End of an Era

O tempora! O mores!

Oh, what times! Oh, what morals!

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman orator (106–43 b.c.)

Klicks was driving me crazy with his cocksure attitude. Things were always so simple for him. For every political debate, for every moral question, he had a glib, pat answer. Should we legalize devices that directly stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain? What rights do genetically tinkered apes with the power of speech have? Should female priests be allowed to be surrogate mothers? Ask Klicks. He’ll tell you.

Of course, his opinions on mindbenders are similar to those of the editorial writer for The Calgary Herald. His stance on simps bears a startling resemblance to that of Mike Bullard. And his viewpoint on celibate surrogates comes right out of that article in Playboy.

A deep thinker? Not Klicks. But he’s smooth, oh so smooth. Microsoft mouse. "Miles is so articulate," Tess had said after the last New Year’s Eve bash we’d given together, the same week that Klicks and I had been named as the crew for this mission. "He could charm the pants right off you."

And so he did.

I’d known him for years. I was even the one who gave him his nickname. How could he, he of all people, steal Tess from me? We had been friends. Friendship is supposed to mean something.

I found out that Klicks and Tess were together less than a month after I’d moved out of our house. Just when I needed my friends most, my best friend — practically my only friend — was off boffing my ex-wife. A man who would steal another man’s wife doesn’t worry about morality, doesn’t weigh the principles, doesn’t consider the repercussions, doesn’t mull over the larger consequences. Doesn’t give a bloody fuck at all.

And yet here he is, all set to grant a reprieve, to — I will say it again, dammit — to play God for an entire race.

We’d spent a lot of time in mission planning debating whether Klicks and I should always stay together. But since there was so little time and so much to do, it had been agreed that we’d have separate lists of tasks to perform. Each of us was armed and carried a radio, so the risk in separating seemed acceptable. Klicks had gone off after breakfast in our Jeep to find a good spot to take core samples. Now that we knew the asteroid had hit two centuries before the end of the Cretaceous, he wanted to collect some samples to see if the iridium, shocked quartz, and microdiamonds thought to be associated with the impact were indeed already present in Earth’s rocks.

Klicks had set out toward the east. I headed west, ostensibly to examine some hills in that direction, but really just to put as much distance between him and me as possible.

The sun had reached its highest point in the sky, a hot orb that looked perhaps a tad whiter than it did in the twenty-first century. Insects buzzed around me in tiny black swarms. I wore a pith helmet with a cheesecloth rim that kept them away from my face, but their constant droning was giving me a headache.

The air was tormentingly hot; the vegetation lush, with vines hanging between stands of dawn redwood. I must have walked at least five kilometers from the Sternberger, but hadn’t felt the distance in this light gravity. I looked over my shoulder, but trees obscured my view. No matter. I had a Radio Shack homing device to find my way back.

My head was still swimming from Klicks’s insistence that we bring the Hets forward. I hated having to make big decisions. If you avoid them long enough, they go away.

Just like Dad will go away eventually.

Dr. Schroeder’s voice echoed in my head, his Bavarian accent making the words harsher, colder: Failing to act is a decision in and of itself. Then the same words again, but in a lilting Jamaican accent: Failing to act is a decision in and of itself.

Screw Schroeder. Screw Klicks. There’s nothing wrong with not liking to make hasty decisions.

Of course, I always end up buying whatever car the dealer has left on the lot from the previous model year so that I won’t have to make all those choices about color and features. And it’s true that I haven’t voted in years. I’ve never been able to decide between the parties — but hell, who can tell them apart? There’s nothing wrong with any of that, damn it all. One shouldn’t make decisions until one is sure.