"I knew Sam. He wouldn't have left things to chance. He changed history, all right. I'm certain about another thing, too. I don't want to meet any more people from the future. Even if it were possible."
"Why?" asked Con.
"Judging from Sam, they'd treat us like dirt," said Joe.
"He was just one person," said Con. "Humanity's bound to improve."
"Is that so?" retorted Joe. "If you believe that, why don't you visit what's left of the Holy Land?"
"That's ... that's a special case," said Con.
"Because it proves my point? I could come up with oth-ers," said Joe. "Rick said we'd go to someplace that's safe. That island's not on my list."
Rick silently watched the exchange and wondered why Joe was so against returning to the island. Ultimately, he realized, it doesn't matter why. Joe's opinion carries the most weight. Only he can fly the plane. While Rick was not convinced that history had been altered, he was also disinclined to return to the island. Passively waiting to be rescued ran against his temperament. It also seemed like a foolhardy gamble. Joe might be right, he thought, or time travelers might take weeks or even years to return.
"We're better off relying on ourselves," said Rick, "than counting on a miraculous rescue."
"Yeah," said Joe.
"Then what chance do we have?" said Con. "We're only three people, and this meteor just killed all the dinosaurs."
"It didn't kill them all," said Rick, "at least not yet. Some people think the impact and the extinctions were just coin-cidences. That's what everyone's been debating since 1980."
"Now that you're the foremost authority in the world," said Joe, "maybe you'd give us your opinion on the matter."
"I think the effects of the impact precipitated the mass extinction," said Rick.
"So we're in for a wild ride," said Joe.
"I'm afraid so," replied Rick.
"May I ask how wild?" said Joe.
"First, the debris from the impact and the soot from the fires will blot out the sun. Photosynthesis will stop."
"For how long?" asked Con.
"Estimates vary," replied Rick. "Several months, at least."
"Several months?" said Con in despair.
"Why do I think that's not all the bad news?" said Joe. "You said something about cold."
"Without sunlight, the Earth's surface temperature will slowly drop below freezing."
"Winter in the middle of summer," said Con bleakly.
"That's one reason why we should head for the southern hemisphere. It's fall there, and the change won't be as drastic to the ecosystem."
"So things should be okay there," said Joe, "once the sky clears."
"There's also the problem of acid rain," said Rick. "The nitrogen-oxygen compounds formed in the impact will be converted to nitric acid. The ocean's chemistry gets thrown off for a millennium. There's also a period of global wanning caused by greenhouse gases."
"In short, all hell breaks loose," said Joe.
"Why did we ever leave the island?" said Con, the dis-couragement heavy in her voice.
"The dinosaurs perished," said Rick, "not because they were primitive or inferior, but because their world changed too rapidly. Their adaptations worked against them, and they died out. Human beings are flexible and smart. We'll find a way to survive."
Rick began talking about changes in vegetation, the "fern spike," and the proliferation of wind-pollinated plants over insect-pollinated ones. He sounds like he's lecturing a class, thought Con irritably. He's talking about my future, not some science experiment. Now that the excitement and the terror of their escape had subsided, thoughts of that future weighed heavily upon her.
Con saw that her choice to flee with Rick was not the result of any deliberation. At the time, her only thought was that they were escaping death. Fear had caused her to flee— fear and Rick. Now she faced a life as the only woman among two men. She could see so many potential problems and conflicts, it made her head spin. Will I have children? The idea of childbirth under such conditions was frightening. A more frightening question arose. Will 1 even have a choice in the matter? Con realized that the norms of society would no long apply. The three of us are society. She contemplated the two men lying so close to her in the enervating heat. Rick had set out to kill a man. Joe had helped Green escape. She wondered what they would be capable of when civilization wore off. It worried her that she didn't know.
"Rick," said Con, "let's talk about something besides this damned K-T thing. Tell us about your brother."
'Tom?" said Rick. His hand automatically caressed the worn knife sheath that hung on his belt. "He was mother and father to me after my folks were killed. I guess he's the reason I love fossils. Every kid is crazy about dinosaurs, but who has a paleontologist to tuck him in at night?"
"So you never grew out of it," said Joe.
"No, never. You know, despite everything, he would love being here. The K-T fauna were Tom's specialty. A lot of people assume the mammals all made it through, but Tom was able to show ..."
"God, Rick!" said Con peevishly. "Do you have a one-track mind?" She turned to Joe and, hoping to steer the con-versation back toward civilization, asked, "Do you have a family?"
"I'm divorced," he said. "My daughter lives with her mother."
"What's your daughter's name?" asked Con.
"Nicole, Nicole Corretta Burns," said Joe in a soft, mel-ancholy voice. "She'll be fifteen this August seventh."
"You must have married young," said Con.
"While I was in graduate school. Nicole was born a year later." In the dim light, Con could see Joe shaking his head. "I wanted to give my girl everything."
"What children really want is love," said Con.
"She had that, but she didn't have my time," said Joe rue-fully. "Frank, my college roommate, and I started a small
R&D company, and we put everything, our whole lives, into it. We developed a neural interface that we were sure would make our fortunes."
"You sound bitter about it," said Con.
"Yeah," said Rick. "What happened?"
"We needed capital, and Frank brought in Peter Green."
" Green was your investor?" said Rick.
"No," replied Joe, "Green hooked us up with a bunch of Russians. I should've figured they were mobsters, but Frank assured me they were legitimate. Guess I wanted to believe him. I kept fooling myself until the drug raid."
"Drug raid!" said Con. "What did drugs have to do with it?"
"Frank had agreed to work on stimuplants in exchange for the financing," said Joe.
"Electronic drugs?" asked Rick.
"Hooked up with the right chip, the neural interface made the perfect stimuplant. It was the state-of-the-art high. They were making them right under my nose."
"And you didn't know?" asked Con.
"No, but tell that to a prosecutor, especially after Frank turned up dead. They said it was suicide, but I'm not so sure. Anyway, I lost my family, the business, and my reputation. The only person who helped me was Green."
"Green?"
"Yeah. He said he didn't know about the Russians and felt bad about what had happened. He paid for my lawyer and hired me when I got out of prison."
"That sounds out of character," said Con.
"He was just getting his hooks into me. I did little jobs at first. Gray stuff. Reverse engineering. Security overrides came later. The deeper I was in, the dirtier the jobs got."
"Why did you put up with it?" asked Con.
"I was going to leave, and Green guessed I was. One day he picked up Nicole's picture from my desk.
'Cute kid,' he said, 'but it's an old picture.' Then he gave me a new picture, taken with a telephoto lens. Oh God!" cried out Joe, in re-membered anguish and rage. "My little girl! All the while, Green had on this big grin, pretending he was giving me a gift instead of threatening my baby."