Iterations and other stories (collection)

Glen nodded slowly. His voice was low and bitter. “Dad never knew in advance what was wrong with him—never had a chance to get help. Uncle Skye never told him. Even after Dad had himself cloned, Skye never spoke up.” He looked at me, fury in his cold gray eyes. “It doesn’t work, dammit—our whole way of life doesn’t work if a soothsayer doesn’t tell the truth. You can’t play the hand you’re dealt if you don’t know what cards you’ve got. Skye deserved to die.”

“And you framed your dad for it. You wanted to punish him, too.”

Glen shook his head. “You don’t understand, man. You can’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I didn’t want to punish Dad—I wanted to protect Billy. Dad can afford the best damn lawyer in Mendelia. Oh, he’ll be found guilty, sure, but he won’t get life. His lawyer will cut it down to the minimum mandatory sentence for murder, which is-—”

“Ten years,” I said, realization dawning. “In ten years, Billy will be an adult—and out of danger from Rodger.”

Glen nodded once.

“But Rodger could have told the truth at any dme—revealed that you were a clone of him. If he’d done that, he would have gotten off, and suspicion would have fallen on you. How did you know he wasn’t going to speak up?”

Glen sounded a lot older than his eighteen years. “If Dad exposed me, I’d expose him—and the penalty for child molestation is also a minimum ten years, so he’d be doing the time anyway.” He looked directly at me. “Except being a murderer gets you left alone in jail, and being a pedophile gets you wrecked up.”

I nodded, led him outside, and hailed a robocab.

Mendelia is a great place to live, honest.

And, hell, I did solve the crime, didn’t I? Meaning I am a good detective. So I guess my soothsayer didn’t lie to me.

At least—at least I hope not…

I had a sudden cold feeling that the SG would stop footing the bill long before this case could come to public trial.

Peking Man

Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year

Author’s Introduction

Ed Kramer wanted to do an anthology in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of a particular literary character. That character wasn’t one I was fascinated with, but I did have a lifelong interest in paleoanthropology, although at this point, I’d never written any fiction on that theme (later, I went on to write a trilogy about Neanderthals). But having recently looked at a picture of a Chinese Homo erectus skull, and having thought, gee, those perfect, square teeth must be fake, an idea occurred to me that I thought might be right for Ed’s book.

To my delight, Ed used this story as the lead piece in his anthology (editors usually put what they consider to be the best stories in the first and last slots). I occasionally think about expanding the premise of this story into a novel; perhaps someday I will.

* * *

The lid was attached to the wooden crate with eighteen nails. The return address, in blue ink on the blond wood, said, “Sender: Dept, of Anatomy, P.U.M.C., Peking, China.” The destination address, in larger letters, was:

Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews

The American Museum of Natural History

Central Park West at 79th Street

New York, N.Y. U.S.A.

The case was marked “Fragile!” and “REGISTERED” and “Par Avion.” A brand had burned the words “Via Hongkong and by U.S. Air Service” into the wood.

Andrews had waited anxiously for this arrival. Between 1922 and 1930, he himself had led the now-famous Gobi Desert expeditions, searching for the Asian cradle of humanity. Although he’d brought back untold scientific riches-—including the first-ever dinosaur eggs—Andrews had failed to discover a single ancient human remain.

But now a German scientist, Franz Weidenreich, had shipped to him a treasure trove from the Orient: the complete fossil remains of Sinanthropus pekinensis. In this very crate were the bones of Peking Man.

Andrews was actually salivating as he used a crowbar to pry off the lid. He’d waited so long for these, terrified that they wouldn’t survive the journey, desperate to see what humanity’s forefathers had looked like, anxious—

The lid came off. The contents were carefully packed in smaller cardboard boxes. He picked one up and moved over to his cluttered desk. He swept the books and papers to the floor, laid down the box, and opened it. Inside was a ball of rice paper, wrapped around a large object. Andrews carefully unwrapped the sheets, and—

White.

White?

No—no, it couldn’t be.

Hut it was. It was a skull, certainly—but not a fossil skull. The material was bright white.

And it didn’t weigh nearly enough.

A plaster cast. Not the original at all.