remotely urgent around here? Somebody misplace a trilobite?”
“Something like that.” Sal made a moue. “From what little I gathered from Brinkman, it’s the biggest crime in four hundred million years.”
They met the grim-faced executive officer coming from the captain’s quarters and found the captain already conferring with two other officers, one each from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The captain barely acknowledged the two civilians with a slight movement of his head, neither a nod nor definitely anything else; he sat at his desk looking perplexed as he turned a clear plastic bag over and over in his hands. Sealed within the bag was a black vial no longer or thicker than his thumb.
“They’d’ve missed it,” said the NCIS officer, “if the carrier hadn’t collapsed in the jump station. He seems to have botched the insertion.”
“Insertion?” said the captain.
“Had it hidden up his, urn, you know.”
The captain quickly set the bag down and regarded it with considered distaste.
“He’s in sick bay now,” said the NCIS officer. “Has he said anything?”
“Not yet. They’re fixing him up. But he knows he’s in a lot of trouble,” and the NCIS officer sent a purposely significant look at the JAG officer. “We’re making formal charges, of course. Starting with smuggling.”
“Yes,” said the captain, “but smuggling what? What’s in that vial? Trilobite larvae, eggs? Seeds?”
“Spores,” said Sal. “Seeds don’t exist here.” The three Navy officers seemed at last to take notice of the two civilians; the NCIS officer gave Sal an irritated look—by association, Morrow also fell under its baleful beam—and said, “Seeds, spores. It’s something, anyway, and contraband no matter what it is.”
The captain looked expectantly at Sal, who spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness and said, “Obviously you’re waiting for the biologists’ report on the contents of that vial. They are working on it, right?”
The NCIS officer blinked at her. “Who are you people?”
The captain made an apologetic noise and started to introduce everybody, but Sal cut him short. “Mr. Morrow here,” she said, “is a United States Customs agent, and I the chief civilian liaison—”
The NCIS snickered. “Already everybody and his dog are trying to get in on it. I never imagined we had so many special agents lurking in our midst.”
Sal smiled her blandest smile. “Who do you suppose makes sure subversives don’t get loose here in the Silurian period?”
“Really?” The NCIS officer concentrated his disregard on Morrow. “What do all you people do?”
“Not a whole lot,” said Morrow. “We’ve been pretty underemployed till now. I want to be present when you interrogate your man.”
The NCIS officer and the JAG officer exchanged looks, and the former said, “This is a Navy matter.”
Sal cleared her throat softly and said, “More accurately, it’s a federal matter. It is of course a Navy matter, but, just off the top of my head, it’s also a Customs and Border Protection matter, and also a Disease Control matter, and conceivably also a matter for the NSF, the FBI, and maybe even the BSA.”
“Who? BSA?”
“Boy Scouts of America. Okay, not them, but I hyperbolize to make the point that if this truly is a matter of smuggling Paleozoic biological specimens, you suddenly have a lot of federal agencies involved. This is probably where I come in, because no two of those agencies are really on good speaking terms with one another.”
“Miz Shelby, this is hardly an occasion for—”
“Shelton,” said Sal.
“Doctor,” Morrow put in. “Doctor Shelton.”
“The point is,” Sal said, “there is no shortage of interested parties, and unless some real effort at coordination is made at the outset, they and you going to be tromping all over each other. Obviously NCIS and JAG are involved because the individual actually caught with biological specimens in his intimate possession is a member of the Navy.”
“Thank you for that concession,” the NCIS officer said in a dry tone.
“But that’s just for openers. Are these living specimens?”
The NCIS officer nodded warily. “It’s tissue of some sort. We have been able to figure that out on our own.”
“Living specimens mean Fish and Wildlife gets involved.”
The captain, the NCIS officer, and the JAG officer each looked more or less astonished, and one of them said, “What?”
Sal ignored the eruption. “Specimens smuggled across a border?”
The three Navy officers hesitated, so Morrow said, “The spacetime anomaly does qualify as a sort of a border, does it not?”
Sal beamed at him. “Perfect. I always knew you were clever. Endangered or threatened marine organisms?”
