Alternate Gerrolds (24 page)

Right. Somehow, the chicken DNA crossed the information highway.

Eventually, they tracked it back to a software error. This file and that file got crossed, so this DNA pattern got mixed with that DNA pattern—and the project was so big by that time and there was so much going on that nobody even noticed that this sample and that sample were from two different experiments, two different species—because that’s what they were doing anyway, so it was just one more set of genes to be spliced—and the compatibility problem got knocked down as a matter of routine—and eventually the samples got processed and put into the
pipeline and chugged along until—well, that’s how they ended up with the feathered mammoth. Cute little thing.

Of course, the cow that delivered it practically died from the shock—but after a dose of prozac large enough to make New York polite, she cheered up and nursed the little guy as if he were her own calf—which he was, but he had this weird yellow down all over him. At first, everybody thought it was just normal fur, but when the first feathers started appearing six weeks later—let me tell you, there were a lot of questions asked and there were a lot of red faces too—but that could have been from the other experiment, the one about genetically redesigning already-living creatures. One of the retro-viruses had escaped, recombined, mutated and become airborne, and now half the team were evolving into Native Americans. So the red faces were normal by then.

Fortunately for everybody, there were a lot of filmic possibilities in weird animals. That was about the time Paramount was going to send Kirk and Spock to the Genesis planet, so they were looking for a cheap source of weird creatures as a way of keeping the special effects budget down, so they pumped some new money into the whole thing; two or three of the other studios also came aboard then, and in short order the guys in Marin were turning out all kinds of little monsters. Hairy chickens of all sizes—they were clumsy and unstable and a strong wind could knock them over and blow them like tumbleweeds—and that’s how you saw them in
Critters
. And there was an ostrich with scales—supposed to look like a deinonychus, but ultimately unconvincing, I think the Corman people finally used it in a dog called
Carnosaur
. Carnivorous rabbits for
Lepus II
. Unmade. A green cat. (That one sold for nearly two million—but the cat died before the script went into turnaround. Pity, the merchandising on it would have been phenomenal. They were all set to breed a million green kittens in time for Christmas.)

And of course, the Feathered Mammoth. They were going to use him in something with Arnold Schwarzenegger, another Conan picture, I think,
Conan in Atlantis
, but it didn’t happen either. The studio sunk it. Nobody really likes working with animals, children or Martians. They always use the Martian’s best take. (But that’s another story, the one about the Martians. When Resnick publishes
Alternate Martians
, I’ll tell it. If they let him edit any more of these. I doubt it after this one, but who knows—they say it’s good work-therapy at the outpatient clinic,
so who am I to piss in his oatmeal? We all wish him a speedy recovery. Well, most of us do. Well, his family anyway. I think.)

But eventually—finally—they did manage to back-breed some real dinosaurs. Sort of.

The problem was they were working with frog and lizard and bird eggs, so the dinosaurs they got were small. Miniature. The size of Dinky toys. That’s what they called them at the farm. Dinky Dinos. Stegasaurs as cute as hamsters. Hadrosaurs that looked like parakeets. A T. Rex the size of a crow. It took a lot of really skillful trick photography to make them look full size for the movie. (I hear they’re going to start selling the Dinky Dinos in pet stores next year, simultaneous with the release of the sequel. That’ll be interesting when Daddy brings home a little T. Rex as a birthday present for little Jill.)

What you didn’t hear about—what nobody heard about—were the raptors. Three of them escaped.

At first nobody on the farm worried about it. There was a chronic problem with rats in the feedstock, so they had brought in terriers, and later on a few wild tomcats had joined the menagerie, too. That had kept the problem manageable—sort of. The cats killed as many lizards and birds as they did rats—so the guys at the farm figured the pussies and the pooches would probably kill the raptors too, thinking they were just some kind of lizard-bird. Only it didn’t happen that way.

First, the rats disappeared. And the mice. And the gophers and the skunks and the badgers (“Badgers? Badgers? We don’ need no steenkeen’ badgers!”) and the rabbits and the weasels and the foxes and the coyotes and everything else small enough to be brought down by a pack of land-piranhas. And of course, the pooches and the pussies too.

By that time, the raptors were numbering nearly thirty. They traveled in packs—five or seven to a group. At any given time there were between four and six packs of them roaming the grounds of the farm, chirruping and cooing like demented pigeons, their little heads bobbing back and forth, turning this way and that, their tails lashing frantically. They were brightly colored—the males were green or blue, with yellow flares of color down their backs and bright red stippling around their heads and forearms. The females were drab gray-green. The females traveled together; the males kept apart from them, except during mating season—then it wasn’t safe to get out of your car unless you were wearing heavy boots.

It wasn’t until the raptors started bringing down the newborn calves that the farm guys realized the problem was out of control; they brought in some tropical quarantine experts who laid out slabs of meat laced with poison cocktails. That got half of them; the other half got smarter. So they tried traps. And retro-viruses. And hunter-killer droids—that was another nightmare. The software mutated—remember the law of unintended consequences? The ex-terminators (formerly terminators, now just ex-terminators) shot at anything that moved—or even looked like it was thinking about moving. Finally, they cut power to the feed lines and the ex-terminators ran out of juice after two or three more weeks. Meanwhile, they still had a raptor problem.

They finally got them with pheromones. They put out lures that smelled like female raptors in heat and all the males couldn’t help themselves; they came sniffing around the lures and tumbled through trap doors into little tar pits where they died like dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats and mastodons in prehistoric Los Angeles. (L.A. needs more tar pits. There are still too many sabre-toothed lawyers and dire agents and studio mammoths staggering around the countryside.)

