by David Drake
It was as if the sabertooth had stepped into a mine field, and the mines were alive. Vickers had counted six adult males in the hominid troop. The cat’s leap after the first had carried it into the midst of the other five. Sparse as the grass and brush had seemed, it had served to cloak the ambush not only from the humans but also from the sabertooth. Murderously intent on its running prey, the cat’s upper canines were bared and its claws were unsheathed to sweep its victim in. A pair of hominids leaped from either side like the jaws of a trap closing. If their own fangs were poor weapons in comparison to those of the 600-pound carnivore, then the blocks of stone they carried in their fists were impressive weapons by any standard. They smashed like sledge hammers, driven by the strength of the long arms.
Whatever might have come of the tumbling kaleidoscope, it should have involved the death of the hominid acting as bait. The cat’s paws were spread, certain to catch and rend even if reflex did not also flesh the long fangs an instant later. The bait, the Judas goat, made one last jump that would not have carried him free had not the white-flashed leader risen behind the sabertooth and seized the cat’s rigid tail.
The hominid’s mass could no more have stopped the flying cat directly than it could have stopped a moving car; but 120 pounds applied to a steering wheel can assuredly affect a car’s direction. The cat’s hindquarters swung outward with the impact. Mindless as a servo-mechanism, the same instinct that would have spun the cat upright in a fall reacted to counter the torque. The claws twisted away from their target. The sabertooth landed on the ground harmlessly, and the thud of its weight was overlaid by the sharper sound of stones mauling its ribs and skull.
The cat had charged silently. Now it screeched on a rising note and slashed to either side. Hominids sprang away. This was not the blind panic of the previous day. Rather, they were retracting themselves as a rifle’s bolt retracts to chamber another round. The leader still gripped the base of the cat’s tail, snarling with a fury the more chilling for the fact it was not mindless. When the sabertooth tried to flex double to reach its slender tormentor, the hominid that had acted as bait smashed a rock against the base of the cat’s skull.
The sabertooth would have run then, but its left hip joint was only shards of bone. Escape was no longer an option. The cat tried to leap and failed in a flurry of limbs. Hominids piled onto the flailing body. One of the attackers was flung high in the air, slashes on its chest filling with blood even as the creature spun. That was probably the last conscious action the carnivore took. All that Vickers could see for the next several minutes was a montage of stone-tipped arms rising and falling with a mechanical certainty. They made a sound on impact like that of mattocks digging a grave in frozen soil.
“God,” whispered the hunter.
Vickers had seen baboons kill a leopard, and he knew of well-enough attested instances of dholes, the red hunting dogs of India, killing tigers that had tried to drive them off their prey. The calculated precision of what he had just watched impressed Vickers in a way that the use of stones as weapons had not, however.
“Oh, I’ve died and gone to heaven,” breathed the paleontologist. “This is incredible. It’s just incredible.”
Vickers shivered. He peered through his binoculars but kept a firm grip on the rifle with his right hand. He was checking, not wholly consciously, to make sure he could account for all six males of the troop. He had sometimes felt a similar discomfort in baboon country, though never so intense. “I don’t think,” he said carefully, “that we’d better track, ah, these further today. They’re apt to act, ah, unpredictably. Used to be I thought if worst came to worst and they rushed us, one shot’d stop them. Right now, I don’t know that would be a good idea.”
Weil looked at the guide’s thin profile, measuring his mind with her eyes. “All right,” she said at last, “we’ll go back for now instead of seeing where they”—she nodded—“head. We’ll see what Holgar has found. But it all depends on Holgar.”
“I hope to God you’re right,” muttered Vickers as he began the task of backing away without arousing the hominids’ attention. They were hooting cheerfully around the machairodont, surely dead by now. The furry arms still rose and fell.
