Mastodonia (9 page)

“Yes, I told you that.”

“We can't afford to let anyone horn in on this. This is ours.”

“I suppose we could interest some universities or museums,” I said. “There are a lot of events in the past they would want to have a look at. Be willing to pay money to look at. But there would be problems. There'd have to be some rules and regulations. You couldn't go back to the siege of Troy lugging cameras. You'd have to speak the language of the day. You'd have to blend in. Wear the right kinds of clothes. Know the customs. If you intruded in any way, you could be in trouble; there would even be the chance that you would influence the very factors you set out to study. You might even change history.”

“You have a point there,” said Rila. “We'll have to set up a body of time-traveling ethics. Where the travelers come in contact with humans, that is. Beyond the human era, it wouldn't matter too much what you did.”

“Like going back to hunt big game?”

“Asa, that's where the money is. Universities couldn't pay enough to make it worth our while. They are always strapped for funds. But big game hunters are a different matter. It used to be that a hunter could go on safari in Africa and bag a lot of different heads. Or in Asia. But that is all gone now. If you go, it's on a very limited license. They run these so-called camera safaris, but for the dyed-in-the-wool hunter, they can't be much fun. Imagine what a hunter would be willing to pay for a go at a mastodon or sabertooth.”

“Or a dinosaur,” I said.

“That's what I'm trying to tell you,” she said. “We have to pick our shots. Not necessarily hunting exclusively. There could be a lot of other things. We could go back or send someone back to pick up some Attic pottery. You can't imagine what stuff like that would sell for. A few Athenian owls for the coin collectors. Or, more recently, some of the early stamps. We could go to South Africa and pick diamonds off the ground. That's how the early diamonds were found. Just picked up off the ground.”

“But not too many of them. Only a few here and there. The Star of Africa, sure. But that was sheer luck. You could go around for years looking at the ground …”

“Maybe that was the way it was, Asa, because we, a few years from now, got there first. They only found what we missed.”

I laughed at her. “You're money-hungry, Rila. All you talk of is money. How to merchandise time travel, how to sell it to the highest bidder. It seems to me it should be used for research. There are so many historical problems. There are geological periods about which we know so little.”

“Later on,” she said. “We can do all of that later on. But we have to make a financial success of it before we can afford to do the things you are talking about. You say I'm money-hungry. Maybe I am. It's been my life. I've spent my life building up a business, seeing that it paid. And this thing, before we can even get it started, will cost us money. The lawyer I have in mind doesn't come cheap. We'll have to build a fence around the property and hire guards to keep out the hordes of visitors once the news is broken. We'll have to put up an administration building and staff it. We may need public relations people.”

“Rila, where are we going to get the money?”

“I can get it.”

“We had that out the other day. Remember?”

“But this is different. Then I was offering to help you stay on here. This is a business venture. The two of us together. You own the land, you laid the foundation. All I do is get some money for us to begin the operation.”

She stared across the table at me. “Or don't you want it that way? I'm horning in. Maybe you don't want that. If that's the case, say so. It's your land, your Catface, your Hiram. I'm just a pushy bitch.”

“Maybe you're a pushy bitch,” I said, “but I want you in with me. It's not something we can throw away, and I'd mess it up without you. It just shook me up, you talking about nothing but how we could merchandise it. I see your point, but to justify our position, some of the time-travel schedule should be allocated to research.”

“It's strange how easily we accept the premise,” she said. “Time travel is something that one automatically rejects as impossible. And yet, we sit here planning for it, basing our belief on Catface and Hiram.”

“We have more than that,” I said. “I did travel into time. No question about it. It couldn't be delusion. I was there for an hour or so—well, actually, I don't know how long I was in the Pleistocene. Long enough to walk from here down to the river and back. And there are Bowser's Folsom point and the fresh dinosaur bones. Intellectually, I'm still fairly sure it's impossible, but actually I know it can be done.”

