The Metrognome and Other Stories Page 15

  "What is it?"

  "Shut up. There's something outside," he whispered.

  She froze. Several minutes went by during which they could hear only the steady percussion of the rain and the puffing wind.

  "Nothing, I guess," he said finally. He grinned. "You know, I just had a thought. Maybe our good guide's using this opportunity to show us city slickers that out here in the swamp anybody can be deluded by a little bad weather and a rambling tall story." He got the grasshopper going, set a pot of water on it.

  "Okay, Crossett!" he abruptly shouted. "Come on in and bet yourself warm. The coffee's boiling, and we're not."

  There was no response. Below, agitated water lapped at the meager shore. Briscoe shrugged. "Let him get soaked, then. I swear, if he comes tumbling in here and drenches us "

  ". . . NURRRRR . . . "

  It was thunder, but dull thunder, not sharp and clean like the kind that walked the treetops but a rich, rasping ululation that had nothing to do with electrical charges. It sounded again, on a rising inflection this time, and while it did not originate in the heavens, it came from a source almost as primal. A feral thunder.

  Watkins found herself turning upside down as she rose into the air. The flaming grasshopper stove tumbled past her and shot out the open tent flap. Lockers, radio, food, charts, bedrolls, all fell in a surreal stream past her. Her head was bent to her chest, and her hands went out instinctively. Then she did a complete somersault, her hips falling past her head. Somewhere above her Briscoe was yelling about his legs, up at the other end of the tent. Aluminum tubing snapped like fresh popcorn around her.

  So this is how a cat in a sack feels, she thought wildly. Then there was air and rain in her face. Seconds later there was pain, splitting her backside and racing up her spine, as she hit the ground.

  Rolling over, she mumbled weakly. "Carey?" A voice was alternately screaming and cursing in the hazy distance, legs and pain and guns all whipped up together in a verbal froth of anger and terror. Her mouth was full of mud. She started to lift up on her hands, collapsed as an unseen tormentor jabbed a long needle into her coccyx.

  "Oh, God." She lay on her side, her right arm under her. The screaming and demanding went on behind her.

  Her gaze turned toward the noise. At the same time she became aware of a thick, rich stench like creosote. Lightning danced in a night sky of gray crepe.

  Outlined in the light was the Thunderer. Occasionally it would let out a querulous bellow, a rumble like a simmering volcano. It shook her, mostly inside. She thought, a mite hysterically, of the reported sightings of such legends as the yeti and bigfoot, describing a hairy man or manlike ape eight or nine feet tall. How silly and foolish people are! she thought chidingly. Even the greatest of imaginary horrors fail when measured against the real thing.

  What stood in the faded discharge of energy and light was at least seventeen feet high at the shoulder, and it stood in a hunched over position. Long arms dragged the ground, ending in great burl knuckles that backed steamshovel sized paws. Long white claws curved back into the palms. It was only remotely manlike, a grotesque hybrid of simian and gargoyle. It had ears like a bat's, vast black eyes, and a prognathous jaw from which protruded a pair of upcurving tusks like a warthog's.

  She'd glimpsed a short, twitching tail, bald as a rat's. The entire slowly heaving mass was covered with short, bristly hairs, sparse but evenly distributed. Between the hairs the skin was composed of large scales like those of a tarpon.

  It was holding the collapsed tent in one paw. She started to crawl away, not yet thinking of retreating to the boat but only of putting distance between herself and that transcendentally hideous form. She also worked to ignore the steady sobbing that was coming from within the smashed shape of the tent.

  "UNNN . . . NURRRRR . . . . " it bellowed. Another hand the size of their boat came off the ground, closed over its companion, and squeezed. There was a last, mercifully short shriek from within the tent. Then silence, save for rain and wind. The creature appeared to be exerting great strength. Watkins imagined she could detect s faint glow emanating from between those tightly pressed paws.

  Thoughts of the size of those paws had reminded her of the boat. Thought of the boat reminded her of the guns lying within. As she painfully dragged herself through the muck, she considered poor Carey's modest .30 30, Crossett's ancient over and under. She struggled to her feet. One hand pressed tight over the fire in her lower back as though that would somehow ward off the agony. As she stood, another needle pierced her left ankle, and she nearly fell. Broken? She couldn't tell.

