sure they haven’t strayed too far, lichens, by God,have taken the big step, ” and there would scarcely be a dry eye among the listeners, except for Kemal’s sister, Gulnar, herself a paleobotanist. Gulnar specialized in psilophytes.
Throughout the discussions, Ivan had felt that, in effect, DeRamus had but to point to his rocks and say,“Old!” or Gabbert to his sky and say,“Big!” and nothing,nothing, he could have said about microbiotic volume in the histic epipedon, or humic acid precipitation, or the varieties of Paleozoic mesofauna he expected to sift through a tullgren funnel, would have meant a damn thing. Rather than enter his saprotrophs in unequal and hopeless competition against thrust faults, sea scorpions, or prehistoric constellations, he would wait until all around the table had settled back, glowering but spent, then softly clear his throat and calmly explain all over again that the origin and evolution of soil ranked among the major events in the history of life on Earth, that soil was linked inextricably to that major event of mid-Paleozoic time, life’s emergence onto land.
It had been by dint of this stolid persistence that he had, in the minds of enough of his peers, ultimately established himself as precisely the sort of knowledgeable, dedicated, persevering person who should be a member of the Paleozoic expedition-and had also established, by extension, all soil scientists everywhere, in every geologic age, as estimable fellows. When finally, Stoll had announced who would go, Ivan stunned to speechlessness, could only gape as each of his colleagues shook his hand; almost a minute passed before he found his voice. “Wonders never cease,” he had said.
Almost the next thing he remembered was looking over the back of the man who had knelt before him to check the seals on his boots. Cutsinger had stood leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed and watched the technicians work. He smiled ruefully at Ivan and said, “Tell me how youreally feel.”
“Like the first astronaut to spacewalk must’ve, just before he went out and did it.”
“That guy had an umbilical cord,” said Dilks, who sat nearby, surrounded by his own satellite system of technicians. He did not go onto say the obvious: We don’t.
“Just don’t lose sight of the anomaly once you’re through,” Cutsinger said.
“Right now,” Ivan said, “getting back through the anomaly doesn’t concern me quite as much as going through the first time and finding myself sinking straight to the bottom of the sea.”
“We sent a probe in to bird-dog for you. The hole’s stabilized over solid ground. You’ll arrive high and dry.” Cutsinger nodded at Dilks. “Both of you, together.”
Ivan flexed his gloved fingers and said, “It’s just the suit,” and thought, It isn’tonly just the suit, but part of itis the suit. The suit was bulky and heavy and had to be hermetic. He and Dilks had to carry their own air supplies and everything else they might conceivably need, lest they contaminate the pristine Paleozoic environment and induce a paradox. The physicists, Ivan and Dilks privately agreed, were covering their own asses.
Cutsinger asked Dilks, “Anything you’re especially concerned about?”
Dilks grinned. “Not liking the scenery. Not seeing a single prehistoric monster.”
Cutsinger smiled thinly. “Careful what you wish for.”
“Time to seal up,” said one of the technicians. Another raised a clear bubble helmet and carefully set it down over Ivan’s head. The helmet sealed when twisted to the right.
“All set?” said the chief technician’s voice in the helmetphone.
“All set,” said Ivan.
Technicians stood by to lend steadying hands as the two suited men got to their feet and lumbered into an adjoining room for decontamination. They stood upon a metal platform. Their equipment had already been decontaminated and stowed.
Ivan gripped the railing that enclosed the platform; he did not trust his legs to hold him up. This is it, he told himself, and then, This is what? He found that he still could not entirely believe what he was about to do.
The wall opposite the door pivoted away. The metal platform began to move on rails toward a ripple in the air.
Everything turned to white light and pain.
They considered their reflections in the full-length mirror. Don and Ivan were two solidly built, deep-chested, middle-aged men, unmistakably products of the same parents. Michelle stood framed in the doorway. Her expression was dubious. “Daddy,” she said, “they’ll never accept him as one of their own. No offense, Uncle Ivan, but you don’t have Hollywood hair and teeth. They’ll be horrified by what you’ve done to your skin. Daddy’s tanned and fit because he works out. You’re brown and hard and leathery because you work.”
Don said to Ivan, “Maybe they’ll mistake you for a retired stuntman.”
“Why retired?”
“What other kind is there anymore?”
“I feel strange in these clothes, but I have to admit that they feel good and look good. They look better that I do.”
“This is up-to-the-moment thread.”
“I look like a rough draft of you.”
“Whatever you do,” Michelle said, “don’t say you’re a scientist. ‘Scientist’ cuts no ice here.”
Don flashed a grin along his shoulder at his brother and said, “Absolutely do not say you’re a pedologist.
They won’t have any idea what a pedologist is, unless they think it’s the same thing as a pedophile.”
“Someone asks what you are,” Michelle said, “they mean, What’s your astrological sign?”
“I don’t know my astrological sign.”
She made a horrified face. “Getout of California!”
“Tell ’em anything,” Don said, “It doesn’t matter, they’ll run with it, tell you they just knew all along you were a Taurus or whatever.”
“Say you’re a time-traveler,” Michelle told him. “But don’t be hurt if they’re not even impressed by that.
It’s not like they’ve ever done anything real.”
The afternoon was warm, golden, perfect, as they wound their way along Mulholland Drive. Don had put the top down, though it meant wearing goggles to screen out airvertising. Ivan sat fingering the unfamiliar cloth of his borrowed clothing and admiring the fine houses. They turned in at a gate in a high stucco wall, passed a security guard’s inspection, and drove on. Around a bend in the driveway, Ivan saw a monstrous house, an unworkable fusion of Spanish and Japanese architectural quirks framed by the rim of hills beyond. Don braked to stop in front of the house and simply abandoned the car-if he gave the keys to someone, Ivan did not see it happen. Just at the door, Don turned to Ivan and said, “Let me take one more look at you.”
Ivan held his arms away from his body, palms forward.
Don laughed. “You’re the most confident-looking guy I’ve ever seen. You look like Samson about to go wreak havoc among the Philistines.”
“What’ve I got to be nervous about?”
They went inside and immediately found themselves in a crowd of mostly gorgeous chattering people, all seemingly intent upon displaying themselves, all dressed with an artful casualness. As he followed Don through the room, Ivan admired their physical flawlessness. The women were breathtaking. They were shorter or taller than one another, paler or darker, blond or brunette, but nearly all fashioned along the same very particular lines-slim and boyish save for improbably full breasts. On two or three occasions, Don paused and turned to introduce Ivan to someone who smiled pleasantly, shook Ivan’s hand, and looked through or around him.
Ivan was, therefore, taken aback when a lovely woman approached from his brother’s blind side, touched Ivan fleetingly on the forearm, and said, “I’m so glad you came, it’s so good to see you.” She wore a short skirt, belted at the waist. Her back, flanks, and shoulders were bare. The tips of her breasts were barely covered by two narrow, translucent strips of fabric that crossed at the navel and fastened behind her neck.
“It’s so good to see you, too,” Ivan said. She said, “I have to go get after the help for a second, but don’t you go away,” and vanished.
Ivan caught up with Don and said, “Who was that?”
“Who was who?”
A simply pretty rather than gorgeous girl paused before Ivan with a food-laden tray and smiled invitingly; he helped himself to some unrecognizable but delicious foodstuff. Before he could help himself to seconds, she was gone. He consoled himself with a drink plucked from another passing tray.
The singer fronting the combo was Frank Sinatra, who snapped his fingers and smiled as he sang “My Way.” According to a placard, the skinny, artfully scruffy young men accompanying him were The Sex Pistols. Although
