Mastodonia (28 page)

“Or we could move the operation to some other country,” said Rila.

“I suppose that could be done,” Courtney told her. “But it would involve negotiations with the country you wanted to move to and that might take considerable time. I wouldn't be surprised if it also would require substantial payments of monies.”

“Bribes,” said Ben.

“They'd probably call it something else. Most nations, in the face of what our government has done, would be reluctant to let us in. First, you'd have to find a country. I warn you it would not be one of the better countries, probably a dictatorship. Once you were there, you might find the officials difficult to get along with. There is one good thing about the State Department order. It tacitly admits that Mastodonia is another country and that spikes the guns of the IRS.”

“You'll file for the injunction soon,” said Ben.

“Immediately,” said Courtney. “I think it likely I can convince Safari and the movie people to join us in the action. They can claim unfair restraint of trade. There probably are a lot of other arguments we can cite. I'll have to think about that.”

“It looks as if we'll just have to hunker down and weather the storm,” said Ben. “How certain are you that you will get an injunction?”

“I honestly don't know. Ordinarily, it's no great problem to get a temporary injunction. But in this case, we are bucking the State Department. That could be heavy.”

He hesitated for a moment and then said, “I don't know if I should mention this right now, but I suppose I may as well. There may be another out. I'm not sure. I may have my signals wrong. But the CIA has been in to talk with me. Hinting about cooperation and our patriotic duties. Trying to make it off the record, but I never told them it was off the record—although if I were you, I'd not talk about it. I gained the impression they'd like to use time travel to get some of their men into position ahead of time in some sticky situations. They didn't say so, but that's one way they could use time travel. I played stupid, but I don't think I fooled them.”

“You mean that if we'd let them use time travel,” said Ben, “the State Department might lift the order. That the order may be no more than a pressure tactic.”

“I can't be sure,” said Courtney. “The signal's not strong enough. If I signaled back to the CIA we were willing, there might suddenly be a lot of pressure on the State Department.”

“Well, why don't we try it,” said Ben. “It's no skin off our noses who uses time travel, or for what.”

“No,” said Rila.

“Why not?” asked Ben.

“Once you give the government a foot in the door, they begin taking over,” she said.

“I'm inclined to agree,” said Courtney. “My advice, for what it's worth, is to save the CIA for future consideration. We might want to make that last desperate deal to save ourselves.”

“Okay,” said Ben. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Understand, I'm not even sure how the CIA ties into this,” said Courtney. “I'm just guessing.”

He rose and said, “Ben, if you'd drive me back. I have work to do.”

Rila and I headed for home. As we drove into Mastodonia, we saw at once something was wrong. The mobile home had been tipped over. Standing beside it was Stiffy. Bowser stood a little way off, barking fiercely. Hiram was belaboring Stiffy with a stick, but the old mastodon was paying no attention to him.

I speeded up the car.

“He's after those goddamn carrots,” I said. “We never should have fed them to him.”

I saw as we drove nearer that he was not only after the carrots; he already had them. He had smashed the kitchen end of the home, had somehow gotten the refrigerator open, and was contentedly munching carrots.

I skidded the car to a halt and the two of us jumped out. I started forward, but Rila grabbed me and held on.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “If you try to drive him off …”

“Drive him off, hell,” I yelled. “I'm going to get a rifle and shoot the son-of-a-bitch. I should have done it long ago.”

“No,” she shouted. “No, not Stiffy. He is such a nice old guy.”

Hiram was yelling at him, one word over and over: “Naughty, naughty, naughty.”

And, as he yelled at Stiffy, he beat him with the stick. Stiffy went on eating carrots.

“You can't get a gun, anyhow,” said Rila.

“If I can clamber up there and get the door open, I can. The rack is just inside.”

Hiram yelled and beat at Stiffy. Stiffy switched his tail, leisurely and happily. He was having a good time.

As I stood there, I found the anger draining out of me and I began to laugh. It was ridiculous—Hiram yelling and wailing away at Stiffy and Stiffy paying no attention whatsoever.

Rila was weeping. She had let go of me and her arms hung at her side. She stood erect, too stiffly erect, while she was racked by sobs. Tears ran down her cheeks. In a few more minutes, I realized, she could become hysterical.

I put an arm around her and got her turned around and urged her back toward the car.

“Asa,” she gasped between her sobs, “it's awful. Nothing has gone right today.”

I got her in the car, then went back to collect Hiram. I grabbed him by the arm that held the stick and took it away from him.

“Cut out that yelling,” I told him sternly. “It's not doing any good.”

He looked at me, blinking, surprised to see me there.

“But, Mr. Steele,” he said, “I told him and I told him. I told him not to do it, but he did it just the same.”

“Get in the car,” I said.

Obediently, he shuffled toward the car.

“Come on,” I said to Bowser. Bowser, no fool, glad to get off the hook, stopped his barking and trotted at my heels.

“In the car,” I told him and he jumped in back with Hiram.

“What are we going to do?” asked Rila wildly. “What can we do?”

“We're going back to the farm,” I told her. “We can stay there for a while.”

That night, in my arms, she cried herself to sleep.

“Asa,” she said, “I love Mastodonia. I want to have a house there.”

“You will,” I said. “You will. One too big and strong for Stiffy to tip over.”

“And, Asa, I so wanted to be rich.”

I had no assurances on that.

THIRTY-ONE

Ben and Herb went back to Mastodonia with us. We used a block and tackle to tip the home upright. It took us the better part of the day, once that was done, to repair the structural damage. Once we were through, the place was livable. Despite Stiffy's messing around to get it open, the refrigerator had not been damaged.

