End of an Era

More static. "Okay. I’ve got a cellophane-wrapped package with two Twinkies in it."

"You’ve got Twinkies?"

"Uh, yes."

"All right. What are you going to do with them?"

"Umm, okay. They’re in the breast pocket of my jacket now."

"You’re wearing that loose-fitting khaki jacket, right?"

"That’s right. If I’m approached too closely, I’ll squish them."

"Okay. One more thing, Klicks. How much do you weigh?"

"About ninety kilos."

"Exactly how much? You had a final physical just before we left. Exactly how much do you weigh?"

"Umm, eighty-nine point five, I think."

"All right. I’m one-oh-four point nothing."

"That much? Goodness!"

"Just remember the damn figure."

"One hundred and four. The number of weeks in two years. Got it. But Brandy—"

He was about to point out that we didn’t have any scales with us, except for a tiny mineralogical one that only went up to two kilograms. "That’s fine," I said, cutting him off. "I’m heading back to the ship now."

"I want to finish these core samples," Klicks said. "I’ll still be several hours."

"Okay. Just don’t eat the Twinkies. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

I returned the walkie-talkie to my backpack and picked up the rifle again.

"About what was all that?" hissed the Het.

I held up the pop can. "Just keep your distance. See this metal tab? If I pull it, it will break the seal on this container in such a way that it can’t be reclosed. It’ll only take me half a second to do that. I doubt you can enter me that quickly."

"I do not intend to enter you now."

"And," I said, "if you do enter me, Klicks knows how much I weigh. The discrepancy caused by your mass within me would be a dead giveaway." Actually it wouldn’t. Even if we’d had a big enough scale, Klicks’s and my weight would normally fluctuate by more than the weight of a Het glob, depending on how much food and waste we were carrying around. Still, it was a credible-sounding threat.

"You seem concerned about us," said the Het. "All we want to do is talk."

I lowered the gun barrel, but made no move to return the rifle to my backpack. "Very well. What do you want to talk about?"

"Cabbages and kings," said the beast. That was my taste in literature, not Klicks’s, and this troodon also spoke with what Klicks would call a Canadian accent. Although this wasn’t old Diamond-snout from yesterday morning, evidently its rider was the same Het I had encountered then. Or maybe — it was hard to wrap my mind around these concepts — maybe, as the Het had tried to explain before, individuality meant nothing to them. Did they all know what any one of them knew? How did they communicate?

"Cabbages and kings?" I repeated, then shrugged. "Charles III is king. And I only eat cabbage in coleslaw."

The dinosaur, still many meters away, cocked its head at me and then digested the information with a measured one-two blink. "Thank you for sharing that," it said, a vacuous little phrase that I’d picked up from Dr. Schroeder. "You are some considerable distance from your timeship."

"Humans have to walk for exercise. It — aids our digestion."

"Ah."

I regarded the beast. "This isn’t one of the troodons that we encountered before," I said.

"True."

"But you are the same Het?"

"More or less."

"Why did you change dinosaur bodies?"

The troodon blinked. "It’s medium-rare for us to occupy the same vehicle for more than a day or two. We find it…" The rasping voice trailed off as the Het searched for the appropriate term. "Claustrophobic." It shuffled its feet. "Also, we need to leave our vehicles so that we can interact directly to share memories."

If that was true, then the Hets vacating Klicks’s and my bodies of their own volition didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t evil. I wondered…

"Tell me," the thing said casually, "where exactly is asshole Klicks?"

"What?"

"Klicks the bastard asshole. Where is he?"

"Why are you calling him that?"

"Klicks? Ah, is pun. Pun links now. His unique identifying word is Miles, but you call him Klicks, short form for kilometers." The beast tossed back its long face. "Ho ho."

"No, why are you calling him names? Asshole, bastard. Why those names?"

"Names you call him. I just — Is usage wrong?" The troodon tipped its head a little. "Your language difficult, imprecise for us."

"You’ve never heard me call him those things. He’d knock my teeth out."

"Interesting. But you call him by such words constantly. We absorb that from you."

Oh, shit. "You mean, that’s what you found in my head?"

"Yess, strong co

"Coon? My God, do I really think that?" I felt my cheeks growing red. "The others are all subjective, at least. But a racial slur … I didn’t, I mean—"

"Coon not good? No, it is — ah, a reference to his skin color. It is darker than yours. That is significant?"

"No. It’s a meaningless difference — an adaptation to more equatorial sunlight, that’s all. Listen, don’t call him that, please."

" ‘That’? Why would I call him ‘that’?"

"No, I mean, please don’t call him coon. Or asshole. Or any of those other names."

"Inappropriate terms? What should I call him?"

"Klicks. Just Klicks."

"Klicks-just-klicks. Links."

Racial slurs. I felt ashamed. You think something is dead and buried, but it’s there, all along, waiting for a chance to come back to life.

Still … I was fascinated by what the reptile had said. I knew I should let the matter drop, but I couldn’t resist. "Tess," I said after a moment. "What words do you — link — to Tess?"

"Tess." The reptile shifted its weight between its two feet and a nictitating membrane passed over each of its iridescent eyes in turn. "Dear. Honey. Bu

"Okay," I said quickly. "I get the idea. What about ‘Dad.’"

"Dad?" A moment of silence. "Burden."

"That’s all?"

"That’s all."

I looked away. I’m sure the alien couldn’t detect or even comprehend my embarrassment, but a wave of guilt washed over me. "What did you really want to talk about?" I said at last.

"Where have you been?"

"Out. Just walking around."

"Ah, good. Did you see anything interesting?"

"No. Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Shall I walk you back to the Sternberger?"

I sighed. "If you must. It’s this way."

"No. Go this way. Cutshort."

As in, his life was cut short, no doubt. "You mean shortcut, I hope."

"Yess."

We headed off into the woods.

Countdown: 4

A good tree ca

I didn’t like being alone with the Het. Although its drawn-out skull was less than thirty centimeters long, and its teeth were tiny, it could still kill me easily enough with a bite to the neck.

The beast’s natural walking speed seemed to be about three times what mine was, but after a few minutes of it getting ahead then hopping back to join me, it matched my pace and we continued on, side by side. It was quite a hike back to the Sternberger, and I downed both Diet Cokes along the way, but all the time kept a finger on the pull-tab of my aspartame grenade.

The Het asked me an endless barrage of questions, most of which seemed i