Barry N. Malzberg - Major League Triceratops.pdf

(44 KB) Pobierz
303219078 UNPDF
MAJOR LEAGUE TRICERATOPS
B a r r y N. M a l z b e r g
IN THE GALLERY
I n the dim corridor, the spaces hushed by fog, the dim and dazzling lights of the exposed diorama
playing, the paleontologist stared at the great, shrouded skeletons revolving slowly into the light, the huge
and vaulting figures of Struthiomimus and Triceratops and that flaming tower, the Tyrannosaurus,
emerging into the strobe. Look at those sons of bitches, the paleontologist said. He was old as new
scientists go, a late career change had plummeted him into university at forty, out at fifty with a deep and
final understanding of mortality. Ever see anything like that? The woman whose hand he was holding
shrugged and shook her head. She had learned the virtues of silence with this man early on. He would not
listen.
They were killers, the paleontologist said. One kick, you were gone. But now they are gone. What do
you think of that?
I don’t think, the woman said.
This was close to the truth, near enough to pass, anyway. The tyrannosaur’s enormous kneebone, the
arch of that bone, loomed before them and she looked up, the line of her gaze passing almost
indifferently, casually, over the small skull, half-concealed behind the foot of the larger Triceratops . The
skull was the size of a man’s and flayed to an ardent white.
Take that one on the ranch, the paleontologist said. He scratched his nose. Ride ’em cowboy, he said.
Take that one down the loop of Montana, what do you say?
I don’t say anything, the woman said. You have taught me the crest of silence. She squeezed his hand,
curled a finger in his palm. Not even a haiku, she said. Not even five by seven by five.
The paleontologist turned, stared at her with full interest, his gaze caught by the fine cheekbones, the
intensity of her gaze, something of the prehistoria herself, he thought, in this odd and twisted light. Her
father had been Japanese, the mother pure Norteamericana, and the Orient had seemed buried in her
face until this angle, this moment, now in the spattered light cast by the dinosaur, in the clutch of her hand
she seemed, suddenly, to bear all of the wound and stain of her heritage. Five by seven by five, the
paleontologist said. In the light the bird/Caught inCretaceous flight as the bone talks to us . What do
you think of that?
I think it is very decadent, she said. De-ca-dent, like the time travelers going back to shoot them on their
ranches, that is what I think.
But not touching?
It is touching, she said. Everything is touching in the gallery at noon in the dark. She pointed at the small,
shattered ridges of teeth. It may talk to you, she said. It doesn’t talk to me.
 
I have nothing to do with the ranches, he said. It is unfair of you to discuss the ranches. I am a scientist.
Yes, she said, you are very scientific. She made him feel the pressure then, putting her knee against his.
De-ca-dent, she said again. A great horned thing charging toward us in the night, yes.
You are strange, Maria, the paleontologist said. I do not understand you.
You are the bone, she said. You are the bone which talks to us. Take me home and show me the bone.
He turned away from her but his other hand was reaching, clutching for her waist. She felt the icy,
encircling touch. In old Montana, he said. They must have had a time.
They always had a time. Time was nothing for them. They cruised through the dirt like boats. Take me
out of here, she said. I have heard enough of Montana and the ranches and time. I don’t want to look at
the dead things anymore. Now, she said, or not at all.
Am I too de-ca-dent for you, Maria? Is that what you are telling me?
She looked at the spaces up and down, the crucifixes of bone assembled now in small wedges up and
down the spines of the reconstructed tyrannosaur. I don’t know, she said. Am I supposed to?
Back then, back here, he said. His grasp tightened and they were moving then toward the door, he
leading, she guiding, the two of them reaching but at the exit they stood for a while, first one then the
other pointing at the creatures looming before them. When they were gone at last, the fog, cleared slightly
by their respiration, closed on the emptiness and obscured what neither had seen: the small, round skull,
shiny and neat as an ornament, lying at the reconstructed rear left foot of the tyrannosaur, the eye hollows
glinting in the received light.
