Mastodonia (20 page)

“I was tracking Hiram down,” I said.

“I stayed here,” said Courtney, “because there are a couple of things I want to talk about with you two.”

“The IRS?” I asked.

“No, not the IRS. They won't start stirring around until they get wind of the deal with Safari.”

“How did the negotiations turn out?” I asked. “I suppose the deal was made.”

“It didn't take too long,” said Courtney. “They're hurting and we had them across the barrel.”

“A million for the license,” said Rila, “and a quarter-million for each time road. They want four time roads. That's two million, Asa.”

“For one year,” said Courtney. “They don't know it yet, but next year the price goes up. By that time, we'll have them hooked.”

“And this is just a start,” said Rila.

“That's what I wanted to talk with you about,” said Courtney. “Ben told you about the church group?”

“Yes,” I said. “Interested in the time of Jesus.”

“A couple of them came to see me the other day,” he said. “Ben had told them to talk with me. Damned if I can figure them. I don't know what they want. They're interested, but they wouldn't open up. I don't know if we should waste time on them.”

“I don't like it,” I said. “The whole thing could get sticky. To start with, we should stay away from anything controversial. Pay some attention to our image. Not create an issue the country, or the world, can choose up sides on.”

“I think the same,” said Rila. “There is not apt to be too much money in it, anyhow, and it could be a headache.”

“I feel pretty much the same,” said Courtney. “They'll be back to see me. I'll try to cool them off. There's someone else who has me worried. Senator Abel Freemore. He's from Nebraska or Kansas, I can never remember which. He's been trying to set up an appointment with me and my secretary has been fending him off. But you can fend off a United States senator for only so long. One of these days, I'll have to find out what he wants.”

“You have no idea?” Rila asked.

“None at all. He's a big agricultural man, of course. Hellbent for the poor downtrodden farmer. But that's not all—he's three kinds of bleeding heart. Whatever he has in mind, I'm afraid it's nothing good.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Not really. It's too early. Everyone is sitting back. Intrigued, of course, but still filled with a natural skepticism. Waiting to see what's going to happen. When the first safari brings out a dinosaur, then is when everything will break. But until then, mostly all that we will get are opportunists and con artists. There's that mining engineer who wants to go out into the Black Hills country and skim off the easy gold. No money, but he's willing to give us half of what he finds—more likely, half of what we force him to admit to. I sort of like him. He's an engaging sort of buccaneer. Utterly without principle and figures everyone else is the same. What was that idea you had, Rila, of going to South Africa and picking up all the easy diamonds off the ground?”

Rila said, “Yes, I admit to the idea. It probably wouldn't work. Maybe there never were a lot of diamonds waiting to be picked up. But it had a nice sound to it.”

“This safari business,” said Courtney, “is apt to be one of the most straightforward, least complicated deals that we can make. An easy one to handle. No tricky angles. What bothers me is that none of your scientific or intellectual types have crawled out of the woodwork. Wanting to study the techniques and motives of the prehistoric cave painters or to observe the Neanderthalers at work and play or to sit in on Marathon or Waterloo.”

“They have to be convinced first,” said Rila. “They are sitting in the smug composure of their academic retreats, telling one another that it can't be done.”

“There is another outfit that has been sniffing around,” said Courtney. “I almost forgot them. Genealogists—those people who, for a price, will trace back the family tree. Seems now they have the idea of providing a more personal, and, of course, a more expensive service. Not just tracing back the record, but actually going back to talk with and, possibly, to sneak pictures of someone's ancient forebears. Great-great-great-uncle Jake being hung for horse thievery—things like that. They're being fairly cagey in their approach to us, but they'll be around again.

“There will be others. Or I think there'll be. With a thing like this, you can never be sure. Can't foresee how time travel will strike the general public and those you might suspect would be interested in using it. It would seem to me that as time went on, we ought to be hearing from the petrochemical people and the coal and iron interests. There are a lot of natural resources back in time.”