That should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. By this time, the guys upstairs were so pissed they were ready to shut the whole operation down. The DNA Team had to get rid of the remaining raptors, so they donated them to the San Francisco zoo. Oh, that was smart. On the one hand, there are no rats in San Francisco any more. On the other hand, there are no stray animals either. You have to keep your cat in the house, and it’s not safe to walk your Chihuahua.

All of which has nothing to do with Resnick directly, except that he was supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the precipitate. Instead, he ended up in the pits. Down in the mouth...and all his other orifices as well.

See, Resnick had been doing this whole series of anthologies—
Alternate Nightmares
,
Alternate Sexes, Alternate Bicycles
—whatever he thought would sell. And he had sold one called
Alternate Dinosaurs
or something like that. Who keeps track? And the publishers had decided that it would be fun to do some kind of tie-in with all the dinosaur movies, but they couldn’t afford much of a licensing fee, and the only one they could link up with was that dreadful turkey Fox was making—
The Feathered Mastodon
. In fact, that’s what it was about—a dreadful turkey—and the mastodon was playing the lead.

And so they sent Resnick out west to have his picture taken with the critter, and there they were, the two of them, side by side—and I was there too with my kid and my video camera, and I forgot that everything I said while taping would be heard on the tape, so when I sent Resnick a copy of the tape he could hear me saying clearly, “The family resemblance is astonishing. They both have the same birthmark in the shape of an Edsel.”

I guess Resnick felt he had to get even. So there he was at the secret convention of trufans, held in Moscow, Idaho, every February, and he was still smarting over the tape I’d just sent him, and that’s when he said what he said, and that’s why I pushed him in the tar and smacked him with the pillows. And then, while no one was looking, also injected him with a cocktail of kangaroo, frog and lizard DNA, with a chaser of growth hormone.

Things should start hopping around the Resnick household Real Soon Now. I’d move out of the state if I were you. In the meantime, I’ve sold an anthology to Tor called
Alternate Resnicks
. Watch for it in the bookstores, next fall.

AFTER A MOMENT, the sad-looking woman approached the registration table. Her husband followed with visible resignation. “Is this the ... seminar?” the woman asked with obvious embarrassment.

The attractive young hostess behind the table smiled warmly at the both of them. Her nametag identified her as Tia. “Yes, you’re in the right place. This is the Nine Circles Corporation. Welcome to our Introduction Seminar.” She slid two beige cards across the table to them, and two pencils as well. “Please fill out a guest card.”

The woman hesitated. “Nobody’s going to call us, are they? We don’t want to be pressured.”

“We don’t pressure people,” Tia said. “And yes, we do make one follow-up call to find out if you enjoyed the evening or have any additional questions or concerns that didn’t get answered.”

“We just don’t want our name on some list....”

Tia’s smile was warm and sincere. “You’re our guests. We like to know who you are.”

The woman sighed and picked up the pencil. She filled out the card slowly. Tia pushed the other card at the husband. Reluctantly, he followed his wife’s lead. Both of them looked sorry and ashamed, as if by being here they were admitting all the failures of their lives. They finished filling in their names and addresses and passed the cards back.

Tia glanced at the tan guest cards and quickly filled out two nametags. “Here you are, Maggie,” she twinkled. Robot-like, Maggie peeled off the backing and stuck the nametag to her coat. “And here’s yours, George. Thank you for being here.”

“Do I have to wear a nametag?” George glowered at the invasion.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. The Seminar Leader likes to know who he’s talking to.”

“Who’s leading the seminar?” George asked suspiciously.

“His name is Steven Keyes, and you’ll find that he’s absolutely the
best
. If you have any questions at all, just ask any of the assistants who are wearing gold nametags like mine.” Tia indicated the badge over her heart. “I’m sure you’ll have a great time tonight. The promise of this evening is that abundance is your divine right.”

“That’s right,” Tia said. “The Nine Circles Corporation is committed to success—
everyone’s
.”

“Yeah?” George grunted skeptically. “What’s the catch?”

Tia’s bright smile deflected George’s remark as if it hadn’t even been spoken. “All your questions will be answered in the seminar, I’m sure.” She gestured toward the waiting door. “I hope you enjoy yourselves.”

Maggie plucked at her husband’s sleeve in a gesture that said more than “Let’s go in.” It also implied, “Please don’t make a scene.” In the language of husbands and wives, the shorthand was unmistakable. George allowed himself to be pulled away, and the two of them headed nervously toward the meeting room. Tia turned her attention to the next group of people waiting to sign in.

Inside, the rows of chairs were filling quickly. Maggie kept her gaze low. As curious as she was, she didn’t really want anyone else to see her here. If she didn’t look around, she believed, then no one else would have the right to look back at her. Nevertheless, after a moment, her curiosity won out and she began taking sly peeks at the other people in the room.

All around them, snappily dressed assistants stood at strategic intervals, smiling and eager to serve. All of the assistants looked healthy and fresh. One vigorous-looking fellow glided up and asked them to please fill up the seats toward the front. After a moment’s hesitation, George and Maggie complied without argument, but they moved deeper into the room with obvious reluctance. Sitting too close to the front would
make it harder to sneak out later if they got uncomfortable with what they were hearing.

“Well, they’re certainly slick,” George muttered resentfully as he took his seat. He folded his arms across his chest; his signal that he had brought his body here, but not his willingness.