In the light my bird, the paleontologist cried later. But that had nothing to do with the gallery, he insisted.
Nothing to do with it at all. Her hands on his head were fire.
THE ROBLES TRANSCRIPTS
I am going to keep notes on this. Testimony is going to be kept. There will be some records of the
disaster, if disaster it will be. Going back to torment Tyrannosaurus, shoot Triceratops, explore the flora
of the Cretaceous and sight the huge, dying beasts. We promised Dix a kill and a kill it is going to be, one
saved from paradox by this world. It will change nothing. (Perhaps it will change everything. But we
wouldn’t know, would we?) Consider the Triceratops .
Consider that beast. Weight up to five and a quarter tons, more than four thousand kilos, then. Thirty to
thirty-five feet in length full grown, flourished or at least lurked in this latest part of the Cretaceous (Latin
derivative, chalk ). One of the largest and meanest of the horned dinosaurs, not like scuttling
Struthiomimus or businesslike tyrannosaur but rather this is an animal with its own program. Put it down,
give it to Dix tomorrow, the number of the beast. With photographs. Three sharp, pointed horns on that
bland, boxy rhinoceros face, the horns measuring more than three feet. The mottled cores encircled by a
series of occipital bones. Am I doing this right? Ten species, more or less, slightly varied.
Those bony horn cores survive into our era in the form of rhinoceroses and some of the great horned
birds. The Great Montana Dude Ranch. Point the launcher, Dix, and let it fly, unseat the beast, make his
bones run like water. Perhaps overdramatizing but then again, melodrama is the last connection the
servant class can attempt toward a sense of their consequence. I think I just made that up now.
It is cold here, the small arc of light, the pungent blasts of heater do not really help, do not conceal the
 
cold. Dix, the winner of the contest, sleeps quietly, gathering himself against his great opportunity. I gather
myself too . Gather myself in this prehistoric plunge toward—toward what? Reconception and
redevelopment to be sure and all the revisions of time. In latter years the Triceratops shot by Dix will
decompose along with all this era, the living too, steam slowly into the mists. None of it will remain but
that small testimony I can leave or that at least I think is the insistence which drives me forward, drives
me back, takes me through this busy and circumstantial time.
Dix, poised on the rim of the impossible, leveling the stick of fire and the great beast, confused, stumbling
in the chalk and doom.
MORNING LIGHT
The notes lacked away, his schedule set, insistent sleep craved, Robles stumbled toward awareness
quickly, rising through the flickering levels of illumination, reaching toward the weight of sixty-seven
million crushing years and found himself lying tangled on the earth, the ropes of the tent a geometry of
madness spattering shadows. Cry of prehistoric birds in the distance, the strange, dry whooping of a
beast, then. He reared to a seated position, arched away from the sleeping Muffy, fully clothed yes as he
had prepared but with the feeling that he had nonetheless fallen helplessly behind, lost all grip and sense
of what he had come to do, knew only the falling sickness. But peering through the tent he could see that
the little camp was silent, the other tents undisturbed, Dix’s tent falling in even folds, this dense time still
wrapped heavily around the sleepers. His terror must have come from dreams, not circumstance, some
atavism of displacement, of having been taken by time to this utter and dismaying disconnection.
Back in the tent he struggled to move from dreams of wounded reptiles and death then, suppressed the
dream sounds of carnage to come, breathed slowly in the clammy silence, his breath curling before him.
Muffy sighed, a pretty woman, a pretty distracted woman, no courtesan but a friend, a part of the tour,
yes, but more than that to him now, she insisted, and he looked at her momentarily without desire,
without any intimation of need, remembering the places his hands had found in that scurrying time earlier
when he had been driven from a need he could no more articulate than he could decipher those dim
whoops. Let her sleep, yes, he thought, there was enough and a different aspect of time to come.
