It was just after dawn when we loaded up outside the chamber, and took off north.
"I've heard that the Ethiopians have an armed guard back here in the Pleistocene, making sure the scientists don't cheat around the Awash colony," I said.
"Not my concern," Kilbrew said casually. "I'm after hippos, not scientists."
In the rear seat, Hendrik laughed. Not pleasantly.
Probably one of the countries with the biggest differences between now and then is Ethiopia. Now it's arid desert, with deep ravines rutting the landscape. Water, when you can find it, is brown, brackish.
It feels like an old, tired country, a country who died a long, long time ago, and is now nothing but a desiccated corpse.
Its people move slowly in the heat, conserving their energy and the low calories they're able to scrub up from the soil.
Pleistocene Ethiopia is brawling, alive. It's still hot, of course, near the equator, but muggy. There are swamps everywhere, opening into lakes.
I looked as we flew on, and counted three active volcanoes.
The hunting camp was to be on the northern shore of this lake… "No name," Kilbrew said. "If I were an egomaniac, I'd think about naming it after myself."
"Or Wandi, your wife," I suggested.
He looked at me, didn't smile, and stared back out the side of the open hovercraft.
I'd given Beauregard a copy of the map Kilbrew had made when he was here the first time, and picked up his beacon after about two hours flight.
I followed it, and set down next to the tents that had already sprung up.
Beauregard and Ming were quite used to changing scenery, but the workers we'd picked up in Nairobi weren't. They were working, but kept looking over their shoulders, as if expecting some horrid monster to burst out of the ferny swamp around us.
I did a reccie down to the lake, saw no signs of hippos at all. I didn't hear their honk, but I didn't know if Hippo gigans called out the way modern beasts did.
I asked Kilbrew what evidence he had there were giant hippos floating around out there.
He said from a survey he'd gotten from an Ethiopian.
"But if it's wrong, we'll search on south until we find what we're after."
Strangely, he didn't seem particularly disturbed at the thought of losing a few days.
Quite surprisingly, he then announced that this first day he'd throw a barbecue. A proper Texas barbecue, and he and his bodyguards would do the cooking and serving.
I found it almost impossible to believe that these three would actually wait on blacks, but after Ming had set up the serving line, Kilbrew opened up a large container, and took out cow-type steaks, baked beans that'd been made in the twenty-first century, coleslaw and cherry pie. He fired up a charcoal grill, and the trio set to work, cheerful as diggers on the inside when the innkeeper calls time, winks and locks the door.
"The whole meal's just like the men, real men, who settled Texas, ate at their roundups," Kilbrew shouted. "Including the Rocky Mountain oysters."
For some reason, I wasn't that hungry, and ate lightly, only having a couple of the deep-fried calves' testicles Kilbrew called "oysters," and some tea.
I felt unaccountably sleepy, and yawning, begged off dessert.
"Maybe a bit of a nap?" Kilbrew suggested. "Give us some rest, and get up later, and figure out what happens tomorrow."
I nodded, and, almost stuporous, stumbled off to my tent.
I was almost instantly asleep.
I had terrible dreams that had me tossing, dreams of someone or something entering my tent. I kept trying to wake up, to reach the.600 I always kept at bedside when I was on safari, but couldn't.
The thing, whatever it was, was getting closer, then it had me, was shaking me.
I tried to shout for help, but then my eyes came open, and I was awake, and Beauregard Black was the one shaking me.
"Come on, boss. Wake up. Come on, Reggie," he was saying. "The bastards tried to poison us."
The shock brought me up into a sitting position.
"Come on, man. Wake up. That Kluxer took one of the hovercraft and took off north."
"Why… what… " and then I had it, remembering that conversation on our first trip, when Kilbrew had talked about how one infantry squad could have wiped out Awash man, and prevented any blacks from being born.
I stumbled up, seeing two and three Beauregards, made it out into the campsite.
There were bodies sprawled here and there.
"Poison," Beauregard said. "I don't know why. Ming's the only one who's still alive."
"Why… what about you?"
"I swore I'd be damned if I'd take anything in the way of food from that bastard," Black said. "Then, when one of the workers fell over, and one of those Boer bastards started laughing, I figured his game.
"I pretended to be sleepy, went for my tent, and ducked into the brush, trying to figure out what to do.
"One of the helpers must've figured something was going wrong, because he went for Kilbrew. One of his goons shot the poor son of a bitch with one of those monster guns they brought along.
"I didn't look back til I found something to hide under. Then I saw them lift, and came back, hoping I could find somebody alive who might know what the hell is going on."
I stumbled down to the lake, and fell on my face, splashing about, hoping the tepid water would wake me up, not giving a damn about prehistoric bilharzia.
"Where are they going, Reggie? They've only been gone a few minutes. We've got to go after them or something."
I managed to find the words and explained.
"Those mothers are just plain wack!" he said. "Wipe out those puppies, and everybody goes."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe not. Maybe the paradox thing will work. Or maybe it won't. If it doesn't work… can you fly that Daimler?"
"There hasn't been anything I can't drive or fly," Black said. "Come on."
"No," I said. "First we'll need guns."
We took my.600, and Black a camp.375, plus boxes of shells.
I flopped into the passenger's seat, and Beauregard got the hovercraft started and airborne.
"Where are we going?"
I was suddenly grateful for that overflight over contemporary Awash Park, and my rather adept sense of direction.
"East-northeast," I said. "And keep it as low as you can. And I don't give a damn if you fry the turbine."
Beauregard shoved the power quadrant up to its stop, and the hovercraft nosed over and accelerated.
I was scanning the sky ahead, hoping Kilbrew would keep it at a sensible altitude, and we could spot him.
But my eyes were still blurring. I was still under the effect of that bit of whatever poison that'd been in that ever so bloody kindly barbecue.
"There," Beauregard said. He pointed, and then I could see a dot ahead of us.
Kilbrew's hovercraft had an additional passenger, and maybe ours was in a little better tune, for we were closing on them.
Someone must've seen us, because the hovercraft climbed, banked and came down on us.
"Reggie, I ain't no fighter pilot! Gimme some help here!"
I thought.
"Go straight for him, like we're going to ram the bastard."
"And then what?"
"Then he'll break first."
I didn't add "I hope."
I had my.600 loaded, and the safety off.
"I don't like this," Black muttered, but held firm.
We were within a few hundred meters of the other ship, closing fast. I heard a pair of shots, but we were out of effective range of either Kilbrew's.577 or those damnable shotguns he'd had built, all the while dreaming of mass murder, murder that might include the entire human race.
"Closer… closer… " I was muttering, wondering if maybe I'd been wrong and maybe whoever was flying the hovercraft had rock solid nerves.
Only a moment before my nerve broke, about to shout to Beauregard to dive, the other hovercraft banked steeply to the right.