The closest human-sized cover was 200 yards from the locust trees but that was close enough. Nilson had to admit that his senior had done a masterful job of arranging the trap. The section of netting lay flat. Each pair of corner ropes was slanted across the net to a bent branch on the other side. When the trigger peg was pulled out to release the branches, the net would be snatched upward and rolled shut simultaneously—while still under enough unreleased tension to prevent anything within from escaping unaided. The release line itself led to a patch of brush on a rocky outcrop. It would become unbearably hot by ten in the morning, but by then the hominids should have visited the grove if they were coming at all.
Nilson desperately hoped that the troop had completely evacuated the region in the aftermath of the sabertooth’s attack.
The Norwegian morosely fingered the handle of doweling around which Vickers had clamped the release line. Anyone else would have used nylon cord for the line; Vickers had disconnected the braided steel cable from the winch to use instead. The nylon could easily have taken the strain, but it would have stretched considerably over the distance when Nilson pulled on it. That could be enough warning to send the hominids scurrying away before the trap released. The steel would require only a single sharp jerk with enough muscle in it to overcome the line’s dead weight.
Nilson studied the watercourse through his binoculars, for want of anything better to do at the moment. A half-squadron of hipparions dashed up to the bank, paused, and dashed away again without actually touching the water. The nervous horses were ignored by the score or so of antelopes already drinking. From their size and markings they appeared to be impalas; but if so, the species was different enough from those Topside for the females as well as the males to bear horns. There was no sign of hominids.
The younger guide had considered failing to spring the trap or deliberately botching the operation—perhaps managing to frighten them away permanently without capturing one. But even though this was Holgar Nilson’s first expedition with Vickers as his partner, he knew already what result such sabotage would bring. If Vickers found the trap had been released at the wrong time, or that it had not been released when there was sign in the grove that hominids had been present . . . well, the senior guide was accurate out to 500 meters with his Garand. There was not the slightest chance that he would not shoot a hominid if he thought Nilson had tried to call his bluff.
The half-light had become true dawn. Even the gray of the bush pig’s hide was a color rather than a shade. The sow watched as her piglets drank and stamped at the edge of the water, light glinting on the spikes of her tusks.
Something was moving in the grove.
Even before he shifted his glasses, Nilson knew that the hominids had arrived as he had feared they would. There were three of them, all females. Two were fully adult, each carrying a nursing infant. The third was shorter and slighter, the adolescent who had received the infant from the tiger’s victim. Now she was holding a large leaf or a swatch of hide. Fascinated, Nilson forgot for a moment why he was stationed there, forgot also his fear and anger at the situation.
The adult hominids were gathering locust pods from the ground. When each had a handful, she dropped it onto the makeshift platter which the adolescent carried.
Nilson swore under his breath. An incipient basket was a more frightening concept to him than was an incipient axe. They were men, they were ancestors of him and of all the billions of other humans living Topside, who had been living Topside before the intrusion team started meddling . . .
One of the adults moved off to the left, hunched over and momentarily hidden by bushes. The other adult chittered happily. Ignoring the thorns, she began to climb the trunk of one of the trees that armed the trap.
The trap. The adolescent
was holding her bundle in one hand and with the other hand was plucking curiously at the nylon meshes on which she stood. Nilson touched the release handle. He did not pull it. Then he had a vision of the hominid as she would look through the sights of Henry Vickers’ rifle, the front blade bisecting her chest and the whole head and torso framed by the ring of the rear aperture. Nilson jerked the line.
The whittled peg flipped from its socket and the two anchor lines slashed against the sky. Their twang and the victim’s shriek of alarm were simultaneous as the net looped crosswise in the air. It hung between the branches, humming like a fly ambushed and held by a jumping spider.
The two adult hominids and their infant burdens disappeared screaming like children near a lightning strike. The Norwegian hunter could not be sure that the one who had been climbing had not been flung from her perch and killed when the trap sprung. There was no time to worry about that now. Snatching up his Mauser and the sled, Nilson began running through the grass toward the grove. Antelope exploded from the water. Hipparions joined the rout with less grace but a certain heavy-footed majesty.
