Dancing in Dreamtime

by Scott Russell Sanders

  “Though Scott Russell Sanders is best known today as an essayist and conservationist, he previously was one of the brightest science-fiction newcomers of the 1980s, and his incisive, playful, startling stories—which speak directly to our twenty first-century environmental and genetic concerns—were staples of Omni, Asimov’s, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. To have virtually all this material back in print in a single collection is a joy. Whether you knew it or not, you’ve had a space on your shelf all these years, waiting to be filled by Dancing in Dreamtime.”

  ANDY DUNCAN, author of The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories

  “Although the stories in Scott Russell Sanders’s new collection, Dancing in Dreamtime, often portray futuristic worlds, they always hold a mirror to our contemporary society in a way that allows us to see ourselves and our present time more clearly. Wildly imaginative and haunting, these stories are the stuff of dreams, yes, but they also have much to show us about who we are in the here and now.”

  LEE MARTIN, author of The Bright Forever: A Novel

  “Dancing in Dreamtime sparks with brilliant imagery, from a city where dreams roost in trees and the destruction of their habitat threatens the inhabitants’ sanity, to a circus where robotic pandas play organ music and tigers blink with neon stripes. These are stories of people subjected to the dreams of others, reminders that our best fantasies have unintended consequences. They dream our doom, they dream our possible salvation, they draw us further into the dance.”

  TERESA MILBRODT, author of Bearded Women: Stories

  “The stories in Dancing in Dreamtime are familiar enough to make your heart ache and new enough to feel fresh and wondrous. Here you will find people connecting and falling apart as people have always connected and fallen apart, but beneath a fantastical and occasionally terrifying sky.”

  CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

  “These brilliant stories explore birds who’ve time-warped to avoid extinction on earth, and people who long for both tidiness and the wilds. Human innovation and destruction are at the center of all these tales, which leave reality in order to return readers to this planet we’ve ravaged, more awake to ecological catastrophe, and our earth and its peoples who are ravenous and yearning and not-yet ruined. These fictions both delight and warn.”

  ERIN STALCUP, author of And Yet It Moves

  “As these enchanting stories examine how technologies and advancements disconnect us and create chaos, Sanders always shows that we will persevere with our own kind of hope, our own kind of love, and our own kind of heart.”

  LUCAS SOUTHWORTH, author of Everyone Here Has a Gun: Stories

  “Scott Russell Sanders is certainly best known as one of our finest essayists. What is less known—and likely more surprising—is that he was once also an artful author of science fiction. We should all rejoice that these stories have at last been collected in Dancing in Dreamtime. Sanders is the Alice Munro of science fiction, and these quiet, lyrical stories covering his career in the genre offer all the necessary proof. Highly recommended.”

  GREGORY FROST, author of Shadowbridge

  ALSO BY SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

  FICTION

  Divine Animal

  The Invisible Company

  The Engineer of Beasts

  Bad Man Ballad

  Terrarium

  Wonders Hidden

  Fetching the Dead

  Hear the Wind Blow

  Wilderness Plots

  NONFICTION

  Earth Works: Selected Essays

  A Conservationist Manifesto

  A Private History of Awe

  The Force of Spirit

  The Country of Language

  Hunting for Hope

  Writing from the Center

  Staying Put

  Secrets of the Universe

  The Paradise of Bombs

  Stone Country

  DANCING IN

  Dreamtime

  DANCING IN

  Dreamtime

  SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

  This book is a publication of

  INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Office of Scholarly Publishing

  Herman B Wells Library 350

  1320 East 10th Street

  Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

  iupress.indiana.edu

  © 2016 by Scott Russell Sanders

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sanders, Scott R. (Scott Russell), [date], author

  Title: Dancing in dreamtime / Scott Russell Sanders.

  Description: Bloomington and Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016019538 (print) | LCCN 2016024281 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253022516 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253022592 (e-book)

  Classification: LCC PS3569.A5137 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PS3569.A5137 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019538

  1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16

  FOR URSULA K. LE GUIN

  The universe is made of stories,

  not of atoms.

  MURIEL RUKEYSER, “The Speed of Darkness”

  Contents

  THE ANATOMY LESSON

  CLEAR-CUT

  ASCENSION

  SLEEPWALKER

  THE FIRST JOURNEY OF JASON MOSS

  THE ARTIST OF HUNGER

  THE ENGINEER OF BEASTS

  THE CIRCUS ANIMALS’ DESERTION

  MOUNTAINS OF MEMORY

  TERRARIUM

  QUARANTINE

  TOUCH THE EARTH

  EROS PASSAGE

  THE AUDUBON EFFECT

  THE LAND WHERE SONGTREES GROW

  TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR

  DANCING IN DREAMTIME

  CREDITS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BOOK CLUB GUIDE

  The Anatomy Lesson

  By the time I reached the Anatomy Library all the bones had been checked out. At every table, students bent over yawning boxes, assembling feet and arms, scribbling in notebooks, muttering Latin names. Half the chairs were occupied by slouching skeletons, and skulls littered the floor like driftwood.

