Time Travel Omnibus, page 754
“Okay,” I said, “so long as you remember not to shoot at anything without the word from me.”
On the appointed day, we gathered in the time-chamber building. Although it was the Raja’s turn to lead a party in the field while I manned the office, he wasn’t going because his wife was expecting. I was there with Standish, Hofmann, the Chinese professor—a pleasant enough little bloke—and our supporting cast: Ming the cook, Beauregard Black the camp boss, his three helpers, and a dozen asses. You’d call ’em burros, I suppose. Why don’t we use motorized transport? That’s a long story; remind me to tell you some time.
In the Cretaceous, the chamber materializes on a fairly high ridge, giving a good view of the surrounding country. By the Oligocene, that ridge had disappeared. The country is still somewhat rolling, and the chamber wallah set us down on a low rise, with a bushy flat on one side and several clumps of trees nearby.
Once you get past the K-T Event, which ended the Mesozoic and the dinosaurs along with it, the vegetation looks quite modern. Where we were, the trees ran to oaks, cedars, and maples much like those of today, although I daresay a paleobotanist could point out differences.
Despite the trees, we could see fairly well, though the view did not compare with the one we got in the Cretaceous from that point. The ground sloped in directions different from the Cretaceous ones. In the Cretaceous there’s a river, which the Raja has named the Narbada, emptying into the Kansas Sea. It’s only half a day’s trek south from the chamber site. By the Oligocene, this river had disappeared along with the Kansas Sea.
Instead, there was a bigger stream flowing south about a kilometer west from our site. I don’t know if it evolved into the modern Mississippi. We shall know better when the U.S. Geological Survey completes their survey of the area round the chamber site over the geological eras. They have a neat little gadget, a rocket-propelled robot camera. It shoots straight up from the site, deploys a parachute, and snaps pictures on the way down.
Following our usual drill, I hopped out first with my gun ready, although I didn’t expect to find anything dangerous waiting for us. The chamber and then Reg Rivers, however, startled the hell out of a spotted feline, devouring its prey on an open space a few meters from the site. In size it was a bit smaller than a leopard or a puma, with a long tail and a pair of big, protruding upper canine teeth. It was, I believe, an ancestor of the later sabertooths, although its sabers had developed only half as far as those of later members of the family.
Be that as it may, this cat took one look, gave a kind of spitting yowl, and bounded away, dragging a piece of its half-eaten prey with it.
“What pity!” murmured Huang, looking at the remains of the prey animal. “It is one of the oreodonts, or merycoidodontids if one must be technically precise. My main purpose in coming to this period is to study their digestive systems, but this one has been too badly torn up to furnish much information.”
“What about their digestive systems?” I asked.
“One of the debates among my fellow paleontologists is which of the many lines of Cenozoic artiodactyls—” Excuse me, Miss Bergstrom, but that’s how Doctor Huang talked, like a textbook. He meant split-hooved animals, like sheep, cows, and deer. “—of Cenozoic artiodactyls developed the multiple stomachs of ruminants and which did not. The oreodonts are thought by some to have developed this feature, and by others not. One scientist called them ‘ruminating hogs.’ The question cannot be settled by fossils, since the soft tissues are almost never preserved.”
The day after we arrived, I told my sahibs we were going out on our regular meat hunt. When we were assembled, Hofmann had on his regular khaki safari rig, including one of those canvas vests with enough pockets to carry supplies for a month in the field. He toted his Bratislava.
Huang carried a big collecting bag and had an assortment of knives and other dissecting utensils stuck through loops in his belt. He explained that he was no gunman but would rely on Hofmann and me to protect him.
Clifton Standish showed up carrying his futuristic bow, but he wasn’t wearing a bloody thing else except an athletic support—I believe the Yank term is “jock”—made of some fur, which looked like bear. He also wore sandals and had his quiver slung over his back.
“What in Aljira’s name?” I said.
“I am a barbarian at heart!” cried Standish. “I’ve always wanted to face the wilds as a true barbarian should!”