Standing there, back to the embankment, he could see the reflection of the floodlights spilling through the
protected zone, framing the sleeping Muffy Carter, he could see the Cretaceous refracted as panorama,
diorama, hurtled dogwood and the swamp having the aspect of the museum. It was a “natural habitat,”
Robles thought, and put the quote marks in, the biggest and goddamndest habitat of then all, a
Cretaceous replicate and just the most remarkable thing. Scratching his ass in the curling sunlight, trying
to bring himself to some kind of accommodation, Robles peered at his strange and attractive partner,
then turned to see the mesh fences in the distance, the fences walling off the compound, holding it through
paradoxical electrification and wire from the gigantic animals that would otherwise in their ignorance
blunder through. Protect the animals, protect the travelers, a mutuality of indifference. That was the point
of the tour, wasn’t it? But they had promised Dix one kill. A major-league Triceratops . That was where
the center lay now.
He didn’t want to think about it. Killing Triceratops was not Robles’ ticket, he would direct the fire,
whisper words of encouragement to Dix, estimate the windage and the burn ratio and the number of
meters toward the beast but the kill was all Dix’s responsibility, the Combine had made that quite clear, a
line had been drawn (just like that for the dinosaurs) and Robles would not have to cross it. I’m here
safe, he said, you hear that Muffy? Muffy sighed, clutched a pink pillow in her pretty hands, rubbed her
face in the crease, then gave a long, purling groan. I know you don’t want to talk about it, he said. No
one wants to talk about it. We all have our jobs, we’re all safe, aren’t we? Dix is the major-league
Triceratops hunter while you and I make sweet, sweet love under the dogwoods, isn’t that right? He
 
listened, heard the catch in her breath, the tiny acquiescence in her exhalation. Right, he said, that is
exactly right.
He strode toward the flat, peered out again. Past the enclosure: past the abyss dug into this hollow by
Camp Paradox itself (that was Muffy’s name for it, it would stay, it was the right term) was the
landscape. The shallow depressions, curved mountains, all of this curiously without color like the beasts
themselves; small puffs from hidden volcanoes and buttes, those commas and exclamation points of
nature. Later, much later, the strata would accumulate: these would be mines, the strata valleys and
mountains, over there perhaps downtown Helena. The volcanoes, attended to, the fix of attention,
gurgled like beasts, made little whickering sounds in the darkness, and the beasts hidden by the arc and
incline of the landscape gurgled like volcanoes. In and out, that shuddering identity.
Robles shook his head, not in awe, awe was not the proper term for any of this. On your sixth voyage
back, now much more than a guide (if less than a hunter), you either internalized some of this and put it
away or you perished through the implications of the circumstance, just let it carry you under. No, it was
the lack of anticipation, his strange indifference in this first dawn which was stunning; never had he felt this
way before, now the period had no effect upon him. He was rising to confront fire and the beast but he
might as well have been in Brooklyn Complex, working out some kind of appropriations plan. That was
how much it meant to him now. Even burrowing within Muffy had had that blandness—her deeps which
once had seemed magnificent, arching now gave him back only small and splintering visions of himself,
little feathered mysteries in the dark. Here in what would become Helena sometime, the mines were yet
to be cast from this crystal unrest, the strata and volcanic ash lay millennia in the future as did his own
unspeakable conception. To this place, which should have been sacred—Robles felt that this was the
only sanctity which could be grasped, all the rest of it was ritual—had come the crowd of travelers with
Dix, host and moderator at their front, to sight the huge beasts for the promised international, televised,
major-league kill. What fearful symmetry, Robles said. Who would have dreamt that? Hand or eye? Are
you up yet?
Amphibian noises from the pallet, water and earth. She flipped a cover at him. I’m up, she said, thanks.
What are you talking about?
Poetry, Robles said. Old poetry.
You mean unwritten poetry, Muffy said. Won’t be written for ages.
Camp Paradox, Robles said. Camp out of time.
