Iterations and other stories (collection)

The dinosaur’s mouth hung open, showing white conical teeth. There were some gaps—this might indeed have been the same individual that attacked Kowalski. But Kowalski had been a fool—doubdess he’d tried to run, or to ward off the approaching beast.

Ludlam walked slowly toward the dinosaur. The creature tilted its head to one side, as if puzzled. It could have decapitated Ludlam with a single bite, but for the moment it seemed merely curious. Ludlam reached up gently, placing his flat palm softly against the beast’s rough, warm hide.

The dinosaur’s chest puffed out, and it let loose a great roar. The sound started long and loud, but soon it was attenuating, growing fainter—

—as was the beast itself.

Ludlam felt a tingling over his entire body, and then pain shooting up into his brain, and then a shiver that ran down his spine as though a cold hand were touching each vertebra in turn, and then he was completely blind, and then there was a flash of absolutely pure, white light, and then—

—and then, he was there.

On the other side.

In the other timeline.

Ludlam had been in physical contact with the dinosaur as it had returned home, and he’d been swept back to the other side with it.

It had been nighttime in New York, and, of course, it was nighttime here. But the sky was crystal clear, with, just as it had been back in the other timeline, the moon perfectly full. Ludlam saw stars twinkling overhead—in precisely the patterns he was used to seeing whenever he got away from the city’s lights.

This was the present day, and it was Manhattan Island—but devoid of skyscrapers, devoid of streets. They were at the bank of a river—a river long ago buried in the other timeline as part of New York’s sanitation system.

The tyrannosaur was standing next to Ludlam. It looked disoriented, and was rocking back and forth on its two legs, its stiff tail almost touching the ground at the end of each arc.

The creature eyed Ludlam.

It had no arms; therefore, it had no technology. But Ludlam felt sure there must be a large brain beneath that domed skull. Surely it would recognize that Ludlam meant it no harm—and that his scrawny frame would hardly constitute a decent meal.

The dinosaur stood motionless. Ludlam opened his mouth in a wide, toothy grin—

—and the great beast did the same thing—

—and Ludlam realized his mistake—

A territorial challenge.

He ran as fast as he could.

Thank God for arms. He managed to clamber up a tree, out of reach of the tyrannosaur’s snapping jaws.

He looked up. A pterosaur with giant furry wings moved across the face of the moon. Glorious.

He would have to be careful here.

But he couldn’t imagine any place he’d rather be.

Sixty-five million years of additional evolution! And not the boring, base evolution of mice and moles and monkeys. No, this was dinosaurian evolution. The ruling reptiles, the terrible lizards—the greatest creatures the Earth had ever known, their tenure uninterrupted. The way the story of life was really meant to unfold. Ludlam’s heart was pounding, but with excitement, not fear, as he looked down from his branch at the tyrannosaur-like being, its lean, muscled form stark in the moonlight.

He’d wait till morning, and then he’d try again to make friends with the dinosaur.

But—hot damn!—he was so pleased to be here, it was going to be a real struggle to keep from grinning.

The Blue Planet

Author’s Introduction

On December 3, 1999, the Mars Polar Lander disappeared as it descended toward the red planet. Five days later, an editor with the wonderfully appropriate surname of Bradbury at The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper called to ask me if I could write a science-fiction story explaining the probe’s disappearance. The only catch: they needed the finished story in just twenty-four hours. I said I couldn’t contemplate such a tight deadline for less than a dollar a word, the editor said fine (much to my surprise), and—voild!—a story was born.

Newspapers are notorious for changing writers’ words, but the only thing The Globe changed was my title, from “The Blue Planet” to the rather histrionic “Mars Reacts!”

David G. Hartwell took this story for his fifth-annual Year’s Best SF anthology, but he preferred my original tide, and so the story was republished there—and now here—as “The Blue Planet.”

* * *

The round door to the office in the underground city irised open. “Teltor! Teltor!”

The director of the space-sciences hive swung her eyestalks to look wearily at Dostan, her excitable assistant. “What is it?”

“Another space probe has been detected coming from the third planet.”

“Again?” said Teltor, agitated. She spread her four exoskeletal arms. “But it’s only been a hundred days or so since their last probe.”

“Exactly. Which means this one must have been launched before we dealt with that one.”