Dimension of Miracles (13 page)

‘Now to particulars. Diving, digging or spinning are straightforward, but they lose effectiveness against a creature with the faculty of memory. A creature like youself, Carmody, could you avoid the simplistic deadly attack once, might never be deceived again.

‘Straightforwardness is not Nature’s way, however. It has been said that Nature has a vested interest in illusions, which are highways to death and birth. I for one will not argue the proposition. If we accept the concept, we see that your predator must engage in complex manoeuvres in order to snare a complex creature such as yourself.

‘There is another side to the problem also. Your predator was not conceived solely in order to eat you. You are the single most important thing in his life, granted; but he does possess free will, just as you do, and therefore is not limited to the strict logic of his eating function. Barn mice may think that the owl in the rafters was conceived and delineated for the sole purpose of hunting mice. But we know that the owl has several other things on his mind. This is how it is with all predators, including yours. From this, we draw an important conclusion: that all predators are functionally imperfect by virtue of their free will.’

‘I never thought of it that way before,’ Carmody said. ‘Does that help me?’

‘Well, not really. But I thought you should know it anyhow. You see, practically speaking, you may never be able to exploit your predator’s imperfections. Indeed, you may never even learn what they are. In this situation you are just like the barn mice. You may find a hole to scamper in when you hear the whirr of wings, but you will never be able to analyse the nature, talents, and limitations of the owl.’

‘Well, that’s just great,’ Carmody said, with heavy sarcasm. ‘I’m licked before I start. Or, to use your terminology, I’m as good as eaten even though nobody’s stuck a fork in me yet.’

‘Temper, temper,’ the Prize cautioned. ‘It isn’t quite as bad as that.’

‘So how bad is it? Can either of you tell me anything useful?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to do,’ Maudsley said.

‘Then tell me what this predator looks like.’

Maudsley shook his head. ‘That is quite impossible. Do you think any victim can learn what his predator looks like? If he could, the victim would become immortal!’

‘And that’s against the rules,’ the Prize put in.

‘At least give me an idea,’ Carmody said. ‘Does he always go around disguised as a spaceship?’

‘Of course not,’ Maudsley said. ‘From your point of view, he is a shape-changer. Have you ever heard of a mouse walking into the jaws of a snake, or a fly lighting on a frog’s tongue, or a fawn stepping between the forepaws of a tiger?
That
is the essence of predation! And you must ask yourself: where did those deluded victims think they were going, and what did they think was in front of them? Similarly, you must ask yourself what was really in front of your eyes when you talked to three of the predator’s fingers and followed them straight into his mouth!’

‘They looked like people,’ Carmody said. ‘But I still don’t know what the predator looked like.’ ‘There is no way I can enlighten you,’ Maudsley said. ‘Information about predators is not easily gained. They are too complementary to oneself. Its traps and concealments are based upon your own memories, your dreams and fantasies, your hopes and desires. The predator takes your own treasured dramas and plays them for you, as you just saw. To know your predator, you must know yourself. And it is easier to know the entire Universe than to know oneself.’

‘What can I do?’ Carmody asked.

‘Learn!’ Maudsley said. ‘Be eternally vigilant, move at top speed, trust nothing and no one. Don’t think of relaxing until you have reached your home.’

‘Home!’ Carmody said.

‘Yes. You will be safe on your own planet. Your predator cannot enter your lair. You will still be subject to all commonplace disasters, but at least you will be spared this.’

‘Can you send me home?’ Carmody asked. ‘You said you were working on a machine.’

‘I have completed it,’ Maudsley said. ‘But you must, understand its limitations, which are a concomitant with my own. My machine can take you to Where Earth is now, but that is all it can do.’

‘But that’s all I need!’ Carmody said.

‘No, it is not. “Where” gives you only the first W of location. You will still have to solve for When and Which. Take them in order, is my advice. Temporality before particularity, to use a common expression. You will have to leave here at once; your predator, whose appetite you foolishly aroused, may be back at any instant. I may not be so lucky this time in my rescue attempts.’