“I've thought of that,” said Rila. “It worries me. What I don't understand is this: The natural resources are back there, sure, and there is nothing to stop us from grubbing them out. There is no question they're there for the taking. But if we take them, then what happens in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Will those essential minerals still be there to take, and the answer seems they will be because we have, indeed, taken them. If you're worried about paradoxes, there's a classic one for you to mumble over.”

“Rila,” said Courtney, “I just don't know. I suspect we're just not thinking right, that our thinking on things like that will have to be readjusted. At the moment, there are other things to do; I'm not going to worry about it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

So began a period of waiting. Safari had said it might be ten days or two weeks before the first of their parties arrived. We went on a few trips into the surrounding country. We saw a number of mastodons and bisons. We found another colony of giant beavers. We sighted a number of bears and a few cats, but none of the cats was a sabertooth. I began to wonder if the sabertooths might be thinning out or be already extinct, although that seemed unlikely. Once Rila thought she glimpsed a glyptodont, one of the prehistoric giant armadillos, but when we arrived at the place where she had thought she'd seen it, we were unable to find any trace of it. We kept a lookout for horses, but saw none. There were a lot of wolves and foxes.

We selected a spot for a garden—Rila said we should put the virgin soil to use—but we never got around to doing anything about it. One thing we did do was lay in a telephone line from Ben's office so that someone wouldn't have to come trotting into Mastodonia each time they wanted to talk with us. We got the line in, but it wouldn't work; a signal would not pass through whatever it was that separated Mastodonia from the twentieth century. I had Ben get me a number of steel rods. I painted their tops red and hammered them into line to serve as guides into the time roads that Catface would be setting up into the Cretaceous. Hiram's wooden stakes had been all right, but the steel rods were more permanent; they could not be broken off as could the wooden stakes. I laid out lines for four time roads, and still had plenty of rods remaining to mark the other ends once we had the time roads.

Between Catface and Stiffy, Hiram was kept busy. Whenever he wasn't visiting one of them, he was with the other. Bowser usually was with him. I did some worrying about this loose-footedness of Hiram's, envisioning all the different kinds of trouble he could get into, but nothing happened and I told myself that it was foolish of me to worry so much, but I somehow couldn't stop it.

Early one afternoon, I was sitting at the lawn table having a can of beer. Rila had gone into the house to make a salad she had planned for dinner. The place was peaceful, as it always seemed to be. On the slope below me, I saw Hiram coming up the hill. I watched him idly, looking for Bowser. Then I saw the dog, a little way from Hiram, nosing at the grass as if he might have picked up something interesting.

Suddenly, Hiram let out a frightened bellow and bent forward, seeming to stumble. He went down on his knees, then got up again, thrashing around as if his foot was trapped in something. Bowser was running toward him, ears laid back. I jumped up and started running down the hill, yelling for Rila, but not looking back to see if she had heard.

Hiram began screaming, one ragged scream and then another, never letting up. He was sitting down and bending forward, holding his left leg with both his hands. Off to one side of him, Bowser pounced on something in the grass, then jerked his head up and shook it savagely. He had something in his jaws and was shaking it. One look at it told me what it was.

I reached Hiram and grabbed him by the shoulders, forcing him back.

“Let go of that leg,” I yelled. “Lay back.”

Hiram quit his senseless screaming, but he bawled at me, “It bit me, Mr. Steele. It bit me!”

“Lie back,” I said. “Be quiet.”

He did lie back the way I told him, but he wasn't quiet. He was doing a lot of moaning.

I pulled my jackknife out of my pocket and ripped his left pant leg open. When I pulled it back, I saw the darkening bruise and the two punctures, with a bright drop of blood glistening on each of them. I used the knife to rip the pant leg lengthwise, then hauled the pants up so much of the thigh was exposed.

“Asa,” said Rila behind me. “Asa. Asa. Asa.”

“Find a stick,” I told her. “Any kind of stick. We'll have to put on a tourniquet.”

I unfastened my belt and stripped it from the loops, then wound it around his leg above the wound. Rila crouched on the other side of him, facing me. She thrust a stick at me, a dry branch. I looped it through the belt and twisted.

“Here, hold this,” I said. “Keep it tight.”