“Our one weak link,” she said, “is Hiram. If he is not telling us the truth, if he's playing games with us …”

“I think I can vouch for him. I've been decent to him while many others haven't, and he worships Bowser. Almost never a day went past, even before all this, when he didn't show up here. I think, as well, that he hasn't the intellect to lie.”

“But if he talks. Before we're ready to let anyone know.”

“He won't intentionally. Someone may ask him questions and worm some of it out of him, or he may get to talking and a slip of the tongue will give it away. He's not all that bright.”

“I suppose it is a chance we have to take. In a little while, it won't matter what he says.”

She rose from the table and began picking up the dishes. “I'll have to make a few phone calls,” she said. “To some people in New York and the attorney in Washington. In a day or two, I'll have to travel east for a few days. I'd like you to come along with me.”

I shook my head. “I'll leave it to you. I'll stay here and hold the fort. Someone should be here.”

THIRTEEN

I was washing the supper dishes when Ben Page came knocking at the kitchen door.

“I see you're alone again,” said Ben.

“Rila went east for a few days. She'll be back.”

“You say the two of you were on a dig together, years ago.”

“That's right. Turkey. A small ruin that dated back to the Bronze Age. It wasn't much of a dig. Nothing new, nothing exciting. The sponsors were disappointed.”

“I suppose you can do a lot of digging sometimes and come up with nothing.”

“That is true,” I said. I put away the last of the dishes, wiped my hands and sat down at the kitchen table, across from Ben. In his corner, Bowser whimpered eagerly, his feet twitching as he chased dream rabbits.

“This digging you been doing,” said Ben. “Turning up much?”

“Not yet. Nothing that amounts to much.”

“But it isn't just a sinkhole.”

“No, not a sinkhole. I don't know what it is. Maybe a meteorite. Found some stray chunks of metal.”

“Asa,” said Ben accusingly, “you're not leveling with me. There is something going on.”

“What makes you say that, Ben?”

“Hiram. He's acting mysterious. As if you were on to something and he was in on it. Says he can't talk about it; that he promised not to. He makes a joke about it. Says to ask Bowser.”

“Hiram thinks he can talk with Bowser.”

“I know. He talks with everything.”

“Hiram's all right,” I said. “But you can't depend on him. He talks a lot of nonsense.”

“I don't think so, not this time. The whole thing is a little strange. You coming back and buying the farm and digging in the sinkhole. Then Rila shows up and she's an archaeologist, just like you.”

“If there was anything to tell you, Ben, I would. There's nothing now, maybe never will be.”

“Look,” said Ben, “as mayor of this town, I have a right to ask. If you are up to something that might affect the town, I should know ahead of time. So we can get ready for it.”

“Ben, I don't know what you are getting at.”

“Well, for example, I own ten acres at the edge of town. Foreclosed on it some years ago, been paying taxes on it ever since. Good place for a motel. There ain't but this one flytrap of a motel here. No self-respecting person would put up in it. Money in a motel, if it's a good one and there are people who would want to use it. If something should happen that would bring a lot of people here, a motel would be a good business venture.”

“What did Hiram say that made you think there might be people coming here?”

“Well, not a great deal. He acts so damn mysterious and important. He enjoys it so much I figure it must be something big. He did let one thing sort of slip without knowing it. Asa, tell me, could there be a crashed spaceship at the bottom of the sinkhole?”

“I suppose there could be,” I said. “That's one thought I've had in mind. But nothing so far to support it. If there is, it would have to be an alien spaceship. One operated by intelligent people from way out in space, from another star. If you found fragments of such a ship and could show credible evidence, it would be an important find. It would be the first real evidence that there was another thinking race in the universe and that, at some time, they had visited the Earth.”

Ben whistled softly. “That would bring a lot of people here, wouldn't it? People to study it. A lot of curiosity seekers. And they'd come year after year. It could be a tourist attraction that would last for years.”

