The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (126 page)

Thomas

T
HE AFTERNOON WAS
clear and exceptionally cold. An off-duty company geologist was driving across the floor of the mine when a flash of reflected light caught his gaze. He didn’t particularly want to go home, and thirty-one years in the coal industry hadn’t quite killed the curious boy inside him. Backing up, he saw the flash repeated, and it seemed peculiar enough that he pulled on his stocking cap and mittens and climbed slowly up over the lignite coal, taking a close, careful look at something that made no sense whatsoever.

His fingers were numb and nose frostbitten when he reached the field office. But he didn’t tremble until he began to the maps, showing his superiors what patch of ground shouldn’t be touched until more qualified experts could come in and kick around.

“What’d you find?” they asked.

“An unknown species,” seemed like an honest, worthy answer.

Sixty million years ago, plant material had gathered inside a basin sandwiched between young mountain ranges. Then the peat was covered over with eroded debris and slowly cooked into the low-sulfur treasure that today fed power plants across half of the country. Fossils were common in Powder River country. The coal often looked like rotted leaves and sticks. But there was no way to systematically investigate what the gigantic machines wrested from the ground. Tons of profit came up with every scoop, and only one person in the room wanted the discovery preserved, no matter how unique it might be.

The geologist listened to the group’s decision. Then he lifted the stakes, showing the photographs that he had taken with his cell phone camera. “This resembles nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he added. Then mostly to himself, he muttered, “It’s like nothing else in the world.”

“I’ve seen these before,” one supervisor barked. “It’s nothing, Tom.”

Normally an agreeable sort, the geologist nodded calmly, but then his voice showed bite when he asked, “Why can’t we damn well be sure? Just to be safe?”

“No,” another boss growled. “Now forget about it.”

Thirty-one years of loyal service to the company brought one undeniable lesson: This argument would never be won here. So he retreated, driving into Gillette and his tiny house. His wife was sitting in the front of the television, half-asleep. He poured the last of her whiskey down the sink, and she stood and cursed him for some vague reason and swung hard at his face, and he caught her and wrestled her to bed, saying all of the usual words until she finally closed her eyes. Then he collected several dozen important names and agencies, sending out a trim but explicit e-mail that included his phone numbers and the best of his inadequate pictures. Thomas showered quickly, and he waited. Nobody called. Then he dressed and ate dinner before carrying two shotguns, unloaded, and a tall thermos of coffee out the truck, and after a few minutes of consideration, he drove back to the mine, parking as close to the fossil as possible.

Tom’s plan, such as it was, involved shooing away the excavators as long as possible, first with words, and if necessary, empty threats. But these were temporary measures, and worse, he discovered that his phone didn’t work down here in the pit’s deepest corner. That’s why he stepped out into the cold again. Navigating by the stars and carrying a small hammer, he intended to break off a few pieces of the fossil – as a precaution, in case this treasure was dug up and rolled east, doomed to be incinerated with the rest of the anonymous coal.

Mattie

Few took notice of the peculiar e-mail. Three colleagues called its author, two leaving messages on his voice mail. CNN’s science reporter ordered her intern to contact the corporation’s main office for reaction. The PR person on duty knew nothing about the incident, sharply questioned its validity, and after restating his employer’s sterling environmental record, hung up. In frustration, the intern contacted a random astronomer living in Colorado. The astronomer knew nothing about the matter. She glanced at the forwarded e-mail, in particular the downloaded images, and then said, “Interesting,” to the uninterested voice. It wasn’t until later, staring at the twisted body with its odd limbs and very peculiar skull that her heart began to race. She called the geologist’s phones. Nobody answered. Leaving warning of her imminent arrival, she dressed for the Arctic and grabbed the department’s sat-phone, buying two tall coffees when she gassed up on her way out of Boulder.

Better than most, Mattie understood the temporary nature of life. This woman who had never before been stopped by the police earned three speeding tickets on the journey north. Approaching the mine, she slipped in behind an empty dump truck, driving almost beneath the rear axle, and because the only security guard happened to be relieving himself, she managed to slip undetected out onto the gouged, unearthly landscape.

