Mastodonia

TWENTY-THREE

When Hiram and I got back to the house, Rila and Courtney were sitting at the table. The others were gone; so was one of the cars.

“Ben took the others for a drive,” said Rila. “We wondered what happened to you.”

“I was tracking Hiram down,” I said.

“I stayed here,” said Courtney, “because there are couple of things I want to talk about with you two.”

“The IRS?” I asked.

“No, not the IRS. They won’t start stirring around until they get wind of the deal with Safari.”

“How did the negotiations turn out?” I asked. “I suppose the deal was made.”

“It didn’t take too long,” said Courtney. “They’re hurting and we had them across the barrel.”

“A million for the license,” said Rila, “and a quarter-million for each time road. They want four time roads. That’s two million, Asa.”.

“For one year,” said Courtney. “They don’t know yet, but next year the price goes up. By that time, we’ll have them hooked.”

“And this is just a start,” said Rila.

“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about,” said Courtney. “Ben told you about the church group?”

“Yes,” I said. “Interested in the time of Mohammud.”

“A couple of them came to see me the other day,” he said. “Ben had told them to talk with me. Damned I can figure them. I don’t know what they want.

They’re interested, but they wouldn’t open up. I don’t know if we should waste time on them.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “The whole thing could get sticky. To start with, we should stay away from anything controversial. Pay some attention to our image.

Not create an issue the country, or the world, can choose up sides on.”

“I think the same,” said Rila. “There is not apt to be too much money in it, anyhow, and it could be a headache.”

“I feel pretty much the same,” said Courtney.

“They’ll be back to see me. I’ll try to cool them off.

There’s someone else who has me worried. Senator Abel Freemore. He’s from Nebraska or Kansas, I can never remember which. He’s been trying to set up an appointment with me and my secretary has been fending him off. But you can fend off a United States senator for only so long. One of these days, I’ll have to find out what he wants.”

“You have no idea?” Rila asked.

“None at all. He’s a big agricultural man, of course.

Hell-bent for the poor down-trodden farmer. But that’s not all — he’s three kinds of bleeding heart. Whatever he has in mind, I’m afraid it’s nothing good.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Not really. It’s too early. Everyone is sitting back.

Intrigued, of course, but still filled with a natural skepticism. Waiting to see what’s going to happen.

When the first safari brings out a dinosaur, then is when everything will break. But until then, mostly all that we will get are opportunists and con artists. There’s that mining engineer who wants to go out into the Black Hills country and skim off the easy gold. No money, but he’s willing to give us half of what he finds — more likely, half of what we force him to admit to. I sort of like him. He’s an engaging sort of buccaneer. Utterly without principle and figures everyone else is the same. What was that idea you had, Rila, of going to South Africa and picking up all the easy diamonds off the ground?”

Rila said, “Yes, I admit to the idea. It probably wouldn’t work. Maybe there never were a lot of diamonds waiting to be picked up. But it had a nice sound to it.”

“This safari business,” said Courtney, “is apt to be one of the most straightforward, least complicated deals that we can make. An easy one to handle. No tricky angles. What bothers me is that none of your scientific or intellectual types have crawled out of the wood-work. Wanting to study the techniques and motives of the prehistoric cave painters or to observe the Neanderthalers at work and play or to sit in on Marathon or Waterloo.”

“They have to be convinced first,” said Rila. “They are sitting in the smug composure of their academic retreats, telling one another that it can’t be done.”

“There is another outfit that has been sniffing around,” said Courtney. “I almost forgot them. Genealogists — those people who, for a price, will trace back the family tree. Seems now they have the idea of providing a more personal, and, of course, a more expensive service. Not just tracing back the record, but actually going back to talk with and, possibly, to sneak pictures of someone’s ancient forebears. Great-great-great-uncle Jake being hung for horse thievery — things like that. They’re being fairly cagey in their approach to us, but they’ll be around again.

“There will be others. Or I think there’ll be. With a thing like this, you can never be sure. Can’t foresee how time travel will strike the general public and those you might suspect would be interested in using it. It would seem to me that as time went on, we ought to be hearing from the petrochemical people and the coal and iron interests. There are a lot of natural resources back in time.”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Rila. “It worries me.

What I don’t understand is this: The natural resources are back there, sure, and there is nothing to stop us from grubbing them out. There is no question they’re there for the taking. But if we take them, then what happens in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

Will those essential minerals still be there to take, and the answer seems they will be because we have, indeed, taken them. If you’re worried about paradoxes, there’s a classic one for you to mumble over.”

“Rila,” said Courtney, “I just don’t know. I suspect we’re just not thinking right, that our thinking on things like that will have to be readjusted. At the moment, there are other things to do; I’m not going to worry about it.”