by David Drake
Vickers was sucking deep breaths. His face and tunic front were covered with blood. He put the shotgun on safe and cocked an arm behind him to help him rise.
“No, no,” said the dark-haired woman, touching the guide’s shoulder with a restraining hand. “Just wait—”
Vickers lurched upright into a sitting position. “I’m all right,” he wheezed. Then, “It was my fault. It was all my fault.”
“The buckle,” said Nilson. “Look at your pack buckle.” The Norwegian’s composure was returning. His left index finger touched one strap of the pack Vickers had been wearing to hold small specimens. The steel buckle was warped like foil against its padding where it had blocked the thrust of the sabertooth’s fang. The brushing contact of Nilson’s finger caused pain to stab Vickers.
“Damn,” muttered the older guide as Linda Weil helped him off with the empty pack and unbuttoned his tunic. The blood that sprayed Vickers was the cat’s, but he knew from the pain that he might well have a cracked rib of his own. The female paleontologist’s fingers were cool and expert. She had been chosen as an on-site investigator for the Time Intrusion Project as much for her three years of medical school as for her excellent series of digs in the Sinai with a University of Chicago team.
A square mark larger than the buckle’s edges was stamped in white above Vickers’ left nipple. “I don’t hear anything grating,” Weil said. “We’ll strap it. Maybe when we get back to Tel Aviv they’ll want to drain the hematoma.”
“It was waiting for me like I was a goddamn antelope,” Vickers said. He was a stocky man of thirty-five who usually looked as calm as a fireplug. Now he rubbed the back of his hand over the sockets of his pale eyes, smearing the splotches of tacky blood. “Holgar,” he said, “I wasn’t ready. I wouldn’t have had a snowball’s chance in hell except for you.”
“Holgar, we’ll want the skull and limbs of this macheirodont when you have a chance,” said Linda Weil, pointing toward the sabertooth as she stood. She looked back at Vickers before she continued, “And frankly, I think that if anyone’s error can be said to have led to this—problem, near disaster—it was mine. Both of you are used to animals that’ve had hundreds of thousands of years to learn to fear man. That’s not the case here. As you said, Henry, we’re just meat on the hoof so far as the bigger carnivores here are concerned. I’m the one who should have realized that.”
Vickers sighed and stood up carefully. He walked over to the spur-legged partridge, ten feet away where he had dropped it when the cat struck. Raising the heavy bird, he gestured with it to Weil. “It’s a francolin like the one we got in the snare two days ago,” he said. “I thought I’d roast it for dinner instead of keeping it for a specimen.”
The dark-haired paleontologist nodded back. “After I get you bandaged,” she agreed. “I think we could all do with a meal and a chance to relax.”
# # #
Hyenas had already begun to call in the sullen dusk. Time spent in the African bush gave the ugly, rhythmic laughter a homely sound to the pair of guides, but Linda Weil shuddered with distaste.
Holgar Nilson laughed. He patted the paleontologist on the thigh with a greasy hand. “They are only predators like ourselves,” he said. “Perhaps we should invite them to join us for dinner one night, yes? We have so much in common.”
Weil switched the francolin drumstick to her left hand and squeezed Nilson against her thigh with her right. “I don’t question their right to exist,” the woman said. “It’s just that I don’t like them.” She frowned, scientist again. “We could use a specimen, though. There’s a good enough series of hyena fossils known Topside that fresh examples ought to be more datable than most of what we’ve gathered.”
“You know,” said Vickers, speaking in a conscious effort to break out of the shell of depression that surrounded him, “I’ve never quite understood what use the specimens we bring back were going to be. For dating, that is. I mean, taking radiation levels from the igneous rocks should give them the time within a few thousand years. And if I understand the Zeiss—” he gestured with his thumb—“its photographs ought to be down to the minute when they’re compared to computer models of star and planet positions.”