‘How did you get me out of his mouth?’ Carmody asked.

‘I hastily fabricated a lure,’ Maudsley told him. ‘It looked just like you, but I built it a little larger than life-size and gave it a bit more vitality. The predator dropped you and bounded after it, dribbling saliva. But we can’t try that again.’

Carmody preferred not to ask if the lure had felt any pain. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘But where am I going, and what is going to happen?’

‘You are going to an Earth, almost undoubtedly the wrong one. But I will send a letter to a person I know who is very clever at solving temporal problems. He’ll look you up, if he decides to take your case, and after that … well, who can say? Take it as it comes, Carmody, and be grateful if anything comes at all.’

‘I am grateful,’ Carmody said. ‘No matter what the outcome, I want to thank you very much.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ Maudsley said. ‘Don’t forget my message to the old fellow if you ever do get back home. All set to go? The machine is right here beside me. I didn’t have time to make it visible, but it looks almost exactly like a Zenith battery-operated shortwave radio. Where the hell did it go? Here it is. Got your Prize?’

‘I’ve got him,’ the Prize said, holding on to Carmody’s left arm with both hands.

‘Then we’re ready. I set this dial here and then this one, and then these two over here … You’ll find it pleasant to be out of the macrocosm, Carmody, and back on a planet, even if it isn’t yours. There’s no qualitative difference, of course, among atom, planet, galaxy or universe. It’s all a question of what scale you live on most comfortably. And now I push
this
–’

Bam! Pow! Crrrrunch!
Slow dissolve, quick dissolve, lap dissolve, electronic music denoting outer space, outer space denoting electronic music. Pages of a calendar flip, Carmody tumbles head over heels in simulated free fall. Kettledrums sound ominous note, ominous note sounds kettledrums, bright flash of colours, woman’s voice keening in echo chamber, laughter of children, montage of Jaffa oranges lighted to look like planets, collage of a solar system lighted to look like ripples in a brook. Slow the tape, speed the tape, fade out, fade in.

It was one hell of a trip, but nothing Carmody hadn’t expected.

PART THREE

When is Earth?

CHAPTER 18

With the transition completed, Carmody took stock of himself. A brief inventory convinced him that he still had all four limbs, one body, one head, and one mind. Final returns were not in, of course, but he did seem to be all there. He also noted that he still had the Prize, which was somehow recognizable even though it had undergone its usual metamorphosis. This time it had changed from a dwarf into a badly constructed flute.

‘So far, so good,’ Carmody said to nobody in particular. He now surveyed his surroundings.

‘Not so good,’ he said at once. He had been prepared to arrive at the wrong Earth, but he hadn’t expected it would be quite so wrong as this.

He was standing on marshy ground at the edge of a swamp. Miasmic vapours rose from the stagnant brown waters. There were broad-leaved ferns, and low, thin-leaved shrubs, and bushy-headed palms, and a single dogwood tree. The air was blood-warm and heavily laden with odours of fertility and decay.

‘Maybe I’m in Florida,’ Carmody said hopefully.

‘Afraid not,’ said the Prize, or the flute, speaking in a low melodious voice but with an excess of vibrato.

Carmody glared at the Prize. ‘How come you can speak?’ he demanded.

‘How come you didn’t ask me that when I was a cauldron?’ the Prize replied. ‘But I’ll tell you, if you really want to know. Affixed up here, just inside my mouthpiece, is a CO
₂
cartridge. That serves me in place of lungs, though for a limited time only. The rest is obvious.’

It wasn’t obvious to Carmody. But he had more important matters on his mind. He asked, ‘Where am I?’

‘
We
,’ said the Prize, ‘are on the planet Earth. This moist bit of ground upon which we are standing will become, in your day, the township of Scarsdale, New York.’ He snickered. ‘I suggest you buy property now, while the real-estate values are depressed.’

‘It sure as hell doesn’t look like Scarsdale,’ Carmody said.

‘Of course not. Leaving aside for a moment the question of
Whichness,
we can see that the
Whenness
is all wrong.’