“I would imagine so,” I said.

“It's slow going for you,” said Ben. “Out there digging by yourself. How about me getting some of the boys together and coming out to help you.”

“I appreciate the thought, but it wouldn't work. This kind of digging takes training. You've got to know what to look for. You have to take it easy and plot exactly where you found each item. You can't just rush in there and start throwing dirt. Get a gang in with picks and shovels and they'd destroy a lot of evidence. Little things that wouldn't mean a thing to them, but would to a trained digger.”

Ben nodded gravely. “Yes, I can see how it would be. It was just a thought.”

“I thank you for it,” I said. “And, Ben, I'd appreciate it if you said nothing of it. It would be embarrassing to me if the word got out I was digging for a spaceship. The town would think I was crazy, and the word would filter out into academic circles and there'd be a lot of university types shooting off their faces, and some of them would be coming out to look the situation over, and most of them, I suspect, would sneer at us.”

“Sure,” said Ben. “Not a word from me. Not a single word from me. But do you think there could be …”

“I'm not sure at all. Just a hunch. Based on some evidence that may be no evidence at all. I may be doing no more than making a fool of myself. How about a beer?”

After Ben had left, I sat at the table for a long time, wondering if what I'd told him had been wise. It could backfire, I knew, but probably not with Ben. He was a grasping bastard and would probably keep his mouth shut because he'd want to be the first to know, so that he could rush in, ahead of all the others, and get his motel built—and probably other things that he had not mentioned.

I'd had to tell him something, and I'd had to throw him slightly off the track. Just a plain denial would not have satisfied him. Hiram's slip of the tongue and the way that he was acting had made Ben suspicious. And I hadn't really lied to him, I told myself. There was a spaceship out there at the bottom of the sinkhole.

I'd probably shut him up, for a time at least. And that was important, for village gossip and speculation had to be kept to a minimum at the moment. Once we started building the fence, of course, there'd be no stopping it. And Rila was right; we would need the fence.

I went to the refrigerator and got another beer.

Christ, I thought, sitting there drinking it, the entire thing was mad. Much as I might tell myself, in moments of clarity and right thinking, it was not possible for men to travel into time, I knew it was. Imprinted on my mind as nothing else in my entire life, was the memory of that big bull mastodon, with his rapid, almost gliding tread, and his trunk swinging like a pendulum between his tusks as he hurried to reach the herd. And I could not forget the terror I had felt when I realized where I was, the lostness and displacement.

Once again, I ran through the preliminary plans Rila and I had made, sitting at this very table. Thinking of the plans, I felt not only a vague unreality, but some apprehension as well. There could be so much that we had not been able to foresee, blind spots prone to wrecking the best-laid plans. What, I wondered, had we overlooked? What unsuspected circumstances would arise to plague us in the days to come?

I was bothered by how we planned to use time travel. If I had ever thought of it at all, I would not have thought of it as Rila did. I found it difficult to brush aside the conviction that time travel should be used in the furtherance of science and of understanding; that it was not something to be offered in the marketplace.

But Rila was undoubtedly right in saying that if someone else had found the secret and possessed the technique, they, for their part, would use it to their own best advantage. In her opinion, it was silly to throw away an opportunity to place travel into time on a sound economic basis; for only with such a basis could it be used consistently for research.

In his corner, the dreaming Bowser yipped wildly as he closed in on the rabbit. I finished my beer, threw the bottle in the trash can and went off to bed.

Rila was coming home tomorrow and I'd have to get up early to drive to Minneapolis and meet her at the airport.

FOURTEEN

When I first caught sight of Rila as she came up the ramp, she bore a grim, determined look, but at the sight of me, she smiled and hurried forward. I caught her in my arms and said, “It's good to have you back. The last three days have been lonely ones.”

She tilted up her head for a kiss, then pressed her face against my shoulder. “It's good to see you, Asa,” she whispered. “It's nice to be home again. What an awful time!”