Mastodonia

  “But I’m confused,” I said. “Many things I do not understand.”

  “Your understanding,” he said, “is greater than you know.”

  “I’ll be back again,” I said. “We will talk again.”

  I went up the hillside, and when I got back to the mobile home, there was no one there. I wondered if that last safari might have come out while I had been with Catface. I had not worried about it when I’d left because I felt that if they came out, most certainly I’d hear them. But during my conversation with Catface, I doubted I’d have heard anything at all. So I went down to the mouth of time road number one and there were no tracks coming out. That meant they were two days overdue. If they didn’t come out tomorrow, I told myself, Ben and I probably should go in to see what was delaying them. Not that I was worried. Percy Aspinwall had struck me as a man who was entirely competent. Yet I found myself uneasy.

  I went back to the mobile home and sat on the steps. Bowser crawled from underneath the house and clambered up the steps to sit beside me, plastered close against me. It was almost like the old days, before Rila had arrived and all this business of time travel had started.

  I had been half numbed at first after what had happened with Catface, but now I could begin to think about it. At first, while it had been happening, the whole thing had seemed almost routine, nothing to be greatly astounded at, the sort of circumstance that one could confidently have anticipated. But now, with time to think about it, I began to feel cold spider feet walking up and down my spine, and while I knew that it had really happened, I began to feel a flood of denial welling up in me. The old human game of saying that something had not happened so that it would not have happened.

  But despite the automatic denial, I knew damn well that it had happened, and I sat there on the steps trying to get it straight in my mind. But I didn’t have the chance to do much straightening out because just when I had got settled down to it, Rila came driving up the ridge and beside her sat Hiram.

  Hiram leaped down as soon as the car had stopped and made straight for Bowser. He didn’t waste any words on me; I’m not sure he even saw me. Bowser came down off the steps at the sight of him and Hiram went down on his knees, throwing his arms around the dog, while Bowser, whimpering and whining in his happiness, washed Hiram’s face with a busy tongue.

  Rila rushed up to me and threw her arms around me and there were the four of us, Hiram hugging Bowser and Rila hugging me.

  “Isn’t it nice to have Hiram back?” she asked. “The hospital said it was all right for him to leave, but that he had to take it easy and build up his strength. It seems he lost a lot of strength. He’s not to do much work and he …”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Hiram never was what you might call addicted to work.”

  “He should take some exercise every day,” she said. “Walking is the best. And he should have a high-protein diet and there is some medicine that he has to take. He doesn’t like the medicine. Says it tastes awful bad. But he promised to take it if they let him leave. And, oh, Asa, you should see the kind of house we’re going to build. I haven’t got the plans as yet, but I can draw you a rough sketch of it. All fieldstone and lots of big chimneys—there’ll be fireplaces in almost every room. And a lot of glass. Entire walls of thermoglass so that we can look out on this world of ours. Just like we were sitting outdoors. There will be a patio and an outdoor broiler, built of stone just like the house and a stone chimney to carry off the smoke and a swimming pool if it’s something that you’d like. I think that I would like it. Water from the spring to fill it and that water’s awfully cold, but the contractor said that in a day or two, the sun will warm it and then there’s …”

  I saw Hiram and Bowser walking off, heading down the ridge, and they either didn’t hear me shout at them or paid no attention, so I went running after them.

  I caught Hiram by the shoulder and turned him around.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. “Rila says you have to take it easy, not too much exertion.”

  “But Mr. Steele,” said Hiram, in all reasonableness, “I just have to see how Stiffy is getting along. I have to let him know I’m back.”

  “Not today,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe. We’ll take a car and see if we can find him.”

  I herded the two of them back, Hiram protesting all the way.

  “And you,” said Rila, “how did you spend your day?”

  “Talking with Catface,” I said.

  She laughed gaily. “What did you find to talk about?”

  “Quite a lot,” I said.

  Then she was off on the matter of the house and I never got a word in edgewise. She talked about it until we went to bed. I’d never seen her so happy and excited.

  I told myself that I’d tell her about Catface in the morning, but it didn’t work out that way. Ben got me out of bed, pounding on the door and yelling for me to get out of there.

  I staggered out bias-eyed, not dressed.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked. “What is it that can’t wait?”

  “The Safari bunch is on the prod,” he said. “They are getting nervous. They want us to go in and see what is holding up Aspinwall and his outfit.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ben had more to worry about than the overdue safari. He told me about it as we got ready for the trip.

  “That goddamn Hotchkiss,” he said, “opened up a can of worms. Churches and church organizations are lining up. One newspaper writer the other day said there’s been nothing like it since the Reformation. The Vatican is expected to make a statement in another week or two. I meant to bring you this morning’s paper, but I got busy with other things and forgot it. Petitions are being circulated to ask Congress to pass a law about going back into the early Christian era. The congressmen are running for cover. They want no part of it. They cite the separation of church and state; because of that, they say, they have no authority to pass any kind of law bearing on the matter. A couple of them pointed out, too, that we are the only ones who can send anyone into time and they have no authority here, either, because Mastodonia is not a part of the United States. I’m afraid there’ll be an argument over that, too, if this controversy keeps on. I think everyone’s confused. They don’t know if we’re part of the USA or not.”