I could have pointed out that the eyeglasses and the futuristic bow rather spoiled the picture; but there was no point in quarreling with a cash customer. I only said:
“Okay, if you don’t mind the bug bites and don’t get badly sunburned.”
So off we went. After a bit of a hike we came upon an agriochoerid browsing. It was about the size of a medium-large dog. Although it’s a vegetarian, with a head not unlike that of one of our asses, it has feet like a dog’s, with blunt claws.
Standish drew his arrow to the ear, in proper Agincourt style, released—and missed. The animal jerked its head up at the whistle of the arrow. While it was looking round, Hofmann gave it a bullet from his rifle.
He hit the beast all right. The trouble was that with a dinosaur-killer like the Bratislava, the impact spreads a small creature like an agriochoerid over the landscape.
“That’s a funny combination,” said Hofmann. “A kind of hornless goat with dog’s feet!”
Standish said: “I read an article once on the giant panda of China. It said it was once a meat-eater like wolves and cats but for some reason took to eating bamboo instead and developed teeth and a gullet to enable it to do so. Could this be the same sort of thing: an animal that started out to be a wolf and changed its mind?”
“I don’t believe so,” I said. “According to my scientific friends, nearly all mammals had feet like those back in the early Eocene, regardless of their diets. This kind was a plant-eater all along but forgot to evolve its paws into hooves.”
Looking at the spread-out remains, Huang uttered what I took to be Chinese curses. Then he said:
“What pity! I shall have difficulty in coming to definite conclusions from this mass of dispersed viscera. Mr. Rivers, is there not a smaller rifle for such game?”
“Yes, there is,” I said. “But Frank wanted to bring his cannon in case we met something bigger.”
Huang sighed. “At least, you will wish mainly the limbs and other muscular parts for aliment. I shall do what I can with the internal organs.”
So, while Hoffman and Standish and I butchered and cut out the more edible parts of the agriochoerid, Huang squatted over the spilled guts, turning over this and that internal organ, popping some of them into his bag, and getting bloody all over. Standish obviously did not like this sort of job. He turned a little green but manfully stuck to his task, though so clumsy at it that Hofmann and I could, I am sure, have done the job faster without his help.
By the time the meat was ready to go, Huang looked up with a smile. “It is not so bad as I feared,” he said. “I believe that I have identified a separate division of the digestive tract combining, in a primitive way, features of the rumen and the reticulum. One might say that this animal was well on the way to evolving into a full ruminant.”
We went out for the next two days. We saw plenty of animals, but all were small, nondescript ancestors of modern horses, rhinos, camels, etcetera, the size of dogs of different breeds and all looking much alike. Hardly a horn amongst the lot, save the little Protoceras, a kind of ancestral pronghorn scarcely bigger than a jackrabbit. It has two pairs of hornlike bumps on the head of the male. But neither of my hunters wanted it for a trophy; too small, they said.
My clients got itchy over our endless walk through an outdoor zoo, stocked with a rather prosaic lot of smallish beasts. These animals all looked remarkably alike, despite the fact that their descendants varied enormously in size and appearance. So I told Beauregard to pack up to shift camp the following day. We should go westward to the river that, I had heard, ran south past the chamber site.
The trek took off before sunrise. Standish went in front in his cave-man outfit, muttering things like: “Yield thee, civilized degenerate weakling!”
The thought struck me that, if Standish got much more peculiar, we might have to tie him up. The Raja’s better at handling disturbed minds than I, but he was not with us.
It was a bright, hot day when we stopped for lunch. Beauregard’s crew had unsaddled the asses and staked them out to browse. We were munching our sandwiches when Standish made some remark about how much more sensibly he was dressed than we were; our khakis were all pretty sweat-soaked.
We were sitting in a circle, eating, when Hofmann muttered an exclamation. In one motion he gulped down his mouthful of sandwich, grabbed his gun, and bounced to his feet.
