Summary: By Judith Tarr Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. First published in DINOSAURFANTASTIC from DAW edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, 1993 All stories by Judith Tarr All stories read by Mur Lafferty REVENANTS by Judith Tarr Janie wanted to pet the pterodactyl. “Here’s the auk,” I said. “Look how soft his feathers are. Look at the dodo, isn’t he funny? Don’t you want to give the quagga a carrot?” Janie wouldn’t even dignify that with disgust. It was the pterodactyl or nothing. Janie is four. At four, all or nothing isn’t a philosophy, it’s universal law. A very intelligent four can argue that this is the Greater Metro Revenants’ Zoo, yes? And this is the room where they keep the ones that can be petted, yes? So why can’t a person pet the pterodactyl? No use explaining that everything else was inoculated and immunized and sterilized and rendered safe for children to handle. Everything but the pterodactyl. They’d just made it, and it was supposed to be pettable when they were done, but not yet. There’d been plenty of controversy about putting it on display so soon, but public outcry won out over scientific common sense. So the thing was on display, but behind neoglas inlaid with the injunction: No, I’m Not Ready Yet. Look, But Don’t Touch. Janie reads. I should know. It’s one of the chief points of debate between her father and me. She could read the warning as well as I could. “So why can’t I touch? I want to touch!” She was fast winding up to a tantrum. I could stop it now and risk an injunction for public child abuse, or wait till it became a nuisance and we were both shuffled off the premises. Inside its enclosure, the pterodactyl stretched its wings and opened its beak and hissed. Neoglas is new, about as new as revenants; it’s one-way to sound as well as sight. The pterodactyl couldn’t see us or hear us, which was lucky for Janie. I wished we couldn’t see or hear it, either. It wasn’t particularly ugly, just strange. One whole faction of paleontologists had been thrown out into the cold when the thing came out of its vat warm-blooded and covered with soft silvery-white fur. Without the fur it would have been a leathery lizardlike thing with batwings. With the fur it looked like a white bat with a peculiar, half-avian, half-saurian head, and extremely convincing talons. Janie’s fixation and the thing’s furriness notwithstanding, it didn’t look very pettable. Its eyes were a disturbing shade of red, with pinpoint pupils. I wondered if it was hungry, or if it wanted to stretch its wings and fly. Janie had stopped whining. She was going to howl next. Something bellowed in the bowels of the building. Janie’s mouth snapped shut. “There,” I said. “Look what you did.” If that got me cited, let it. It cut off Janie’s howl before it started. “They’ve got something big down there,” somebody said. “Probably the aurochs,” said somebody else. “Mammoths trumpet like elephants.” “Maybe it’s a T. Rex,” said a kid’s voice. “They don’t have one of those yet,” said the one who knew it all. “They’d need a bigger enclosure than they can afford to build, with a stronger perimeter field. So they’re bringing back later things, because they’re smaller.” “But if they’ve got the mammoths—” “Mammoths don’t have teeth as long as your arm. They don’t eat people.” Janie’s eyes were as big as they can get. I got her out of there before she decided she wanted to howl after all. Ice cream distracted her. So did a pony ride in the zoo’s park—the pony was a Merychippus, a handsome little dun that looked perfectly ponylike except for the pair of vestigial toes flanking each of its hooves. By the time we picked up our picnic and headed for the tables by the mammoths’ pit, I was starting to breathe almost normally. If you haven’t got your kid license yet, you can only imagine you know what it’s like to take the qualifying exam. Studying for it is hell, and the practicum’s a raving bitch. Then when you pass and get the kid, six times out o[...]
