Lesson: “Think Like a Dinosaur” Short Story
Lesson: “Think Like a Dinosaur” Short StoryAttached Files:
Reading–Think Like a Dinosaur James Patrick Kelley (Text) Reading–Think Like a Dinosaur James Patrick Kelley (Text) – Alternative Formats (165.457 KB)
- Read, annotate, and take notes over the short story attached entitled “Think Like a Dinosaur.”
Discussion Board: “Think Like a Dinosaur” Analysis
For this discussion board, you will analyze the short story “Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelley.
Consider the three Kamala Shastris.
The first (and original) Kamala arrives at Tuulen Station scared but ready to complete her mission. She gets into the marble, but there is a malfunction. She gets out of the marble but then refuses to go back in. She believes she is going home, but Michael tricks here and pushes her out the airlock to kill her instead.
The second Kamala is the one who is actually translated to Gend when the Hanen think the marble is malfunctioning. She goes on to complete the mission but is killed when she is translated back to Tuulen Station at the end of her mission.
The third Kamala is the one who is translated back to Tuulen Station at the end of her mission. The reader meets her at the very beginning and very end of the story. When she returns, she barely remembers Michael, doesn’t know about how the first Kamala is killed, and is changed. She is harder with long nails (“claws really”) and a scar on her cheek.
Considering what you know about the Kamala’s experiences, her knowledge (or lack of information) about the situation and mission, and Michael’s actions and duties, do you think Michael has committed murder when he pushes the original Kamala out the air lock to kill her? Or is he simply doing his job? Is Michael Burr a murderer?
You need to include a full explanation for your analysis/claim with evidence from the story. You can paraphrase actions or include quotes, but you must include support for your claim. You need to write a full 250 words. You must explain. Do not simply summarize the story. Explain HOW your example proves Michael is innocent or guilty of murder.
You need to write in complete paragraphs with topic sentences, evidence (quotes or paraphrases), and full explanations.
Don’t forget that you must respond to at least two of your peers (you may respond to more). When responding, list any evidence that you found that your peer(s) may have left out. Be sure you make it clear whether you think the evidence supports his guilt or innocence. As more evidence is discovered, you may even change your stance on Burr’s guilt or innocence!
James Patrick Kelly (born I95I) was told as a young writer by his teachers at the Clarion
workshop that science fiction stories should be well thought out and well researched, and so he
set out to write that way. Only later did he learn that many writers in the field don’t bother to
work that hard. But by then, his habits were in place. He is not one of hard SF’s politically
committed true believers, but rather is intrigued by the dramatic possibilities of hard SF
situations. He has a dear graceful style and a willingness to do the work of making the science in
his stories count. His stories are tight and polished and his narratives tend to have a strong voice
and point of view that allow Kelly to play the drama of the situation he has chosen.
“Think like a Dinosaur” won the I996 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.
Kamala Shastri came back to this world as she had left it naked. She tottered out of the
assembler, trying to balance in Tuulen Station’s delicate gravity. I caught her and bundled her
into a robe with one motion, then eased her onto the float. Three years on another planet had
transformed Kamala. She was leaner, more muscular. Her fingernails were now a couple of
centimeters long, and there were four parallel scars incised on her left cheek, perhaps some
Gendian’s idea of beautification. But what struck me most was the darting strangeness in her
eyes. This place, so familiar to me, seemed almost to shock her. It was as if she doubted the walls
and was skeptical of air. She had learned to think like an alien.
“Welcome back.” The float’s whisper rose to a whoosh as l walked it down the hallway.
She swallowed hard, and I thought she might cry. Three years ago, she would have. Lots
of migrators are devastated when they come out of the assembler; it’s because there is no
transition. A few seconds ago Kamala was on Gend, fourth planet of the star we call epsilon Leo,
and now she was here in lunar orbit. She was almost home; her life’s great adventure was over.
“Matthew?” she said.
“Michael.” I couldn’t help but be pleased that she remembered me. After all, she had
changed my life.
I’ve guided maybe three hundred migrations-comings and goings since I first came to
Tuulen to study the dinos. Kamala Shastri’s is the only quantum scan I’ve ever pirated. I doubt
that the dinos care; I suspect this is a trespass they occasionally allow themselves. I know more
about her-at least, as she was three years ago- than I know about myself. When the dinos sent her
to Gend, she massed 50,39I.72 grams and her red cell count was 4.8I million per mm3. She could
play the nagas-varam, a kind of bamboo flute. Her father came from Thana, near Bombay, and
her favorite flavor of chewyfruit was watermelon, and she’d had five lovers, and when she was
eleven, she had wanted to be a gymnast but instead she had become a biomaterials engineer who
at age twenty-nine had volunteered to go to the stars to learn how to grow artificial eyes. It took
her two years to go through migrator training; she knew she could have backed out at any time,
right up until the moment Silloin translated her into a superluminal signal. She understood what
it meant to balance the equation.
