Nebula Awards Showcase 2004

by Vonda N. McIntyre

“Put it back!” Agnes, who had followed them up into the Museum, shouted at him.

  “Is this yours?” Mr. Chase asked her. “It’s very pretty.”

  “None of your damn business! Put it back!”

  Agnes harangued the investigators all the way down from the attic.

  “Foo! Humans! War mongers! Animal eaters! Planet spoilers! G’wan! Beat it! Scram!”

  “Adamant, isn’t she?” Mr. Chase said to Dr. Margaret.

  “You’re upsetting her,” Dr. Margaret replied.

  “Sounds to me like she’s upsetting herself.”

  “Didya hear?” Axel, still perched on Ms. Leahy’s shoulder, whispered to her. “He called Agnes an ant!”

  Ms. Leahy held her finger up to her lips. “Ssshh. Maybe he meant ‘aunt.’ ”

  When the investigators reached the sleep room they were approached by a pale green hadrosaur who, after some deliberation, shouted to them, “Yar-woo?”

  “No! No!” Agnes coached the hadrosaur. “That’s not what I told you to say!”

  The hadrosaur tried again: “Yar-woo!”

  “No! ‘Foo!’ You’re supposed to say ‘Foo!’ ” She smacked her tail against the floor.

  “Foo?”

  “Forget it! Just forget it!”

  “Foo!” The hadrosaur smiled and walked away.

  In the closet of the sleep room, Mr. Chase found a little cardboard box with wadded-up cotton inside. Nestled in the cotton was a tiny egg.

  “Here’s something,” he said to his colleagues, who were searching in other parts of the room.

  “Hey! Put that back!” Agnes shouted. “That’s not yours!”

  Mr. Chase held up the egg and inspected it carefully. It had a blue tint to it, and was no bigger than the first joint of his thumb.

  “It’s a bird’s egg,” Bronte walked up to Mr. Chase nervously. “A robin’s, probably. Sluggo found it in the yard. Sometimes we try to hatch them—as if they were ours.”

  She looked up at Dr. Yoon and Dr. Phillips. “If they do hatch, we feed the little bird until it’s old enough. Tom can sometimes find another nest in the yard and put it back. Sometimes the older birds accept him.” Her voice was trembling now. “It’s—it’s just sort of a thing we do.”

  Dr. Phillips took the egg and held it up to the light from the window. “Looks like a robin’s egg to me.”

  “That’s what she said!” Agnes stood next to Bronte. “Now beat it! G’wan! Scram!”

  “Is this when they pull their guns out?” Axel whispered to Ms. Leahy.

  “They don’t have guns,” she answered.

  “I thought they were bad guys!”

  “Well, not really. Not that kind, at least.”

  Dr. Yoon, with arms folded, glanced at Agnes and said to her colleagues, “It may be that their eggs and the robin’s eggs are almost alike. We better take it in.”

  “No!” Bronte gasped.

  Ms. Leahy bent down and put her hand gently on Bronte’s back. “Must you?” She asked the investigators.

  “We have to know.” Dr. Phillips put the egg back into its box. “I can give you all sorts of reasons, but the answer simply boils down to this: we have to know.”

  “Hear that?” Agnes shouted to the other saurs. “He said ‘boil!’ I told you they were going to eat them!”

  “Please,” Kara said to the investigators. “It really is a robin’s egg. Honest. Don’t take it away.”

  Dr. Phillips bent down and spoke to Bronte, resting the box carefully on his knee. “We won’t hurt it. We just need to know what it is. It’s a very simple procedure and we can have it back to you in a day or so.”

  “What if it hatches?” Bronte asked. “You’ll take care of the little bird? You won’t just—pitch it?”

  “If that’s what happens, I’ll take care of it.” He reached out and touched the little furrows on her brow. “I promise.”

  Dr. Phillips put the cardboard box into a little specimen bag, but left the bag open. Dr. Yoon made some notes with her pocket computer. Saurs filled the room. None of them spoke, not even Agnes, but they all looked at the investigators, who did their work quickly and tried not to look back.

  “They may not be bad guys,” Ms. Leahy whispered to Axel, “But I’ll bet you that right now they don’t feel like good guys.”