“I know,” she said. “It was a rattler. Bowser killed it.”

I nodded. The wound had told me that much. No other North American snake in these latitudes could inflict such a wound.

Hiram had quieted down somewhat, but was still moaning.

“Hang on,” I told him. “This will hurt.”

I gave him no chance to protest. In telling him, I was only being fair, giving him fair warning.

I sliced a deep gash in his leg, connecting the two puncture marks. Hiram howled and tried to sit up. Rila, using her free hand, pushed him back.

I bent my mouth to the cut and sucked, tasting the warm saltiness of blood. I sucked and spat, sucked and spat. I hoped to God there were no broken tissues in my mouth. But it was no good thinking of that now. Even had I known there were, I would have done the same thing.

“He's fainted,” Rila said.

I sucked and spat, sucked and spat. Bowser came up to us, sat down ponderously, watching us.

Hiram moaned. “He's coming to,” said Rila.

I rested for a moment, then went back to the sucking. Finally, I quit. I'd pumped out at least some of the venom; I was sure of that. I sat back on my heels and reached for the stick. I loosened the tourniquet for a few seconds, then tightened it again.

“Get one of the cars turned around and headed for Willow Bend,” I told Rila. “We've got to get help for him. I'll carry him up.”

“Can you handle the tourniquet and still carry him?”

“I think so.” I said to Hiram, “Put your arms around my neck. Tight as you can. And hang on hard. I have only one arm to carry you.”

He locked his arms around me and I managed to get him lifted and started staggering up the slope. He was heavier than I'd thought he'd be. Ahead of me, Rila was running for one of the cars. She had it turned around and waiting for me when I got there. I hoisted Hiram into the back, got in beside him. “Come on, Bowser,” I said. Bowser leaped aboard. The car was already moving.

People came tumbling out of the rear door of the office building when Rila pulled up and leaned on the horn. I lifted Hiram from the car. Herb was the first to reach us. “Snake bite,” I told him. “Rattler. Get an ambulance.”

“Here, let me have him,” said Ben. “There's a bottle of whiskey in my lower left desk drawer. I don't suppose you gave him any.”

“I'm not sure …”

“Goddamn it, I am. If it doesn't help, it won't hurt. I've always been told it helps.”

I went for the whiskey and brought it back to the front office, where Hiram was stretched out on a sofa. Herb turned from the phone. “The ambulance is on its way,” he said. “There'll be a paramedic with it. He'll take over. I talked with a doctor. He said no whiskey.”

I put the bottle on a desk. “How are you, Hiram?” I asked.

“It hurts,” said Hiram. “I hurt all over. I hurt terrible.”

“We'll get you to a hospital,” I said. “They'll take care of you there. I'll go with you.”

Herb grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to one side. “I don't want you to go,” he said.

“But I have to. Hiram is my friend. He'll want me.”

“Not with those newsmen out there. They'll follow the ambulance. In the hospital, you'll be fair game to them.”

“The hell with them. Hiram is my friend.”

“Be reasonable, Asa,” Herb pleaded. “I've built you and Rila up as mysteries. Recluses. Publicity shy. Exclusive people. We need that image. For a while longer, at least.”

“We don't need an image. Hiram needs help.”

“How can you help him? Hold his hand? Wait while the doctors work on him?”

“That's part of it,” I said. “Just being there.”

Ben joined us. “Herb's right,” he said. “I'll go along with Hiram.”

“There has to be one of us. Myself or Rila. It should be me.”

“Rila,” said Herb. “She'll be upset, hysterical.”

“Rila hysterical?”

“The newsmen won't press her as hard as they would you,” said Ben. “If she says she won't talk, she'll have to say it fewer times than you would. She could build up her exclusiveness, while you …”

“You're bastards!” I shouted. “Both of you are bastards!”

It did me no good. In the end, Ben and Rila rode the ambulance and I stayed. I felt horrible. I felt I'd lost control, that I was no longer my own man, and I felt a terrible rage and fear. But I stayed behind. On this end of the operation, Ben and Herb were calling the shots.