Mastodonia

by Clifford D. Simak

  She handed me the binoculars, but they were so heavy that standing, I couldn’t hold them steady. I had to sit down and use my knees to support my elbows, as she had been doing.

  It took a while to pinpoint what she wanted me to see, but finally I caught the thing in the field and fiddled with the adjustment wheels to bring it more sharply into focus. It was in a squatting position, resting, reared back with its knees flexed so that its great tail gave it support. The huge body was almost upright and the ugly head kept swinging from side to side as if keeping watch of the countryside.

  “What do you think?” asked Rila. “A tyrannosaur?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t be sure.”

  The trouble, of course, was that no one could be sure. All we had ever seen of any of the dinosaurs were their bones, plus, in a few instances, fossil mummies with part of the skin intact. Our visual impressions of them came from artists’ conceptions, which were fine, so far as they went, but couldn’t even pretend to be sure of many details.

  “Not rex,” I said. “The forelegs are too big. Maybe a trionychid. Maybe another kind of tyrannosaur we’ve never found a fossil of; we can’t be sure we’ve found the fossils of all the different kinds of tyrannosaurs. But whatever he is, he’s a big brute. Sitting up there resting, taking it easy, looking around for something that’s worth his while to gobble up.”

  I kept on watching the brute. Except for his swinging head, he did not stir.

  “The forelegs are too well developed,” said Rila. “That’s what puzzled me. If we were a few million years farther back, I’d be tempted to say it’s an allosaur. But up here there aren’t supposed to be any allosaurs. They died out long ago.”

  “Maybe not,” I told her. “We’re acting as if we knew the entire history of the dinosaurs from the fossils we have found. If we find one dinosaur in an old stratum and find him in none after that, we’re inclined to say he became extinct. What could happen is that we simply failed to look in the right place to find him in the younger strata. Allosaurs could have existed up to the very end.”

  I handed the glasses to Ben, pointing out the clump of trees. “Over to the left of them,” I said.

  “Asa,” said Rila, “I want some film of him. He’s the first big thing I’ve seen.”

  “Use the telephoto lens,” I said. “That will catch him.”

  “I have,” she answered, “but it comes up awfully fuzzy. At least, what I can see does. I suppose on the film as well. To convince the safari people, to get them all fired up, I have to have something sharp and close.”

  “We can try to get closer,” I said. “He’s a long way from here, but we can have a try.”

  “The beggar’s moving off,” said Ben. “Going up the ridge. He is moving fast. Maybe he spotted something he’s after.”

  “Damn it,” said Rila bitterly. “It was you guys and your test-firing. It made him uneasy.”

  “He didn’t look uneasy to me,” I said. “He was just sitting there. From this distance, the firing would not have been very loud.”

  “But I’ve got to get some big stuff,” said Rila.

  “We’ll find it,” I said, trying to comfort her.

  “There is a lot of little stuff out there,” she said. “Ostrich dinosaurs and small herds of little fellows, turkey size or so. A few ankylosaurs. A few small horned varieties. All sorts of lizards. Some big turtles down by the river, but who cares for big turtles? Some flying reptiles. Pterosaurs, I suppose. Some birds. But nothing spectacular.”

  “It would be senseless to go chasing after that big fellow,” Ben said. “He was traveling fast. Like he knew where he was going. By the time we get out there, he’ll be clear out of the country, the rate that he was going. We can take a small stroll, if that is what you want. Maybe we can stir up something. But we shouldn’t go too far. It’s getting well into the afternoon and we should be back here well before night sets in.”

  “We’ll likely be safer after dark than at any other time,” I told him. “I doubt that any of the reptiles would move around too much once the sun has set. They get lethargic then, or are supposed to. They’re cold-blooded. Their temperature tolerance is narrow. They take shelter at noon when the sun gets hot, and don’t move around much when the temperature falls at night.”

  “You are probably right,” said Ben. “Undoubtedly, you are. You know about such things. But me, I’ll feel more comfortable at night in camp with a good fire going.”

