Time Travel Omnibus, page 755
To get back to the story: None of my sahibs wished to kill the amynodont, but Huang still wanted his photographs. So I sent him and Hofmann ahead to stalk the brute, warning them to go no closer than a hundred meters. I thought that Huang, with his telephoto lens, could get all the pictures he wanted at that distance. I followed.
We tell the sahibs that we put them in front to give them the first shot. That is true, but it’s not the only reason. It’s also a fact that every now and then one of these amateur Nimrods trips over a root and stumbles or falls, and if the guide were in front, he might get his bloody head blown off.
“Keep behind me, Cliff,” I told Standish. “That bow of yours wouldn’t make much impression on a thick-skinned bloke like that.”
So I stood, gun ready, as Hofmann and Huang walked toward the amynodont. At about a hundred yards, they stopped for Huang to look through his eyepiece. But then they started advancing again, slowly and stealthily. I wanted to call out a warning to go no further; but to do so would only excite the amynodont. It might run away, in which case Huang would not get his pictures; or it might charge, in which case they would have to rely on Hofmann’s rifle, with me as a back-up. Having seen Hofmann shoot, I didn’t think I had much to worry about on that score; but I started forward, too, keeping a constant distance behind my clients.
They kept stalking closer and closer. They must have covered another fifty meters, and I was filling my lungs to yell “Stop!” when they halted. The amynodont had quit eating and raised its head suspiciously. I snatched a look through my own glasses. Although I know creatures like that don’t have facial expressions, I couldn’t help thinking that it was glowering at my clients.
They froze, and after a few seconds the amynodont went back to chewing the leaves off a bush.
Huang raised his camera and began photographing. Whether the motion of his hands or the tiny buzz and click of the camera aroused the amynodont, I don’t know. But all of a sudden the animal looked up again, uttered a thunderous snort, champed its jaws—showing a fine set of tusks—and began bounding toward my clients like an animated blimp at racehorse speed.
Huang turned and ran toward me. Hofmann raised his rifle and seemed about to fire, but nothing happened. Then he began looking through the pockets of his safari vest. In the field you need a lot of pockets; but with those bloody things—I wear one, too—there are so many pockets that it takes forever to go through them all. I remembered that Hofmann had emptied his magazine potting alligators, and I didn’t recall seeing him reload. Evidently he was looking for more cartridges and not finding them.
“Run!” I yelled.
The amynodont was getting closer when Hofmann looked up, saw the beast bearing down on him, and belatedly turned and ran after Huang. Behind him came the amynodont, puffing and galumphing along and gaining with every bound. I hoped it would not catch Hofmann before he got out of a straight line between me and the animal, to give me a clear shot.
Hofmann raced past, and I sighted on the animal’s skull. But then the amynodont unexpectedly halted. It stood for several seconds, panting and peering about. Then it calmly turned and waddled back toward the river, to resume its browse on that bush. It must have run out of wind, as those short-legged animals do on a long run.
My mind was snatched back from watching the beast by sounds of a violent quarrel behind me: “You’ve got my vest!”
“I have not!”
“Let’s see it. There, it’s got my cartridges!”
“Must have been a mistake when we got dressed—”
“The hell it was! You wanted me killed, to give you another chance at Marta!”
“That’s a lie! I never had any such idea—”
The two had a rare old row; got so bloody furious that I was trying to think how to get the rifle and the bow away from them. Standish insisted that he and Hofmann had inadvertently traded safari vests when they dressed. Hofmann thought Standish had done it on purpose, hoping Hofmann would get himself killed, so Standish could court Hofmann’s widow, whom he’d been romancing before she married his friend.
I could see a strong argument either way. Standish couldn’t have known that Hofmann would shoot off all his magazine at alligators and forget to reload. On the other hand, it was equally unlikely that Standish would put on the vest, with a kilo or two of rounds in its pockets, without noticing the extra weight.