  “We can make as good an argument against being part of the country,” I said, “as anyone can claiming we are.”

  “I know,” said Ben, “but if that gets to be a part of general argument in this church uproar, it is going to strike pretty close to home. I don’t like it, Asa. I don’t like any of it.”

  I didn’t like it either, but right at the time, I wasn’t as upset about it as he was.

  Rila was determined to go into the Cretaceous with us, and it took us quite a while to convince her she’d better stay behind. She was all burned up at not being allowed to go along. She was outraged; she said she had the right to go.

  “Not a chance,” I told her. “You risked your neck once and that’s enough. That time we had to go for broke, but this time, it’s different. We’ll be back in a little while.”

  It developed that during all the ruckus, Hiram had sneaked off to go hunting Stiffy. Rila wanted me to go after him, but I said to hell with him; I said that if, right at that moment, I did go after him, I’d most likely shoot him and have it over with.

  So Ben and I started out in something of a foul mood. When we hit the Cretaceous, the local weather didn’t help us any. It was hot and stormy and the landscape steamed. A high, hot wind was blowing; the touch of it almost burned you. Great cloud masses, torn apart, raced across the sky, and every once in a while one of the clouds would pull itself together and deliver a five-minute downpour of rain so warm that it seemed to be scalding. Underfoot, the ground was greasy from being soaked by the intermittent downpours, but Ben’s four-wheel drive was a good mudder and we didn’t have too much trouble with it.

  The vile weather apparently had tamed dow
n the fauna. Most of them, perhaps, were hiding out in groves of trees. Those that we did disturb went racing away from us, including one small tyrannosaur. We had to drive around a herd of triceratops, who stood with their heads drooping, not bothering to graze, just waiting for the weather to get decent.

  The track made by the safari was fairly easy to follow, the wheels of the heavy trucks leaving deep depressions in the soil. In a few places, recent rains had either filled the tracks or washed them out, but where they were missing, it was no great problem to pick them up again.

  We found the first campsite about five miles down the river valley. It seemed the safari had stayed there for several days. The campfire locations were thick with ash and there had been a lot of traffic out and back. After some looking, we found the trail the outfit had made in moving out: west over the ridge across the river, then across a prairie for twenty miles or so.

  At the end of that twenty miles, the country broke suddenly, plunging down into the valley of the Raccoon River. The trail that we were following snaked crookedly down the hills. As we rounded the sharp angle of a ridge, we came upon the camp. Ben braked the car to a halt and for a moment we sat there, saying nothing. Tents, many of them down, fluttered in the wind. One truck was tipped over on its side. The other was in a ditch, one of those deep gullies so characteristic of the Cretaceous, its nose buried against one wall of the gully, its back canted up at a steep angle.

  Nothing moved except the fluttering fabric of the tents. There was no smoke; the campfires had burned out. Here and there were clutters of scattered whiteness lying on the ground.

  “For the love of God!” said Ben.

  Slowly, he took his foot off the brake and let the car ease forward. We crept down the slope and into the camp. The place was littered with debris. Cooking utensils were scattered about the dead fires. Torn clothing was tramped into the ground. Dropped rifles lay here and there. The scattered whitenesses were bones—human bones polished clean by scavengers.

  Ben braked the car to a halt and I got out, cradling the heavy rifle in the crook of my arm. For a long time I stood there, looking around, trying to absorb the enormity of what I saw, my mind stubbornly refusing to accept the full impact of the evidence. I heard Ben get out on the other side of the car. His feet crunched as he walked around the vehicle to stand beside me.

  He spoke harshly, as if he were fighting to keep his voice level. “It must have happened a week or more ago. Probably only a day or so after their arrival here. Look at those bones. Stripped clean. It took a while to do that.”

  I tried to answer, but I couldn’t. I found that I had my teeth clenched hard to keep them from chattering.

  “None got away,” said Ben. “How come none got away?”

  I forced myself to speak. “Maybe some of them did. Out in the hills.”

  Ben shook his head. “If they had been able, they would have tried to follow the trail back home. We would have found them coming in. A man alone, or an injured man, would have no chance. If something didn’t snap him up on the first day, they would have on the next, certainly the next after that.”

  Ben left me and walked out into the campsite. After a minute or so, I trailed after him.

  “Asa,” Ben said. He had stopped and was staring at something on the ground. “Look at that. Look at that track.”

  It had been blurred by rain. Little pools of water stood in the deep imprints left by the claws. It was huge. The blurring might have enlarged it or given the impression that it was larger than it actually was, but the print appeared to measure two feet or more across at its breadth. Beyond it and slightly to the left was another similar footprint.

  “Not rex,” said Ben. “Bigger than rex. Bigger than anything we know. And look over there. There are more tracks.”

  Now that Ben had found the first track, we could see that the area was covered with them.

  “Three-toed,” said Ben. “Reptilian. Two-legged, I’d guess.”