  “We can’t be absolutely sure about dinosaurs not moving around at night,” said Rila. “For one thing, we can’t be sure that even with the sun gone the temperature will fall a great deal. And another thing, there is some evidence that dinosaurs may not be cold-blooded. There is a fairly persuasive opinion among some paleontologists that they were, in fact, warm-blooded.”

  She was right, of course—there was some evidence of warm bloodedness. I had read some of the argument and had not been impressed with it. I didn’t say so, though. Apparently Rila did accept it and this was no place to get into an academic argument.

  Somewhere to the north, something began to bellow. We stood and listened to it. It didn’t get any nearer, nor did it recede; the bellowing just kept on. Everything else fell silent, and in between the bellows, there was nothing to be heard. We had not been aware of the background noise before, but now we noticed the absence of other sounds, of the grunting, feeble honking, the multitude of different squeaks.

  “Wonder if that’s our pal from over on the ridge?” asked Ben.

  “It could be,” said Rila, “It could be something else.”

  “I didn’t know dinosaurs made sounds.”

  “No one knew. The general belief, I think, has been that they were silent creatures. Now we know they’re noisy.”

  “If we climb the hill,” said Ben, “once we get to the top, we may be able to spot this bellower.”

  We climbed the hill, but we didn’t find the bellower. The bellowing quit before we reached the hilltop. A search with the glasses failed to pick up anything big enough to have been making all that noise.

  We didn’t find the bellower, but we stirred up a lot of life. Small bands of ostrich dinosaurs that looked for all the world like six-foot naked birds went racing away from us. A grunting bunch of little horned monsters, two feet at the shoulder, waddled away from a patch of ground they had torn up with their horns in search of roots and bulbs. Snakes slithered out from beneath our feet. We raised a flock of grotesque, awkward birds, the size of grouse or maybe a little bigger, that fluttered protestingly. They were funny-looking things. Their feathers seemed to be put on wrong, and they were not good at flying. A little distance off, we saw a few iguanodons standing six feet high or so. They should have been much bigger; more than likely, according to the fossil record, they shouldn’t have been there at all. They were flabby, evil-looking beasts, and when they opened their mouths, they showed fine sets of teeth. There was no question they were meat-eaters. Those teeth were never made to deal with vegetation. We edged up close to them, Ben and I on the alert, rifles ready. I was braced for a charge, but they weren’t sore at anyone. They regarded us sleepily and suspiciously for a time, then they wheeled about and went lumbering off.

  During the afternoon, Rila’s camera kept up an almost ceaseless whirring. She used up a lot of film, having to stop every now and then to reload. But except for iguanodons, she wasn’t getting anything big.

  As we turned to go home, Ben pointed at the sky. “Look there,” he said.

  He was pointing at a flock of birds far off. There must have been a hundred of them, looking like black gnats in the sky, flying east.

  I focused the glasses on them and, although they remained fairly small, there was no mistaking them.

  “Pterosaurs,” I said. “There must be big water out there somewhere.”

  The sun was only an hour or so above the horizon when we turned back for camp. Halfway there, we ran head-on into a group of six ostrich dinosaurs. T
hey hesitated at the sight of us, began to turn away. Ben thrust his elephant gun at me. “Hang onto this for a minute,” he said.

  He lifted the shoulder strap of the .30-06, and as he swung around, the ostriches were off, running fast with their powerful, swinging stride. Ben’s rifle came up and he swung it, following them. It coughed with a flat vicious sound, and one of the fleeing dinosaurs spun head over heels. It landed on its back and its slender legs stuck up in the air, kicking.

  “Supper,” Ben said, grinning. He slung the strap of the smaller rifle over his shoulder and reached out for the one I was holding for him.

  “Did you get it?” he asked Rila.

  “I got it,” she said grimly. “It’s on film. The first dinosaur kill.”

  Ben grinned even more broadly. “What do you know about that!” he said.

  We walked to the kill. Ben leaned the big gun against it and took a knife out of the belt sheath.