  She, along with Tom and Dr. Margaret, followed the investigators back out to the limousine, but in the living room she noticed Doc, still sitting on his plastic box, staring out toward the window as if deep in thought.

  She put Axel down and kissed him on the snout. “I’ll see you later,” she said. “Gotta talk to my old buddy over there.”

  Ms. Leahy knelt down next to Doc and hugged him. “My old friend. Forgive me for not stopping to talk to you.”

  “You were busy, I know. There is nothing to forgive.”

  “I’ll come back soon. For a real visit. We’ll sit on the porch and talk of Cicero and Democritus and St. Augustine.”

  “Juvenal.” Doc smiled. “ ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes’?” He looked out toward the front door, where the limousine waited. “Not bad for a tiny, manufactured brain, eh?”

  “It’s not how much brain you’ve got, but how you use it.”

  She hugged him again and Doc reciprocated as best he could with his short forearms.

  She whispered: “Is there any real reason to worry?”

  Doc shook his head. “We’ll be fine, for now.”

  When she stood up, Ms. Leahy could see the motionless metal cylinder of Rotomotoman saluting her. She returned his salute, bid farewell to the others and walked out to the limousine.

  On the porch, Dr. Margaret asked Tom, “What will you do now?”

  “I think I’ll sit out here for a while.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It’s not really my call. It’s theirs.” He gestured back to the house with his thumb.

  “What are they doing in there?”

  The horn sounded from the limousine.

  Tom walked Dr. Margaret to the limousine. “Come back tonight.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it gently. She got into the limousine and he watched it until it was out of sight, past the trees. For a few more minutes he sat on the bench on the porch, then got up and looked through the living room window.

  Rotomotoman, back in motion again, had rolled out to the center of the room. The saurs were gathered around him in a circle. Tom could hear a faint mechanical buzzing and a high-pitched beep come from the metal cylinder. At the same moment, a section of the odd little robot, defined by nearly imperceptible seams in his cylindrical torso, slid out like the drawer of a desk.

  Tom couldn’t see what was inside, but he knew what it was. Bronte was the closest to the drawer, peering in with sad, hopeful eyes.

  Then she opened her mouth as if to gasp.

  She spoke to the others and they all moved in even closer, trying to get a peek inside. Tom couldn’t hear a word of it, but he didn’t have to.

  Axel, perched on Hubert’s back to stare into the little drawer, shouted out, “It moved! I saw it move!”

  Tom went back to the bench. His coming in now would just create more nervous commotion and probably start Agnes shouting again.

  There would be plenty of time later to consider all the implications. The investigators, back-tracking through their information, might request a look at the schematics of Axel’s metal friend and discover Rotomotoman’s very practical function as an incubator.

  But then, Reggie may have anticipated that too, and devised a little camouflage for it. Never underestimate the Reggiesystem, Tom learned long ago.

  After all, Reggie too was a kind of human-made life form, and like the saurs had developed in his own way.

  For now, though, the moment belonged to the saurs, especially Bronte, the mother-to-be.

  * * *

  That night, Axel descended the stairs as stealthily as he could manage, in search
of TV Frog. But the living room was dark, the video turned off. For a moment he thought that TV Frog must not have come, but he turned around and saw the illuminated screen of the Reggiesystem computer in the dining room, and before it sat TV Frog, visible in silhouette. The plastic stairs were placed in front of the desk, just behind where TV Frog sat with an old-fashioned clicker mouse, which he slapped with his left paw just as he’d slapped the video’s remote pad.

  TV Frog seemed to be clicking through a set of files, text on the right side and pictures on the left. Axel couldn’t make out any of it, so he crept up the steps to get a closer look.

  The pictures weren’t very pleasant to look at: emaciated creatures with agonized expressions, bruised, battered, and scarred. Gaping mouths, hollowed eyes, muscles tensed with pain—

  They were saurs, all of them.

  These were the official files of the Atherton Foundation, all of their cases, with photos taken of the saurs when they were first found or brought to them.