  Since I also needed to cram for the following day’s exam, I asked the librarian to search one last time for bone-boxes in the storeroom.

  “I’ve told you there aren’t any more,” she said, frowning at me from beneath a tangle of dark hair, like a vexed animal caught in a bush. How many students had already pestered her for bones this evening?

  “Are there partial skeletons? Mismatched sets? Irregulars?”

  The librarian measured me with her stare, as if estimating the size of box my bones would fill. She was young enough to be a student herself, yet shadows drooped beneath her eyes, like the painted tears of a clown. “Irregulars,” she repeated. “You’re sure?”

  “I’ll take anything.”

  A bitten-off smile quirked her lips. Then she turned away from the desk, murmuring, “Very well. I’ll see what I can find.”

  I blinked with relief at her departing back. Only as she slipped noiselessly into the
storeroom did I notice the beige gloves on her hands. Fastidious, I thought.

  While awaiting the specimen, I scrutinized the vertebrae that were exposed like beads along the bent necks of students who labored over skeletons at nearby tables. Five lumbar vertebrae, seven cervical, a dozen thoracic: I rehearsed the names.

  Presently the librarian returned with a box the size of an orange crate, wooden, dingy with age. The metal clasps that held it shut were tarnished green. No wonder she wore the gloves.

  “You’re in luck,” she said, shoving it over the counter.

  I hesitated, my hands poised above the crate as if I were testing it for heat.

  “Well, do you want it, or don’t you?” she said.

  Afraid she might return it to the archives, I lifted the box, which seemed lighter than its bulk would have promised, as if the wood had dried with age. Perhaps instead of bones inside there would be heaps of dust.

  “Must be an old model,” I observed amiably.

  Her plump lips curled.

  I found a clear space on the floor beside a spindly man whose elbows and knees protruded through rents in his clothing like the humps of a sea serpent above the waters. The clasps, cold against my fingers, yielded with a metallic shriek, drawing the bleary glances of my fellow students. I shrugged apologetically, and the glazed eyes returned to work.

  Inside the crate I found a stack of hinged trays, as in a fishing-tackle box, each tray gleaming with putty-colored bones. I began on the foot, joining tarsal to metatarsal. It was soon evident that there were too many bones. Each one seemed a bit odd in shape, with an extra flange where none should be, or a misplaced knob, and they were too light, as light as hollow reeds. Fitted together, they formed a seven-toed foot, slightly larger than that of an adult male, with phalanges all of the same length and ankle-bones bearing the sockets for . . . what? Flippers? Wings?

  This drove me back to my anatomy text. Yet no consulting of diagrams would make sense of this foot. A scrape with a coin assured me these were real bones, not plastic or plaster. But from what creature? Feeling queasy, as if in my ignorance I had created this monstrosity, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Everywhere living skulls tilted over dead ones, ignoring me. Only the librarian seemed to be watching me sidelong, through her tangled hair. I hastily returned the foot bones to their various compartments.

  Next I worked at the hand, which boasted six rather than seven digits. Two of them were clearly thumbs, opposite in orientation, and each of the remaining fingers was double-jointed, so that both sides of these vanished hands could have served as palms.

  After examining fibula, femur, sternum, and clavicle, each bone familiar yet slightly awry from the norm, I gingerly unpacked the plates of the skull. Their scattered state was unsettling enough, since in ordinary skeletal kits they would have come pre-assembled into a braincase. Their gathered state was even more unsettling. They would go together in only one arrangement, yet it appeared so outrageous to me that I reassembled the skull three times, always with the same result. There was only one jaw, to be sure, though an exceedingly broad one, and the usual pair of holes for ears. The skull itself, however, was clearly double, as if two heads had been squeezed together, like cherries grown double on a single stem. Each hemisphere of the brain enjoyed its own cranium. The opening for the nose was in its accustomed place, as were two of the eyes. But in the center of the vast forehead, like the drain in a bare expanse of bathtub, was the cavity for a third eye.

  I closed the anatomy text. Hunched over to shield this freak from the gaze of other students, I stared long at that triangle of eyes, and at the twinned craniums that splayed out behind like a fusion of moons. No, I decided, such a creature was not possible. It must be a counterfeit, like the Piltdown Man or the Cardiff Giant. But I would not fall for the trick. I dismantled the skull, stuffed the bones into their trays, clasped the box shut and returned it to the check-out desk.

  “This may seem funny to you,” I hissed at the librarian, who was rooting in her bush of hair with the point of a pencil, “but I have an exam to pass.”

  “Funny?” she whispered.

  “This hoax.” I slapped the box, raising a puff of dust.

  “Not so loud, please.”