‘Well …
When
are we?’

‘A good question,’ the Prize replied, ‘but one to which I can only make an approximate and highly qualified reply. Obviously enough, we are in the Phanerozoic Aeon, which in itself covers one sixth of Earth’s geological time. Easy enough; but what
part
of the Phanerozoic are we in, the Palaeozoic or the Mesozoic Era? Here I must hazard a guess. Just on the basis of climate, I rule out all of the Palaeozoic except, just possibly, the end of the Permian Period. But wait, now I can rule that out, too! Look, overhead and to your right!’

Carmody looked and saw an oddly shaped bird flapping awkwardly into the distance.

‘Definitely an Archaeopteryx,’ the Prize said. ‘You could tell at once from the way its feathers diverged pinnately from its axis. Most scientists consider it a creature of the upper Jurassic and the Cretaceous Periods, but certainly not older than the Triassic. So we can rule out the entire Palaeozoic; we are definitely in the Mesozoic Era.’

‘That’s pretty far back, huh?’ Carmody said.

‘Quite far,’ the Prize agreed. ‘But we can do better than that. I think we can pinpoint what part of the Mesozoic we are in. Let me think for a bit.’ He thought for a bit. ‘Yes, I think I have it.
Not
the Triassic! That swamp is a false clue, I fear. However, the angiospermous flowering plant near your left foot points an unmistakable direction, periodwise. Nor does it constitute our sole evidence. You noticed the dogwood tree in front of you? Well, turn around and you will see two poplars and a fig tree in the midst of a small group of conifers. Significant, eh? But did you notice the most important detail of all, so commonplace in your time that you would be apt to overlook it? I refer to grass, which we see here in abundance. There was no grass as late as Jurassic times! Just ferns and cycadeoids! And that decides it, Carmody! I’d wager my life savings on it! We are in the Cretaceous Period, and probably not far from its upper limit!’

Carmody had only the vaguest remembrance of the geological periods of the Earth. ‘Cretaceous,’ he said. ‘How far is that from my time?’

‘Oh, about a hundred million years, give or take a few million,’ the Prize said. ‘The Cretaceous age lasted for seventy million years.’

Carmody had no difficulty in adjusting to this concept; he never even tried. He said to the Prize, ‘How did you learn all of this geology stuff?’

‘How do you think?’ the Prize replied spiritedly. ‘I studied. I figured, since we were going to Earth, I’d better find out something about the place. And it’s a damned good thing I did. If it weren’t for me, you’d be stumbling around here looking for Miami Beach, and you’d have probably ended up being eaten by an allosaurus.’

‘Eaten by a who?’

‘I refer,’ the Prize said, ‘to one of the uglier members of the order Saurischia, an offshoot of which – the sauropoda – culminated in the renowned brontosaurus.’

‘You mean to tell me there are dinosaurs here?’ Carmody asked.

‘I mean to tell you,’ the Prize said in obbligato, ‘that this is the one and original Dinosaursville, and I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Age of the Giant Reptiles.’

Carmody made an incoherent noise. He noticed a movement to his left and turned. He saw a dinosaur. It looked about twenty feet high, and might have stretched fifty feet from nose to tail. It stood erect on its hind legs. It was coloured slate-blue, and it was striding rapidly towards Carmody.

‘Is that a tyrannosaurus?’ Carmody asked.

‘Yes, it is,’ the Prize said. ‘
Tyrannosaurus rex,
most highly respected of the saurischians. A true deinodon, you will note, its upper incisors running half a foot in length. This young chap coming towards us must weigh upwards of nine tons.’

‘And he eats meat,’ Carmody said.

‘Yes, of course. I personally think that tyrannosaurus and other carnosaurs of this period feasted mainly on the inoffensive and widely distributed hadrosaurs. But that is only my own pet theory.’

The giant creature was less than fifty feet away. There was no refuge on the flat, marshy land, no place to climb, no cave to scuttle into. Carmody said, ‘What should I do?’