I looked behind me. Headed for the staked asses at a shambling run came the biggest predator of that time and place, a hyaenodon of the largest species, H. horridus. It was about the size of a tiger, with similar stripes but with a longer skull, more like that of an oversized wolf or hyena, and an impressive set of canine fangs. Despite the name, it’s really no horrider than any other big predator, programmed by its teeth and its instincts to eat other animals.
I was rising with my gun when Hofmann fired. It was one of the best-executed shots I have seen in all my guiding. He nailed the hyaenodon between the eyes, and down it went.
Nobody argued that Hofmann had not won his trophy fair dinkum. But I asked:
“What are you going to take home, Frank? Just the head? If so, I’ll help you cut it off. Or you may decide to make a fur rug out of it. That means skinning the whole animal and separating out the skull, so the taxidermist can stretch the skin of the head over it.”
“I think I’d like the rug,” said Hofmann. “But it would take us all afternoon to skin it.”
“Then,” said Standish, “we’d better carry the creature with us until the camp is pitched again.”
“Sure,” said Hofmann. “We’ll sling it on the carrying pole, and Cliff and I will each take one end.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Better think about what you’re letting yourselves in for. The thing must weigh well over a hundred kilos. Oh, Beauregard!”
“Yes, Mr. Rivers?”
“Could we use an ass or two to carry this animal?”
“I don’t think so,” said Black. “They’re scared shitless now, and if we even moved that thing near them, they’d go real sure frantic. Besides, they’re full-loaded now, and you gents would have to carry their loads.”
We ended by eviscerating the carcass, roping it to the pole, and struggling over many kilometers with the thing on our shoulders. Hofmann and Standish, who had talked boldly of carrying it the whole way, were glad to have little Huang, who was no muscle man, and me spell them with the carrying.
Slowed by this load, we got to the river after sunset. Standish suffered from insect bites. At the new campsite, the mosquitoes went to work on him. After much slapping and cursing, he was at last persuaded to put on a shirt and pants.
“While you’re about it,” I said, “better take a good look for ticks. With all those long grasses and herbs we’ve waded through, you should be hosting a few of them.”
Sure enough, examination by electric torch showed a dozen or so on Standish’s legs, busily drilling away. None had had time to suck much blood yet, and we got them out with a glowing cigarette in Hofmann’s hands. We were lucky, since hardly anyone smokes nowadays. If you simply pull a tick out, the head often breaks off and remains in the skin to give you trouble.
Standish said: “Does this mean I’m liable to come down with spotted fever or something?”
“Don’t know for sure, but I doubt it,” I told him. “So far back, you’ll find bloody few microorganisms that can live in a human bloodstream long enough to cause an illness.”
Then he complained of sunburn. When he took off his shirt, his face, shoulders, and back were the color of a tropical sunset. As I swabbed him down with lotion, I said:
“All right, my lad, that’s the last time I shall let you run around all day dressed as Ug-Wug the cave man. If you come down with something serious, aside from my little store of antibiotics, there’s not a damned thing I can do for you until the chamber comes back, ten days from now.”
With a face as long as a month of Sundays, Standish muttered a surly assent. Then he said: “Maybe the Great Spirit just doesn’t want me to be a real barbarian.” His lower lip quivered as if he were going to burst into tears.
“Come, come, Cliff!” said Hofmann. “You’ve had your fun. We pale North European types can’t take so much sun, because our ancestors lived where it was cloudy most of the time.”
The remark showed better sense than I should have expected from that pair. Skinning the hyaenodon kept us busy all evening.
The day after the move, my sahibs were pretty tired, not being hardened to such activity. I gave Hofmann and Standish the day off, but I went after Huang, saying:
“Professor, you’ve bloody well got to wash those khakis. The blood of that agriochoerid has begun to stink so that all the others are complaining.”
He looked vague. “But Mr. Rivers, can you not get one of the camp crew to wash them for us?”
“Not their job, and they’ve got plenty to do.”
“But, sir, I have never washed a garment of my own! I do not know how!”
“I’ll give you a hand and show you how. Hey, Beauregard, will you dig us out a scrubbing brush and a piece of soap, please?”