  “It’s a fabrication.”

  “Is it?” She rested her gloved hands atop the crate.

  “Nobody who knows a scrap of anatomy would fall for it.”

  “Really?” she said, peeling the glove away from one wrist. I wanted to hurry away before she could uncover that hand. Yet I was caught by the slide of cloth, the sight of pink skin emerging. “I found it hard to believe myself, at first,” she said, spreading the naked hand before me, palm up. I was relieved to count only five digits. But the fleshy heel was inflamed, as if the bud of a new thumb were sprouting there. A scar, only a scar, I thought. Nothing more. Whereupon she turned the hand over and displayed another palm. The fingers curled upward and then curled in the reverse direction, forming a cage of fingers on the counter.

  I flinched, and turned my gaze aside, unwilling to look her in the eye, fearful of what those snarled bangs might hide. Skeletons were shattering in my mind, names of bones were fluttering away like blown leaves.

  “How many of you are there?” I whispered.

  “I’m the first, so far as I know. Unless you count our friend here.” She clacked her nails on the bone-box.

  I guessed the distances to inhabited planets. “Where do you come from?”

  “Boise.”

  “Boise . . . Idaho?”

  “Actually, I grew up in a logging camp out in the sticks, but Boise’s the nearest place anybody’s ever heard of.”

  “You mean you’re . . .”

  “Human? Of course!” She loosed a quiet laugh. Students glanced up momentarily from their skeletons with glassy eyes. The librarian lowered her voice, until it burbled like whale song. “At least I started out that way,” she whispered.

  “But what about your hands? Your face?”

  “Until a few months ago they were just ordinary hands.” She wriggled fingers back into the glove and touched one cheek. “My face wasn’t swollen. My shoes fit.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I assembled these bones.” Again she tapped the crate. From inside came a muffled clatter, like the sound of gravel sliding.

  “You’re becoming one of them?”

  “So it appears.”

  Her upturned lips and downturned eyes gave me contradictory messages. The clown-sad eyes seemed too far apart, and her forehead, obscured behind a thicket of hair, seemed impossibly broad.

  “Aren’t you frightened?” I said.

  “Not anymore,” she answered. “Not since my head began to open.”

  I winced, recalling the vast skull, pale as porcelain, and the triangle of eyes. I touched the bone-box gingerly. “What are you turning into?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I begin to get glimmerings, begin to see myself flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “Or maybe swimming. I can’t be sure. My vision’s still blurry.”

  I tried to imagine her ankles affixed with wings, her head swollen like a double moon, her third eye blinking. “And what sort of creature will you be when you’re . . . changed?”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?”

  “We?”

  “You’ve put the bones together, haven’t you?”

  I stared at my palms, and then turned my hands over to examine the twitching skin where the knuckles should be.

  Clear-Cut

  “Have you noticed there aren’t nearly so many dreams these days?” said the man who sat down next to Veronica on the park bench one April morning. He was about her age, mid-twenties, bearded, bespectacled, thin as a bird’s wing, with the secretive air of a spy. “And the dreams that do come,” he added, “are so threadbare you can see right through them.”

  When Veronica merely studied the black scuffed toes of her nurse’s
clogs without replying, the man leaned toward her and confided, “It comes from cutting down the old forest. There aren’t enough places for dreams to roost in the daytime. I can remember when this whole ridge was covered in trees.”

  Ordinarily, when a strange man addressed her, Veronica either ignored him until he fell silent or else, if he persisted, she glared at him and walked swiftly away. But she was intrigued by what this stranger said, and reassured by his shyness. Accustomed to being stared at by men, she found it refreshing that he peered through his metal-rimmed glasses in every direction but hers.

  “Yes,” she said. “From the fire tower you could see trees all the way to the horizon.”

  The man nodded agreement with a wag of his chin. Veronica gripped the edge of the bench to keep her hands from trembling, wondering if she had finally met a kindred soul.

  Although she did nothing to enhance what nature had blessed her with, neither padding nor painting, wherever Veronica went men flung after her the lassos of their gaze. They saw in her wavy auburn hair and rosy complexion promises of offspring and delight. Her swaying walk set their hearts racing. Had they been moose or bison they would have battered one another to win her favor; since they were human, they invited her on dates. But Veronica found her suitors to be drearily predictable, passionate only about money and sex, perhaps with milder interest in cars or golf, without an ounce of imagination. Their idea of high adventure was to try a new restaurant or to shift the asset allocation in their portfolios. One after another she told them no, no, a thousand times no.

  “You won’t bloom forever,” her mother warned. “One day the bees will stop buzzing around.” Then I won’t get stung, Veronica thought. “Would a doctor be such a bad catch?” her father asked. Caught like a cold, she thought, or like plague? She bit her tongue and let her parents nag. For how could they know what she longed for, when she had only the vaguest notion herself?