GPS coordinates took her to a pickup truck parked beside a blackish-brown cliff. The engine was running, a stranger sleeping behind the wheel. Beside him on the seat was what looked like huge, misshapen hands cradling a large golden ring. Two shotguns were perched against the far door. For a brief moment, she hesitated. But Mattie shoved her natural caution aside. With a tap on the glass, she woke the stranger, and startled, he stared out at what must have looked like a ghost – this young woman with almost no hair and a gaunt, wasted face.

He nervously rolled down the window.

“Are you Thomas Greene? I’m Mattie Chong.”

Stupid with fatigue, Tom asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see your alien,” she reported.

He accepted that. What bothered him more was the stranger’s appearance. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind my asking . . . what’s wrong with you?”

“Cancer,” Mattie reported amiably, throwing her flashlight’s beam against the deep seam of lignite. “And if I’m alive in four months, I’ll beat all of my doctors’ predictions.”

The President

It was rare not to be the most important man in the room. And today brought one of those exceptional occasions: a trailer crowded with scientists and Secret Service agents, mining representatives and select reporters, plus the three-person congressional delegation from Wyoming. But the hero of the moment was Dr Greene, and everybody wanted to stand beside the renowned geologist. Of course Dr Chong should have shared this limelight, but she was flown to Utah this morning, her illness taking its expected, presumably fatal turn. The president was merely another visitor, and as the lesser celebrity, it was his duty to shake hands and ask about the poor woman’s health. Every researcher had to be congratulated on the historic, world-shattering work. And he insisted on smiles all around. Bullied joviality was the president’s great skill, and he was at his best when he was feeling less than happy.

Today was especially miserable. The bitter wind and low leaden skies only underscored a mood that had crumbled at dawn. That’s when word arrived that his former Chief of Staff – a slippery political worm on his noblest day – planned to give the Special Investigator everything, including the damned briefcase filled with cash and ten hours of exceptionally embarrassing recordings. The president’s administration was wounded, and by tomorrow it might well be dead. Cautious voices wanted the Wyoming visit canceled, but that would have required an artful excuse, and what would have changed? Nothing. Besides, he understood that if enough people were fascinated with these old bones and odd artifacts, the coming nastiness might not be as awful as it promised to be.

Dr Irving Case was the project administrator, and he had been on duty for less than a week. But with a bureaucrat’s instincts for what counted, he used a large empty smile and a big voice. “Mr President, sir. Would you like to go see the discovery now, sir?”

“If it’s no problem. Let’s have a peek at old George.”

Back into the winter miseries they went. A tent-like shelter had been erected around the burial site, to block the wind and blowing coal dust. As they strolled across the barren scene, a dozen experts spoke in a competitive chorus, agreeing that the fossil was unique and remarkable, and of course immeasurably precious. The first priority was to disturb nothing, every clue precious and no one certain what constituted a clue. The president kept hearing how little was known, yet in the next moment, a dozen different hypotheses were offered to explain the creature’s origins and how it might have looked in life and why it was where it was and why this wasn’t where it had lived.

“It didn’t live here?” the president interrupted. Aiming for humor, he said, “This splendid desolation . . . this is exactly where every movie alien roams.”

Laughter blossomed – the bright fleeting giddiness that attaches itself to men of power. Then they reached the shelter, and reverent silence took hold. Dr Case mentioned rules. Politely but firmly, he reminded everybody to wear the proper masks and gloves, and nothing could be touched, and then he warned the press to stand back so that all might enjoy the best possible view.

Photographs and video had already shown the mysterious fossil to the world. The enormous stratum of coal in which he, or she, was entombed was long ago dubbed Big George, hence the fossil’s popular name. Lights had been strung near the tent ceiling. The coal slag was cleared away, the flat floor littered with scientific instruments and brightly colored cables. What rose before the president was both immediately recognizable and immeasurably strange: sixty million years ago, alien hands had dug a hole deep into the watery peat, and then “George” was lowered in or climbed in, feet first. Shovels had been used in the excavation. Two archeologists pointed at nearly invisible details, describing with confidence how the metal blades must have looked and what kinds of limbs employed them, and even while they were talking, a third voice reminded everyone that conjectures were fine, but nothing was proved and might never be.

