Rivers of Time
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1993
- Язык: английский
- Год: Baen Books
- ISBN: 9781555940232
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Rivers of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
Includes:
• Faunas (1968)
• A Gun for Dinosaur (1956)
• The Cayuse
• Crocamander Quest
• Miocene Romance
• The Synthetic Barbarian
• The Satanic Illusion
• The Big Splash
• The Mislaid Mastodon
• The Honeymoon Dragon
"I shall want to meet Mr. or Doctor Haupt," I said. "We always like to judge our sahibs before we take them on. A crook choice can cause serious trouble later, as we've found to our sorrow. Right, Raja?"
"Absolutely," said the Raja—that is, Chandra Aiyar. I call him "Raja" because he's actually the hereditary lord of some place in India called Janpur. If he went back there now and tried to assert hereditary claims, the locals would probably throw things at him. I gather the last reigning Raja of Janpur, before the Republic, wasn't universally beloved.
Doctor Haupt turned out a big, beefy fellow, almost my size, with red hair and whiskers. He needed the beef to lug his instrument: a super-scientific combination of telescope, transit, and radar set, all over knobs and lenses. By means of the radar he could get a quick reading on the distance of anything this side of Mars.
The first complication popped up when I talked to Beauregard Black, our camp boss, about the trip. The problem was that, since the Event was likely to be a bloody catastrophe for everything around, we had to have the chamber stay with us the whole time we were there leading up to the Event, so we could make a quick getaway. There's no telephone line to Present, so you can ring up and yelclass="underline"
"Come and get us, quick!"
Bruce Cohen, who ran the chamber, said that was okay with him as long as he was paid his regular rate. In fact, he said, he was glad of a chance for a good look at one of these primeval landscapes he'd been ferrying people to. So far he'd had only brief glimpses when he opened the chamber doors for the time travelers to hop out and later back in.
When we explained this to Beauregard, he said he had to talk to the rest of the crew, the helpers and herders and Ming the cook. Next day he came back to say in effect: sorry, mate, no dice. The sahibs and I could go back and sit on a log to watch the end of the Mesozoic world, but to him and the others that was taking too much of a chance. He said:
"Mr. Rivers, I don't know how fast we'd have to skedaddle; but it would sure be a lot faster than the usual way, with at least two trips in the chamber. With the jacks, it'd take at least three. And we jest ain't gonna stand around watchin' the world go up in smoke waiting for the chamber to come back for the next load."
"We're not taking the asses," I said. "Since we don't know the exact time of the Event, we shan't dare go far enough from the landing site to call for moving the camp. So the crew will be smaller."
Beauregard shook his head. "Jeez, I'm sorry, Mr. Rivers; but I'm afraid we jest ain't gonna. I've talked with the other boys, and we all agree. We got famblies and that kind of thing."
The Raja and I tried to argue Beauregard round, but we might as well have tried to knock over a mammoth with a flyswatter. I suppose I could have fired him and the others for breach of contract; but I doubted I should ever again find such a bonzer camp boss. We'd been on several safariin together, so I knew Beauregard pretty well. Not having our regular helpers would rather leave us up a gum tree. It's not the sort of expedition on which you could rely on casual, untrained help. To push off with such a crew would be asking for disaster.
And so it turned out, when I discussed the problem with our five sahibs. The scientists complained that all the pitching and striking camp, cooking and cleaning up, etcetera, wouldn't leave them time for their scientific work. O'Connor complained that it wouldn't leave him time for his art. But the loudest complaints came from Todd, who was one of these little, Napoleonic types who tries to make up for his physical stature by a prickly, aggressive attitude.
"If this safari doesn't have the things it was advertised as having," he said, "I'm damned if I'll go along on it. I won't be able to get in a decent hunt if I've got to fuck around collecting firewood and all that nonsense. I'll expect my deposit back, too."
Later, when the Raja and I were alone, he said: "I believe I see a way out, Reggie." Back down-under nobody calls me "Reggie." There, it's "Reg." But the Raja had been through one of those English-style educations and picked up some pommy habits. Americans on these jaunts hear him and copy him; so to them I'm "Reggie," too. I don't mind; life is full enough of real problems without stewing over trifles. The Raja explained:
"Suppose Mr. Black and his crew come back to the pre-K-T with us, set up camp, and then go back to Present. Then let Mr. Cohen bring the chamber back to pre-K-T and stay there. When time comes to leave, we shan't strike camp in our usual environmentally-careful way; just heave the small, valuable items like guns and instruments into the chamber and leave the tents, camp chairs, and so on where they are. The universities won't like the cost of wasting that stuff, but we shall simply tell them this is the only way the job can be done."
That's how it was decided. The sahibs still grumbled; but their protests were muffled when Ming decided to come along for the whole stretch, so at least they wouldn't have to cook and wash dishes. He explained:
"Mr. Rivers, some day I'll have my own restaurant, and I'll advertise myself as the world's greatest cook for dinosaurs and other extinct animals. You shoot 'em, I'll cook 'em. Besides, I want to try out that new set of kitchen hardware you bought for this time trip."
The first problem, Mr. Burgess, was in setting down the transition chamber at the right time—within a convenient interval before the Event, but not so far ahead that we should grow old while waiting for it. The dating for rocks from the time of the formation had narrowed down the time of the onset of the Event to about a year and a half. They were pretty sure it began in 65,971,453 B.C. or the year following. They couldn't get any closer, and certainly it was bloody marvelous to be able to pin it down to one part in tens of millions.
Neither would it do to overshoot our mark and land in the midst of the Event, which might cause the chamber and us inside it to go poof. It would also be unsatisfactory to land after it was over. We could witness the aftereffects but not to be able to tell what caused them, which was after all the main purpose of the project.
So we agreed that Cohen should pilot the chamber to somewhere in the low sixty-six millions, and then we should bring it forward in time by jumps of ten years, with Haupt setting up his instrument at each step to try for a dekko at Enyo—that is, assuming this asteroid or comet really existed. As we neared the date of the Event, we should shorten the jumps, first to a month each and then to a day.
The next question was, would the time we chose to settle in provide us with a suitable landing area? The chamber moves back and forth in past time but stays at the same latitude and longitude, and as the centuries fly past the land changes beneath you. For a part of the Cretaceous, the area around St. Louis, Missouri, was under an arm of the Kansas Sea, and the chamber's not equipped for landing in water. At other times, this spot might be the side of a cliff, or a mucky swamp where the passengers couldn't leave the chamber. It has telescoping legs, which allow it some latitude in terrain; but only within limits.
Since we couldn't move the chamber horizontally over the Earth's surface, we had to learn what we could from the sites we stopped at, whatever these turned out to be. The scientists—those who believe in an extraterrestrial Enyo, that is—have various ideas as to where it hit. The largest vote was for some place in the Caribbean Sea or the adjacent Yucatan peninsula. Others held out for India, and one group argued that the impact had caused Bering Sea.
There was no sense in fetching the entire crew and equipment back with us each time. Each step required Haupt to sit up all night with his face glued to his eyepiece, while he twiddled knobs and either the Raja or I stood behind him ready to shoot any carnosaur that thought we smelled edible.