  She might as well throw mud at the gigantus as use either of the guns. But there was something else: a tightly wrapped pack of gelignite charges for making soundings. If she could set a detonator in just one charge, place it where the monster might step nearby, it ought to discourage it. Perhaps even kill it.

  She had no time to consider where the monster was, refused to consider what it might be doing with what remained of Caret'. All her energies, all her thoughts, were concentrated on reaching the boat. It appeared undisturbed, bobbing nervously in the fractured water. In the middle, beneath her seat, should be the small reinforced locker holding the charges. She reached the bow . . . and slipped.

  No doubt about it, she thought with an odd disinterest, her ankle was definitely broken. She lay breathing heavily, rain pelting her mud streaked face. Her arms moved weakly on the wet ground.

  Have to . . . get . . . charges . . .

  Despite the pain, she inched forward. The earth grew wetter, more slippery beneath her. Must ignore the pain, she told herself. Pretend it doesn't exist. Refusing to accede to positive thinking, the pain grew worse. Her femur was a log in a fireplace, burning evenly.

  She paused for breath. Moisture covered her mouth. She licked her lips. Not water: thicker, pungent . . . familiar.

  She glanced downward. She was lying not in thin mud; or a puddle of rain but in thick oil. It must, she thought wildly, be a natural pool, oozing to the surface. That meant a potentially huge field requiring little drilling. Just drop in the pumps and suck it out. The company would be pleased.

  The boat, the boat . . . she forced herself ahead. Hand, knee, hand, knee . . . Maybe it wouldn't notice her, a dim, slow moving little lump in the darkness. Her head bumped something: the side of the boat.

  Up now, she ordered herself. Hand grip gunwale, other hand grip, pull . . . pull, dammit!

  Her head was over the side. Ahead, still secure beneath the center seat, was the small metal locker holding the charges. It was neatly latched and untouched. She started to pull herself into the boat.

  Something made her nose wrinkle.

  Creosote.

  They found the boat and the remnants of the tent a week later. The hurricane had spent its strength and petered out over Alabama.

  "Damn shame," Hardin muttered, kneeling to pick up a battered, broken shape. "This might've been the radio."

  "Might," agreed his disconsolate companion. Weinberger had worked in Styrene with both missing geologists. His eyes surveyed the storm battered swamp, the bayou behind them where an iron ring was still tied to a stump of cypress. It was all they'd found of the survey party's missing outboard.

  Nearby was a small pool of oil, a smudge on the earth. Stains showed it had recently been modestly larger. Shreds of clothing lay scattered around and within the stained soil.

  "Looks like the storm tore the clothes right off their backs."

  Hardin, his hands on his hips, nudged the blackened fragments of polyester and nylon. "Hundred twentymile per hour winds could do that, sure. Looks like they found some oil, too."

  "Afraid not, Sheriff." Weinberger eyed the stained earth and the bit of fluid remaining with an experienced gaze, indicated the traces of two similar pools nearby.

  "They must have had it with them, though I'm damned if I can figure why. That old geezer back upstream said they only bought gas from him."

  A glint of me ca
ught his eye, and he bent, recovering an oil stained lump of dull gold colored slag. It was about the size of a belt buckle.

  "Wonder what this was." He chucked it aside, sighed. "Oh, the oil? It's fresh, new. Hasn't come out of the ground. No, I'm afraid they didn't find anything at all."

  PLEISTOSPORT

  Sitting atop the TV in my study is the skull of a sabertoothed tiger (Smilodon californicus), cast in resin from the original and painted to look exactly like it. The lower jaw raises and dowers to show how the great slashing saber teeth passed neatly outside the bone. A stuffed Garfield sits beneath those impressive teeth, grinning imperturbably. Relatives, it would seem. I talk again of cats.

  When I was growing up, paleontologists were so busy trying to sort out which head belonged to which skeleton and whether Iguanodon walked upright or on all fours that they had tittle time to devote to visuals. Color does not fossilize. Within the past decade or so artists such as William Stout, Richard Bell, Linda Broad, and John Sibbick have done for prehistoric life what Chris Foss did for spaceships. Patterning replaced monotones, and color took its rightful place in our picture of the ancient world.

