Time Travel Omnibus, page 1112
“Like gravity moving through me. A roller coaster. That’s what I thought.”
Her mind replayed that snippet of memory once again—the raptor lunging at her, Wilson lifting the gun—
“Why did you wait so long to shoot?”
“Wouldn’t do to miss, would it? We’re not all yoked.”
“You’ve been yoked before, Mr. Wilson?”
“Yes.”
“And had to use it.”
“Oh sure.”
“What happened?”
“Female tyrannosaur cornered me in a ravine. They’re the bad ones. The females.”
He raised his eyebrows. She wasn’t sure if he was joking.
“What’s it feel like?”
“The yoke?”
“Yes.”
“Like being turned inside out.”
“So why aren’t you wearing one now?”
“Because it feels like being turned inside out.”
“Seriously.”
“It would hardly do if your guide disappeared, would it? If I’d been yoked today, we both might have gone home. Who’d have led your intrepid hikers back to the hotel?”
She glimpsed Peter, watching them from the buffet, and had a momentary image of him trying to find his way back through the woods alone—Peter, who lived almost entirely in a world of complex financial transactions, a world where meaning was not innate, but created by the universal assent of billions. What had Stafford called it the other day? Pushing money around. He’d said something else, too: I like to put my hands on something solid. Like to say, I did that.
Yet—
“You risk your life for that?”
“There’s money, of course. And more.”
“More?”
“It doesn’t bear talking to death.”
She fell silent. They revolved to the music.
Wilson said: “What the devil possessed you to do that, anyway?”
The sound of the yearling screaming echoed in her memory.
“I don’t know,” she said. She said, “I can’t stand to see things in pain.”
“This is no good for you, then.”
“I’m not sure what’s good for me, anymore.”
“Who is?”
“You seem to be pretty certain.”
“I’ve stripped my life to certain basics, that’s all.”
“There’s no Mrs. Wilson?”
“Not for many years now.”
“Are you lonely?”
“You’re very curious, aren’t you? Let’s collect our drinks.”
They stood at the railing again. Gwyneth sipped her martini. She was being careful now.
“I thought perhaps some great heartache in your past—”
“Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid. She wasn’t willing to live with the risks I take. I wasn’t willing to live without them.”
“Why not?”
“Do you know Wallace Stevens? Death is the mother of beauty?”
“Poetry, too?”
“You know it then.”
“I’ve read it, I think. In college once.”
“You should read it again.”
She laughed. “What would I find there, Robert Wilson. Truth or beauty?”
“A bit of both, maybe.”
“You must feel great disdain for your charges.”
He shrugged.
“You must feel great disdain for me.”
“If I felt disdain, I wouldn’t be talking to you, would I?”
“What do you feel?”
“Are you flirting with me, Mrs. Braunmiller?”
“I’m curious, that’s all.”
“What you did was very brave. Also very stupid. I admire the courage.”
“And the stupidity?”
Wilson didn’t answer. He lifted his glass and finished his whiskey. He held it in his mouth for a long moment. He set the glass on the railing. “Laphroaig,” he said. “Nectar of the gods.”
“Mr. Wilson—”
He squared up to face her. “I don’t admire stupidity in anyone, Mrs. Braunmiller. But I admire courage very much. Courage compensates for many failings.” Then, after a moment: “It was the yearling, was it?”
“I suppose.”
“It won’t do to anthropomorphize them. You’re likely to get me killed that way.”
When she didn’t answer, he said, “What have you come here for? Nobody comes here without a reason.”
“To see the dinosaurs, what else?”
But he wouldn’t take that as an answer. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the observing blue eyes that held hers to account.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“No one ever is,” he said.
The party settled into the languid rhythm that dying parties acquire. The band swung into something soft and jazzy. There was no more dancing. The guests who lingered clustered around the fire pits and talked quietly, occasional bursts of laughter lifting into the air like larks.
Gwyneth stood at the edge of the terrace with a glass of wine, watching as someone threw a log onto a dying fire. A shower of sparks swirled up to print themselves against the swollen moon that had lately cleared the mountains. She felt a surge of gladness, a kind of nostalgia in reverse, that at least that had not changed. The old familiar moon still gazed down upon her from the alien wash of stars.
A hand touched her elbow.
She turned, half expecting to see Wilson—she wasn’t sure where he had gone, or when—and found herself staring into Peter’s face instead.
“It’s late,” he said.
She didn’t know the time.
They leaned their elbows on the railing and stared into the night.
“I waited up.”
“I thought you might.” Her wine caught a spark of firelight and held it. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“You didn’t worry me.”
She saw the lie in the set of his jaw, the muscle twitching there.
“I just wondered where you were.”
“I’ve been right here.”
“I know.” That twitch of muscle. “I just wondered, that’s all.”
They were silent for a time.
“We didn’t dance,” he said.
“You didn’t ask.”
Gwyneth turned to look at him. In the moonlight, Peter’s face looked older, gaunt, his eyes deeply shadowed. How strange he had become to her.
What had happened to them?
Peter laughed quietly. “No, I suppose I didn’t.”