Nilson pounded into the grove, panting as much from nerves as from the 200 yards he had run. The net was pulled tight enough to bulge the meshes around the captive, though not so tight that it choked off the hominid’s helpless bleats. Locust pods spilled from a horsehide apron were scattered on the ground beneath the trap.
“Sweet Jesus,” the guide muttered. “Oh, my children, my Mary.”
Vickers had planned a safe method of completing the capture single-handedly as well. It proved as effective in practice as the trap itself had. The hominid hung six feet in the air, only eye height for the Norwegian. He flung a second square of netting over the taut roll. Then, through the edges hanging low enough to avoid the captive’s teeth and claws, he wove a cord back and forth in a loose running seam. When Nilson had reached the hominid’s feet, he pulled the cord and tightened the outer net over the inner one like cross-wrapped sheets. As soon as he tied off the lace, the guide had a bundle which the captive within could not escape even after the tension of the branches was released. Holding the head end of the bundle with his left hand, Nilson cut the anchor cords one at a time, dampening the backlash and ultimately supporting the hominid’s weight with his own unaided strength. She mewed and twisted within the layers of net, baring her teeth but unable to sink them into the Norwegian’s arm.
Nilson found it easier to think of the creature as a beast now than it had been when he watched her moving freely at a distance. She was small, and small without the softness of a human child of the same size. Her jaw was prominent, her forehead receding, and her nose little more than the bare nostrils of a chimpanzee. Most of all, the covering of coarse brown fur robbed the captive of her humanity.
And the fur was as specious an indicator as the rest of them, which the guide knew full well. The hominid had no more hair than Nilson did himself. Only the fact that the body hairs of later-evolved hominids were short and transparent by comparison to those of the captive permitted Nilson to pretend the captive was inhuman. That did not matter. The fact that Nilson could pretend to be dealing with a beast and not an ancestor was the only thing that allowed him to do what circumstances forced him to do.
The big man set his captive down gently. With practiced speed, he extended the titanium frame of the sled and locked its members into place. He picked up the hominid again, lifting her off the ground one-handed instead of dragging her as a smaller and weaker man would have had to do. The sled had integral tie-downs with which he fastened his burden securely despite her squirming. It would be to no one’s benefit for her to break halfway loose and injure herself. The best Nilson could hope for now was that Weil would examine the hominid briefly and release her. Unharmed, the creature could go on about whatever business she would have accomplished had the time intrusion not occurred.
The guide settled his slung rifle and began trudging toward camp at a pace that would not upset the sled on the irregular ground. As a matter of course, he glanced around frequently to be sure that he was not being stalked by a predator. He paid no particular attention to the brush surrounding the locust grove, however.
Nilson would have had to look very carefully indeed to see the glint of bright eyes hidden there. The eyes followed him and the captive hominid step by step toward his camp.
# # #
“I’ll put a kettle of water on and do the dishes,” Henry Vickers said. “No need for you two to worry about it.”
The firelight brought out attractive bronze highlights in Linda Weil’s dark hair. It softened the lines of her face as well. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said with a comfortable smile. “We can carry them Topside dirty and let somebody there worry about them.”
Both men turned and stared silently at the beaming paleontologist. The hominid whimpered outside the circle of firelight. She was in a cage, the largest one available but still meant for considerably smaller specimens. Weil ignored the sound. She turned to Holgar Nilson who stared glumly at his hands. “Holgar,” she said, “you did a great job today. I know how much you hated doing it, but you did it splendidly, professionally, anyway. Because of that, we’re able to return Topside first thing tomorrow and not—not interfere with the creatures living here any further.”
Nilson looked up slowly. His face was as doubtful as that of a political prisoner who has just been informed that the revolution has made him president. “Do you mean,” he asked carefully, “that you’re already done examining, ah, it?” A quirk of his head indicated the cage at which Nilson had refused to look ever since he had transferred his captive to it.
The paleontologist gave a brief headshake, a tightening around her eyes showing that she was aware of what was about to happen. “No,” she said, “we’ll carry the specimen back with us Topside. The sort of testing necessary will take years.”
“No,” said the Norwegian flatly. Then he cried, “God in heaven, no! Are you mad? Henry”—turning to the senior guide who would not look at him, stretching out both hands to Vickers as if he were the last hope of a drowning man—“you cannot permit her to do this, will you?”
“Look, one cull from a troop,” muttered Vickers to his hands. “Not even breeding age . . .”
Nilson’s eyes were red with rage and the firelight. “I—” he began, but the alarm pinged and cut off even his fury.
Both men focused on the panel, their hands snatching up their rifles. Linda Weil was trying to place the source of the sound. The indicator for Sensor Five, northeast of the camp, was pulsing. From the dial, the intruder was of small to medium size: an impala, say—or a hyena.
The guides exchanged glances. The Norwegian shifted his rifle to a one-hand hold, its butt socketed on his hip. He picked up the spotlight. Vickers leveled the Garand, leaning into it with all the slack in the trigger taken up. He nodded. Nilson flicked on the light and slashed its narrow beam across the arc the sensor reported. Nearby bushes flashed white as the spot touched them; further out, only shadows pivoted about the beam. According to the sensor, the intruder was still there, 150 meters out in the night. It did not raise its eyes to give a pair of red aiming points when the light touched them.
“Turn it out,” Vickers whispered across the breech of his rifle.
After-effects of the fierce white beam shrank the firelit circle to a glow that scarcely cast the men’s shadows toward the bush. The sensor needle quivered as the intruder moved. Vickers fired into the night.
The crack of the .30-’06 made Weil scream in surprise. The muzzle flash was a red ball, momentary but as intense as a bath in acid. Chips of jacket metal spun burning into the night like tiny signal rockets. The sensor jolted, then slipped back to rest position as the intruder bounded back into darkness.
“What was it?” Linda Weil demanded. Her palms were clamped to her ears as if to squeeze the ringing from the drums.
“I don’t care so long as it’s gone,” Vickers said, slowly
lowering the Garand. “I’ve seen a man after a hyena dragged him out of his tent by the face.”
“The world might be better off if we were killed here,” said Holgar Nilson bitterly.
Vickers looked at the younger man. He did not speak. Nilson spat on the fire. “I am very tired now,” he said. “I will sleep.” He nodded toward the intrusion vehicle, its supporting beams sunk to knee- height in the ground. The metal glowed with a soft sheen of oil where rust had not already crept. “There. I wish you both comfort.”
The blond man’s footsteps could be heard on the steel even after his form had blurred into the night. “I shouldn’t care, should I?” said the woman, speaking toward the fire but loudly enough for Vickers to hear her.
Vickers walked to the water tank and began filling the eight-liter cauldron. The stream rang from the galvanized metal until the water buffered itself. “I don’t know,” the guide said. “If somebody thinks he’s accomplishing anything by sleeping on steel planking, I guess that’s his business.” He set the pot directly on the coals, twisting it a little to form a safe seat.
“After all, I was only recreation anyway, wasn’t I?” the dark-haired woman resumed. “What was a twenty-seven-year-old man going to want with a woman five years older when he got back to a place with some choice? Even if he didn’t already have a family!”
“Look, that’s out of my field,” said the guide. He had already switched magazines in the Garand. Now he checked his pockets to see if they held a loose round to replace the one he had just fired into the night.
“Well, he can have his damned security!” Weil said. “I’ve got success that he couldn’t comprehend if he had to. Do you realize—” her index finger prodded the air toward Vickers—“just how big this is? By bringing back this specimen, I’ve just become the most important researcher into human prehistory in this century!”
The guide’s expression did not change. Linda Weil pulled back with a slight start. “Well, we all have in a way,” she amended in a more guarded voice. “I mean, I couldn’t have done this here without you and, and Holgar, of course. But the . . . well, it’s my field, of course.”