"There's your other trophy, sports," I said. "Who wants it?"
Standish and Hofmann muttered between themselves, and Hofmann said: "I'll pass. The oreodont skin will do me fine. Marta would never let me mount that critter's head in our living room; it wouldn't leave room for people."
"Me neither," said Standish. "The entelodont's enough for me. I suppose Reggie'd want me to help cut it up again?"
"Bloody right I would," I said.
"Well, anyway, I doubt if my bow would do the job." It was his first admission that his marvelous bow wouldn't kill anything in sight.
At the sound of our voices, the brontothere raised its head and took a couple of steps toward us. Hofmann and I checked our rifles.
Then the brontothere seemed to lose interest. I could imagine what was going on in that primitive little brain. Nothing over there smells good to eat, and those creatures don't look dangerous. Why waste time on them when there's all this lovely edible green stuff?
Of course that's just my imagining. All I can state as a fact is that the brontothere turned away and went back to its herbs. It ate and ate and ate its way across the meadow and then, still eating, disappeared into a copse of trees.
You might say it was an anticlimax to our adventure; but on the whole I was just as glad things turned out as they did, with no homicides or other casualties. The main thing with loonies like Standish is that you can never be sure what they'll do next, so you don't know what precautions to take.
And that's the story of the strangest client I've had, although when I think back I could tell of some who ran Standish a close second and maybe outdid him. The chamber arrived on time; we boarded with our trophies; and Cohen the chamber wallah whisked us back to Present without further complications.
I haven't heard about Frank Hofmann since. Standish did break into the news about a year ago.
Seems he married a girl who turned out to be a bit of a tart. A few months later, he caught her in bed with another bloke, whom he promptly strangled to death. He must have been stronger than he looked. He was acquitted at the trial, dumped the dame, and dropped out of sight.
As I said, these safaris can be fun; but more often it's a case of batting down one bloody emergency after another. I've come to hate surprises. And don't forget to send me a copy of this interview when it's printed!
VI
The Satanic Illusion
Yes, Mr. Proctor, we have had trouble with wowsers like that. If you had come by a couple of years ago, you'd have seen a line of pickets outside our office here. The signs they carried denounced the Raja— that is, my partner, Chandra Aiyar—and me as murderers and emissaries of Satan. I was never quite clear as to whether one of us was supposed to be Old Nick himself, and the other an assistant imp. It was a bloody nuisance while it lasted, but I don't think it actually turned away many would-be clients. The blokes who go on time safaris with us are not the sort to let the seven days of Genesis stop them.
All right, I'll tell you the story. It was my turn to man the office while the Raja took a party to the Jurassic. Somehow the hard cases always seem to come up on my watch.
Anyway, one afternoon Miss Minakuchi told me that two clerical gents were here to see me. This was unusual; but I said, send them in. They turned out to a big, stout one, the Reverend Gilmore Zahn, and a little, skinny one, the Reverend Paul Hubert. I'd heard of Zahn, St. Louis' leading hellfire-and-damnation Fundamentalist preacher. Miss Minakuchi used to cut out newspaper stories, in which Zahn made remarks about Rivers and Aiyar as leading souls into unbelief and damnation; but I never paid much attention.
This visit surprised me, as if the leading anti-liquor crusader were to drop in at the headquarters of Schneider's Brewery for a donation. But in business you have to take the rough with the smooth. So I said:
"What can I do for you gentlemen?"
Zahn answered: "We want to go on one of your time safaris, not to hunt, but to look over the landscape and the fauna and flora for various so-called geological eras. I am Gilmore Zahn, and this is my assistant pastor, the Reverend Paul Hubert."
"Pleased to meet you," I said. "I believe the papers have carried some of the remarks you've made in sermons, touching upon my partner's and my business."
"Oh, that." Zahn waved a big, pudgy hand and smiled a big, round smile. "Nothing personal, I do assure you. From all I hear, you are a pillar of the community, a good family man who faithfully performs his civic duties and leads a quiet, normal life. Naturally, there are philosophical differences between us; but that should not preclude a friendly personal relationship."
The big bloke had an ingratiating manner, which made it hard to dislike him. Then the Reverend Hubert spoke:
"We hope you won't mind if this survey ruins your business. What we're trying to do is to nail down the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
"Eh?" said I. "Why should it ruin our business?"
He leaned forward, pointing his sharp nose at me as if it were a weapon. "Because it will expose the falsity of the whole evolutionary heresy. It will demonstrate that all these prehistoric beasts, whereof your clients bring home heads, hides, and photographs, did not live in succession, but all the same time." To emphasize, he slapped my desk with his palm, which I thought a bit of cheek.
"Oh, really?" I said.
"Yes, really," continued Hubert, shaking a finger at me. "It will show that they were created by God all at once, as the Bible says."
"How about all those thousands of extinct forms, of which they have dug up fossils, and which our safaris have seen in the flesh?"
"They are species that couldn't make it to the Ark," said Hubert.
"Calm down, Paul," said Zahn. "Don't get Mr. Rivers' back up. You, sir, can evidently take hunters back to an ancient time—either thousands of years ago, as we believe, or millions of years, as the false religion of scientism claims, to hunt animals that are extinct in the present world. I do not see why you cannot go on doing just that, regardless of the truth or falsity of the evolutionary theory. Will you take us?"
I shook my head. "No, gentlemen, I don't think a time safari of the sort you have in mind is practicable. Too far out of our regular line of work. Besides, the Reverend Hubert looks to me too small a man to take to the Mesozoic."
"What does my size have to do with it?" asked Hubert, bristling.
"Because you're too small to handle the kind of gun that's needed for confronting dinosaurs. The only time we ever lost a client was the result of taking too small a man to the Cretaceous. A tyrannosaur ate him, even after he had pumped it full of .375 magnums."
"We have no intention of hunting or shooting anything," said Zahn. "From what I hear about wildlife, if you leave them alone they will mostly do you the same courtesy. No guns; we shall be quite satisfied to view the dangerous ones at long range, through binoculars. How about it?"
"No, sorry. Our business is to take trophy hunters to periods where they shan't have to worry about endangered species, not to prove theological points."
"Mr. Rivers," said Zahn, "did you or did you not give a talk on time safaris at the West Side YMCA last March?"
"Yes, I did."
"And did you or didn't you say that you wished you could take some of these foolish Fundamentalists back on one of your safaris, so they could see how the world really was in prehistoric times?"