Read Online Tales of Old Earth by Michael Swanwick - Free Book Online

long time, Satan kept on frenziedly slashing at the window with his jaws, leaving long scratches in the glass.
    Philippe pressed his body against the window with all his strength, trying to minimize the distance between himself and savage dino death. Shrieking with joyous laughter when that killer mouth tried to snatch him up. I felt for the kid, wanting to get as close to the action as he could. I could identify.
    I was just like that myself when I was his age.
    When Satan finally wore himself out and went bad-humoredly away, I returned to the de Chervilles. Philippe had restored himself to the company of his family. The kid looked pale and happy.
    So did his sister. I noticed that she was breathing shallowly. Satan does that to young women.
    â€œYou dropped your napkin.” I handed it to Melusine. Inside was a postcard-sized promotional map, showing Hilltop Station and behind it Tent City, where the researchers lived. One of the tents was circled. Under it was written, While the others are dancing .
    I had signed it Don .
    â€œWhen I grow up I’m going to be a paleontologist,” the kid said fervently. “A behavioral paleontologist, not an anatomist or a wrangler.” Somebody had come to take him home. His folks were staying to dance. And Melusine was long gone, off to Hawkins’ tent.
    â€œGood for you,” I said. I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Come see me when you’ve got the education. I’ll be happy to show you the ropes.”
    The kid left.
    He’d had a conversion experience. I knew exactly how it felt. I’d had mine standing in front of the Zallinger “Age of Reptiles” mural in the Peabody Museum in New Haven. That was before time travel, when paintings of dinosaurs were about as real as you could get. Nowadays I could point out a hundred inaccuracies in how the dinosaurs were depicted. But on that distant sun-dusty morning in the Atlantis of my youth, I just stood staring at those magnificent brutes, head filled with wonder, until my mother dragged me away.
    It really was a pity. Philippe was so full of curiosity and enthusiasm. He’d make a great paleontologist. I could see that. He wasn’t going to get to realize his dreams, though. His folks had too much money to allow that .
    I knew because I’d glanced through the personnel records for the next hundred years and his name wasn’t there anywhere.
    It was possibly the least of the thousands of secrets I held within me, never to be shared. Still, it made me sad. For an instant I felt the weight of all my years, every petty accommodation, every unworthy expedience. Then I went up the funnel and back down again to an hour previous.
    Unseen, I slipped out and went to wait for Melusine.
    Maintaining the funnel is expensive. During normal operations—when we’re not holding fund-raisers—we spend months at a time in the field. Hence the compound, with its army surplus platform tents and electrified perimeter to keep the monsters out.
    It was dark when Melusine slipped into the tent.
    â€œDonald?”
    â€œShhh.” I put a finger to her lips, drew her close to me. One hand slid slowly down her naked back, over a scrap of crushed velvet, and then back up and under her skirt to squeeze that elegant little ass. She raised her mouth to mine and we kissed deeply, passionately.
    Then I tumbled her to the cot, and we began undressing each other. She ripped off three buttons tearing my shirt from me.
    Melusine made a lot of noise, for which I was grateful. She was a demanding, self-centered lay, who let you know when she didn’t like what you were doing and wasn’t at all shy about telling you what to do next. She required a lot of attention. For which I was also grateful.
    I needed the distraction.
    Because while I was in his tent, screwing the woman he didn’t want, Hawkins was somewhere out there getting killed. According to the operational report that I’d write