  Axel recognized some of them—Zack, Kip, Charlie, Hetman—Oh! Hetman! How did he ever make it? He barely looked alive. He—

  The words got all tied up in Axel’s head. If he looked at the pictures, at least he didn’t have to think about them. But how could he not think about them after looking at all the faces, all the pain—

  And then he saw a photograph of a small, blue theropod, exhausted, lying on his side, head twisted back as if he could hardly raise it—one black, expressionless eye was visible, staring upward. A second photo showed a long, straight cut down his back, infected and swollen.

  The cut was the same length as the scar down Axel’s back.

  Axel felt as if the desk dropped out from under him—and the floor, the house, everything—as if he was falling through time and space.

  “Space and Time and Time and Space—”

  Whirling and spinning like an amusement park ride, but only the really, truly scary parts, and no one was there with whom he could share the elation and danger.

  A boy, the one he’d been purchased for, had cut him open, goaded on a bet, to see if he had mechanical parts or biological organs. “Not like he’s an animal,” the boy had said. “Just a thing. Don’t matter what anyone does to him.”

  But the boy said “him,” like he was someone—

  And Lancelot was there! Lancelot, his buddy! The two of them were purchased together, and they lived with the boy and his family. “Buddies forever, Lancelot and Axel, Axel and Lancelot—”

  But Lancelot was all cut open, spread out on the floor, screaming, pleading, “Please! Stop! Help me! Kill me! Stop!”

  And Axel had shouted too. “Don’t! Don’t hurt him! Stop it!”

  A grown-up interrupted the impromptu dissections. Axel had run, with all his strength. He’d run, hidden himself, bled. With no food, with all his energy and muscle spent, he slipped into a hole on the edge of a construction site and waited to die, like Lancelot.

  Axel remembered what that upward-turned eye in the photograph was looking at.

  It had been night. The stars were out, and they were everywhere.

  “Space—” said Axel. He put his forepaw on TV Frog’s smooth back. It shuddered like an unbalanced engine.

  “It was all space and big and perfect and endless. And even though I was small, I felt as big as space. I felt as big as the universe.”

  TV Frog clicked the mouse and the monitor screen went dark.

  “That’s what I should have asked the space guys about,” Axel told him. “What I wanted to ask before I forgot. I wanted to ask if they knew any way to bring Lancelot back, or do something, so that he wouldn’t be dead.”

  TV Frog just sat there. Still shuddering. His eyes looked immeasurably deep and sad.

  “I guess they couldn’t, huh?”

  Whether or not he could answer, TV Frog didn’t, which seemed like a kind of answer in itself.

  Axel and TV Frog stood in front of the computer, and after a while the monitor clicked on again.

  The screen filled with stars.

  This time, when the screensaver reached the end of the cycle, with the smeared thumbprint galaxy just in view, it seemed to go a little farther. The galaxy filled the whole screen.

  “You know, Reggie says the universe is one big place!”

  TV Frog’s eyes bobbed down into his head in a kind of affirmative gesture.

  “I came down to ask if you wanted to come upstairs and see what’s happening. It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened here. The biggest thing that’s ever happened anywhere!”

  TV Frog didn’t move.

  Axel bent down and tugged at TV Frog’s forepaw. “It’s okay! No one will see you there! They’re all looking at the egg!”

  Axel kept tugging and urging until TV Frog turned away from the computer.

  “We’d better hurry! It’s almost ready to hatch!”

  But TV Frog propelled himself slowly, one cautious ‘flop’ at a time.

  “Come on! No one will see you! I promise!”

  All the way down from the desk, across the floor and up the stairs to the second floor, with Axel leading, TV Frog moved on: flop, pause, flop, pause, flop.

  They peered around the doorway into the sleep room. All the saurs were gathered around Rotomotoman, situated in the center of the room. He, like everyone else, was staring into his incubator drawer, his pupils cast at an awkwardly downward angle. Bronte stood closest to the drawer, along with Kara, Agnes, Doc and Preston. The only sounds in the room were the soft purr of Rotomotoman’s machinery and the anticipatory breathing of every creature in the room.

  Sitting in the back, as far out of the way as they could situate themselves, were Tom Groverton and Dr. Margaret. They were holding hands, which Axel thought especially fascinating. He tapped TV Frog and pointed to them.

