The Beast of Tara by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s SF, January-February 2022) is a “companion piece” to last year’s Dream Atlas (Asimov’s SF March/April 2021)1 and, by the by, also has similarities with Scherzo with Tyrannosaur (Asimov’s SF, July 1999).2 All these (spoiler) involve people from the future interfering with the past.
In this story that intervention comes in the form of a young schoolboy called Gallagher, who turns up at an Irish archaeological site because he wants to write an article for his school paper. The team he visits are using an experimental machine to recover historical sounds (“A stone contains within itself the diminishing vibrations of every sound that ever bounced against it”), and Gallagher “accidentally” damages it on two separate occasions. On his third attempt to do so, Finn, the local fixer/bouncer, intervenes, and Gallagher reveals he is an agent of (not from) the future. He explains he is there to stop development of their new technology because, once they progress, they will find that they will be able to recover sounds from the future as well as the past (there is some waffle about the “quantum realm” here).
After Gallagher disappears in a puff of dust, the team leader, Dr Leithauser, decides to continue with their work, and the story concludes with the revelation that Finn is also an agent from the future (from a faction opposed to Gallagher’s). The team then recover the sound of a harpist playing at the coronation of an Irish king.
This is okay, but the the not entirely convincing plot is formulaic time-traveller material—and tarting it up with bits of Ireland, old and new, doesn’t disguise that.
** (Average). 3,400 words.
1. My review of Dream Atlas.
2. My review of Scherzo with Tyrannosaur.