I led Huang, still muttering objections, down to the river. A couple of alligators were sunning on the sandy margin, but they slipped into the water and swam away as we approached.
One thing you must remember in going back to former eras is that the animals, never having seen human beings and never having been hunted by them, don’t have the built-in fear of people that you find in areas of the Present where wild animals are still wild. Instead of running away, as they’re apt to do now, they may come sniffing round you to investigate these strange creatures at close quarters. That can be dangerous, even if you have no intention of killing anything.
Huang and I spent a couple of hours at the cleaning job. The blood had dried and so was much harder to get off than if we had done it the day Huang got his clothes mucked up.
Next morning I rose early to get the sahibs up for some animal watching, since the beasts are better seen along the river at this time than during the heat of the day. Standish was already dressing, I was glad to see in his regular khakis, including a safari vest like Hofmann’s, and not in his cave-man get-up.
“Where’s Frank?” I asked.
“He went out earlier to look at animals on his own.”
“Damn!” I said. “He knows he’s not-supposed to go buzzing round the outback without a guide!”
I was interrupted by a loud bang from the direction of the river; Hofmann’s Bratislava without a doubt. Then came three more shots.
I dashed out of the tent, grabbed my own rifle, and ran toward the sound. As I came in sight of Frank Hofmann, he let off another shot, aimed out into the river.
“What the hell are you doing, Frank?” I shouted.
“Just shooting at some alligators,” he said. “I think I hit a couple.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Thought I’d like a couple of skins to take home. But they sink when I hit them, so I don’t know how I could recover them.”
I gave him an eloquent calling-down for wandering off unescorted. I didn’t go into the ethics of killing things of no use to the killer, just for fun. Too much talk of that sort would be bad for our business. I know that’s how many people feel nowadays; but I assure them that, since the things we kill are all long extinct anyway, it’s not as if we were doing in some endangered species.
Frank Hofmann, I must say, took his wigging very well. He apologized and promised not to do anything like that again. We went back to camp, ate the breakfast Ming served us, and set out along the east bank, detouring where the gallery forest along the banks grew so thick a dog couldn’t bark in it.
We had gone perhaps half a kilometer when Huang and I, in the lead, spotted something moving ahead. When we got closer, I saw an amynodont, a big hippolike herbivore, munching greenery. Beside me, Huang said:
“Mr. Rivers, that is a Metamynodon, of the family Amynodontidae, superfamily Rhinoceroidea, order Perissodactyla. I very much want some pictures.” He adjusted his camera. “How close can we get?”
“A hundred meters is considered the minimum safe distance for thick-skinned game like that,” I said. “We’d better circle round to the left, to get down-wind of him.”
The other two had come up with us and were peering through field glasses—Hofmann’s pair, which he and Standish looked through alternately.
“Huh!” said Standish. “I don’t want him for a trophy; no horns or antlers, and not so spectacular as a modern hippo.”
Let me explain, Miss Bergstrom. The Metamynodon is, you might say, a member of a branch of the rhinoceros tribe that tried to evolve into hippopotami and didn’t quite make it. In build it is much like a modern rhinoceros, without any horns and not quite so squatty as the modern hippo. The hippo’s ears, eyes, and nostrils all open on top of the head, so the animal can lie in the water with only those organs showing. In the Metamynodon, those parts hadn’t yet moved so far up the skull.
Its habits seem to have been much like those of the modern hippo. A hippopotamus comes out at night and wanders around, gobbling everything green it can find. Then it goes back in the lake or river and lies there awash all day, digesting that enormous meal. The Metamynodon follows a similar routine. It has tusks, like a hippo’s but not so magnificent.
No, it’s not related to the hippo, save in the sense that all animals are related. But you’d have to go back to the Paleocene Epoch to find their common ancestor. It’s an odd-toed animal, like horses and tapirs; while the hippo is even-toed and related to the pigs. It’s a case of what my scientific friends call parallel or convergent evolution.