  “Look at that!” he whispered. “I’ll bet they’re learning how to make eggs too!”

  He kept staring at the humans until he heard a kind of chiming sound coming from Rotomotoman. A disk-shaped part at the top of his head slid away and up from the cavity rose a flashing, rotating red light—just as Axel had designed it.

  A word flashed on Rotomotoman’s display screen: “Ready!”

  The little drawer opened.

  The quiet sighs of awe and pent up relief from everyone gathered around sounded a little like a low, deep chord from some great church organ.

  “Come on! Let’s get a closer look!” Axel reached over to tap TV Frog again, but there was no one at his side now.

  TV Frog was gone.

  “Hey!”

  Axel wanted to go look for him, but his curiosity about the egg proved the greater draw. Axel crept up to the incubator drawer and told himself he’d find TV Frog later.

  He gently pushed through the thick crowd of saurs. Charlie grouched at him until Rosie reminded him that it was Axel who was responsible for Rotomotoman. They let him through, and Axel climbed up on Hubert’s back, where he could easily see into the drawer.

  The first few hairline cracks had already appeared on the surface of the shivering egg. A piece of the shell dropped away and from that breach popped a little pink head at the end of a long neck.

  No one looked more surprised than Rotomotoman, whose huge disk-eyes implausibly seemed to grow larger at the sight.

  The tiny hatchling’s eyes were shut at first, but its mouth was open and it made a little sound, a “Gack!” like a clearing of its throat.

  Diogenes, who in all his years at the house had never been heard to utter more than a few words, turned to Hetman’s bed and whispered, “Did you hear?”

  Hetman nodded. “Thank you, that I lived long enough to hear it.”

  Then he (or she) opened his (or her) eyes.

  The small, black, glistening orbs seemed instantly focused. The hatchling looked over the top of the drawer and seemed to see everyone and everything.

  Bronte bent down and caressed the little creature with her snout, then tapped away another piece
of the shell to free it more.

  “It’s hard to say,” Doc looked at the hatchling, “since he’s without precedent, as far as we know, but he looks like a healthy little fellow to me.”

  “Little fellow?” Agnes snapped. “Can’t you see it’s obviously female? Obviously intelligent? Obviously smarter than any carnosaur could ever hope to be?”

  “Don’t start,” said Kara. “It’s not the time to fight.”

  “What will happen now?” Bronte asked Kara. “Will she grow? Will she change and mature? Will she learn to do all the things we do?”

  “Who knows?” said Kara. “We’ll learn as we go along.”

  “It won’t stay a secret for long,” said Charlie, rubbing his nasal horn against the floor. “Those humans in the big car know more than they’re saying. They wouldn’t have taken Axel’s story so seriously if they didn’t.”

  “That they figure it out isn’t what matters,” Agnes said. “It’s what they’ll do when they know.”

  “Which we can’t predict,” said Preston, smiling at the little pink creature in the incubator drawer. “And this isn’t the time to try.”

  All this time Axel, balanced on Hubert’s back, kept trying to get the hatchling’s attention, waving excitedly with one forepaw while holding to Hubert’s neck with the other.

  “Hiya! Hey! Up here! Hey! Hiya!”

  The tiny pink sauropod looked up at Axel.

  “Gack!”

  “Hiya Gack! I’m Axel!”

  “That’s not her name!” Agnes waved her tail. “Moron!”

  Kara nudged her and shook her head. “We’ll sort it out later.”

  When Axel climbed down, Preston put his forepaw on his head and said, “We need to thank you. You—and Reggie.”

  Axel looked up at Preston. “Don’t forget Rotomotoman!”

  “Yes, Rotomotoman too.”

  Rotomotoman stared down and saluted the hatchling, the red light on his head still rotating, as the word “Gack” flashed on his display screen.

  Axel looked around the sleep room and noticed that Sluggo was up on the box seat under the window, looking out.

  “Hey!” Axel hopped up and joined him. It was his favorite spot, after all. “Whatya doing up here?”

  “I—I just wanted to look up at the stars. I don’t know why. The egg—and everything—I feel scared and I don’t know why. Or I do—but I’m still scared. I just needed to look up at the sky and see the stars.”