  Great gray eminences such as the sauropods and therapods were colorized not by Ted Turner but by reason and logic. Suddenly they were transformed from towering symbols of a bygone eon into living, breathing creatures. They acquired Color. Color for attracting mates, color to warn, color to camouflage. Nature did not invent man and the paintbrush simultaneously. Previously the Mesozoic was thought to be a dull place. Dinosaurs were large like elephants, so naturally they were portrayed in elephantine gray.

  The later mammals fared no better. Herbivores were as brown as bison. The big cats and catlike carnivores were sandy yellow, like lions. It was obvious and most likely inaccurate. The ancient environments were as varied as those of today. As animal life expanded to fill specific niches in those environments, what more natural than that they should change color and size to fit them? No less could be expected of possible subspecies of Smilodon.

  As far as I'm concerned, someone who hunts for food occupies higher moral ground than do those of us who go to the supermarket to buy our meat preslaughtered. But one who hunts for a ' 'trophy " dwells below the moral and intellectual level of a diseased Neanderthal. To the former, respect and even admiration. To the latter, this story.

  There is a beautiful painting done in colored scratchboard and airbrush by the noted California wildlife artist Lewis Jones that illustrates this tale.

  Thackeray enjoyed the pleistocene.

  Oh, he also liked the nest of the Quaternary period, but the Pleistocene was his favorite. It contained a greater variety of large animals than any other part of the Quaternary. And if you were lucky, you might catch a glimpse of one of the protohominids that might or might not be your great grandpa several million times removed.

  It was a shame, though, that the time puncture didn't encompass any more than the Quaternary. Still, one to five million years gave a man plenty of room to explore. If you tried for anything more recent than one million, the Chronovert just sat in its station stall and whined petulantly. Try for beyond five million and the Chronovert (and likely as not its passenger, too) ended up a pile of expensive slag.

  If only the technicians could add another hundred million years to the puncture! What he wouldn't pay to be able to come back with the head of a tyrannosaur or a Deinonychus to mount in the aerie he'd built above Santa Fe. The boys at the club would vote him a life membership, at least.

  Of course, those limp wristed wimps who belonged to the Time Preservationist Society would launch into their usual tirades, just as they did now whenever he or a friend brought back a trophy. Ranting and raving they'd be about preserving the ecology and inviolability of the past. Well, he knew why they were so vitriolic in their condemnation of the Quaternate hunters. It was because none of the faggots had the guts to travel in the past themselves.

  He scrunched lower in his seat. Snow was falling steadily outside the blind. The camouflaged tent kept him concealed and cozy warm. Ice goggles let him penetrate the drifting whiteness with relative ease.

  The Wincolt .50 caliber lay close at hand, its forty-round high power drum locked tight into the barrel, telescopic heat sensitive sight ready to warn him if anything came within killable range, laser pickup itching to pick out a fatal spot. Thackeray was proud of his equipment. After all, he was a sportsman.

  He reached behind the cushioned, electrically warmed chair and picked up the thermos of coffee. Part of his muffler blew into his mouth, and he irritably shoved it aside while he sipped the hot Kona. Beyond the triangular entrance to the blind and downslope tumbled a foaming river. To his right lay the edge of the primordial ice sheet. Somewhere beneath those miles of solid ice lay land that in his own time would be the province of Canada, subterritory of British Columbia.

  Behind him were the almost modern crags of the Canadian Rockies. Beautiful country still, but not as wild and dangerous as this. Only a few cougars and bears roamed the modern Rockies. The Quaternate Rockies, on the other hand, were alive with all manner of impressive beasts. And no game wardens. The National Rifle Association had seen to that.

  Thackeray relished a challenge. Most of his fellow hunters preferred the warmer regions to the south. The area around the La Brea tar pits was particularly popular. You could always count on bringing back a decent mastodon head from there or, if you were lucky, a cave bear. Dire wolves were thick as fleas. An animal trapped in tar wasn't too hard to stalk.