  “From the looks of the evidence,” I said, “a pack of them. One, or even two, couldn’t make that many tracks. Remember our pair of tyrannosaurs? We thought they hunted in pairs. Before that, the impression was they hunted alone. Maybe they hunt in packs. Sweeping across the country like a pack of wolves, grabbing everything they can’ find. A pack would pick up more prey than a lone hunter or even a pair of them.”

  “If that is the case,” said Ben, “if they hunt in packs, Aspinwall and the others didn’t have a prayer.”

  We walked across the campsite, trying hard not to look too closely at some of the things we saw. The four-wheel drives, curiously, stood where they had been parked. Only one of them had been knocked over. Cartridge cases gleamed dully in the half-light of the cloudy day. Rifles lay here and there. And everywhere, the marks of those huge, three-clawed footprints.

  The wind whined and moaned in the hollows and across the ridges that ran down to the river valley. The sky of torn and racing clouds boiled like a cauldron. From far off came the rumble of thunder.

  Leering out of a small thicket at me was a skull, tattered bits of hairy scalp still clinging to it, a patch of beard adhering to the jawbone. Gagging, I turned back to the car. I’d had enough.

  Ben’s bellow stopped me. When I looked back, I saw him standing at the edge of a deep gully that ran down the southern edge of the campsite.

  “Asa, over here!” he yelled.

  I staggered back to where he stood. In the gully lay a pile of massive bones. Bits of scaly hide fluttered from some of them. A rib cage lay gaping, a clawed foot thrust upward, a skull with the jawbone still attached had the look of being interrupted in executing a mangling snap.

  “That foot,” said Ben. “The one sticking up. That’s a forefoot. Well developed, strong, not like the forelimb of a rex.”

  “An allosaur,” I told him. “It has to be an allosaur. One grown to gigantic size, its fossilized bones never found by anyone.”

  “Well, at least we know our people got one of them.”

  “They may have gotten others. If we looked around …”

  “No,” said Ben. “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Ben phoned Courtney, while Rila and I listened in on other phones. We were a fairly sober lot.

  “Court, we have bad news,” said Ben when Courtney came on the line.

  “I welcome you to the club,” said Courtney. “This Hotchkiss business is getting out of hand. It could cause us trouble. The whole damn country’s upset. Everyone is getting into the act.”

  “I don’t like it either,” said Ben, “but that’s not what we are calling you about. You know one of the safaris is overdue.”

  “Yes, a couple of days or so. Nothing to worry about. Found better hunting than they expected. Or drove farther than they realized. Maybe vehicle breakdown.”

  “We thought the same,” said Ben, “but this morning I got a call from Safari in New York. They were a little nervous. Asked if we could check. So Asa and I went in. Asa’s on the phone with me now. So is Rila.”

  Suddenly, Courtney’s voice took on a note of worry. “You found everything all right, of course.”

  “No, we didn’t,” said Ben. “The expedition was wiped out. All of them dead.…”

  “Dead? All of them?”

  “Asa and I found no survivors. We didn’t try to count the bodies. Not bodies, really—skeletons. It was pretty horrible. We got out of there.”

  “But dead! What could …”

  “Courtney,” I said, “the evidence is they were attacked by a pack of carnosaurs.”

  “I didn’t know carnosaurs ran in packs.”

  “Neither did I. Neither did anyone. But the evidence is they do. More footprints than would be made by just two or three …”

  “Footprints?”

  “Not only footprints. We found the skeleton of a large carnosaur. Not a tyrannosaur. An allosaur, more than likely. Quite a bit bigger than rex.”

  “You tal
k about skeletons. Not bodies, but skeletons.”

  “Court, it must have happened quite a while ago,” said Ben. “Maybe shortly after they went in. Looks as if the scavengers had a while to work on them.”

  “What we want to know,” said Rila, “is where we stand legally. And what do we do next?”

  There was a long silence on the other end, then Courtney said, “Legally, we are blameless. Safari signed a waiver to cover each group that went in. The contract also makes it clear we are not responsible for anything that happens. If you’re wondering if they can sue us, I don’t think they can. There are no grounds.”

  “How about the clients they took along?”

  “Same thing. Safari is responsible if anyone is. I suppose the clients also signed waivers, holding Safari blameless. I would think it would be regular procedure. What we have to worry about is the impact on Safari’s business. Once this is known, will clients cancel out? What will be the impact on public opinion? Will some damn fool come out screaming that safaris into the past must be stopped? You must remember, too, that Safari has paid only half of the contract fee. The other half is due in six months. They could hold up payment, or refuse payment on the second half.”

  “It all depends,” said Ben, “on how Safari takes this news.”

  “They’re hard-headed businessmen,” said Courtney. “Sure, this is a tragic thing, but tragedies do happen. Miners are killed in mines, but mining still goes on. If too many clients cancel, if others don’t come in and sign up for the hunts, then they will be concerned.”

  “Some may cancel,” said Ben. “Not many. I know the breed. This will only make it more zestful. Something big back there, something dangerous, let us go and get it. A bigger trophy than anyone has ever dreamed.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Courtney. “Safari is the only deal, so far, that we have going for us. It does beat hell. We thought there’d be other big deals knocking at our door, but they’re slow developing. The same with things we worried about. We figured the IRS would hassle us. They did come sniffing around, but that is all, so far.”