The next day, over the protests of both Hiram and Rila, we took two four-wheel drives and went looking for Stiffy. We found him in the valley and herded him down it. He got irate at the treatment and several times threatened to charge. We made discreet use of shotguns loaded with birdshot, which would sting but do no damage, to keep him on the move. He protested, grumbling and groaning every foot of the way. We shagged him about twenty miles before we turned back home.

A few days later, he was back in his old stamping ground, but from then on, despite whatever memory he might have had of carrots, he did not bother us. I gave Hiram strict orders to leave him alone and, for once, Hiram paid some attention to what I told him.

We had not heard from Courtney for several days. When he finally got in touch with us, I was in the office talking with Ben. Ben signaled me to pick up another phone.

Courtney said he had moved for a temporary injunction, joined by Safari and the movie people. But the proceedings, he said, were going to take longer than he had thought because of the number of complex arguments cited by both sides. He was particularly incensed by one allegation put forth in defense of the State Department ban—that traveling into time presented a health hazard. He would, he said, be quite willing to agree that travel into more recent, historic times might present such a danger, but the government brief had extended the claim to include time brackets millions of years into the past, postulating that bacteria and viruses that had existed in those times might be able to adapt to the human organism and bring about plagues that could become pandemic.

There had been, Courtney reported, no further word from the CIA.

“Maybe State has called them off,” he said.

Senator Freemore had been in to tell him that bills would be introduced in both houses of Congress to implement emigration of the disadvantaged population (or such of them as might want to go) into prehistoric periods. Freemore, he said, wanted to know what period would be best.

“Asa is on the line with us,” said Ben. “He can tell you about that.”

“Okay,” said Courtney. “How about it, Asa?”

“The Miocene,” I said.

“What about Mastodonia? It would seem ideal to me.”

“There's not enough time span,” I told him. “If you are going to establish a human population sometime in the past, you have to be sure there is enough time margin so it doesn't collide with the rise of the human race.”

“Mastodonia is pretty far back, isn't it?”

“No, it's not. We're only a little more than one hundred fifty thousand years back in time. You could go back three hundred thousand and still be in the Sangamon, but even that's not far enough. There were men on Earth then, primitive men, but still men. We can't afford a collision with them.”

“But you and Rila?”

“Just the two of us. We're not going to introduce anyone else into the era. Just transitory people who come in to use the time roads. And there will be no men in America for at least a hundred thousand years.”

“I see. And the Miocene? How far back is that?”

“Twenty-five million years.”

“You judge that's deep enough into the past?”

“It gives us better than twenty million years before there could be anything even resembling man. Twenty million years from now, when the first possible collision could take place, there probably will be no humans left on Earth. Either in our present time span or twenty million years into our past.”

“You mean we'll be extinct by that time.”

“Extinct or gone somewhere else.”

“Yes,” said Courtney, “I suppose so.”

He waited for a moment, then asked, “Asa, why the Miocene? Why not earlier? Why not a little later?”

“There'll be grass in the Miocene. Grass like we have now, very similar to it. Grass is necessary if you are going to raise livestock. Also, grass makes possible the existence of wild game herds. It would be important for settlers to have game herds; in the early days of settlement, they would supply food. And in the Miocene, the climate would be better.”

“How so?”

“A long rain cycle would be coming to an end. The climate would be drier, but probably still sufficiently rainy for agriculture. The big forests that covered most of the land area would be dying out, giving way to grassland. Settlers wouldn't have to clear forests to make farmland, but there'd still be plenty of wood for them to use. No really vicious animal life, or, at least, none that we know of. Nothing like the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous. Some titanotheres, giant pigs, early elephants, but nothing that a big rifle couldn't handle.”

“Okay, you've sold me. I'll tell the senator. And Asa …”

“Yes?”

“What do you think of the idea? Of sending these people back?”

“It wouldn't work,” I said. “Not many of them would want to go. They're not pioneers; they don't want to be.”

“You figure they'd rather stay right here, on welfare the rest of their lives? For that is what it amounts to. They're in a poverty trap and they can't get out.”

“I think most of them would stay right here,” I said. “They know what they're facing here. Back there, they wouldn't know.”

Courtney said, “I'm afraid you're right. I was in hopes that if our injunction move fails, Freemore's plan might bail us out—if it passes, that is.”

“Don't count on it,” I said.

Courtney and Ben talked only a short time longer. There wasn't much to talk about.

As I sat there, listening to Ben's parting words, I thought about the brightness of the promise that had so quickly darkened. A few weeks ago, it had seemed that nothing could interfere with us; we had the Safari contract, the movie deal was moving forward, and we were confident that other business would be shaping up. But now, unless Courtney could prevail against the State Department's order, we were out of business.

Personally, I did not mind too much—oh, of course, I wouldn't have minded becoming a millionaire, but money and success in business never had mattered too much to me. For Rila, however, it was quite a different story, and while Ben said but little about it, I knew that it meant a lot to him as well. My disappointment, I realized, was not so much for what I had lost as for what the other two had lost.

When I left Ben's office, I went out into the orchard and found Catface there. We settled down to talk. He did most of the talking. This time, he told me about and showed me his home planet. It was an entirely different place than the headquarters planet, an outback world that had a poor economic basis. Its land was thin for farming, it had few natural resources, no great cities had arisen. Its people dragged out a dismal existence and they were different from Catface—definitely biological, although there was about them a puzzling ephemeral tendency, as if they hovered indecisively between groundlings and sprites.

Catface must have sensed my surprise at this, for he said to me, “I was a freak. What would you call it? Perhaps a mutant. I was unlike the rest of them. I changed and they were puzzled at me and ashamed of me and perhaps even a little frightened of me. My beginning was unhappy.”

His beginning—not his childhood, not his boyhood. I pondered over that.