  Well, Thackeray had had enough of that. After all, he was a sportsman.

  There was no thrill if there was no challenge, no work, no discomfort involved. Anyway, he'd already grabbed off the best the tar pits had to offer. His trophy room was crammed full of record and near record heads: Smilodons, dire wolves, American lions, giant ground sloths, mammoth and mastodon, and a new, as yet unclassified smaller relative.

  Now he was after the only major trophy that had eluded him: the woolly rhinoceros. The paleontologists had decided that the woolly rhino had never been very common. The mammoths were more efficient subglacial browsers, the musk oxen more intelligent . . . Competition was tough.

  Hell with that, Thackeray had decided. He wanted a woolly rhino head, and by God, he meant to have one. He was convinced the paleontologists were in league with the preservationists, anyway. Surely the history of the Earth wouldn't suffer from the loss of one lousy rhino.

  The wind howled mournfully around the blind. If there was a real storm coming, he'd have to close up and wait it out. Or worse. He glanced over a shoulder.

  Behind him squatted a tubular metal chair surrounded by a molded plastic body impregnated with special circuitry. He could always climb back into the Chronovert, pack up his equipment, and be whisked back to the time station in twenty second century Albuquerque.

  To do so would be to admit failure. Thackeray didn't like to fail. He didn't like it in himself, .and he didn't like it in his employees, who unfortunately could only be fired and not shot. Besides, Chronoverting was expensive, even for one of his considerable wealth.

  Not many could afford to Chronovert. Not many had the financial wherewithal or the health (he was only forty-three).

  He was determined to have that woolly rhino head for his trophy room. He'd reserved room for it on the west wall, a blank space he was sick of listening to comments about. That smarmy oilman from Qatar, Musseb Ihq, had noticed it right off during the New Year's party.

  Well, Tuq didn't have a rhino, either. Thackeray knew because he'd visited the oilman's home. This was one time he intended to be first.

  Unless the paleontologists beat him to it. They were hunting woolies, too, but for breeding and study. Thackeray decried the waste of good travel money.

  The heat sensor on the Wincolt's sight beeped once.

  Quickly he put down the thermos, wiped coffee from his lips. He raised the weapon and cradled it on his lap as he stared out through the drifting sn
ow.

  The river was a good location for a blind. It flowed from the base of the distant ice sheet out of the mountains and down into a burgeoning lake surrounded by relatively flat land. Herds of camels and small horses grazed contentedly around the lake. They were huddled together against the snow now. This was a transition zone, where inhabitants of the glacial front mixed with migrants from the warmer subalpine regions. There was free flowing water and plenty of forage. Perfect rhino country.

  He'd chosen a location on the flank of a hill, just below the more inaccessible bulge of the Rockies. He could shoot downhill from there. A bulky creature like a rhino wouldn't be able to muster much of a charge uphill. Thackeray was a sportsman but a prudent one.

  He raised the Wincolt and squinted through the telescopic sight. Plenty of mammoth in view, a large herd of zebrelles, but no rhinos. Probably the gun had beeped for a zebrelle.

  He was about to put the weapon back in its resting place when he heard the scream. It was sharp and high, and the wind carried it straight to him. Not an ungulate, of that he was certain. He'd heard too many of them scream when they'd been shot. This was something different.

  Braving the snow, he stuck his head out of the blind. A rustling sound, a soft thrashing, came from somewhere behind his shelter. He frowned. It was snowing hard, but there seemed no danger of it turning into a whiteout. Could it be a trapped rhino, maybe, stuck in the snow? The wind could've distorted the scream. If so, his kill would be easy. He debated whether to go and have a look.

  Unlikely to be a mammoth. The trail up the slope was too narrow, and there was no reason for a mammoth to come this way, anyhow. But a hungry rhino, maybe, just maybe.

  Hell, it was worth a minute to check it out. Cradling the Wincolt tightly, he stepped out of the blind. The wind struck him full force and chilled him instantly. He worked his way cautiously around the shelter. The snow wasn't deep enough to hinder his progress. It whipped his exposed cheeks and made him think of his warm den back m Santa Fe.