I first met her on June 22, 2069. She shuttled over from Lunex’s L1 port and came
through our airlock at promptly I0:I5, a small, roundish woman with black hair parted in the
middle and drawn tight against her skull. They had darkened her skin against epsilon Leo’s UV;
it was the deep blue-black of twilight. She was wearing a striped clingy and Velcro slippers to
help her get around for the short time she’d be navigating our .2 microgravity.
“Welcome to Tuulen Station.” I smiled and offered my hand. “My name is Michael.” We
shook. “I’m supposed to be a sapientologist, but I also moonlight as the local guide.”
“Guide?” She nodded distractedly. “Okay.” She peered past me, as if expecting someone
else.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said, “The dinos are in their cages.”
Her eyes got wide as she let her hand slip from mine. “You call the Hanen dinos?”
“Why not?” I laughed. “They call us babies. The weeps, among other things.”
She shook her head in amazement. People who’ve never met a dino tended to romanticize
them: the wise and noble reptiles who had mastered superluminal physics and introduced Earth
to the wonders of galactic civilization. I doubt Kamala had ever seen a dino play poker or gobble
down a screaming rabbit. And she had never argued with Linna, who still wasn’t convinced that
humans were psychologically ready to go to the stars. . · .
“Have you eaten?” I gestured down the corridor toward the reception rooms. “Yes …I
mean, no.” She didn’t move. “I am not hungry.”
“Let me guess. You’re too nervous to eat. You’re too nervous to talk, even. You wish I’d
just shut up, pop you into the marble, and beam you out. Let’s just get this part the hell over
with, eh?”
“I don’t mind the conversation, actually.”
“There you go. Well, Kamala, it is my solemn duty to advise you that there are no peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches on Gend. And no chicken vindaloo. What’s my name again?”
“Michael?”
“See, you’re not that nervous. Not one taco, or a single slice of eggplant pizza.
This is your last chance to eat like a human.”
“Okay.” She did not actually smile-she was too busy being brave, but a corner of her
mouth twitched. “Actually, I would not mind a cup of tea.”
“Now, tea they’ve got.” She let me guide her toward reception room D; her slippers
snicked at the Velcro carpet. “Of course, they brew it from lawn clippings.”
“The Gendians don’t keep lawns. They live underground.”
“Refresh my memory.” I kept my hand on her shoulder; beneath the clingy, her muscles
were rigid. “Are they the ferrets or the things with the orange bumps?”
“They look nothing like ferrets.”
We popped through the door bubble into reception D, a compact rectangular space with a
scatter of low, unthreatening furniture. There was a kitchen station at one end, a closet with a
vacuum toilet at the other. The ceiling was blue sky; the long wall showed a live view of the
Charles River and the Boston skyline, baking in the late June sun. Kamala had just finished her
doctorate at MIT.
I opaqued the door. She perched on the edge of a couch like a wren, ready to flit away.
While I was making her tea, my fingernail screen flashed. I answered it, and a tiny Silloin
came up in discreet mode. She didn’t look at me; she was too busy watching arrays in the control
room. =A problem,= her voice buzzed in my earstone, =most negligible, really. But we will have
to void the last two from today’s schedule. Save them at Lunex until first shift tomorrow. Can
this one be kept for an hour?=
“Sure,” I said. “Kamala, would you like to meet a Hanen?” I transferred Silloin to a dina-
sized window on the wall. “Silloin, this is Kamala Shastri. Silloin is the one who actually runs
things. I’m just the doorman.”
Silloin looked through the window with her near eye, then swung around and peered at
Kamala with her other. She was short for a dino, just over a meter tall, but she had an enormous
head that teetered on her neck like a watermelon balancing on a grapefruit. She must have just
oiled herself because her silver scales shone.
=Kamala, you will accept my happiest intentions for you?= She raised her left hand,
spreading the skinny digits to expose dark crescents of vestigial webbing.
“Of course, I…”
=And you will permit us to render you this translation?= She straightened. “Yes.”
=Have you questions?=
I’m sure she had several hundred, but at this point was probably too scared to ask. While
she hesitated, I broke in. “Which came first, the lizard or the egg?”
Silloin ignored me. =It will be excellent for you to begin when?=
“She’s just having a little tea,” I said handing her the cup. “I’ll bring her along when
she’s done. Say an hour?”
Kamala squirmed on the couch. “No, really, it will not take me…”
Silloin showed us her teeth several of which were as long as piano keys. =That would be most
appropriate Michael.= She closed, a gull flew through the space where her window had been.
“Why did you do that!” Kamala’s voice was sharp
“Because it says here that you have to wait your turn. You are not the only migrator we’re
sending this morning.” This was a lie, of course. We had to cut the schedule because Jodi
Larchaw, the other sapientologist assigned to Tuulen, was at the University of Hipparchus
presenting our paper on the Hanen concept of identity. “Don’t worry. I’ll make the time fly.”
For a moment, we looked at each other. I could have laid down an hour’s worth of patter.
I’d done that often enough. Or I could have drawn her out on why she was going: no doubt she
had a blind grandma or second cousin just waiting for her to bring home those artificial eyes, not
to mention those spinoffs which could well end tuberculosis, famine, and premature ejaculation,
blah, blah, blah. Or I could have just left her alone in the room to read the wall. The trick was
guessing how spooked she really was.
“Tell me a secret,” I said.
“What?”
“A secret, you know, something no one else knows.”
She stared as if I’d just fallen off Mars.
“Look in a little while you’re going someplace that’s what…three hundred and ten light
years away? You’re scheduled to stay for three years. By the time you come back, I could easily
be rich, famous, or elsewhere. We’ll probably never see each other again. So what have you got
to lose? I promise not to tell.”
She leaned back on the couch and settled the cup in her lap. “This is another test, right?
After everything they have put me through, they still have not decided whether to send me.”
“Oh, no, in a couple of hours, you’ll be cracking nuts with ferrets in some dark Gendian
borrow. This is just me, talking.”
“You are crazy.”
“Actually, I believe the technical term is logomaniac. It’s from the Greek: logos meaning
word, mania meaning two bits short of a byte. I just love to chat is all. Tell you what, I’ll go first.
If my secret isn’t juicy enough, you don’t have to say anything.”
Her eyes were slits as she sipped her tea. I was fairly sure that whatever she was worrying
about at that moment, it wasn’t being swallowed by the big blue marble.
“I was brought up Catholic,” I said, settling onto a chair in front of her. I’m not anymore,
but that’s not the secret. My parents sent me to Mary, Mother of God High School; we called it
Moogoo. It was run by a couple of old priests, Father Thomas and his wife, Mother Jennifer.
Father Tom taught physics, which I got a ‘D’ in, mostly because he talked like he had walnuts in
his mouth. Mother Jennifer taught theology and had all the warmth of a marble pew; her
nickname was Mama Moogoo.
“One night a week before my graduation, Father Tom and Mama Moogoo went out in
their Chevy Minimus for ice cream. On their way home, Mama Moogoo pushed a yellow light
and got broadsided by an ambulance. Like I said, she was old, a hundred and twenty something.
They should’ve lifted her license back in the 50’s. She was killed instantly. Father Tom died in
the hospital.
“Of course, we were all supposed to feel sorry for them and I guess I did a little, but I
never really liked either of them and I resented the way their deaths had screwed things up for
my class. So I was more annoyed than sorry, but then I also had this edge of guilt for being so
uncharitable. Maybe you’d have to grow up Catholic to understand that. Anyway, the day after it
happened they called an assembly in the gym and we were all there squirming on the bleachers
and the cardinal himself telepresented a sermon. He kept trying to comfort us like it had been our
parents that had died. When I made a joke about it to the kid next to me, I got caught and spent
the last week of my senior year with an in-school suspension.”
Kamala had finished her tea. She slid the empty cup into one of the holders built into the
table.
“Want some more?” I said.
She stirred restlessly. “Why are you telling me this?”
“It’s part of the secret,” I leaned forward in my chair. “See, my family lived down the
street from Holy Spirit Cemetery and in order to get to the carryvan line on McKinley Ave. I had
to cut through. Now this happened a couple of days after I got in trouble at the assembly. It was
around midnight and I was coming home from a graduation party where I had taken a couple of
pokes of insight so I was feeling sly as a philosopher king. As I walked through the cemetery, I
stumbled across two dirt mounds right next to each other. At first, I thought they were flower
beds, then I saw the wooden crosses. Fresh graves: here lies Father Tom and Mama Moogoo.
There wasn’t much to the crosses: they were basically just stakes with crosspieces, painted white
and hammered into the ground. The names were hand printed on them. The way I figured it, they
were there to mark the graves until the stones got delivered. I didn’t need any insight to
recognize a once in a lifetime opportunity. If I switched them, what were the chances anyone was
going to notice? It was no problem sliding them out of their holes. I smoothed the dirt with my
hand and then ran like hell.”
Until that moment, she’d seemed bemused by my story and slightly condescending
towards me. Now there was a glint of alarm in her eyes. “That was a terrible thing to do,” she
said.
“Absolutely,” I said, “Although the dinos think that the whole idea of planting bodies in
graveyards and marking them with carved rock is weepy. They say there is no identity in dead
meat, so why get so sentimental about it? Linna keeps asking how come we don’t put markers
over our shit. But that’s not the secret. See, it’d been a warmish night in the middle of June, only
as I ran, the air turned cold. Freezing, I could see my breath. And my shoes got heavier and
heavier, like they had turned to stone. As I got closer to the back gate, it felt like I was fighting a
strong wind, except my clothes weren’t flapping. I slowed to a walk. I know I could have pushed
through, but my heart was thumping and then I heard this whispery seashell noise and I
panicked. So the secret is I’m a coward. I switched the crosses back and I never went near that
cemetery again. As a matter of fact,” I nodded at the walls of reception room D on Tuulen
Station, “when I grew up, I got about as far away from it as I could.”
She stared as I settled back in my chair. “True story,” I said and raised my right hand. She
seemed so astonished that I started laughing. A smile bloomed on her dark face and suddenly she
was giggling too. It was a soft, liquid sound, like a brook bubbling over smooth stones; it made
me laugh even harder. Her lips were full and her teeth were very white.
“Your turn,” I said, finally.
“Oh, no, I could not.” She waved me off. “I don’t have anything so good…”
She paused, then frowned. “You have told that before?”
“Once,” I said. “To the Hanen, during the psych screening for this job. Only I didn’t tell
them the last part. I know how dinos think, so I ended it when I switched the crosses. The rest is
baby stuff.” I waggled a finger at her. “Don’t forget, you promised to keep my secret.”
“Did I?”
“Tell me about when you were young. Where did you grow up?”
“Toronto.” She glanced at me, appraisingly. “There was something, but not funny. Sad.”
I nodded encouragement and changed the wall to Toronto’s skyline dominated by the CN
Tower, Toronto-Dominion Centre, Commerce Court, and the King’s Needle.
She twisted to take in the view and spoke over her shoulder. “When I was ten we moved
to an apartment; right downtown on Bloor Street, so my mother could be close to work. She
pointed at the wall and turned back to face me. “She is an accountant, my father wrote wallpaper
for Imagineering. It was a huge building; it seemed as if we were always getting into the elevator
with ten neighbors we never knew we had. I was coming home from school one day when an old
woman stopped me in the lobby. ‘Little girl,’ she said, ‘how would you like to earn ten dollars?’
My parents had warned me not to talk to strangers but she obviously was a resident. Besides, she
had an ancient pair of exolegs strapped on, so I knew I could out run her if I needed to. She
asked me to go to the store for her, handed me a grocery list and a cash card, and said I should
bring everything up to her apartment, 10W. I should have been more suspicious because all the
downtown groceries delivered, but, as I soon found out, all she really wanted was someone to
talk to her. And she was willing to pay for it, usually five or ten dollars, depending on how long I
stayed. Soon I was stopping by almost every day after school. I think my parents would have
made me stop if they had known; they were very strict. They would not have liked me taking her
money. But neither of them got home until after six, so it was my secret to keep.”
“Who was she?” I said. “What did you talk about?”
“Her name was Margaret Ase. She was ninety seven years old, and I think she had been
some kind of counselor. Her husband and her daughter had both died, and she was alone. I didn’t
find out much about her. She made me do most of the talking. She asked me about my friends
and what I was learning in school and my family. Things like that…”
Her voice trailed off as my fingernail started to flash. I answered it.
=Michael, I am pleased to call you to here.= Silloin buzzed in my ear. She was almost
twenty minutes ahead of schedule.
“See, I told you we’d make the time fly.” I stood; Kamala’s eyes got very wide.
“I’m ready if you are.”
I offered her my hand. She took it and let me help her up. She wavered for a moment and
I sensed just how fragile her resolve was. I put my hand around her waist and steered her into the
corridor. In the microgravity of Tuulen Station, she already felt as insubstantial as a memory. “So
tell me, what happened that was so sad?”
At first 1 thought she hadn’t heard. She shuffled along, said nothing.
“Hey, don’t keep me in suspense here, Kamala,” I said. “You have to finish the story.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think I do.”
I didn’t take this personally. My only real interest in the conversation had been to distract
her. If she refused to be distracted, that was her choice. Some migrators kept talking right up to
the moment they slid into the big blue marble, but lots of them went quiet just before. They
turned inward. Maybe in her mind she was already on Gend, blinking in the hard white light.
We arrived at the scan center, the largest space on Tuulen Station. Immediately in front of
us was the marble, containment for the quantum nondemolition sensor array-QNSA for the
acronymically inclined. It was the milky blue of glacial ice and big as two elephants. The upper
hemisphere was raised and the scanning table protruded like a shiny gray tongue. Kamala
approached the marble and touched her reflection, which writhed across its polished surface. To
the right was a padded bench, the fogger, and a toilet. I looked left, through the control room
window. Silloin stood watching us, her impossible head cocked to one side.
=She is docile?= she buzzed in my earstone.
I held up crossed fingers.
=Welcome, Kamala Shastri.= Silloin’s voice came over the speakers with a soothing
hush. =You are ready to open your translation?=
Kamala bowed to the window. “This is where 1take my clothes off?”
=-If you would be so convenient.-=
She brushed past me to the bench. Apparently, I had ceased to exist; this was between her
and the dino now. She undressed quickly, folding her dingy into a neat bundle, tucking her
slippers beneath the bench. Out of the comer of my eye, I could see tiny feet, heavy thighs, and
the beautiful, dark smooth skin of her back. She stepped into the fogger and closed the door.
“Ready,” she called.
From the control room, Silloin dosed circuits which filled the fogger with a dense cloud
of nanolenses. The nano stuck to Kamala and deployed, coating the surface of her body. As she
breathed them, they passed from her lungs into her bloodstream. She only coughed twice; she
had been well trained. When the eight minutes were up, Silloin cleared the air in the fogger and
she emerged. Still ignoring me, she again faced the control room.
=Now you must arrange yourself on the scanning table,= said Silloin, =and enable
Michael to fix you.= ·
She crossed to the marble without hesitation, climbed the gantry beside, eased onto the
table, and laid back.
I followed her up. “Sure you won’t tell me the rest of the secret!” She stared at the
ceiling, unblinking.
“Okay then.” I took the canister and a sparker out of my hip pouch. “This is going to
happen just like you’ve practiced it.” I used the canister to respray the bottoms of her feet with
nano. I watched her belly rise and fall, rise and fall. She was deep into her breathing exercise.
“Remember, no skipping rope or whistling, while you’re in the scanner.”
She did not answer. “Deep breath now,” I said and touched a sparker to her big toe, There
was a brief crackle as the nano on her skin wove into a net and stiffened, locking her in place.
“Bark at the ferrets for me.” I picked up my equipment, climbed down the gantry, and wheeled it
back to the wall.
With a low whine, the big blue marble retracted its tongue. I watched the upper
hemisphere close, swallowing Kamala Shastri, then joined Silloin in the control room.
I’m not of the school who thinks the dinos stink, another reason I got assigned to study
them up dose. Parikkal, for example, has no smell at all that l can tell. Normally Silloin had the
faint but not unpleasant smell of stale wine. When she was under stress; however, her scent
became vinegary and biting. It must have been a wild morning for her. Breathing through my
mouth, I settled onto the stool at my station.
She was working quickly, now that the marble was sealed. Even with all their training,
migrators tend to get claustrophobic fast. After all, they’re lying in the dark, in nanobondage,
waiting to be translated. Waiting. The simulator at the Singapore training center makes a noise
while it’s emulating a scan. Most compare it to a light rain pattering against the marble; for
some, it’s low volume radio static. As long as they hear the patter, the migrators think they’re
safe. We reproduce it for them while they’re in our marble, even though scanning takes about
three seconds and is utterly silent. From my vantage, I could see that the sagittal, axial, and
coronal windows had stopped blinking, indicating full data capture. Silloin was skirring busily to
herself; her comm didn’t bother to interpret. Wasn’t saying anything baby Michael needed to
know, obviously. Her head bobbed as she monitored the enormous spread of readouts; her claws
clicked against touch screens that glowed orange and yellow.
At my station; there was only a migration status screen and a white button.
I wasn’t lying when I said I was just the doorman. My field is sapientology, not quantum
physics. Whatever went wrong with Kamala’s migration that morning, there was nothing I could
have done. The dinos tell me that the quantum nondemoliton sensor array is able to circumvent
Heisenberg’s Uncerrainty Principle by measuring spacetime’s most crogglingly small quantities
without collapsing the wave/particle duality. How small? They say that no one can ever “see”
anything that’s only 1.62 x l0-33 centimeters long, because at that size, space and time come
apart. Time ceases to exist and space becomes a random probabilistic foam, sort of like quantum
spit. We humans call this the Planck Wheeler length. There’s a Planck Wheeler time, too: 10-45 of
a second. If something happens and something else happens and the two events are separated by
an interval of a mere I0-45 of a second, it is impossible to say which came first. It was all dino to
me, and that’s just the scanning. The Hanen use different tech to create artificial wormholes, hold
them open with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations, pass the superluminal signal through, and
then assemble the migrator from elementary particles at the destination.
On my status screen, I could see that the signal which mapped Kamala Shastri had
already been compressed and burst through the wormhole. All that we had to wait for was for
Gend to confirm acquisition. Once they officially told us that they had her, it would be my job to
balance the equation.
Pitter patter, pitter-pat.
Some Hanen technologies are so powerful that they can alter reality itself. Wormholes
could be used by some time traveling fanatic to corrupt history; the scanner/assembler could be
used to create a billion Silloins—or Michael Burr’s. Pristine reality, unpolluted by such
anomalies, has what the dinos call harmony. Before any sapients get to join the galactic club,
they must prove total commitment to preserving harmony.
Since I had come to Tuulen to study the dinos, I had pressed the white button over two
hundred times. It was what I had to do in order to keep my assignment. Pressing it sent a killing
pulse of ionizing radiation through the cerebral cortex of the migrator’s duplicated, and therefore
unnecessary, body. No brain, no pain; death followed within seconds. Yes, the first few times I’d
balanced the equation had been traumatic. It was still…unpleasant. But this was the price of a
ticket to the stars. If certain unusual people like Kamala Shastri had decided that price was
reasonable, it was their choice, not mine.
=This is not a happy result, Michael.= Silloin spoke to me for the first time since I’d
entered the control room. =Discrepancies are unfolding.= On my status screen, I watched as the
error checking routines started turning up hits.
“Is the problem here?” I felt a knot twist suddenly inside me. “Or there?” If our original
scan checked out, then all Silloin would have to do is send it to Gend again.
There was a long, infuriating silence. Silloin concentrated on part of her board as if it
showed her first born hatchling chipping out of its egg. The respirator between her shoulders had
ballooned to twice its normal size. My screen showed that Kamala had been in the marble for
four minutes plus.
=It may be fortunate to recalibrate the scanner and begin over.=
“Shit.” I slammed my hand against the wall, felt the pain tingle to my elbow. “I thought
you had it fixed.” When error checking turned up problems, the solution was almost always to
retransmit. “You’re sure, Silloin? Because this one was right on the edge when I tucked her in.”
Silloin gave me a dismissive sneeze and slapped at the error readouts with her bony little
hand, as if to knock them back to normal. Like Linna and the other dinos, she had little patience
with what she regarded as our weepy fears of migration. However, unlike Linna, she was
convinced that someday, after we had used Hanen technologies long enough, we would learn to
think like dinos. Maybe she’s right. Maybe when we’ve been squirting through wormholes for
hundreds of years, we’ll cheerfully discard our redundant bodies. When the dinos and other
sapients migrate, the redundants zap themselves—very harmonious. They tried it with humans
but it didn’t always work. That’s why I’m here. =The need is most clear. It will prolong about
thirty minutes,= she said.
Kamala had been alone in the dark for almost six minutes, longer than any migrator I’d
ever guided. “Let me hear what’s going on in the marble.”
The control room filled with the sound of Kamala screaming. It didn’t sound human to
me more like the shriek of tires skidding toward a crash.
“We’ve got to get her out of there,” I said. That is baby thinking, Michael.
“So she’s a baby, damn it.” I knew that bringing migrators out of the marble was big
trouble…I could have asked Silloin to tum the speakers off and sat there while Kamala suffered.
It was my decision.
“Don’t open the marble until I get the gantry in place.” I ran for the door. “And keep the
sound effects going.”
At the first crack of light, she howled. The upper hemisphere seemed to lift in slow
motion; inside the marble she bucked against the nano. Just when I was sure it was impossible
that she could scream any louder, she did. We had accomplished something extraordinary, Silloin
and I; we had stripped the brave biomaterials engineer away completely, leaving in her place a
terrified animal.
“Kamala, it’s me. Michael.”
Her frantic screams cohered into words. “Stop … don’t … oh my god, someone help!” If 1
could have, I would’ve jumped into the marble to release her, but the sensor array is fragile, and I
wasn’t going to risk causing any more problems with it. We both had to wait until the upper
hemisphere swung fully open and the scanning table offered poor Kamala to me.
“It’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen, all right? We’re bringing you out, that’s all.
Everything’s all right.”
When I released her with the sparker. She flew at me. We pitched back and almost
toppled down the steps. Her grip was so tight I couldn’t breathe.
“Don’t kill me, don’t, please, don’t.”
I rolled on top of her. “Kamala!” I wriggled one arm free and sed it to pry myself from
her. I scrabbled sideways to the top step. She lurche “You bastard. What are you assholes trying to do to me?” She drew several shuddering “The scan got corrupted somehow. Silloin is working on it.” problem.” I backed toward the bench. flesh or bones. “They said I wouldn’t feel anything and…do you know what it’s like…it’s…” get you out of here.” back into her clingy. They were the size of the old dimes my grandfather used to hoard, and they “I don’t know.” I went to the kitchen station and took the carafe from the distiller. “What “For what?” once Silloin recalibrated the scanner, she’d have very little time to change her mind. “You want “How about a gin and tonic—hold the tonic?” She rubbed beneath her eyes. “Or a couple I tried to pretend she’d made a joke. “You know the dinos won’t let us open the bar for “Don’t you understand?” She was right back at the edge of hysteria. “I am not going!” I Oz, just as long as l didn’t have to be in the same room with this miserable creature who was “I thought I could do it.” She clamped hands to her ears as if to keep from hearing her “You did it, Kamala. You did everything we asked.” trying to touch me. In the dark. I had not thought of her since…” She shivered. “It’s your fault “Your secret friend,” I said. · was always a little bit scared of her, because I was never quite sure of what she wanted from She squinted, as if observing-judging-her younger self through the lens of time. “I think I =Michael,= Silloin whispered, without any warning flash. =An impossibility has “As soon as I was out of that building, I started to get better. Then they found her. After l =Michael, Parikkal is here with Linna.= for a minute?” She seemed surprised that I would leave. I slipped into the hall and hardened the “What impossibility?” I said, heading for the control room. =This is Parikkal.= My earstone translated his skirring with a sizzling edge, like bacon I pushed through the bubble into the scan center. I could see the three dinos through the =Our communications with Gend were marred by a transient falsehood,= said Silloin. “She migrated?” l felt the deck shifting beneath my feet. “What about the one we’ve got “I’ve got news for you. She’s not going anywhere near that marble.” not exactly in charge of Tuulen Station; she was more like a senior partner. Parikkal and Silloin “What do you expect me to do? Wring her neck?” through the window, their heads now perfectly still. cold, and the comm was silent, but suddenly their debate crackled through my earstone. harmony. It is wrongful to further unleash them on the many worlds.= equation to be balanced.= long brown teeth. It would take her maybe five seconds to rip Kamala’s throat out. And even =I will argue that we adjourn human migration until this world has been This was the typical dino condescension. Even though they appeared to be arguing with “Wait,” I said. “Maybe I can coax her back into the scanner.” I had to get away from She had curled into herself on the couch, arms clutching knees to her chest, as if trying to “We’re all set,” I said briskly. “You’ll be in the marble for less than a minute, “No, Michael.” away a huge part of your life.” · No, it wasn’t. She was redundant; she had no rights. What had she said about the dead old “Okay, then,” I jabbed at her shoulder with a stiff forefinger. “Let’s go.” She recoiled. should be helping them settle in, instead of having to deal with you.” She unfolded herself “Come on.” I jerked her roughly to her feet. “The dinos want you off Tuulen as soon as She nodded and let me march her to the bubble door. the shuttle. She tried to twist out of my grip, but I put my shoulder into her, hard. She flew across As soon as the inner door sealed, I opened the outer door. After all, how many ways are I heard the whoosh of escaping air and thought that was it; the body had been ejected into There were just a few centimeters between us, the difference between life and death. Now I don’t know how long it took. The thumping slowed. Stopped. And then I was a hero. I
I popped through the bubble door into reception D. “It’s time to board the shuttle.”
Kamala had changed into a clingy and Velcro slippers. There were at least ten windows open on She gave me a smile that seemed stiff from disuse. “I want to thank you again, Michael.” “You were.” snapped her fingers, “there I was on Gend, just like you said.” She brushed up against me as we “I decided to stay on.” The inner door of the airlock glided open. “It’s a job that grows on “You have got migrators waiting?” she said. long nails—claws, really. For a moment, I thought she meant to scar my cheek the way she had “I know,” I said.
breaths and began to sob.
The difficulty is obscure, said Silloin from the control room. “But that’s not your
“They lied,” she mumbled and seemed to fold in upon herself as if she were just skin, no
I fumbled for her clingy. “Look, here are your clothes. Why don’t you get dressed? We’ll
“You bastard,” she repeated, but her voice was empty. ·
She let me coax her down off the gantry. I counted nubs on the wall while she fumbled
glowed with a soft golden bioluminescence. I was up to forty-seven before she was dressed and
ready to return to reception D. Where before she had perched expectantly at the edge of the
couch, now she slumped back against it. “So what now?” she said.
now, Silloin?” I poured water over the back of my hand to wash the blood off. It stung. My
earstone was silent. “I guess we wait.” I said finally.
“For her to fix …”
“I’m not going back in there.”
I decided to let that pass. It was probably too soon to argue with her about it, although
something from the kitchen? Another cup of tea, maybe?” ·
of hundred milliliters of serentol.”
migrators. The Scanner might misread your brain chemistry and your visit to Gend would be
nothing hut a three year drunk.”
didn’t really blame her for the way she was acting, but at that moment, all I wanted was to get rid
of Kamala Shastri. I didn’t care if she went on to Gend or back to Lunex or over the rainbow to
trying to make me feel guilty about an accident I had nothing to do with.
own despair. “I wasted the last two years convincing myself that I could just lie there and not
think and then suddenly I’d be far away. I was going someplace wonderful and strange.” She
made a strangled sound and let her hands drop into her lap. “I was going to help people see.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t not think. That was the problem. And then there she was,
for reminding me.”
“Friend!” Kamala seemed puzzled by the word. “No, I wouldn’t say she was a friend. I
me.” She paused. “One day I went up to 10W after school. She was in her chair, staring down at
Bloor Street. Her back was to me. I said, ‘Hi, Ms. Ase.’ I was going to show her a genie I had
written, only she didn’t say anything. I came around. Her skin was the color of ashes. I took her
hand. It was like picking up something plastic. She was stiff, hard—not a person anymore. She
had become a thing, like a feather or a bone. I ran; I had to get out of there. I went up to our
apartment and I hid from her.”
understand now what she wanted. I think she knew she was dying. She probably wanted me there
with her at the end, or at least to find her body afterward and report it. Only I could not. If I told
anyone she was dead, my parents would find out about us. Maybe people would suspect me of
doing something to her. I don’t know. I could have called security but I was only ten; I was afraid
somehow they might trace me. A couple of weeks went by and still nobody had found her. By
then it was too late to say anything. Everyone would have blamed me for keeping quiet for so
long. At night I imagined her turning black and rotting into her chair like a banana. It made me
sick; I couldn’t sleep or eat. They had to put me in the hospital, because I had touched her.
Touched death.”
formed.=
came home, I worked hard to forget Ms. Ase. And I did, almost.” Kamala wrapped her arms
around herself. “But just now she was with me again, inside the marble…I couldn’t see her but
somehow I knew she was reaching for me.
