Project Mastodon Read online

  But then there would come a time when all the chores were finished and there was nothing left to do.

  "You ready to go?" asked Cooper.

  "Sure. All rested now," said Hudson.

  They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again.

  Hudson had lain awake nights thinking of it and all the thoughts had been dead ends.

  One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, complete with photographs and sketches, and it would be a pointless thing to do, because no future scientist would ever have a chance to read it.

  Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid, perhaps, which would carry a message forward across fifteen hundred centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance of immortality. But if they did, they would be working against the sure and certain knowledge that it all would come to naught, for they knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historic time.

  Or they might set out to seek contemporary Man, hiking across four thousand miles of wilderness to Bering Strait and over into Asia. And having found contemporary Man cowering in his caves, they might be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his great inheritance. Except that they'd never make it and even if they did, contemporary Man undoubtedly would find some way to do them in and might eat them in the bargain.

  They came out of the woods and there was the cabin, just a hundred yards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring, with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-gray skyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they saw the door was open.

  "Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way," said Cooper. "No telling when a bear might decide to come visiting."

  "Hey, Wes!" yelled Hudson.

  But there was no sign of him.

  Inside the cabin, a white sheet of paper lay on the table top. Hudson snatched it up and read it, with Cooper at his shoulder.

  Dear guys—I don't want to get your hopes up again and have you disappointed. But I think I may have found the trouble. I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work, I'll come back and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you. Wes.

  Hudson crumpled the note in his hand. "The crazy fool!"

  "He's gone off his rocker," Cooper said. "He just thought...."

  The same thought struck them both and they bolted for the door. At the corner of the cabin, they skidded to a halt and stood there, staring at the ridge above them.

  The pyramid of rocks they'd built two months ago was gone!

  XI

  The crash brought Gen. Leslie Bowers (ret.) up out of bed—about two feet out of bed—old muscles tense, white mustache bristling.

  Even at his age, the general was a man of action. He flipped the covers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall.

  Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across the dining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door, he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. He practically took the door off its hinges getting to the stoop and he stood there, bare feet gripping the planks, nightshirt billowing in the wind, the shotgun poised and ready.

  "What's going on out there?" he bellowed.

  There was a tremendous pile of rocks resting where he'd parked his car. One crumpled fender and a drunken headlight peeped out of the rubble.

  A man was clambering carefully down the jumbled stones, making a detour to dodge the battered fender.

  The general pulled back the hammer of the gun and fought to control himself.

  The man reached the bottom of the pile and turned around to face him. The general saw that he was hugging something tightly to his chest.

  "Mister," the general told him, "your explanation better be a good one. That was a brand-new car. And this was the first time I was set for a night of sleep since my tooth quit aching."

  The man just stood and looked at him.

  "Who in thunder are you?" roared the general.

  The man walked slowly forward. He stopped at the bottom of the stoop.

  "My name is Wesley Adams," he said. "I'm—"

  "Wesley Adams!" howled the general. "My God, man, where have you been all these years?"

  "Well, I don't imagine you'll believe me, but the fact is...."

  "We've been waiting for you. For twenty-five long years! Or, rather, I've been waiting for you. Those other idiots gave up. I've waited right here for you, Adams, for the last three years, ever since they called off the guard."

  Adams gulped. "I'm sorry about the car. You see, it was this way...."

  The general, he saw, was beaming at him fondly.

  "I had faith in you," the general said.

  He waved the shotgun by way of invitation. "Come on in. I have a call to make."

  Adams stumbled up the stairs.

  "Move!" the general ordered, shivering. "On the double! You want me to catch my death of cold out here?"

  Inside, he fumbled for the lights and turned them on. He laid the shotgun across the kitchen table and picked up the telephone.

  "Give me the White House at Washington," he said. "Yes, I said the White House.... The President? Naturally he's the one I want to talk to.... Yes, it's all right. He won't mind my calling him."

  "Sir," said Adams tentatively.

  The general looked up. "What is it, Adams? Go ahead and say it."

  "Did you say twenty-five years?"

  "That's what I said. What were you doing all that time?"

  Adams grasped the table and hung on. "But it wasn't...."

  "Yes," said the general to the operator. "Yes, I'll wait."

  He held his hand over the receiver and looked inquiringly at Adams. "I imagine you'll want the same terms as before."

  "Terms?"

  "Sure. Recognition. Point Four Aid. Defense pact."

  "I suppose so," Adams said.

  "You got these saps across the barrel," the general told him happily. "You can get anything you want. You rate it, too, after what you've done and the bonehead treatment you got—but especially for not selling out."

  XII

  The night editor read the bulletin just off the teletype.

  "Well, what do you know!" he said. "We just recognized Mastodonia."

  He looked at the copy chief.

  "Where the hell is Mastodonia?" he asked.

  The copy chief shrugged. "Don't ask me. You're the brains in this joint."

  "Well, let's get a map for the next edition," said the night editor.

  XIII

  Tabby, the saber-tooth, dabbed playfully at Cooper with his mighty paw.

  Cooper kicked him in the ribs—an equally playful gesture.

  Tabby snarled at him.

  "Show your teeth at me, will you!" said Cooper. "Raised you from a kitten and that's the gratitude you show. Do it just once more and I'll belt you in the chops."

  Tabby lay down blissfully and began to wash his face.

  "Some day," warned Hudson, "that cat will miss a meal and that's the day you're it."

  "Gentle as a dove," Cooper assured him. "Wouldn't hurt a fly."

  "Well, one thing about it, nothing dares to bother us with that monstrosity around."

  "Best watchdog there ever was. Got to have something to guard all this stuff we've got. When Wes gets back, we'll be millionaires. All those furs and ginseng and the ivory."

  "If he gets back."

  "He'll be back. Quit your worrying."

  "But it's been five years," Hudson protested.

  "He'll be back. Something happened, that's all. He's probably working on it right now. Could be that he messed up the time setting when he repaired the unit or it might have been knocked out of kilter when Buster hit the helicopter. That would take a while to fix. I don't worry that he won't come back. What I can't figure out is why did he go and leave us?"

  "I've told you," Hudson said. "He was afraid it wouldn't work."
<
br />   "There wasn't any need to be scared of that. We never would have laughed at him."

  "No. Of course we wouldn't."

  "Then what was he scared of?" Cooper asked.

  "If the unit failed and we knew it failed, Wes was afraid we'd try to make him see how hopeless and insane it was. And he knew we'd probably convince him and then all his hope would be gone. And he wanted to hang onto that, Johnny. He wanted to hang onto his hope even when there wasn't any left."

  "That doesn't matter now," said Cooper. "What counts is that he'll come back. I can feel it in my bones."

  And here's another case, thought Hudson, of hope begging to be allowed to go on living.

  God, he thought, I wish I could be that blind!

  "Wes is working on it right now," said Cooper confidently.

  XIV

  He was. Not he alone, but a thousand others, working desperately, knowing that the time was short, working not alone for two men trapped in time, but for the peace they all had dreamed about—that the whole world had yearned for through the ages.

  For to be of any use, it was imperative that they could zero in the time machines they meant to build as an artilleryman would zero in a battery of guns, that each time machine would take its occupants to the same instant of the past, that their operation would extend over the same period of time, to the exact second.

  It was a problem of control and calibration—starting with a prototype that was calibrated, as its finest adjustment, for jumps of 50,000 years.

  Project Mastodon was finally under way.

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 0bc55784-a9f7-44c4-891e-37e9f8baf207

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 29.12.2013

  Created using: calibre 1.17.0, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Clifford Donald Simak

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