Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 (22 page)

“How long, Jim?”

“I don’t know. Pretty quick. Colin can come out of the hospital if he wants to, keeping him in won’t help. A hospice might be better. A day or two, a few weeks, a month. Nobody knows.”

“And there’s no other treatment you can try?”

He said nothing. Julia stared across at the wall, where Wollaston had hung one of Colin’s postoperative drawings, a lightning sketch of half a dozen lines that was clearly a picture of some kind of bird feeding her chick, the beak inside the little one’s gaping bill and halfway down its throat.

“When did Colin draw the picture on the wall there?”

“About two weeks ago.” Wollaston stirred. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Have you seen all the others—the ones he’s done since the operation?”

“I haven’t seen any. It’s a habit we got into years ago. I wouldn’t look at Colin’s work when he was getting ready for a show or a delivery until the end, then I’d give him my opinion of the whole thing. He didn’t like me in his studio.”

“Maybe it’s just as well. Some of the recent ones have been…strange.”

“You mean he’s losing his technique? God, to Colin that would be worse than dying.”

“No. The technique is terrific. But the animals don’t look right. For instance, he drew a pair of seals. But their flippers were too developed, too much like real legs. And there was one of a zebra, except it wasn’t quite a zebra, more like a funny okapi. I wondered at first if the pictures could tell me something about what’s going on in Colin’s head, but they haven’t. I’d say he’s feeling strange, so he’s drawing strange.” He patted her hand. “I know, Julia, ‘Colin draws just what he sees,’ don’t say it.”

“Real legs, you say? And there’s wing claws on that bird, that’s what’s odd. But it’s not a baby hoatzin.”

The hand was pulled from his. There was a rapid movement of the couch next to him. Wollaston opened his eyes. “Julia?”

But she was no longer by his side. She was over at the wall, gazing with total concentration at Colin’s drawing. When she turned, her mouth was an open O of confusion and surmise.

***

“There they are.” Julia Trantham patted a stack of papers, boards, and canvases. They were in Wollaston’s office, with the big wooden desk swept clear and the table lamp on its highest setting. “Every one we could find. But instead of grouping according to medium and size, the way you usually would, I’ve rearranged them to chronological order. There are eighty-nine pictures here, all signed and dated. The top one is the first drawing that Colin made when he was flying back from England. The last one is the painting he was working on in his studio when he passed out. I want you to look through the whole stack before you say anything.”

“If you say so.” James Wollaston was humoring her, knowing she had been under terrible stress for months. It was close to midnight, and they had spent the last hour collecting Colin Trantham’s pictures, pulling them from medical records and apartment and studio. Julia would not tell him what game she was playing, but he could see that to her it was far more than a game. He started carefully through the heap; pen and ink drawings, charcoal sketches, oils and acrylics and pencils.

“Well?” Julia was too impatient to wait for him to finish. She was staring at him expectantly although he was on only the tenth picture.

“Did he always draw nothing but nature scenes?” said Wollaston. “Just plants and animals?” He was staring at sheet after sheet.

“Mostly. Colin is a top biological illustrator. Why?”

“You insist he drew from life, from what he had seen. But in these pictures that doesn’t seem to be true.”

“Why not?” Julia pounced on him with the question.

“Well, I recognize the first drawings, and they’re terrific. But this—” he held out the board he was examining “—it looks wrong.”

“It’s not wrong. That’s a member of Castoroidinae—a rodent, a sort of beaver. Keep going. What’s that one?”

“Damned if I know. Like a cross between a horse and a dog—as though Colin started by drawing a horse’s head, then when he got to the body and legs he changed his mind.”

“You were right about the horse. That’s Hyracotherium. To the life. Keep going.”

But Wollaston had paused. “Are you sure? It looks strange to me, and I have a pretty good grounding in comparative anatomy.”