A couple of years later, I still don’t know the good oil. Maybe I ought to get in touch with that psychic who told Standish he’d been a barbarian in an earlier life. Of course, if you believe in reincarnation, fifty-odd centuries ago everybody was a barbarian; so that’s what you’d have had to be.
Wishing I had the Raja along to handle the situation, I managed to calm those two down enough so that there was no immediate danger of mutual homicide. We spent a couple of bloody unpleasant days at that river camp.
You said something at the start of this interview, about how people thought I ought to have the most fun of anyone in the world at this occupation. Well, at times you can be as happy as a ’possum in a gum tree, when everything goes as planned. But that doesn’t happen often. And when you have a pair of clients who want to kill each other, it’s no bloody fun at all! Not only is there no beak or walloper you can appeal to; but also, how could you convict anyone of a murder committed tens of millions of years ago?
Another thing about hunting these animals, or even just watching and photographing them: It’s the nature of the beasts to be thick one day and all gone the next. That’s how it was here. Plenty of game the first day, and then the countryside empty; not a beast in sight save a couple of alligator sculling along the river. Then we had a rainy day, which kept us in camp.
By the time we got back to the chamber site, Standish and Hofmann were at least on speaking terms again, though no longer good mates. The first day after our return, I heard a hullabaloo and came out to see. Running into the camp was Pancho, one of Beauregard’s crew, holding a bag full of garbage. After him came the second biggest local herbivore, the entelodont of that time, called Archaeotherium. It’s a relative of the pigs and hippopotami.
If you imagine a buffalo-sized warthog, you’ll have the general idea. It doesn’t have the tusks curling up outside its mouth, as our warthog does. Instead, it had big canine teeth, like those of the hyaenodon and other carnivores. Like a warthog, it has big, bony bumps on its skull, I suppose to protect it when the boars fight over sows or territory.
Pancho had been dutifully taking a load of garbage away from the camp to bury it. The entelodont must have thought the smell too delicious to pass up and made for the bag with its fangs bared to grab it. Pancho had orders not to feed garbage to the animals, since it might make them more familiar with the camp than we liked. These beasts have no instinctive fear of man, since there weren’t any in their time. If you let them get familiar, they come to expect service; and if they don’t get it they’re likely to take out their resentment with teeth, horns, or hooves.
All Pancho could do was to drop his shovel and race back with the bag, the entelodont one bound behind him. Pancho’s a smallish bloke, but he put on a notable turn of speed, as Professor Huang had done with the amynodont. Still, there’s nothing like being chased by a prehistoric monster to bring out the best in any runner.
By the time I got there with my rifle, Pancho was just entering the camp, and Clifton Standish was lining up the entelodont in the sights of his bow. Hofmann was just ducking into their tent to grab his gun.
As the entelodont entered the camp, Standish loosed his arrow. For once it didn’t miss, but struck with a meaty sound and buried itself in the animal’s body between neck and shoulder.
The entelodont halted and whirled halfway round, looking this way and that to see what had punctured it. As it presented its broadside, Standish gave it another arrow, this time in the ribs. When it whirled about again, he gave it another on the other side.
The entelodont halted, hanging its head. Standish shot another arrow, into the beast’s neck. Blood dripped from the animal’s muzzle. It turned about and started to walk out of the camp. Outside the boundary it collapsed on the ground, where it lay, kicking in a feeble, uncoordinated way, until it died.
“Ya!” yelled Standish, “Who says I’m not a barbarian?” The silly galah screamed: “Yeow!” and pounded his chest with his fist.
“There’s your trophy,” I told him. “Bear a hand with cutting off and salting the head.”
His expression changed. “You mean I’ve got to get all mucked up with blood and goo?”
“Of course! When did a true barbarian mind a little gore? Come on!”
He came on, though I could see he hated every minute of it. At least he didn’t faint or vomit.
