"Go right," I called, and Beauregard obeyed.
I had a perfect shot at the bottom of the other ship, and put a left and a right into its bottom.
Anything that will set a behemoth on its hind legs will, rather thoroughly, put paid to machinery.
The hovercraft bucked, spun, almost out of control.
I was shoving new rounds into the.600.
"There, you shitheel!" Black shouted, and I looked up, and saw one of the Boers fall out of the hovercraft.
It was a few hundred feet, and he screamed all the way down.
Kilbrew's ship was wobbling, going in.
"Stay on its ass!"
Beauregard nodded.
I heard another bang, saw the other Boer… Hendrik, I recognized, leaning out, at the driver's seat of the hovercraft. He fired at us twice, one-handed, with one of the alley sweepers Kilbrew had devised.
The windscreen of our ship starred, then blew out, and Black swore, and ducked as Kilbrew himself fired once, then again with his monster gun.
I chanced a shot back at him, missed.
We were dropping, and the ground was coming up fast.
Beauregard flared it just above some brush, and we came in for a stickery, if soft, landing.
"Now," I said. "Now we go after them."
I tossed Beauregard his rifle, reloaded the empty chamber of my.600 and we jumped out of the hovercraft. Black had the presence of mind to grab the ignition keys and shut the engine down.
Then it was silent, silent except for the high whine of the other ship, turbine spinning out of control, down somewhere to our right.
The land was mucky, ferny, with cycads that looked much like the ones around prehistoric Saint Louis.
Beauregard looked scared. He wasn't a hunter, didn't pretend to be.
Nor was I a mankiller. But I was about to learn how.
I'd better.
I motioned silence, waved Beauregard to my left rear, and we started forward.
I moved slowly, as slowly as I'd ever stalked. Even Tyrannosaurus doesn't shoot back.
I saw Hendrik as he saw me.
He had one of those super shotguns.
I stepped sideways, into the slight cover of a drooping fern, and had my gun up.
I fired just an instant before he did.
My.600 round took him in the mouth, and took off most of his head.
His shot went wide. At least most of it did.
One of the pellets got me in the forearm, and I jerked, dropping my rifle.
Kilbrew came up from a crouch, behind Hendrik's body. He was carrying the.577.
I went for my.600, but it was far, too far away.
He had me cold.
Being Kilbrew, he savored the moment, aiming carefully.
There was a tight grin on his face.
"Fuck you!" I managed, damned if I'd give him the satisfaction of any fear.
I braced for the shock, even though I knew there wouldn't be any pain.
Just instant death.
He was less than ten meters away when he fired.
The bullet sprayed muck a meter away from me. Kilbrew gaped at the impossible miss, worked the bolt, and then Beauregard shot him in the guts.
The bullet, intended for one-shot kills of anything short of an elephant, almost cut Kilbrew in two.
Kilbrew went back, and down, completely motionless.
Illogically, since there was nothing left to kill, I scrabbled for my rifle, broke it, fumbled another slug in, and snapped the action closed.
Then I looked up.
Coming out of the brush to the side was a small, hairy biped. It had a furred face, and wide, lemur-like eyes that were watching me curiously, not afraid, not worried.
I froze, seeing Australopithecus afarensis.
He, for I could see it was a male, eyed me calmly, then looked up at Beauregard, who stood, petrified, rifle in his hand.
Afarensis nodded then, as if making a judgment, and was gone.
Bloody hell.
I felt like I'd just met my own grandfather. I know with that tiny head he couldn't have been very intelligent, but to me he looked as if he had all the wisdom of all mankind.
Paul, I've been dry for ten minutes, and I really need another, very badly… thank you.
Better. Some better.
I walked over, picked up Kilbrew's rifle. I'd been right. There aren't any free lunches in physics. That few centimeters Kilbrew had so cleverly designed had also given the gun's recoil a chance to get a little momentum, enough to shock-shear one of the scope mounts. Kilbrew hadn't noticed it, but the scope was twisted about 20 degrees to the side.
Sometimes, the scientists are right…
So we piled the bodies into our hovercraft, and went back to our camp.
It wasn't quite as bad as we thought.
Only four of the help died. The others, after careful nursing by us, then shuttled back to where the transition chamber would come, and rushed to the best hospital in Nairobi, all lived.
I told an inspector of the Kenyan police what had happened.
"One of the richest men in the world… murdered. This is not good," he decided. "Did he say anything about having bribed the Ethiopian guards around Awash?"
"Nothing," I said. "But we weren't on chatting terms by then."
He turned everything over to the local UN representative, who turned everything in turn over to the US ambassador.
Surprisingly, no one leaked.
At least, not yet.
But suddenly there's mention of laws completely closing off Ethiopia from any time travel under ten million years ago. Or maybe closing it off completely.
I don't know.
I don't really care, since I'll never go back to the Pleistocene again.
One look at those eyes, and that was enough for me forever.
Of course, Wandi Kilbrew refused to pay the bill, and lawyers are now talking. When his estate eventually comes through, you can bloody bet Beauregard Black will get a bonus that will stagger his people for half a dozen generations.
And I'm thinking that maybe from now on I'll do nothing but sightseeing or photo safaris.
Father Figures
Susan Shwartz
"I have been a word in a book
I have been a book originally"
Emrys sat alone under a tree trying not to panic. If he really were a prophet, he'd have no cause to panic because he'd know. But all Emrys knew was that Uther's men, who watched him from a hundred vantage points near the great circular embankment, whispered that he was damned well prophet and wizard and they'd kill him if he proved them wrong.
And then there were the black-robed priests who had called him a devil's son and longed to send him back to hell. They bore a remarkable resemblance to Vortigern's evil wizards who'd been ready to sacrifice him for being the boy without a father. So far, he'd managed to bite his tongue on that observation.
So maybe Emrys was a prophet, and maybe he'd just been damned lucky?unfortunate as the choice of words was.
What he was now, beyond all doubt, was a fool. What had possessed him to declare at Aurelius Ambrosius' funeral feast that he would deck the High King of Britain's grave with nothing less than the light itself?
The boy's drunk. He could see Uther's warriors mouthing that to one another and, pretty much in their cups themselves, grinning at the idea. Emrys had almost been insulted. You could expect that kind of stupidity from a descendant of Hengist or Horsa, drunk out of what few wits they had. Besides, Emrys hadn't even had that much to drink. He'd been blind with grief, not mead.
Uther had to understand that; with a gesture like the slash of a knife, he'd silenced his retainers. But he couldn't silence young Gildas, whose limp made him as useless a warrior as Emrys. And Gildas had his brother monks to protect him and honey over his mutterings that Emrys had been Aurelius' catamite.