The 200mm reflector bolted to the intrusion vehicle was lost in the darkness, as was the normal purr of the motor drive that rotated it by microns along the plane of the ecliptic. As Vickers gestured, the mechanism gave one of its rare clicks, signaling the end of an exposure as the telescope reset itself to lock on another portion of sky. The click might have been that of a grenade arming for the level of response it drew from Holgar Nilson, though the younger guide kept the edges of his anger sheathed in bluff camaraderie. “Come, come,” he said, “machines fail. Anyway, the sky could have been overcast for months, for years, for all they knew Topside. And for the rock dating to work, they must compare the samples we bring back with samples from the same rock a million years in the future. How are they to be sure of that, hey? When they only think so far we are inserted into the same place, with latitude and longitude changing as the continents move.”
Vickers nodded, realizing why his partner reacted so defensively. “Sure,” he said, “and the more cross-checks, the better. And I suppose the astronomical data is going to be easier to correlate if they’ve got a fair notion of where to start.”
“Besides,” said Linda Weil harshly, “I don’t think anyone quite realized how useless anything I came back with would be for the intended purpose. Oh, it’ll have use—we’ve enormously expanded human knowledge of Pliocene life-forms, but as you say, Henry, for dating—”
She paused, looking out over the twilit hills. They had been fortunate in that their intrusion vehicle, an angular block of plates and girders, had been inserted onto high ground. During daylight they had a good view over the brush and acacias, the short grass and the beasts that lived there. Now the shadows of the trees and outcrops had merged with the greater shadow of the horizon, and the landscape was melding into a velvet blur. “The whole problem,” Weil said toward the darkness, “is that we’ve got an embarrassment of riches. Before—when I was Topside—a femur was as much as you were likely to get to identify an animal, and a complete skull was a treasure. We decided what the prehistoric biomass looked like by reconstructing a few fragments here, a few fragments there . . .” She chuckled ruefully and looked back at her male companions. “And here we are, in the middle of thousands and thousands of animals, somewhere in the past I’ve been studying for years . . . and I’m nowhere near being able to accurately place the time into which we’ve been inserted, the way I’ve been hired to do—because I can’t swear that a single species is one that we ‘know’ from fossils. I feel as if I’ve spent my working life throwing darts at a map and convincing myself that I’ve travelled to the places the darts hit.”
“Well, you’ve travelled here, for certain,” said the blond man, “and I at least am glad of it.” He raised his hand to Weil’s shoulder and tried to guide the woman closer to him for a kiss.
“Holgar . . .” the woman objected in a low voice, leaning free of the big hand’s pressure.
“I’ll get a couple hyenas tomorrow,” Vickers said morosely. The fire he stared at glinted from his face where grease from the bird smeared him. “Unless I screw up again, at least. Christ, Holgar, maybe I’d have been better off if you were a second slower with your shot. Hunting’s about the one thing I’d decided I could handle. If I’m no good for that either, then I may as well be a cat’s dinner.” Unwatched, the shorter guide’s hands turned and turned again the section of francolin ribs from which he had gnawed only half the flesh.
Nilson looked disconcerted. He lowered his hand from the paleontologist’s back and resumed attacking his meal. Absently, Vickers wished that one of the three of them had had the skill to make gravy to go with the mashed potatoes, which were freeze-dried and reconstituted.
“Ah, Henry,” said Linda Weil, “I think that’s just shock talking. You aren’t incompetent b
ecause of one mistake—it’s the mistakes that make us human. The planning for this, this expedition, was mostly yours; and everything’s gone very well. Except that all I can really say about the time we’re at is that we’re a great deal farther back than the round million years they intended to send us.”
“You see, Henry,” Nilson said, “what you need is a wife.” The Norwegian gestured with the fork he had just cleared of its load of canned peas. “You have no calm center to your life. Wherever I go, I know that my Mary is there in Pretoria, my children are growing—Oskar, Olaf, and little Kristin . . . do you see? That is what you need.”
