set up a staff …”
“A year,” said Courtney. “To start with.”
“You’d give us all counsel and consideration …”
“That’s how you have it written out?” asked Courtney, gesturing at the papers Stuart had spread out in front of him.
“That’s the way we’d thought of it. We’re new to this business of the Cretaceous and …”
“All we give you,” said Courtney, “is the license.
Once you have that, the rest is up to you. That doesn’t mean that we won’t give whatever counsel and assistance we can offer, but as a matter of good will, not by contract.”
“Let’s quit this haggling,” said the major. “We want to send in safaris. Not one safari, but a lot of them.
A lot of them early on before the novelty wears off.
If I know sportsmen, and I do, it would be important for any one of them to be among the first to bring out a dinosaur. And we don’t want to pile one safari on the other. We want to keep the hunting areas as clear as we can manage. We’ll need more than one time road.”
Courtney looked at me, questioning.
“It would be possible,” I told him. “As many as they want, each separated by, say, ten thousand years. We could cut it finer and make the interval less than that.”
“You realize, of course,” Courtney said to Hennessey, “that each time road will cost you.”
“We’d be willing,” said Stuart, “to pay you as much as a million dollars for three time roads.”
Courtney shook his head. “A million for the license for one year. Let’s say a half-million for each time road after the first.”
“But, my God, man, we’d be losing money!”
“I don’t think you would,” said Courtney. “Are you willing to tell me what you’d charge for a two-week safari?”
“We haven’t gotten around to discussing that,” said Stuart.
“The hell you haven’t. You’ve had a couple of weeks to consider it. With all the publicity, you must have a waiting list.”
“You’re talking economic nonsense,” said Stuart.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Courtney replied.
“You’re on your last legs and you know it. Up in the twentieth century, the hunting’s gone. What have you got left — a few limited big-game trips, camera safaris?
Here you have a chance to get back in business. An unlimited chance. Hundreds of years of hunting. New and fascinating game animals. If some of your clients would rather have a go at titanotheres or mammoth or a dozen other kinds of big and dangerous game, all you have to do is say the word; we’ll take you there.
And we’re the only ones who can take you there.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Stuart. “If Miss Elliot and Mr. Steele can develop a time machine …”
“That’s something I tried to tell you,” said Rila.
“You wouldn’t listen or you didn’t believe. You just glossed over it. There is no machine.”
“No machine? What, then?”
“That,” said Courtney smoothly, “is a trade secret that we’re not divulging.”
“They’ve got us, Stuart,” said Major Hennessey.
“There’s no ducking it. They are right. No one else can get us there. Miss Elliot did say no machine. From the very start, she said it. So why don’t we sharpen up our pencils and get down to figuring. Perhaps our friends would be willing to take a cut of our net.
Twenty percent, perhaps.”
“If you want to go that route,” said Courtney, “fifty percent of your gross. No less. We’d rather operate on a license fee. It would be a cleaner deal.”
I had been sitting there, listening to all of this, and my head was spinning just a little. You can talk about a million dollars and it doesn’t mean too much; it’s just a lot of figures. But when it’s your own million bucks, that’s a different thing.
I walked down the ridge. I’m not sure the others even knew I had left. Bowser crawled out from under the house and trailed after me. There was no sign of Hiram and I was worried about him. I had told him to come right back, and still there was no sign of him.
Stiffy was ambling slowly across the valley, heading for the river, perhaps to get a drink, but Hiram wasn’t with him. I stood on the ridge and looked everywhere.
There was no sign of him.
I heard a sound behind me. It was Ben. His boots made a hissing sound as he walked through the foot-high grass. He came and stood beside me and together we stared off across the valley. Far down it there were a lot of moving dots — perhaps mastodons or bison.
“Ben,” I asked, “how much is a million dollars?”
“It’s an awful lot of cash,” said Ben.
“I can’t get it straight in my mind,” I said, “that back there they are talking about a million and perhaps more than that.”
“Neither can I,” said Ben.
“But you’re a banker, Ben.”
“I’m still a country boy,” said Ben. “So are you.
That’s why we can’t understand.”
“Country boy,” I said, “we’ve come a long way since we roamed these hills together.”
“In just the last few weeks,” said Ben. “You’re worried, Asa. What is troubling you?”
“Hiram,” I told him. “He was supposed to come straight back once he led Stiffy out of here.”
“Stiffy?”
“Stiffy is the mastodon.”
“He’ll be back,” said Ben. “He’s just found a woodchuck.”
“Don’t you realize,” I asked him, “that if anything were to happen to Hiram, we’d be out of business?”
“Sure, I know,” said Ben, “but there’ll nothing happen to him. He’ll get along all right. He’s half wild animal himself.”
We stood and looked a while longer and saw nothing of Hiram.
Finally Ben said, “I’m going back and see how they’re coming.”
“You go along,” I said. “I’m going to find Hiram.”
An hour later I found him, coming out of the crab-apple grove below the house.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
“I was having a good long talk with Catface, Mr.
Steele. With all the exploring we been doing for the last few days, I’ve been neglecting him. I was afraid he would get lonesome.”
“And had he gotten lonesome?”
“No,” said Hiram. “No, he said he hadn’t. But he’s anxious to get to work. He wants to lay out some time roads. He wonders why it’s taking us so long.”
“Hiram,” I said, “I want to talk with you. Maybe you don’t realize it, but you’re the one important person in this entire setup; you’re the only one who can talk with Catface.”
“Bowser can talk with Catface.”
“All right. Maybe he can. But that does me no good.
I can’t talk to Bowser.”
I laid out the situation for him. I explained most carefully. I practically drew him diagrams.
He promised to do better.
TWENTY-THREE
