"Circle"
by Steven Carlton
(part 2 of 2)
"Soon, Dear," Mother said. She was watching Father closely. He was still in control of himself, but the rage was there. A family of long-necked apats walking by glanced at them skittishly. Pheromones were roiling off of Father's skin, making the herbivores nervous.
"They flew," Father said quietly. He used THAT voice, the one that made people want to sit quietly in the shadows and pray that he didn't notice them. The voice of the King of Carnivores. He leaned forward, gripping the fence railing in his powerful, taloned hands. "They made machines that went underwater, too," he continued. "They were empathetic and made medicines to help one another, regardless of species. Because they were all one species. Covering the planet, subjugating anything that wanted to eat them. They made music, they had a written language, they may even have left the planet altogether and visited the other planets. Maybe even other stars. Who knows? Some even say they created us."
Mother snorted, but kept her scorn in check. "Religious nonsense," she said.
"But what if it isn't?" Father asked.
"I thought we made them?" Junior said. "You said that scientist made them. From old DNA."
"No, they cloned them," Father said. "They found something underground. The military won't talk about it, but I've heard it was a giant hive or something. They hoped they'd survive whatever it was that wiped them out down there, but they died anyway. Sealed in like they were, there was still viable DNA. Isn't that amazing? After forty thousand years, they were still almost fresh. And now we've brought them back."
"We were here first," Junior said, testing the water with a snide lilt to his words.
Father ignored it. "Yes, we were," he said. "Sixty-five million years ago, we were here, and then we were gone. And they came in our place. They came with their art and their dreams and their science and they brought our kind back from extinction."
"What happened to them then?" Junior scoffed. "If they were so powerful, when why are they gone? What wiped them out?"
Father turned slowly to look at his son, baring his teeth, long fangs that had bitten into many necks, ripped apart much flesh. "We did," he said. Junior's crest paled, but Mother felt a touch of pride that it was the only sign that her son was afraid. He would move out after this, she was certain. He would not continue his foolish plan to replace his father.
Just then, Mother saw a movement from the corner of her eye and whipped her heavy head around. She saw a flash of brown amongst the foliage bounding the edge of the exhibit. Across the moat, a group of the things sat at the edge. One was watching her closely. Mother stared at the leafy fronds, but saw nothing else. She peered over the fence, into the moat. It was just an empty gulf, sharply angled walls flowing down to a dry, concrete bed. Impassable.
Wasn't it? A challenge for creatures with paws and hooves. Maybe even for those with short, clawed arms. She couldn't cross it easily, she thought. But what if she had longer arms? What if she had fingers? What if she had toes instead of claws on her feet? She knew monkeys could climb, and these things were supposed to be like monkeys...
Just how safe were these exhibits?
But then she laughed at herself. They were tiny. Naked and helpless, what danger could they possibly pose to them?
"Dear? What really wiped them out?" she asked.
He sighed, the anger flowing out of him. He shrugged as best he could with his narrow shoulders. "You won't believe me," he said.
Junior started to speak, but Mother shoved against him before he could. "Tell me," she said, glancing back at the vegetation. Was that a tiny face in the shadows?
"They were trying to destroy us," Father said. "Our ancestors, I mean. They brought dinosaurs back to life, put us in a park like this, and our ancestors broke free. It was just a matter of time before we...they, I mean, before they were pushing into all the places the humans lived. They were very good at war, the scientists think. They had all kinds of machines to kill each other with, but they had one weapon that was the strongest of all, and they used it. Something so strong and horrible that it darkened the sky and left us with all the deadzones we have today. They tried to destroy us, but only destroyed themselves."
Mother felt a chill. The sun was bright overhead, the breeze comfortably warm, and yet she felt as if a shadow had passed over her. She glanced at the foliage again. The face, if she had really seen it at all, was gone now.
Smart, vicious predators who had once ruled the planet. Creatures that could make machines fly and make weapons that scorched the land so deeply that forty thousand years later no one could live there still.
And we brought them back!
"I'm hungry," Junior said again.
Father sighed. "Let's go eat, then," he said. "But then we're going to go look at the village exhibit. They put a group of humans in there by themselves, and a month later they'd constructed shelters for themselves. They say it's really worth seeing."
Father and son turned away. Mother lingered for a moment, staring at the creatures across the moat, across a gulf of time that, suddenly, wasn't comfortably wide enough. They stared back at her with small eyes and inscrutable expressions. But, somehow, she knew what they were thinking.
You took our throne. We want it back.
Shivering, she ran after her mate and offspring, wishing they had never come to Holocene Park.