Vickers looked at the bigger man. Nilson had jarred him out of his depression as Linda Weil had been unable to do with her encouragement. The paleontologist’s complexion was dark, but it was no trick of the firelight that led Vickers to see a blush on her face. She looked down at her hands. “Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong places,” Vickers said dryly. “Your wife is British, if I remember?”
Nilson nodded vigorously as he chewed another mouthful of peas.
“Both of mine were Americans,” the older guide said. “Maybe that’s where I went wrong.” He turned his face toward the night. His profile was as sharp and thin as a half-worn knife. “The sporting goods store I tried to manage was in Duluth,” he continued, “and the ranch was in Rhodesia. But I could hunt, that I could do. Well.” He looked at Weil again. In a normal voice he added, “Well, I still can. I’ll get you a hyena in the morning.”
“Actually,” said Weil, visibly glad of the change of subject, “what concerns me more is that something’s raiding our box traps. Several of those to the west had the lids sprung when I checked them this morning. The rest were empty. Probably was a hyena; I don’t think a mongoose would be strong enough. But apart from being interested in whatever’s doing it, I’d like to have the damage stopped.”
“We could lay a sensor from the intrusion alarm under one of the traps,” Holgar said. His enthusiasm rang a little false. It was a reaction to the embarrassment he finally had realized that his earlier comment had caused. “Sleep close with the shotgun.”
“I’ve got a three-bead night sight on the Garand,” Vickers said, the problem reflecting his mind away from the depression that had been smothering him. “I can sandbag the gun and the spotlight a hundred yards away. That ought to be far enough we won’t disturb whatever it is.” He frowned and turned to Linda Weil. “Thing is, I can’t make sure of something at night unless I give it a head shot or use soft points that’ll blow the body apart if it’s small. What’s your preference?”
The paleontologist waved the question away. “Save the skull if you can,” she said. “But—we’ve just seen how dangerous the predators here—now, that is—can be. Are you going to disconnect the warning system around us?”
“Just move one pick-up,” Nilson said with a laugh. His left fingertips caressed Weil’s cheek playfully. “Otherwise you might get a closer and sooner view of a hyena than you expected, no? And what a waste that would be.”
Vickers noticed that his hands were still trembling. Just as well the administrators Topside hadn’t permitted any liquor among the supplies, he thought. Though usually it wouldn’t have mattered to him one way or the other. “It’s all right,” he said aloud. “I probably won’t be sleeping much tonight anyway. Holgar, let’s rig something now while there’s still enough daylight to work with.”
They were forced to finish moving and resetting the nearest of the traps by lamplight after all. When the door mechanism was cocked and the trigger baited with nuts and fruit, Vickers made his own preparations. His rifle was an Ml Garand, modified by a Marine armorer to accept twenty-round BAR magazines. He rested it on a sand-filled pair of his own trousers, its sights aligned on a point just above the center of the trap. The variable-aperture spotlight was set for a pencil beam and also aimed at the trap. The light should freeze the trap robber long enough for Vickers to put a soft-nosed .30-’06 bullet through its chest.
Around two am the alarm rang. It was a hyrax which had blundered into the trap in search of the nuts. The Hyracoidea had been driven to holes and the night by the more efficient grazing animals who followed their family’s Oligocene peak. The little creature in the trap wiggled its whiskers against the electric glare. Vickers switched off the spotlight, hoping the live bait would bring the robber shortly. But to his own surprise, he managed to fall asleep and it was dawn rather than the intrusion alarm that awakened him the second time.
Vickers’ neck was stiff and his feet were cold. A sheen of dew overlay his nylon parka and the fluorocarbon finish of his rifle’s metal surfaces. The fire was dead. Hot coffee was the only reason to kindle another fire: the Sun would be comfortably warm in an hour, a hammer in three. But hot coffee was a good enough reason, God knew, and a fire would be the second priority.
The flap of the tent which Linda Weil shared with Nilson opened while Vickers was still wiping the Garand with an oily rag. It was a habit ingrained in the hunter before steel could be protected by space-age polymers. Caring for the rifle which kept him alive was still useful as a ritual even if it were no longer a practical necessity.