Again the Navy officers hesitated, so again Morrow spoke up. “Well, they are extinct species, back home. Endangered status would seem to be a prerequisite for extinction.”
“Excellent. National Marine Fisheries Service will be interested, then. Just for fun, why don’t we call these specimens pre-endangered species? A classification that can only exist in time travel. Now, Marine Fisheries only becomes involved here if the species is on a marine organisms protected list of some kind. We’ll let that go for the time being, because there are other issues to consider. Such as, whether or not these are specimens of potentially injurious wildlife.”
The captain spread both hands palms down on his blotter and lowered his head as though tensing for a spring over the desk. “Christ, who knows?”
“USDA Animal Health Inspection Service would certainly have to know.”
“This is ridiculous,” said the NCIS officer. “Not in the least,” Sal assured him. “Let’s take a listed living trilobite, genus Phacops. Now, all along, ever since the expedition first established itself in Paleozoic time, we’ve had our proper scientific authorities making recommendations on how to study organisms like Phacops without extending species accidentally into our own dear Holocene epoch. So for legal transport of specimens, you’d have to have pennits from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Our smugglers’, plural, first mistake has been to ignore and thus defy the authority vested in our dedicated wildlife agents.”
“Smugglers plural?” echoed the JAG officer. “Yes, of course. Which means you can add conspiracy to your list of charges. Now, it’s easy to skip Fish and Wildlife’s authorization—whether our smugglers did it knowingly or unknowingly—because nobody, not even wildlife agents, likes to admit that invertebrates are wildlife in the first place. Now let’s assume further that our Phacops can wreak havoc when accidentally released into strange waters. Sort of like snakeheads or zebra mussels. Those were probably before your time.” Sal’s blue eyes twinkled in her seamed face. “Take my word for it. Awful little buggers.”
“Nasty,” Morrow said to the glowering NCIS officer.
“Anyhow,” Sal went on, “your Animal Health Inspection Service must also issue permission for Phacops to be brought in, based on your bona fides and proof that you house and transport them securely. So, our smugglers’ second mistake has been to skip Animal Health. Here is where Mr. Morrow comes in, because either violation gets our smugglers into trouble with Customs. So, to make a long story short—”
“And about goddamn time,” muttered the NCIS officer.
“—our smugglers have ignored the necessity for permits from Fish and Wildlife to take, transport, and possess specimens. Plus they have ticked off Animal Health if the specimens are injurious to native wildlife. Plus Marine Fisheries if there are special concerns re: their wild population. Plus Customs if there are any other problems.”
“Other,” said the captain, ponderously, “problems?”
Sal shrugged. “Let’s say, for example, Phacops smells like drugs. Customs can impound specimens for anything along these lines even if everything else is in order. If wild Phacops carry, say, Ebola, you have to have clearance—not exactly the same thing as a permit—from the Center for Disease Control attesting that your specimens do not carry it. In these matters you are guilty until proven innocent. There is a long list of Select Agents of High Consequence Pathogens and Toxins that we have to fill out every year if we have brought in anything identified as a bioterrorism threat.”
One or more Navy officers yelped, “Bioterrorism?”
“Oh, I almost forgot to mention. Customs and USDA Animal and Plant Health are part of Homeland Security.”
“Sleep well,” said Morrow.
“It isn’t just that we want to discourage a trade in some extremely exotic species,” Sal said. “If this sort of traffic has been going on for any length of time, there’s no telling what may be in private hands back home. And, eventually, perhaps inevitably, either through somebody’s carelessness or even out of maliciousness, Paleozoic organisms will be introduced into Holocene environments.”
“But these Paleozoic organisms wouldn’t pose much of a threat, would they? I mean, they became extinct in the first place because they couldn’t keep up in the race for survival, right?”
“They may just have been unlucky, like the dinosaurs. I don’t know if sea scorpions or trilobites could establish a colony in our own time. I don’t want to find out. No, what disturbs me is the idea that these creatures must come complete with their own complements of viral and bacterial diseases. Organisms in our own time might not have defenses.”
“Wouldn’t advanced organisms in our own time have immunological defenses more than adequate to combat primitive diseases?”
