End of an Era

"Perhaps not. But it’s unfair to the Hets for us to assume that humanity will eventually get around to dealing with their plight sometime in the distant future. We’ve got to help them right now, while we’re sure we can."

"It’s a moral decision," I said, shaking my head.

Klicks frowned. "And you hate making moral decisions."

" ‘Hate’ is a strong word—"

"You don’t have a stand on abortion or capital punishment. Hell, you haven’t voted in, what, twenty years?"

I despised the sound of his voice. I’d never had any trouble refuting Klicks’s claims in print, taking hours to mold letters of response for the journals, but face-to-face he could always run circles around me. "But this isn’t a decision we’re competent to make."

"I feel up to it." Klicks grinned broadly, but it quickly slipped into a patronizing smile. "Brandy, failing to act is a decision in and of itself."

He’s been reading my diary, I thought briefly, but immediately rejected the idea. It was password-protected on my palmtop, and I’m twenty times the programmer Klicks is. Although he’s doubtless seen me tapping away at the keyboard, there’s no way he could have accessed the file. Still, those words, those cruel words -

Failing to act is a decision in and of itself.

Dr. Schroeder had said that to me when I talked to him about my father.

Failing to act…

"It’s not a decision I’m comfortable making," I said at last, my head swimming.

Klicks shrugged, then settled back into the contours of his crash couch. "Life isn’t always comfortable." He looked me straight in the eye. "I’m sorry, Brandy, but the great moral decision is up to you and me."

"But—"

"No buts, my friend. It’s up to us."

I was about to object again, when suddenly, 65 million years before the invention of Jehovah’s Witnesses, of Avon Ladies, of nosy neighbors, there was a knock at the door.

Countdown: 14

We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German dramatist (1749–1832)

Klicks got up off his crash couch and made his way across the semicircular floor of the Sternberger’s habitat to door number one. He pulled it open, walked down the short access ramp, and peered out the little glassteel insert in the main hatchway. I followed him down and looked over his shoulder. It was a big drop to the crater wall, but there, standing on it, was a dancing green troodon, hopping like a Mexican jumping bean to keep balanced on the ragged slope.

Klicks opened the outer door and looked down at the thing. "What do you want?"

The reptile was silent for half a minute. At last, it made a series of low roars like corrugated cardboard being ripped apart. Klicks turned to look at me. "I don’t think this one talks."

I scratched my beard. "What’s it doing here, then?"

The cardboard ripping noises were growing softer, less harsh. Finally, English came from the reptile’s mouth. "Nothing, man," it said, except it sounded more like "Nuttin’, mon."

I had to smile. "No wonder he’s a bit slow, Klicks," I said. "This must be the one who learned to speak from you." I faced the troodon. "Hey, man! Day O!"

The reptile looked at the ground as if thinking. "Daylight come and me want go home," it said at last.

I laughed.

"Your wastes are eliminated?" it said. "Your bodies cleansed?"

"Yes," I said warily.

"Then now we shall talk."

"All right," I said.

"I come in?" said the troodon.

"No," I said. "We’ll come down."

The troodon held up a scaly hand. "Later." In a flash, it was gone, skittering down the crater wall. I stepped to the threshold myself and looked out. It was shortly after noon. The sun, brilliantly bright against a cloudless sky, had begun to slip down toward the western horizon. Overhead I could see a trio of gorgeous copper-colored pterosaurs lazily rising and falling on columns of heated air. I took the giant first step out the door and skidded down the crater wall and onto the mud flat. Klicks, holding an elephant gun, followed behind me.

The three troodons were standing about thirty meters from the crater wall. As soon as we were both down, they moved toward us with surprising speed, long legs eating up distance rapidly. Their curved necks worked back and forth as they walked, just like pigeons, but because the dinosaurs had much longer necks, the effect was elegant instead of comical. Their stiff tails, sticking straight out from lean rumps, bounced up and down as they moved. At once, the troodons came to an instantaneous halt: no slowing down, the last stride no different from any of the previous ones. They simply stopped, cold, about three meters away from us.

The one with the diamond-shaped patch of yellow skin on its muzzle — the one that spoke like me — once again did most of the talking. "We have questions for you," it said.