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
Sorry, I'm digressing again. You can bloody well bet I didn't think any such thoughts while the super-lizard was rushing upon us.
A quick check showed that the magazine of the rifle was empty. I felt as that bloke Siegfried in the opera would have felt, as he stood outside the dragon's cave and cocked a snook at the dragon. Then, when Fafnir (I think that was its name) took him up on the challenge and came roaring out, the hero found he had left his sword back in camp.
Brenda threw a stone. It bounced off the dragon's head, but the animal seemed not to notice. On it came, hissing like the whistle of one of those steam-powered excursion boats they run on the Mississippi and some other places for tourists.
I stepped in front of Brenda, fumbling in my safari vest for a cartridge. It was a toss-up whether I could get a round into the chamber before the Megalania got its teeth into one of us; it was already gaping and showing the scarlet lining of its gullet. I remember thinking that, if bashing the brute over the head with the butt didn't stop it, perhaps I could jam the gun down its throat.
Then something whirled across the terrain with a swishing noise and struck the dragon in the flank with a boom. It was Malgaru's boomerang. The dragon staggered and swiveled round toward the source of the blow. At that instant, Cohen's Bratislava banged, once, twice, and thrice. The impacts knocked the dragon off its feet, writhing and thrashing in the bush. Three more shots, one from my rifle, which I finally got loaded, quieted the lizard down—though like other reptiles it continued to twitch and snap long after it was officially dead.
The boomerang had not done the dragon much harm, save perhaps to crack a rib. But without the distraction of that blow, the lizard would surely have fleshed its fangs in one or the other of the Riverses before anyone could shoot.
Cohen and Malgaru burst out of the bush and trotted up to see if we were safe. I said: "Where's Prendergast?"
"Over that way, taking some more shots," said Malgaru. "Told us to go ahead and he'd catch up. Here he comes now."
Prendergast, with the video camera balanced on his shoulder, stepped into view, burbling: "What a marvelous film sequence! This will make a bonzer story for my next issue!"
As he approached, I looked closely at Prendergast's safari vest, and found the pockets bulged suspiciously. I said:
"Mark, let me have a look at those pockets."
"No need for that," he replied airily. "Just spools of extra film."
"Then there's no harm in examining them." Smiling, I took a step toward him.
"No, sir!" he said, backing away. "I won't have you searching my person: that would be an invasion of privacy! I know my rights as an Australian citizen. Go get a warrant from a magistrate!"
"Okay," I said, trading looks with Cohen and Malgaru. "Since there won't be any magistrates for half a million years, we shall have to do it the hard way."
I started for Prendergast. He turned to run, but I brought him down with the kind of tackle they use in American football. Cohen and Malgaru grabbed his arms. In his pockets, as I suspected, I found the missing cartridges for my Mannlicher-Schönauer.
We hauled him back to the chamber, tied him up, and told Radich to return us to Present. There was one delay, when Brenda said:
"Darling, do you know what I'd really love as a souvenir of this trip? The hide of that dragon, to hang on our family-room wall, would make this honeymoon just perfect!
Well, that's the story, Mr. Saito. When we got back, there was the kind of stink you would expect. We told our story; Prendergast told his. He said my rifle had been fully loaded, but I got buck fever at the sight of the dragon and couldn't shoot. Then we three had ganged up to frame him in revenge for some of the things he had written in his magazine. Since Cohen's, Malgaru's, and my stories tallied, Prendergast's version failed to convince. Havens fired him.
The Australian union of time-chamber employees struck to try to force Doctor Havens to take Prendergast back. Unions have long been a major force in Australia, you know; and these were loyally standing up for a fellow employee regardless of what he had done. Algy Malgaru said with a broad grin:
"What do you expect, Reg? That's simple tribalism, among people who think themselves superior to us Abos because they've evolved beyond that sort of thing."
After a couple of months, the dispute was compromised by the chamber's paying Prendergast some back salary instead of re-hiring him. Prendergast dropped out of sight, and I have no idea of where he is now.
But if you would care to visit us, I'll show you the hide of a fine Megalania, spread out on our wall. Of course the tail is bent around, because we have no rooms with walls fifteen meters long!
Why did Prendergast carry on this one-sided feud? Damned if I know, Mr. Saito. I'm no shrink; but if I had to guess, I should say it was simple jealousy, allowed to flower into an obsession. I'm no world shaker; but I have been, and done, and seen a lot of things that I daresay Prendergast wishes he had been and done and seen. Because he is younger than I, and because the paradox tabu stops transition chambers from affecting human history, there is no way he could go back in time a little way and get into the time-safari business ahead of me.
No, I have no idea of how he knew there was a cave in that slope, with a Megalania lurking in it. Perhaps he had made an unauthorized time trip just before the one we made—say, within a year of our safari. That's dangerous, because a slight miscalculation can throw you into a paradox, and then—bam! you've had it. He must have known the risk but have hated me with sufficient venom to have taken the chance. l£ that's what the silly galah did, he got away with it on his time trip, but in the long run he lost.
Author's Afterword
In 1954, I read a story by a colleague, telling of a hunt for dinosaurs by time machine. I had been a dinosaur buff since the First World, or Kaiserian, War, when my parents gave me a copy of the 1912 edition of The Book of Knowledge. This included a page of appallingly inaccurate and wretchedly-drawn pictures of prehistoric life: a mammoth, a mastodon, several dinosaurs, and other Mesozoic reptiles. Hooked, I read everything paleontological I could find and haunted the fourth floor of the American Museum of Natural History, at 77th Street and Central Park West, New York, where fossil skeletons were displayed.
Fate denied me the lifetime role of paleontologist; but I still thought I saw egregious scientific errors in my colleague's story. These irked me to the point of writing my own story of dinosaur hunting by time machine, "A Gun for Dinosaur," trying to show how it should be done.
Comes 1990; Bob Silverberg asked me to write a dinosaur story for his proposed anthology, published in 1991 as The Ultimate Dinosaur. Feeling that Reginald Rivers ought to have many good tales to tell besides "A Gun for Dinosaur," I wrote "Crocamander Quest" for Bob.
Then, finding myself between books, I wrote five more Reggie Rivers reminiscences. I also edited "A Gun for Dinosaur" to bring it into line with what I think I have learned in the last thirty-seven years. For instance, I assume that by the time of these tales, in the 21st century, the metric system, already in force in Reggie's native Australia, will also have been generally adopted in the backward United States.
L. Sprague de Camp
Piano, Texas
August 1991
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