You said it, she said. I didn’t. Why don’t you come here and lay with me? Create some more paradox.
He looked at her, the shadows dressing her nakedness, casting arrows and curvatures of shape. Better
not, he said, everyone will be up soon. What if they saw us locked to ground, playing the old
sniffle-snaffle? What then, Muffy?
She yawned. Part of the tour, she said.
I’m a guide, Robles said. You’re a counselor. Not professional, it wouldn’t look right at all.
What do you think they’re doing? Any different than we?
Dix doesn’t, Robles said. He doesn’t do anything like that at all, ever. Remember? He said that once. A
violation of the temple of the holy spirit. He’s a fanatic too, not just a great group mind.
You’re too serious for me, Muffy said. You’re too much of a speculator. I don’t have that kind of stuff
 
going on in my head. To me it’s all green thoughts, everywhere. Whatever you say, then.
Robles walked to the pallet, looked down at her, then knelt, touched her elbow gently, felt the yielding of
the flesh, watched as her mouth opened slightly for entrance or reproof, it hardly mattered, with Muffy
Carter they mingled, they were all the same. Everything mingled and intermixed deep in the sweet probe.
Murder coming, yes, anachronism aplenty in the deep Cretaceous, but it was all the same to her and
everything would come out even in those dark, sweet depths. No copulation, nothing like that in the
sendback, the Administrators had said, but Muffy paid as much attention to that as any guide, which was
none at all. With good contraception and a tight, banging constraint, what was the difference? she had
asked. A pregnancy would be silly, bad luck for all of them, but really, who was to know? What was the
difference? There would be no pregnancy and everything happening here then, even the kill, would be an
abstraction. The death of the dinosaurs was as diminished as the pregnancy which would not occur: they
became in that cosmic accident fungi, heaps of bone trapped in that fungus, then ash, then fossils, trapped
in the clumsy and insistent onrush of time. Inthe new millennium, only a few bones and suggestions then to
mark their passage. Come on, she said, get right aboard. Ride me like a hobby horse, ride me like
before. Come, come.
Robles felt himself rolling toward her, then yanked himself away. No, he said, not now. It wouldn’t work
out, it wouldn’t be right.
Then go away, she said. She stared at him. I mean it. Just go. Don’t hover .
Yes, he said, you’re right. He tried to stand, felt his knees lock, sank into the dirt, vertigo pulling at him
then. You never get used to it, he said. Do you? I can’t take it. But it’s never been like this before.
Don’t get sentimental on me, Muffy said. I’m just a guide.
Maybe you never get used to it, he said. It’s all the cartage outside. Hundreds of thousands of tons. How
do you get used to it?
Maybe you should pass me my clothes, let me pull myself together then.
You can be blasé, Robles said. That’s because you don’t have to think about it. You just point and give
figures. But I’m supposed to be able to give interpretation . It’s the intellectual part of me.
You’re a deep fellow, she said. You’re beyond me. If fate and circumstance hadn’t thrown us together,
who knows how we might have been? Is it too late for us now? Will we survive? Time will tell, two
hundred million years of it.
I’m afraid of Dix, Robles said. Can you understand that? I don’t like him. I don’t know what he wants.
He wants to shoot Triceratops, dummy. That’s why he’s here.
Not Triceratops, Robles said. That’s just a symbol, whatever you call it. He wants something else. I
don’t know where your clothes are. You’re going to have to get them yourself.
You’re the one who threw them somewhere.
This isn’t a hotel, Robles said fiercely. This isn’t a one-night stand. We’re buried in this place, now, not in
the past, can’t you see that? It’s no joke.
Sure, she said, you’re always so right, I’ll find my own clothes. See if I care. You throw, I go. He’s just a
tourist, she said in a different tone. Maybe a host, maybe a personality with an entourage, but he wants
what the rest of them do. A few pictures, a little admiration, a thrill to touch his insulated life.
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin