Iterations and other stories (collection)

The hunters marched far away from their camp, each carrying a spear thrust vertically toward the summer sun, each one crowned by a severed, pointed-toothed head. When, at last, they found a suitable hole in the ground, they dumped the heads in, far, far away from their bodies.

The Others waited for the tribefolk to return.

But they never did.

“Do not send the originals,” said Brancusi.

“But—”

“The originals are mine, do you understand? I will ensure their safe passage out of China.”

It looked for a moment like Weidenreich’s will was going to reassert itself, but then his expression grew blank again. “All right.”

“I’ve seen you make casts of bones before.”

“With plaster of Paris, yes.”

“Make casts of these skulls—and then file the teeth on the casts.”

“But—”

“You said Andrews and others would be able to tell if the original fossils were altered. But there’s no way they could tell that the casts had been modified, correct?”

“Not if it’s done skillfully, I suppose, but—”

“Do it.”

“What about the foramen magnums?”

“What would you conclude if you saw fossils with such widened openings?”

“I don’t know—possibly that ritual cannibalism had been practiced.”

“Ritual?”

“Well, if the only purpose was to get at the brain, so you could eat it, it’s easier just to smash the cranium, and—”

“Good. Good. Leave the damage to the skull bases intact. Let your Andrews have that puzzle to keep him occupied.”

The casts were crated up and sent to the States first. Then Weidenreich himself headed for New York, leaving, he said, instructions for the actual fossils to be shipped aboard the S.S. President Harrison. But the fossils never arrived in America, and Weidenreich, the one man who might have clues to their whereabouts, died shortly thereafter.

Despite the raging war, Brancusi returned to Europe, returned to Transylvania, returned to Castle Dracula.

It took him a while in the darkness of night to find the right spot—the scar left by his earlier digging was just one of many on the desolate landscape. But at last he located it. He prepared a series of smaller holes in the ground, and into each of them he laid one of the grinning skulls. He then covered the holes over with dark soil.

Brancusi hoped never to fall himself, but, if he did, he hoped one of his own converts would do the same thing for him, bringing his remains home to the Family plot.

Iterations

Author’s Introduction

In 1999, the Canadian SF magazine TransVersions, which had previously published my story “Lost in the Mail” (elsewhere in this collection) changed hands. The new editors were good friends of mine: the husband-and-wife team of Marcel Gagne and Sally Tomasevic. They asked me for a story to help them relaunch the magazine.

A nonfiction book that had a huge impact on the SF field was The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler (1994). Tipler’s theory suggested the core of this short story, as well as that of many SF novels of the last few years, including my friend Robert Charles Wilson’s terrific Darwinia. Indeed, when I told Bob that I’d done a story for TransVersions, he asked me what it was about. I said it was a riff on Tipler. Bob smiled and replied, “I love being part of a community in which a phrase like ‘a riff on Tipler’ actually means something.”

So do I.

* * *

“I’m going to have to kill you,” I said to myself, matter-of-factly.

The face looking back at me across the desktop was my own, of course, but not the way I was used to seeing it; it wasn’t flopped left-to-right like it is in a mirror. The other me reacted with an appropriate mixture of surprise and disbelief. The shaggy eyebrows went up—God, why don’t I trim those things?—the brown eyes widened, and the mouth opened to utter a protest.

“You can’t kill me,” he—I—said. “I’m you.”

I frowned, disappointed that he didn’t understand. “You’re a me that never should have existed.”

He spread his arms a bit. “Who’s to say which of us should have existed?”

One of the interesting things about working in the publishing industry in Canada is this: it’s full of Americans who came here during Vietnam. And, even if they didn’t want to go to war, some of them do know how to get guns. “Who’s to say which of us should have existed?” I repeated. I took the Glock 9 mm that Jack Spalding had procured for me out of my pocket and pulled the trigger. “I am.”

I was at home with Mary, my wife and, until everything had fallen apart, my business partner. We were in our bedroom, and I was trying to get through to her. “Don’t you see?” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “None of this is real—it can’t be.”