After that, things were quiet for the next couple of days. I shot an oreodont for Huang to dissect, getting blood all over himself again. We had to have another session with soap and brush. This was harder, since we had to haul our water from a little local stream.
Before the transition chamber arrived to take us back to Present, there was one more incident. I told you there was a bushy, open stretch on one side of our camp. The last day before the chamber arrived, I was in my tent when Beauregard called:
“Mr. Rivers! Come out; here’s suthin’ you gotta see!”
My sahibs and I arrived where Beauregard stood almost simultaneously: Huang with his camera, Standish with his bow, and Hofmann and I with our rifles. What Beauregard had called about was a full-grown male Brontotherium, ambling across the meadow and eating as it went. It was fully as large as one of the smaller adult elephants and can’t have been over fifty meters away.
“There’s your other trophy, sports,” I said. “Who wants it?”
Standish and Hofmann muttered between themselves, and Hofmann said: “I’ll pass. The hyaenodon skin will do me fine. Marta would never let me mount that critter’s head in our living room; it wouldn’t leave room for people.”
“Me neither,” said Standish. “The entelodont’s enough for me. I suppose Reggie’d want me to help cut it up again?”
“Bloody right I would,” I said.
“Well, anyway, I doubt if my bow would do the job.” It was his first admission that his marvelous bow wouldn’t kill anything in sight.
At the sound of our voices, the brontothere raised its head and took a couple of steps toward us. Hofmann and I checked our rifles.
Then the brontothere seemed to lose interest. I could imagine what was going on in that primitive little brain. Nothing over there smells good to eat, and those creatures don’t look dangerous. Why waste time on them when there’s all this lovely edible green stuff?
Of course that’s just my imagining. All I can state as a fact is that the brontothere turned away and went back to its herbs. It ate and ate its way across the meadow and then, still eating, disappeared into a copse of trees.
You might say it was an anticlimax to our adventure; but on the whole I was just as glad things turned out as they did, with no homicides or other casualties. The main thing with loonies like Standish is that you can never be sure what they’ll do next, so you don’t know what precautions to take.
And that’s the story of the strangest client I’ve had, although when I think back I could tell of some who ran Standish a close second and maybe outdid him. The chamber arrived on time; we boarded with our trophies; and Cohen the chamber wallah whisked us back to Present without further complications.
I haven’t heard about Frank Hofmann since. Standish did break into the news about a year ago. Seems he married a girl who turned out to be a bit of a tart. A few months later, he caught her in bed with another bloke, whom he promptly strangled to death. He must have been stronger than he looked. He was acquitted at the trial, dumped the dame, and dropped out of sight.
As I said, these safaris can be fun; but more often it’s a case of batting down one bloody emergency after another. I’ve come to hate surprises. And don’t forget to send me a copy of this interview when it’s printed!
THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND
Nancy Kress
The horrors of war are difficult to face, even for a noncombatant nurse. How much harder when there are two battles—one on the field, and one in your heart?
Over by the mess tent one of my younger nurses is standing close to a Special Forces lieutenant, watch her face tip up to his, her eyes wide and shining, moonlight on her cheekbones. He reaches out one hand—his fingernails are not quite dean—and touches her brown hair where it falls over her shoulder, and the light on her skin trembles. I know that later tonight they will disappear into her tent, or his.
Later this week they with walk around the compound with their arms around each other’s waists, sit across from each other at mess, and feed each other choice bits of chow, oblivious to the amused glances of their friends.
Later this month—or next month, or the one after that if this bizarre duty goes on long enough—she will be pale and distraught, crumpling letters in one hand. She will cry in the supply tent She’s will tell the other nurses that he fed her lies.
She will not hear orders, or will carry them out red-eyed and wrong, endangering other lives and despising her own.
She will be useless to me, and I will have to, and I will have to transfer her out and start over with another.
