Dancing in Dreamtime

“Though Scott Russell Sanders is best known today as an essayist and conservationist, he previously was one of the brightest science-fiction newcomers of the 1980s, and his incisive, playful, startling stories—which speak directly to our twenty first-century environmental and genetic concerns—were staples of
Omni, Asimov's
, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
. To have virtually all this material back in print in a single collection is a joy. Whether you knew it or not, you've had a space on your shelf all these years, waiting to be filled by
Dancing in Dreamtime
.”

ANDY DUNCAN
, author of
The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories

“Although the stories in Scott Russell Sanders's new collection,
Dancing in Dreamtime
, often portray futuristic worlds, they always hold a mirror to our contemporary society in a way that allows us to see ourselves and our present time more clearly. Wildly imaginative and haunting, these stories are the stuff of dreams, yes, but they also have much to show us about who we are in the here and now.”

LEE MARTIN
, author of
The Bright Forever: A Novel

“
Dancing in Dreamtime
sparks with brilliant imagery, from a city where dreams roost in trees and the destruction of their habitat threatens the inhabitants' sanity, to a circus where robotic pandas play organ music and tigers blink with neon stripes. These are stories of people subjected to the dreams of others, reminders that our best fantasies have unintended consequences. They dream our doom, they dream our possible salvation, they draw us further into the dance.”

TERESA MILBRODT
, author of
Bearded Women: Stories

“The stories in
Dancing in Dreamtime
are familiar enough to make your heart ache and new enough to feel fresh and wondrous. Here you will find people connecting and falling apart as people have always connected and fallen apart, but beneath a fantastical and occasionally terrifying sky.”

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO

“These brilliant stories explore birds who've time-warped to avoid extinction on earth, and people who long for both tidiness and the wilds. Human innovation and destruction are at the center of all these tales, which leave reality in order to return readers to this planet we've ravaged, more awake to ecological catastrophe, and our earth and its peoples who are ravenous and yearning and not-yet ruined. These fictions both delight and warn.”

ERIN STALCUP
, author of
And Yet It Moves

“As these enchanting stories examine how technologies and advancements disconnect us and create chaos, Sanders always shows that we will persevere with our own kind of hope, our own kind of love, and our own kind of heart.”

LUCAS SOUTHWORTH
, author of
Everyone Here Has a Gun: Stories

“Scott Russell Sanders is certainly best known as one of our finest essayists. What is less known—and likely more surprising—is that he was once also an artful author of science fiction. We should all rejoice that these stories have at last been collected in
Dancing in Dreamtime
. Sanders is the Alice Munro of science fiction, and these quiet, lyrical stories covering his career in the genre offer all the necessary proof. Highly recommended.”

GREGORY FROST
, author of
Shadowbridge

ALSO BY SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

FICTION

Divine Animal
The Invisible Company
The Engineer of Beasts
Bad Man Ballad
Terrarium
Wonders Hidden
Fetching the Dead
Hear the Wind Blow
Wilderness Plots

NONFICTION

Earth Works: Selected Essays
A Conservationist Manifesto
A Private History of Awe
The Force of Spirit
The Country of Language
Hunting for Hope
Writing from the Center
Staying Put
Secrets of the Universe
The Paradise of Bombs
Stone Country

DANCING IN
Dreamtime

This book is a publication of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405
USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2016 by Scott Russell Sanders

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z
39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sanders, Scott R. (Scott Russell), [date], author

Title: Dancing in dreamtime / Scott Russell Sanders.

Description: Bloomington and Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, [2016]

Identifiers:
LCCN
2016019538 (print) |
LCCN
2016024281 (ebook) |
ISBN
9780253022516 (pb : alk. paper) |
ISBN
9780253022592 (e-book)

Classification:
LCC PS
3569.
A
5137
A
6 2016 (print) |
LCC PS
3569.
A
5137 (ebook) |
DDC
813/.54—dc23

LC
record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019538

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FOR URSULA K. LE GUIN

The universe is made of stories,
not of atoms.