  “You grab hold of the leg,” he told me, “and pull.” Still hanging onto my gun with one hand, I grasped the leg with the other and pulled. Ben’s knife made quick, expert slices, cutting around the ham.

  “All right,” he said. He grasped the leg with both hands and twisted savagely. It came free, but some muscles still held. He slashed twice more and the quarter was severed from the body.

  “I’ll carry it,” I said. “You have the extra gun.”

  He grunted. “We could take the other leg, but this should be enough. No use trying to get meat ahead. It will only spoil.”

  “How do you know this will be good to eat?” I asked.

  “It won’t poison us,” he said. “If we don’t like it, we can throw it out and fry up some bacon.”

  “We won’t have to throw it out,” said Rila. “It will make good eating.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?” I asked.

  “We eat chicken, don’t we?”

  “I may be stupid,” said Ben, “but what have chickens got to do with it?”

  “Chickens are close to dinosaurs. The closest thing we have today. Direct descendants, if you stretch a point or two.”

  Stretch a point or two, indeed, I told myself, but I kept my mouth shut. She was not, of course, entirely wrong. I had kept quiet about the warm-bloodedness, I told myself, and for the sake of harmony, I might as well keep quiet about this one, too.

  We didn’t throw it out. It tasted good. It faintly resembled veal, but it wasn’t veal, either. It had a sweet, succulent taste all its own. We ate a lot of it.

  We built up the fire after the cooking was done and sat beside it. Ben broke out a bottle of whiskey and poured into our coffee cups. “A small drink,” he said. “A hunter’s drink. Just enough for us to feel a little warm and happy. Something to warm the gut.”

  He handed us the cups and put the bottle away.

  We sat there sipping at it, and the world was good. We were snug beside the fire and we had film and everything was all right. We didn’t do much talking. With the tramping we had done, we were too tired to talk.

  In the underbrush around us, we heard rustlings and squeakings.

  “It’s the mammals,” said Rila. “Poor little scurriers, they hide out all day.”

  “Don’t feel pity for them,” said Ben. “They’ll make out all right. They’ll still be here when the dinosaurs and all the rest of them are gone.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” she said.

  “We ought to be getting some sleep. I’ll take the first watch,” he said to me. “I’ll wake you at …” He looked at his watch. “Hell, it says four o’clock. It would. Our time is no good here. Anyhow, I’ll wake you in four hours or so.”

  “There are three of us,” said Rila.

  “You get your sleep,” he said. “Asa and I can take care of it.”

  We had set up the tents, but it was good weather and we didn’t use them. We spread out our bedrolls and lay down. It took me a long time to go to sleep, although I tried to. We had a hard day coming up. Ben sat by the fire for a while, then picked up the heavy gun and walked toward the edge of the grove.

  All around us in the grove, the little rustlings and squeakings continued. There must be, I thought, a lot more little skittering mammals in this world than anyone had suspected.

  “Asa,” Rila said, “are you asleep?”

  “You go to sleep,” I said. “It will be a rough day tomorrow.”

  She didn’t say any more and I lay there, drifting, encouraging myself to drift, and, finally, I must have gone to sleep, because the next I knew Ben was shaking me by the shoulder. I threw back the blanket and got up.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “Nothing’s happening,” he said. “It’ll be dawn before too long.”

  “You stood more than your share of the watch.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, anyway,” he said. “Too excited. But I’m tired. Maybe I can now. If you don’t mind, I’ll use your bedroll. No sense in unrolling mine.”

  He kicked off his boots and got into the bedroll, pulled the blanket over him. I walked over to the fire, which was burning briskly. Ben apparently had put a few sticks of wood on it just before he’d wakened me.

  Some of the squeaking and rustling had died down and everything was quiet. It was still dark, but the feel of the air said that dawn was coming. Off somewhere out beyond the grove something began cheeping. I figured it was a bird—or birds, rather, for there seemed to be a lot of cheeping, more than one thing cheeping.

  I tucked the rifle under my arm and walked out to the edge of the grove. The surrounding countryside was half lighted by a pale sickle Moon.

  Nothing seemed to be moving and then, down in the narrow flatness of the river valley, something did move. I couldn’t make out what it was. The movement had stopped, but suddenly it moved again. In a moment, I told myself, when my eyes became adapted to the darkness, I would make out what it was.

  Ten minutes or so later, it seemed to me that I could make out a number of dark lumps in the valley. I tried to concentrate to make out what they were. They remained dark lumps, but now there seemed to be fleeting reflections as well, the momentary reflection of the thin moonlight off something that was moving. All this time, the cheeping kept on, and it seemed to me that it came from the valley, that there was more and more of it, and that it was getting louder. It was a tricky sort of sound and hard to place. But I could almost have sworn that it was the lumps that were cheeping.

  I squatted down and watched, but I couldn’t see much—just those lumps that seemed at times to be moving, although if they were moving, they weren’t getting anywhere.

  I don’t know how long I squatted there, but it was a long time. Something held me there, watching whatever was moving in the valley. The eastern sky began to lighten, and behind me, in the grove, a bird twittered sleepily. I turned my head to look at the grove, and when I looked back at the valley again, it seemed to me that I could see those black lumps more distinctly than I had before. They were bigger than I had thought they were at first, and they were just ambling about, not all of them at once, but one or two of them moving and stopping, then another one or two moving. They looked to me like cattle grazing, and thinking this, I knew that whatever might be down there were doing exactly that—grazing. A herd of grazing dinosaurs.

  Whether it was thinking in this direction or because the light of the still hidden sun had imperceptibly intensified, I was able quite suddenly to make out what they were: triceratops, a herd of triceratops. Now that I knew what they were, I could make out the flaring frills and the whiteness of the two horns that sprouted and thrust forward just above the eyes.

  I rose slowly and cautiously—perhaps more cautiously than was necessary, for at my distance, there was little chance of spooking them—and went back to camp.

  I knelt and shook Rila’s shoulder and she murmured sleepily, “What now?”

  “Wake up,” I said. “Easy. No noise. We’ve a herd of triceratops.”

  She
came up out of the blanket, still only half awake.

  “Triceratops,” she said. “Horns and everything?”

  “A herd of them. Down in the valley. Like a herd of buffalo. I don’t know how many.”

  Ben rose up, sitting on his bedroll, scrubbing at his eyes with doubled fists. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

  “Triceratops,” said Rila. “Asa spotted them.”

  “Those are the ones with the horns growing out of their face?”

  “That is right,” I said.

  “Big brutes,” said Ben. “They have a skeleton of one in the Science Museum at St. Paul. I saw it several years ago.”

  He stumbled to his feet and picked up the gun. “Well, let’s go get them,” he said.

  “It’s too dark yet,” I said. “We have to wait for light. Let us have some breakfast first.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rila. “I don’t want to miss them. A herd of them? You said a herd of them, didn’t you? Regular triceratops, not some of those little horned fellows we found yesterday?”

  “Big,” I said. “I couldn’t make out how big, but they are good-sized. If you two want to go out and keep an eye on them, I’ll cook some eggs and bacon. When it’s done, I’ll bring it out to you.”

  “Be careful,” warned Rila. “Don’t make any noise. Don’t go banging pots.”

  The two of them left and I dug out the eggs and bacon, got the coffee started and settled down to cooking. When I took their plates and the coffee pot out to them, it was beginning to get light. The triceratops were still there, down in the river valley.

  “Did you ever in your life,” asked Rila, “see anything so beautiful?”

  For a fact, the herd was quite a sight. For a couple of miles up and down the river, the valley was simply covered by them. They were busy cropping at the grass and low-growing ground cover. There were some young ones, not much bigger than hogs, and others slightly larger that I took to be yearlings, but there were a lot of big ones. From where we sat, the big ones appeared to be five feet tall or more, and including their tails, perhaps twenty feet in length. The massive frills made their heads appear enormous. They kept up their contented cheeping.