George was a big fellow, and even to the uninformed eye, he looked like something from another world. The weight of the rock had compressed him, but not as badly as the president expected. Two bent legs helped carry the long horizontal body, and two more legs were presumably buried out of sight. A fifth limb rose from behind what looked like the angular and watchful face of a praying mantis, and the arm was jointed and complicated and partially destroyed. Dr Greene had removed the matching hands and now famous gold ring. The corpse was majestic, wasn’t it? But in the next moment, in the president’s eyes, George looked preposterous. Pieces stolen from unrelated creatures had been thrown together, a wily hoaxer having his laugh at all this foolish, misplaced fascination.

Turning to world’s most famous geologist, the president asked, “How were we so lucky, this poor fellow exposed this way?”

“The coal’s weak around the edges of the grave,” Dr Greene explained. His celebrity was wearing on him, puffy eyes half-closed, a dazed, deep fatigue visible in his features and slope-shouldered posture. “If the blade had cut anywhere else, I wouldn’t have noticed anything.”

“It was the ring you saw?”

“Yes, sir.”

The president nodded. “I haven’t seen that artifact yet,” he mentioned.

Dr Case stepped forward. “The hands and ring have been sent to the Sandia, sir. For analysis and closer study.”

The president nodded, looking up again. “So well preserved.”

Dr Case enjoyed his little stage. “The corpse shows very little sign of decomposition,” he explained. “And we don’t know why. Maybe the acidic peat and lack of oxygen preserved it. Although it’s possible that the flesh was simply too alien and our microbes couldn’t find anything to chew on.”

The president nodded, pretending to appreciate the vagaries of alien biology. Then he returned to one statement that had puzzled him earlier. “And why do we think George lived elsewhere?”

Somebody said, “The feet.”

Each leg ended with a narrow, three-toed foot.

“They’re not built for bogs,” another voice volunteered. “George would have sunk in to his knees, or deeper.”

Against the rules, the president stepped closer. Nobody dared correct him, but the scene grew noticeably quieter. A Clydesdale horse would have been larger, but not by much. He knelt and stared at the lead foot, moving his head back and forth to avoid his own shadow. Sixty million years in the ground, yet the corpse retained its flesh and what seemed to be its natural color, which was tan. The crushing weight had twisted the dead foot, every toe visible. But what was perhaps more remarkable lay beneath the foot – the remnants of what might be animal skin, cut and stitched to create a simple shoe.

“Is this really a moccasin?” he asked.

Dr Case joined him, kneeling and pushing his own mask closer to his mouth – making absolutely certain not to contaminate the treasure. “We have at least fifteen features that are probably remnants of clothing, Mr. President. And six metallic objects that look like knives and such, all carried on the body.”

“Anything special?” the president inquired.

The administrator blinked, unsure what to make of the question.

“You know, like a laser-gun or portable reactor.”

“Nothing like that, sir.”

“That surprises me,” the president admitted.

Dr Case stood, offering his hand. “From what we can tell, sir . . . the technology is Early Iron Age. If that.”

The president rose without anyone’s help.

Another few minutes of inexpert study ended when someone mentioned lunch. “A fine idea,” the president agreed. “Let the scientists back to work!” Then everyone filed outside and pulled off the choking masks. The distraction was over, the show finished. The president found his previous depression waiting for him, like a black mountain bearing down on his aging frame. He wiped his mouth with a sleeve, accepted the vacuous thanks of several people, and then he dredged up another one of his patented smiles, wondering why it was that no President had killed himself in office. Considering the pressures of the job, that seemed remarkable. Almost an oversight, really. The idea was so intriguing that he spent the next several moments dancing with a lurid fantasy: He would kill himself today, people around the world would weep, and with that, he would give himself a lasting, however inglorious place in history.