Then: “Was he scolding you?”
“Mr. Wilson?”
She hadn’t thought so at the time, but—
“Not scolding exactly,” she said. “Reminding me, maybe.”
“Reminding you?”
“That he wasn’t yoked. That he was putting himself at risk in ways the rest of us are not.”
And now, for the second time that evening: “What possessed you, Gwen?”
“Something came over me. I don’t know.”
The whole thing—the entire trip from the moment she’d seen that footage on her screen back home—had been something she’d had to do, a mute imperative that she could not resist. Why did you come here? Wilson had asked her.
I don’t know.
Something came over me, she thought.
“You could have gotten the man killed.”
Wind rustled the conifer needles. The cries of unknown creatures rose up to her. Gwyneth thought about the thousand battles for survival unfolding in the darkness below, marveling that someday millions of years hence, that eternal struggle would give rise to men, and that not long after that as the earth measured its days, men too would reach their apogee and subside into the muck.
Sighing, Peter said, “Come on, it’s late, Gwen.”
And this time, with a wistful glance back at the glowing fire pits and the looming globe of the enormous moon, she consented. As they climbed the plush stairs to their room, Peter put his hand to the small of her back and drew her to him. Their lips brushed in a cool, dry kiss. Gwyneth turned away. A veil of dark hair fell between them. When Gwyneth hooked it over her ear, she could not bear to look him in the face.
“Gwen—”
“Not here,” she whispered.
Yet later still, in the moon-splashed room, as they lay together in their gauzy eggshell bower, Gwyneth drew away once more. Peter turned his back to her. She watched the rigid line of his shoulders. When at last he spoke, Peter’s voice was tense with fury.
“The hell with it then.”
“Peter,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she said.
But it wasn’t enough.
Gwyneth turned away, tears welling in her eyes. They lay still then, back to back, like slow continents adrift. After a time, Peter’s breathing deepened into sleep, but Gwyneth lay awake for hours, staring out the moonlit square of window into the shadowy forest beyond. As she hovered at the edge of sleep, there came a faraway cough in the darkness. She tossed restlessly.
Something ponderous moved in her dreams.
She woke at seven to find Peter staring across the bed at her.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
But his voice was cool and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get up. He lounged in a nest of sheets and watched her dress, scratching his chest and tossing out an occasional desultory comment like a bomb. And when he finally joined her for breakfast, he sprawled unshaven in his chair, ordered pancakes, and leveled his gaze over the table at her. “So what’s on the agenda for today, Gwen?”
She sipped her coffee. “Yet to be seen.”
“A Stegosaurus? A Brontosaurus? A fucking woolly mammoth?”
“Not tennis, you can be sure of that.”
“Tennis might do us good. At least we’d be spending some time together.”
She threw her napkin to the table. “Jesus, Peter! Why can’t you be reasona—”
“Why can’t you, Gwen? Why can’t you—”
Robert Wilson pulled out a chair and sat between them.
“You’ve got your eras confused, Mr. Braunmiller.”
Gwen slumped in embarrassment. How much had he overhead?
When Wilson spoke again, he leaned forward. “Today it’s the biggest game of all, my friends. The one animal everyone comes here to see, the one most of them never do—”
“A T-Rex,” Gwen breathed, embarrassment forgotten.
“Did you hear it in the night?”
“I thought I dreamed it.”
“It was no dream. I woke at five. It was far away, but moving closer.”
Peter kicked out the fourth chair and propped up his feet.
“And how would you know this?”
“I’m a professional, Mr. Braunmiller. I’m very good at what I do. I forget what it is you do exactly—”
“I’m a financial analyst.”
“That’s right. And I’m betting you would spot a trend in the markets long before I would, wouldn’t you?” He didn’t wait for Peter to answer. “Look, I’ve been hunting these animals for the last twenty-five years, and I’ve only seen fourteen of them—one of them nearly killed me, I was telling Mrs. Braunmiller about it last night. These creatures are the apex predators of their era. They’re rare as hell and they can pick up the scent of blood thirty miles away or more.”
“The triceratops,” Gwyneth said.
“You’re a natural, Mrs. Braunmiller.” He propped his elbows on the table. “The way I figure it, this bastard got upwind of that wounded triceratops, and has been following the scent down out of the mountains all night. We’ll be hard-pressed to catch up to it—but if we do—” He shook his head. “Six-and-a half-tons of pure carnivorous aggression. Forty-two feet, nose to tail. Thirteen feet at the hip. Olfactory bulbs the size of grapefruit. A fucking monster is what I’m saying—and I apologize for the language, but there’s really no other way I can say it. You’ll never forget it.”
He put his hands flat on the table and pushed himself to his feet.
“West gate in fifteen minutes. See you there.”
“Along with all the other excursion groups, I’d imagine,” Peter said.
“You underestimate my expertise, Mr. Braunmiller,” Wilson said without rancor. “And overestimate that of my colleagues. Besides, we know something they don’t: we’ll be tracking the bloody triceratops.”
He didn’t wait for a response.
Peter’s pancakes arrived. He buttered them in silence.