“I’m sure you do.” Julia took a painting from the stack. They were less than halfway through the heap. Her hands were trembling. “Current anatomy, Jim. But I specialize in paleoanatomy. Colin has been drawing real plants and animals. The only thing is, some of them are extinct. The Castoroidinae were giant beavers, big as a bear. They were around during the Pleistocene. Hyracotherium’s a forerunner of the horse;, it flourished during the Lower Eocene, forty or fifty million years ago. These pictures are consistent with our best understanding of their anatomy based on the fossil record.”

She was shaking, but Wollaston did not share her excitement. “I’ll take your word for it, Julia. But I want to point out that none of this is too surprising, given your own interests and the work you do.”

“That’s not true!” Julia fumbled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled hard enough to shrivel the bottom of her lungs. “It’s more than surprising, it’s astonishing. I told you the first time we had a drink together, what I do bores Colin stiff. He doesn’t know beans about it and he doesn’t care. There’s no way he got these drawings from me. And do you realize that these pictures are in reverse chronological order? Fossil dating is a tricky business, I’m the first to admit that; but in this set, the more recently Colin did them, the older the forms represented.”

“What are you saying, Julia?” The concern in Wollaston’s voice was for sister more than brother. “If you’re suggesting…what it sounds like you’re suggesting, then it’s nonsense. And there’s a perfectly rational explanation.”

“Like what?”

He reached forward, removed the cigarette from her fingers, and stubbed it out. “Julia, the longer you study the human brain, the more astonishing it seems. You say that what you do bores Colin. Probably true. But do you think that means he didn’t even hear you, when you talked and talked paleontology all these years? Do you think he never picked up one of your books? They’re scattered all over the apartment, I’ve seen them there myself. It’s no wonder you recognize what Colin has been painting—because you put all those ideas into his head yourself.”

“I didn’t, Jim. I know I didn’t. And here’s why.” She was turning the stack, moving down toward the bottom. “Now we’re beyond the K-T barrier—the time of the late Cretaceous extinction. See this?”

The painting was in subdued oils, browns and ochers and dark greens, crowded with detail. The viewpoint was low to the ground, peering up through a screen of ferns. In the clearing beyond the leafy cover crouched three scaly animals, staring at a group of four others advancing from the left. The sun was low, casting long shadows to the right, and there was a hint of morning ground mist still present to soften outlines.

“Saurischians. Coelurosaurs, I’d say, and not very big ones.” Julia pointed to the three animals in the foreground. “The pictures we were looking at before were all Tertiary or later. But everything beyond that is Cretaceous or earlier. I’d place this one as middle Jurassic, a hundred and sixty million years ago. No birds, no flowering plants. I know those three animals—but the four behind them are completely new to me. I’ve never seen anything like them. If I had to guess I’d say they’re a form of small hadrosaur, some unknown midget relative of Orthomerus. That flat hulk, way over in the background, is probably a crocodile. But look at the detail on the coelurosaurs, Jim. I couldn’t have told Colin all that—I couldn’t even have imagined it. Look at the scales and wrinkles and pleats in the mouth pouch, look at the eyes and the saw-toothed brow ridges—I’ve never seen those on any illustration, anywhere. The vegetation fits, too, all gymnosperms, cycads, ginkgoes, and conifers.”

James Wollaston laughed, but there was no suggestion from his face that he found anything funny. He was sure that Julia Trantham was practicing her own form of denial, of reality avoidance. “Julia, if you came in to see me as a patient and said all that, I’d refer you for immediate testing. Listen to yourself!”

But she had moved to the final drawing, smeared where Colin Trantham had fallen on top of it before it was dry. “And this is earlier yet.” She was talking quietly, and not to Wollaston. He stared at her hopelessly.

“Something like Rutiodon, one of the phytosaurs. But a different jaw. And there on the left is Desmatosuchus, one of the aëtosaurs. I don’t recognize that other one, but it has mammalian characteristics.” She looked up. “My God, we must be back near the beginning of the Triassic. Over two hundred million years. These are thecodonts, the original dinosaur root stock. He’s jumping farther and farther! Jim, I’m scared.”