MURIEL RUKEYSER
, “The Speed of Darkness”

THE ANATOMY LESSON

CLEAR-CUT

ASCENSION

SLEEPWALKER

THE FIRST JOURNEY OF JASON MOSS

THE ARTIST OF HUNGER

THE ENGINEER OF BEASTS

THE CIRCUS ANIMALS
'
DESERTION

MOUNTAINS OF MEMORY

TERRARIUM

QUARANTINE

TOUCH THE EARTH

EROS PASSAGE

THE AUDUBON EFFECT

THE LAND WHERE SONGTREES GROW

TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR

DANCING IN DREAMTIME

CREDITS

AUTHOR
'
S NOTE

BOOK CLUB GUIDE

By the time I reached the Anatomy Library all the bones had been checked out. At every table, students bent over yawning boxes, assembling feet and arms, scribbling in notebooks, muttering Latin names. Half the chairs were occupied by slouching skeletons, and skulls littered the floor like driftwood.

Since I also needed to cram for the following day's exam, I asked the librarian to search one last time for bone-boxes in the storeroom.

“I've told you there
aren't
any more,” she said, frowning at me from beneath a tangle of dark hair, like a vexed animal caught in a bush. How many students had already pestered her for bones this evening?

“Are there partial skeletons? Mismatched sets? Irregulars?”

The librarian measured me with her stare, as if estimating the size of box my bones would fill. She was young enough to be a student herself, yet shadows drooped beneath her eyes, like the painted tears of a clown. “Irregulars,” she repeated. “You're sure?”

“I'll take anything.”

A bitten-off smile quirked her lips. Then she turned away from the desk, murmuring, “Very well. I'll see what I can find.”

I blinked with relief at her departing back. Only as she slipped noiselessly into the storeroom did I notice the beige gloves on her hands. Fastidious, I thought.

While awaiting the specimen, I scrutinized the vertebrae that were exposed like beads along the bent necks of students who labored over skeletons at nearby tables. Five lumbar vertebrae, seven cervical, a dozen thoracic: I rehearsed the names.

Presently the librarian returned with a box the size of an orange crate, wooden, dingy with age. The metal clasps that held it shut were tarnished green. No wonder she wore the gloves.

“You're in luck,” she said, shoving it over the counter.

I hesitated, my hands poised above the crate as if I were testing it for heat.

“Well, do you want it, or don't you?” she said.

Afraid she might return it to the archives, I lifted the box, which seemed lighter than its bulk would have promised, as if the wood had dried with age. Perhaps instead of bones inside there would be heaps of dust.

“Must be an old model,” I observed amiably.

Her plump lips curled.

I found a clear space on the floor beside a spindly man whose elbows and knees protruded through rents in his clothing like the humps of a sea serpent above the waters. The clasps, cold against my fingers, yielded with a metallic shriek, drawing the bleary glances of my fellow students. I shrugged apologetically, and the glazed eyes returned to work.

Inside the crate I found a stack of hinged trays, as in a fishing-tackle box, each tray gleaming with putty-colored bones. I began on the foot, joining tarsal to metatarsal. It was soon evident that
there were too many bones. Each one seemed a bit odd in shape, with an extra flange where none should be, or a misplaced knob, and they were too light, as light as hollow reeds. Fitted together, they formed a seven-toed foot, slightly larger than that of an adult male, with phalanges all of the same length and ankle-bones bearing the sockets for . . . what? Flippers? Wings?

This drove me back to my anatomy text. Yet no consulting of diagrams would make sense of this foot. A scrape with a coin assured me these were real bones, not plastic or plaster. But from what creature? Feeling queasy, as if in my ignorance I had created this monstrosity, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Everywhere living skulls tilted over dead ones, ignoring me. Only the librarian seemed to be watching me sidelong, through her tangled hair. I hastily returned the foot bones to their various compartments.

Next I worked at the hand, which boasted six rather than seven digits. Two of them were clearly thumbs, opposite in orientation, and each of the remaining fingers was double-jointed, so that both sides of these vanished hands could have served as palms.