Gwyneth finished her coffee and stood. “I’ll go to the room and get our things together.”
“You needn’t bother with mine.”
She turned in disbelief.
“What did you say?”
He cut a bite of pancake, taking his time about it. When he was done, he said, “I said, you needn’t bother about mine.”
“You have to be kidding me.”
“No.”
“Don’t sulk, Peter. It’s not attractive.”
“You don’t seem to find me attractive, anyway.”
People at surrounding tables had begun to sneak glances at them.
Gwyneth sat down, pushing her plate away. She leaned forward.
“Look,” she said quietly. “The only way we’re going to solve anything is if we spend time together.”
“But we’re not, are we?”
He speared another deliberate forkful of pancake.
“We’re spending time with a dozen other people—not to mention your friend Wilson—chasing down giant lizards—”
“Jesus, Peter, did you read anything I sent you? They’re not lizards. They’re—”
“Warm blooded. I know. That’s not the point. The point is that you care more about that than you do about trying to fix things. They’ve been dead sixty-five million years or more. And staring in awe at them isn’t working on our marriage. Isn’t that what we spent all this money to do? Isn’t that what we both wanted?”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? We could have had gone to the Caymans for a twentieth of the expense and actually spent some time together—”
“We’ve been to the Caymans. We’ve been to Paris, for God’s sake. None of it helped, Peter. None of it—”
And then he said something that stopped her cold in her tracks. “The problem isn’t in Paris, Gwen. The problem isn’t in the goddamn Cretaceous. The problem is in us.”
“Then come with me and help me fix it, Peter. Please.”
“Help me,” he said. “For God’s sake, help me.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and then, like Wilson, she put her hands flat against the table and pushed herself to her feet.
“I’m going to get my things,” she said.
Peter was right: when the west gate swung open, a mass of excursion groups was sorting themselves out. Most of them chose the more difficult route, clambering up the steep ridge in fifteen minute intervals. Wilson’s alone struck out in the direction of the clearing where the raptors had taken down the yearling.
Later, two memories from the journey stuck in Gwyneth’s mind:
Robert Wilson’s cool competence.
And the beast.
The rest was but hazy recollection. The march triple time through the looming woodland. The sweat that poured down her face till it stung her eyes. The tiny theropods that scattered before them. Even the charnel house stench of the clearing itself.
The yearling’s carcass lay on its side in a bed of thrashed and flattened grass, the great ribcage nearly stripped of flesh. Its horns lanced from a face that had been gashed and half devoured. Scavengers had descended upon what remained: opalescent maggots the size of a man’s thumb, chittering insects that were larger still, a clutch of knee-high dinosaurs, ruddy and yellow, that screeched at them in fury, feathered ruffs billowing out to either side of their narrow-beaked maws.
Wilson ignored them.
“Photos, anyone?” he asked, and several of the men shuffled forward.
Great white hunters, Gwyneth thought, as if they’d personally felled the thing. She and Angela and Frank Stafford stood to the side, sipping cool spring water from canteens, and watched.
“Peter not well?” Stafford asked.
“No,” Gwyneth said, and she felt Angela give her a knowing look.
Then they were on the move again, following the path trampled by the fleeing triceratops. Waist-high grass swayed to either side. On the far side of the clearing, the forest enveloped them once again: colonnades of towering conifers and angiosperms, damp soil underfoot. Late morning now, cool shadows under the trees, motes adrift in green air.
Gwyneth watched Wilson, lanky and tall, his neck dusky from wind and sun, slip among the trees like he’d been born of the landscape himself. Deep into the forest, the trail split.
Wilson paused, studying the sign.
“The cows went left, working their way down toward the plain,” he said, pointing. “The bull climbed the ridge-line, looking for a place to hole up.”
“Why?” someone asked.
“Who knows? Instinct, maybe. To protect the cows. He knows the carnivores will be coming for him.”
Something coughed in the distance.
Gwyneth shivered.
“We’re close now,” Wilson said.
He set a faster pace after that. Winded, they trudged after him, still climbing. Wilson moved with unswerving grace, almost invisible as he cut through shadows and the golden blades of sunlight that knifed through the forest canopy.
Perspiration slid down the channel of Gwyneth’s spine.
They followed some spoor that Wilson alone could see, continuing to climb—hard climbing, too, upon occasion, clutching-at-tree-branch climbing, scree sliding loose underfoot. A thin, bearded man slipped and fell, bloodying his forearm. They paused while Wilson disinfected the cut—it must have been three inches long—and applied a pressure bandage with deft, sure hands. “That’ll hold it for now,” he said, gripping the man’s shoulder, and Gwyneth couldn’t help noticing the grace of those long fingers, the blunt crescents of his nails. “You’ll want to get it looked at back at the hotel,” he was saying. “A couple of stitches might be in order.”
They found the wounded triceratops forty minutes’ hike beyond that. The ridge towered above them here, a rocky cliff face that stood sharp against the azure sky. A thick stand of conifers screened a wide ravine. Maybe a hundred-and-fifty yards from side to side, the chasm narrowed as it deepened. The triceratops lay inside, far back in an angle of stone.