“No luck?” asked Weil as she pulled on her jacket in the open air.
“Well, there’s a hyrax,” Vickers replied. “I guess that’s to the good. I was about to put on a pot of—”
The intrusion alarm pinged. The hunter looked by training at the display panel, even though most of the sensor locations encircling the camp were in plain sight in the daytime. The light indicating the trap sensor was pulsing. When Vickers flicked his eyes downhill toward the trap, the paleontologist’s breath had already drawn in.
The guide rolled silently into a prone position, laying his rifle back across the makeshift sandbag. He looked over but not through the Garand’s sights, and his index finger was not on the trigger. Weil was too unfamiliar with guns to appreciate the niceties which differentiate preparations from imminent slaughter. She snatched at Vickers’ shoulder and hissed, “Don’t shoot!”
The guide half-turned and touched Weil’s lips with the fingertips of his left hand. “Are they chimps?” he mouthed, exaggerated lip movements making up for the near soundlessness of his question. “They don’t look quite right.”
“They’re not chimps,” Weil replied as quietly. “My God, they’re not.”
The tent passed Holgar Nilson with a muted rustle and no other sign. When the intrusion alarm rang, the Norwegian had wasted no time on dressing. Neither of the others looked around. They had set the trap where neither trees nor outcropping rocks interfered with the vantage, and where most of the mesh box itself was clear of the grass. The blade tips brushed the calves of the three beasts around the trap now. They were hairy enough for chimpanzees, and they were only slightly taller than chimps standing on their hind legs; but these creatures stood as a matter of course, and they walked erect instead of knuckling about on their long forearms like apes.
Vickers uncapped his binoculars and focused them. The slight breeze was from the trap toward the humans up the slope. The beasts did not seem to be aware they were being watched. Their attention was directed toward the trap and its contents.
The hyrax was squealing in high-pitched terror now. The top of the trap was hinged and pegged closed so that it could be baited and emptied without reaching through the heavily sprung endgate. The traps that had been raided the day before had simply been torn apart. This one—
The tallest of the—hominids, it didn’t mean human, the word was already in all their minds—the tallest of the hominids was a trifle under five feet. His scalp was marked by a streak of blond, almost white, fur that set him apart from his solidly dark companions. He was fumbling at the latch. Without speaking, Vickers handed the binoculars to Linda Weil.
“My God,” she whispered. “He’s learned to open it.”
The hyrax leaped as the lid swung up, but the hominid on that side was too quick. A hand caught the little beast
in mid-air and snatched it upward. The hominid’s teeth were long and startlingly white against the black lips. They snapped on the hyrax’s neck, ending the squeals with a click.
The other black-furred hominid growled audibly and tried to grab the hyrax. The white-flashed leader in the middle struck him with an open hand. As the follower sprang back yelping, the leader turned on the one holding the hyrax. Instead of trying to seize the prey directly as the lesser hominid had done, the leader spread his arms wide and burst into angry chattering. His chest was fully expanded and he gained several inches of height by rising onto the balls of his feet.
The smaller hominid’s face was toward the watchers. They saw his teeth bare as he snarled back, but the defiance was momentary and itself accompanied by a cringing away from the leader. He dropped the hyrax as if he had forgotten it, turning sideways as he did so. As if there were something in the empty air, the follower began to snap and chitter while the leader picked up the hyrax. The mime continued until the white-flashed hominid gave a satisfied grunt and began stalking off northward, away from the human camp. The other hominids followed, a few yards to either side of the leader and perhaps a pace behind. The posture of all three was slightly stooped, but they walked without any suggestion of bow-leggedness and their forelimbs did not touch the ground. The leader held the hyrax by its neck. Not even the binoculars could detail the position of the hominid’s thumb to the paleontologist.
“That’s amazing,” said Holgar Nilson. He had dressed while watching the scene around the trap. Now he was lacing his boots. “They didn’t simply devour it.”