“Don’t you see?” She gave a bitter laugh. “How can 1go to Gend. I’m hallucinating.”
=It has broken the harmony. Join us alone.=
I was tempted to swat at the annoying buzz in my car.
“You know, I’ve never told anyone about her before.”
Well, maybe some good has come of this after all.” l patted her on the knee. “Excuse me
door bubble, sealing her in.
=She is pleased to reopen the scanner?=
“Not pleased at all. More like scared shitless.”
frying. =The confusion was made elsewhere. No mishap can be connected to our station.=
control window. Their heads were bobbing furiously. “Tell me,” I said.
=Kamala Shastri has been received there and reconstructed.=
here?” The simplicity is to load the redundant into the scanner and finalize.
=Her equation is not in balance.= This was Linna, speaking for the first rime. Linna was
had overruled her before—at least I thought they had.
There was a moment’s silence—which was not as unnerving as watching them eye me
“No,” I said.
The dinos were skirring at each other; their heads wove and dipped. At first they cut me
=This is just as I have been telling,= said Linna. =These beings have no realization of
=You may have reason,= said Parikkal =But that is a later discussion. The need is for the
=There is no time. We will have to discard the redundant ourselves.= Silloin bared her
though Silloin was the dino most sympathetic to us, I had no doubt she would enjoy the kill.
rethought.= said Linna.
each other, they were actually speaking to me, laying the situation out so that even the baby
sapient would understand. They were informing me that I was jeopardizing the future of
humanity in space. That the Kamala in reception D was dead whether I quit or not. That the
equation had to be balanced and it had to be now.
them. I pulled my earstone out and slid it into my pocket. I was in such a hurry to escape that I
stumbled as I left the scan center and had to catch myself in the hallway. I stood there for a
second, staring at the hand pressed against the bulkhead. I seemed to see the splayed fingers
through the wrong end of a telescope. I was far away from myself.
shrink so that nobody would notice her.
guaranteed.”
I could actually feel myself receding from Tuulen Station. “Kamala, you’re throwing
“It is my right.” Her eyes were shiny.
lady? She had become a thing, like a bone.
“Go where?”
“Back to Lunex. I’m holding the shuttle for you. It just dropped off my afternoon list; I
slowly.
possible and so do I.” I was so distant. I couldn’t see Kamala Shastri anymore.
“And if we meet anyone in the hall, keep your mouth shut.”
“You’re being so mean.” Her whisper was thick.
“You’re being such a baby.”
When the inner door glided open, she realized immediately that there was no umbilical to
the airlock, slammed against the outer door and caromed onto her back. As I punched the switch
to dose the door, I came back to myself. I was doing this terrible thing—me, Michael Burr. I
couldn’t help myself: I giggled. When I last saw her, Kamala was scrabbling across the deck
toward me, but she was too late. I was surprised that she wasn’t screaming again; all I heard was
her ferocious breathing.
there to kill someone on a space station? There were no guns. Maybe someone else could have
stabbed or strangled her, but not me. Poison how? Besides, I wasn’t thinking, I had been trying
desperately not to think of what I was doing. I was a sapientologist, not a doctor. I always
thought that exposure to space meant instantaneous death. Explosive decompression or
something like. I didn’t want her to suffer. I was trying to make it quick. Painless.
space. I had actually turned away when thumping started, frantic, like the beat of a racing heart.
She must have found something to hold onto. Thump, thump, thump! It was too much. I sagged
against the inner door—thump, thump.—I slid down it, laughing. Turns out that if you empty the
lungs, it is possible to survive exposure to space for at least a minute, maybe two. I thought it
was funny. Thump! Hilarious, actually. I had tried my best for her-risked my career-and this was
how she repaid me? As I laid my cheek against the door, the thumps started to weaken.
she knew all about balancing the equation. I was laughing so hard l could scarcely breathe. Just
like the meat behind the door. Die already, you weepy bitch!
had preserved harmony, kept our link to the stars open. I chuckled with pride; I could think like a
dinosaur.
the wall; the room filled with the murmur of talking heads. Friends and relatives had to be
notified; their loved one had returned, safe and sound. “I have to go,” she said to the wall. I will
call you when I land.”
I wondered how long it took migrators to get used to being human. “You were such a help and 1
was such a…I was not myself.” She glanced around the room one last time and then shivered. “I
was really scared.”
She shook her head. “Was it that bad?”
I shrugged and led her out into the hall.
“I feel so silly now I mean, I was in the marble for less than a minute and then…” she
walked; her body was hard under the clingy. “Anyway, I am glad we got this chance to talk. I
really was going to look you up when I got back. I certainly did not expect to see you here.’
you.” The umbilical shivered as the pressure between Tuulen Station and the shuttle equalized.
“Two.”
“I envy them.” She turned to me. “Have you ever thought about going to the stars?”
“No,” I said.
Kamala put her hand to my face. “It changes everything.” I could feel the prick of her
been scarred.
“Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelley
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