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
"Hurry up, you stupid male! Close up!"
With his hand out, Hockersmith walked up to Delarue. "Fifty bucks, please!"
"Damned coincidence!" grumbled Delarue. But he paid.
Did I think our ghost dance had anything to do with the herd's appearance? Not really; but I try to keep an open mind in such matters. There is so much that human beings don't yet understand.
It did not seem practical to go after the herd that night. We got up extra early next morning and set out with our helpers and equipment. Hockersmith carried not only his gun but also a big bag of apples hanging round his neck. He explained:
"In my experience, you can train almost any animal of the smarter kinds, such as elephant or bear, to come for a free handout. The trouble starts when you run out of goodies. Then the animal may decide to take you apart to see where you've got the rest of the stuff hidden."
Trailing the herd presented no problem. I am not the trailsman that some black trackers are down-under. Some claim these Native Australians can track an animal across bare rock. I don't believe that; but what they can do is remarkable enough. However, between the big, round footprints wherever the soil was a little soft, and the droppings, following that herd needed no Native Australians. We could tell when we came near the herd by the sound of breaking branches.
We scouted round to get up-wind and stole up on them. Everybody was told to keep quiet. Hockersmith warned that if startled, the animals might charge, forcing us to slaughter them, or all run off along their migration route and not be seen again in this area for a year.
"All right, Joe," I said. "Your turn."
"Which one do you want?" asked Hockersmith.
"That young bull," said I, pointing to an animal not quite old enough to have gone off on its own yet. It stood about two meters at the shoulder, with thick male-mastodon tusks only about half as long as those of the herd bull, and a coat of golden-brown fur like that on the mammoth that Delarue had bothered. I asked:
"Where is the big bull now?"
"Don't see him," murmured Hockersmith. "Ah, here he comes. Seems to have something on his mind."
Out from behind some trees came a young female mastodon and, right behind her, the big bull. This last obviously had something on his mind, for his huge penis, the size of a big man's arm with the fist clenched, was fully extended. It seemed, though, that his lady love did not want any just now. After her came the bull with squeaking sounds, which I suppose were mastodontic endearments. She single-footed away fast, weaving among the trees and other members of the herd with the bull behind her. Soon the two passed out of sight, so we never did learn whether the bull consummated his passion.
It took self-control not to burst out laughing. In fact, young Delarue did emit a sputter until the Raja shushed him.
"Okay, here goes!" said Hockersmith.
He stole in Red Indian style towards the young bull I had pointed out. When there was nothing between him and the juvenile male but a big bush, he took an apple from his bag and tossed it. It bounced off the flank of the mastodon, which was munching a shrub it had uprooted. The mastodon jerked up its head and turned this way and that to see what had disturbed it.
Hockersmith tossed another apple, so that it landed on the ground a couple of meters from the mastodon's head, in the direction of the pallet.
The mastodon stood weaving this way and that and sniffing in all directions. It located the second apple, walked to it, and ate it. This brought it in sight of Joe Hockersmith. It gave him a suspicious stare but otherwise followed the trail of apples that Hockersmith was laying down by tossing them ahead of the beast.
An hour of this brought us to the canvas pallet. When, by the use of more apples, Hockersmith had maneuvered all four of the mastodon's feet on the canvas, he slipped a tranquilizer charge into his rifle and fired. Tranquilizers nowadays work much faster than those of the last century, when this method of immobilizing animals began. The mastodon squealed, gave a prodigious yawn, and sank down on the canvas. I called the camp on my communicator and told Beauregard to start the winch.
The rest of that capture was routine. With the help of the winch, we got the mastodon, still tranquilized, into the chamber. The transition back to Present went off without a hitch, save that the beast crapped on the floor. This led Cohen to put on one of his expositions of high-class cursing.
Thank Aljira that Prochaska's transition chamber was on the ground floor of its building! Otherwise I don't know how we should ever have got a couple of tons of mastodon down a flight of stairs and round corners. With all members of the safari pulling and heaving on the canvas, we got the tranquilized beast to the exit. By detaching the winch from inside the chamber and rigging it with extension cords in our timber pen, we gave the winch a clear shot at hauling the mastodon into the inclosure.
During a break in this chore, Norman Blackelk telephoned Redintegration headquarters and told them to send a lorry to pick up their specimen. He also told them to bring a few hundred kilos of lettuce and cabbages to feed the creature on its way to California.
The lorry took a week to reach us. Meanwhile we got better acquainted with the animal, for which someone suggested the name 'Lancelot.' Once a day we opened his cage door to shove in a hundred-kilo bundle of hay and a few cabbages. Lancelot gobbled the cabbages but did not much like hay. He let the bundle sit for hours before starting to eat it. Delarue explained that, while the mastodon would eat anything vegetable, it was really more of a browser than a grazer. What he would really have liked was an equal weight of cuttings from the branch ends of trees and bushes; but we lacked the time to arrange for that.
When the cage door was opened, Lancelot backed away, snorting and grumbling. If I could sum up his attitude towards us, I should call it 'surly,' although I know better than to attribute human emotions and attitudes to an animal of another species. The only one for whom Lancelot seemed to have slightly warmer feelings was Joe Hockersmith. Every day he came to the cage with a couple of apples, which Lancelot learned to take from Hockersmith's outstretched hand. When Hockersmith went away, you could see regret in the mastodon's stance, with drooping head, trunk, and eyelids.
At last the lorry arrived. It was not a semi-trailer rig but a one-piece ten-wheeler. Still, its body was just about the dimensions of the transition chamber, so there should be no problem with fitting Lancelot into it.
My crew wrestled the timber ramp into place outside the door of the cage, and the driver backed the lorry up against its high end. At its rear, the lorry had a pair of swinging doors. When closed, they were secured by a pair of big vertical bolts, running from top to bottom. When the lorry was buttoned up, these bolts were held down by a couple of hinged latches, which in turn were secured by padlocks.
Lancelot plainly did not like the looks of the lorry. He backed into the farthest corner of his pen and, whenever one of us tried to coax him to climb the ramp into the lorry, he trumpeted and swiped at us with his trunk and tusks.
"Think we'll have to tranquilize him again?" said Blackelk.
"I hope not," I said. "He's had so much of that already that it might impair his health."
"Let me try," said Hockersmith. He came back soon with the bag of apples round his neck.