Or maybe it won’t happen that way. An alternate future. He will snap at his buddies, volunteer for extra duty near the Hole, become careless with some red or homespun coated soldier stumbling forward with a musket or bayonet. He’ll tail somebody or—less likely—get killed himself. Or maybe he’ll just snap at the wrong person—his captain, say. He’ll be transferred out. If he kills an Arrival. General Robinson will personally crucify him. General Robinson’s wife and daughters are members of the D.A.R.
The two people by the mess tent, of course, don’t see it this way. They like the same movies, were snubbed by the same people in high school, voted the same way in the last presidential election. Both volunteered for duty by the Hole. It follows that they’re in love. It follows that they understand each other, can see to the bottoms of each other’s souls. The other military couples they know—the ones who have divorced, or who haven’t; the affairs on leave; the angry words on the parade ground at dawn—have nothing to do with them. They are different. They are unique.
When people can see the truth so plain around them, why do they persist in believing some other reality.
“Major Peters! You re needed in Recovery! Quick!”
I leave my tent and tear across the compound at a dead run. We have only three people in Recovery; one of the weird laws Of the Hole seems to be that they seldom come through it if they’re going to recover. Musket balls in the belly or heart, shell explosions that have torn off half a head. Eighty-three percent of the Arrivals are dead a few minutes after they fail through the Hole. Another 11 percent live longer but never regain consciousness. That leaves us with 6 percent who eventually talk, although not to us. After we repair the flesh and boost the immune system, the Army sends heavily armored trucks to move them out of our heavily armored compound to somewhere else. The Pentagon? We aren’t told. Somewhere there are three soldiers from Kichline’s Riflemen, a field-grade officer under Lord Percy, and a shell-shocked corporal in homespun, all talking to the best minds the country thinks it can find.
This time I want to talk first.
The soldier who has finally woken up is a grizzled veteran who came through dressed in breeches, boots, and light coat. It’s summer on the other side of the Hole: The Battle of Long Island was fought on August 27, 1776. Unlike most Arrivals, this one staggered through the Hole without his rifle or bayonet, although he had a hunting knife, which was taken away from him. He’d received a head wound, most likely a glancing shell fragment, enough to cause concussion but, according to the brain scan, not permanent damage. When I burst into Recovery, he’s sitting up, dazed, looking at the guards at the door holding their M-18s.
“The General and Dr. Bechtel are on their way,” I say to the guards, which is approximately true. I sent a soldier walking across the compound to tell them. My phone seems to be malfunctioning. The soldier is walking very slowly.
“General Putnam?” the new Arrival asks. His voice is less dazed than his face: a rough, deep voice with the peculiar twist on almost-British English that still sends a chill through me all these months after the Hole opened.
“Were you with the Connecticut Third Regiment? Let me check your pulse, please, I’m a nurse.”
“A nurse!” That seems to finish the daze; he looks at my uniform, then my face. When the Hole first opened, there was wild talk of putting the medical staff in Colonial dress—“To minimize the psychological shock.” As if anything could minimize dying hooked to machines you couldn’t imagine in a place that didn’t exist while being stuck with needles by people unborn for another two centuries. Cooler heads prevailed. I wear fatigues, my short hair limp against my head from a shower, my glasses thick over my eyes.
“Yes, a nurse. This is a hospital. Let me have your wrist, please.”
He pulls his hand away. I grab his wrist and hold it firmly. Two Arrivals have attacked triage personnel and one attacked a Recovery guard; this soldier looks strong enough for both. But I served in the minor action in Kuwait and the major ones in Colombia. He lets me hold his wrist. His pulse is rapid but strong.
“What is this place?”
“I told you. A hospital.”
He leans forward and clutches my arm with his free hand while I’m reaching for the medscan equipment. “The battle—who won the battle?”
They’re often like this. They find themselves in an alien, impossible, unimaginable place, surrounded by guards with uniforms and weapons they don’t recognize, and yet their first concern is not their personal fate but the battle they left behind. They ask again and again. They have to know what happened.