He reached out for her, and she clung to him and buried her face in his jacket. But her words were perfectly clear: “First thing in the morning, I’ve got to see Colin.”

***

What James Wollaston had heard with incredulity, Colin Trantham listened to with a remote and dreamy interest. Julia had taken one look at him, and known that no matter what the neurologist might say, Colin would never be leaving the hospital. It was not the IVs, or the bluish pallor of his face. It was something else, an impalpable smell in the air of the room that made her look at her brother and see the skull beneath the skin.

Whatever it was, he seemed oblivious to it. He was grinning, staring at her and beyond her, his face filled with the same ecstasy that she had seen in the studio. His conversation faded in and out, at one moment perfectly rational, the next jumping off in some wild direction.

“Very interesting. The implant and the drugs, of course, that’s what’s doing it. Has to be.” From his tone he might have been talking of a treatment applied to some casual acquaintance. “Did you know, Julia, if I were a bird I’d be in much better shape than I am now? Good old Hemsley operated on me, and he got most of it. But he must have missed a little bit—a bit too much for the implant to handle. Poor little scarab, can’t beat the crab. But if I’d been a bird, they could have cut away the whole of both cerebral hemispheres, and I’d be as good as ever. Or nearly as good. Wouldn’t know how to build a nest, of course, but who needs that?”

And then suddenly he was laughing, a gasping laugh that racked his chest and shook the tubes leading into his fleshless arms.

“Colin!” The fear that curiosity had held at bay came flooding back, and Julia was terrified. “I’ll get the nurse.”

“I’m fine.” He stopped the strained laughter as quickly as he had started it and his face went calm. “Better than fine. But I’m a robot now. I, Robot.”

She stared at him in horror, convinced that the final disintegration of mind was at hand.

“You know what I mean, Julie.” Now he sounded rational but impatient. “Don’t go stupid on me. Remember what Feynman said, in physics you can look on any positron as an electron that’s traveling backward in time. You tell me I’ve been jumping backward—”

“Jim says that’s nonsense. He says I’m talking through my hat.”

“Jim?”

“Dr. Wollaston.”

“So it’s Jim, is it. And how long has that been going on?” He narrowed his eyes and peered up at her slyly. “Well, you tell Jim that I agree with you. I’m going backward, and I can prove it. And according to Feynman that means the electrons in my brain are positrons. I’ve got a positronic brain. Get it?” He laughed again, slapping his skinny hands on the bedsheets. “Positronic brain. I’m a robot!”

“Colin, I’m getting the nurse. Right now.” Julia had already pressed the button, but no one had appeared.

“In a minute. And you know how I can prove it? I can prove it because I feel absolutely wonderful.”

His face had filled again with that strange bliss. He reached out and held her hand. “Remember how it felt when you were four years old, and you woke up in the morning, and you knew it was your birthday? That’s how it used to be, all the time for all of us. But ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: immature forms pass through the evolutionary stages of their ancestors. And that applies to feelings as well as bodies. Little kids feel the way all the animals used to feel, a long time ago. That’s the way I am when I’m there. Fantastic, marvelous. And the farther I go, the better it gets. You looked at my pictures. If I’ve been going back, how far did I get?”

Julia hesitated. She was torn. Half of her wanted to believe her brother, to see more of those marvelously detailed drawings and to analyze them. The other half told her she was dealing with a mind already hopelessly twisted by disease.

“Your last picture shows the period of the earliest dinosaurs. They’re all thecodonts, nothing that most people would recognize. The fossil record is very spotty there. We don’t know nearly as much about them as we’d like to.”

“And what would be next—going backward, I mean?”

“The Permian. No dinosaurs. And at this end of the Permian, over ninety percent of all the lifeforms on earth died off. We don’t know why.”

He was nodding. “The barrier. I can feel it, you know, when I’m trying to jump. I went through one, when all the dinosaurs died off. This one is bigger. I’ve been trying to fight my way through. I’m nearly there, but it’s taking every bit of energy I have.”