The Best of L Sprague De Camp Part 5

"We'll see about that. I'm going to try some experiments, anyway. We'll keep them to ourselves, of course. If they didn't work, a lot of our colleagues might agree with your opinion."

Platt began his work with rabbits-modem rabbits, that is. He would kill a rabbit, remove various parts, and hook it up in a Ringer's solution bath to a current source. To build up the missing parts he used bio-charged amino acids, which will combine to form proteins and, in the presence of other cells, form whole new cells.

After many failures, he one day observed that the tissues of one of the rabbits were building up. He pointed the phenomenon out to Staples.

The geologist protested: "But it can't be that one. I turned the juice off in that tank."

"Yes?" replied Platt. "Let's see. Ah! You thought you turned it off, but look at this switch!"

Staples saw that he had accidentally struck the open knife switch so that the bars barely touched the contacts.

Platt said: "Now I know; we've been using too much voltage. It wants something like point oh one volts." And the little man was off like a chipmunk with a bunch of nuts, changing the rheostats to one calibrated for higher resistance.

They perfected their methods of reifying recent animals, which later proved of great value in surgery. Their results were not, however, so incredible when you consider that every cell in an animal's body contains a complete set of chromosomes with all the genes that determine the animal's form. It is as if in each cell there was a complete blueprint of the entire animal.

Their first attempt with fossils-the fragmentary remains of the Castoroides-failed. Staples wasn't sorry. He was worrying about the effect of the news of this bizarre experiment on his professional reputation.

Then at dinner one night Platt jumped up and began orating. He waved his knife and fork so that he almost speared his daughter's boy friend, who slid below the edge of the table until the storm had pa.s.sed. "Ken!" cried the paleontologist. "I know what to do now! You've got to have a lot of the original organic matter of which the organism was composed, in the solution along with the bones. The current makes the original atoms resume their former places, and they serve as a framework for the amino acid molecules in their building-up work. We need a fairly complete skeleton, with considerable organic matter in the surrounding rock-if possible, with impressions of the soft parts. We'll have to a.n.a.lyze the rock, because if the fossil's at all old the original atoms will be scattered through the surrounding rock as to show no visible traces."

The next day they spent in the storehouse, unwrapping the burlap from fossils and testing their matrices for organic material. They picked a specimen of Canis dirus embedded in a big block of sandstone, strung the block up with a chain hoist, and dumped it into one of the tanks.

Nothing happened for a long time. Then the sandstone decomposed into mud, and in its place was a blob of jelly through which they could see the skeleton. The jelly became more and more opaque, and you could see the organs forming as the original atoms took their places, and the others, from the amino acids, polypeptides, and other substances that were introduced into the tank, lined up alongside them. It was uncannily as though the atoms had definite memories of where they belonged in the animal's body back in the Pleistocene.

When the ma.s.s in the tank stopped changing, it had the form of a huge wolf, about the size of a Great Dane, but twice as muscular and ten times as mean-looking.

They fished the brute out of the tank, emptied the solution out of him, and applied an electric starter to his heart. After three hours of this, the wolf shuddered and began coughing the remainder of the Ringer's solution out of his lungs. It occurred to the experimenters that they had no place to keep the wolf, who would make a rather formidable house pet. They tethered him to a tree while they prepared a pen. But for a few days the wolf hardly moved at all. When he did, he was like a man who has been a year in the hospital, and is having to learn to walk all over again.

But at the end of two weeks he was eating of his own accord. His hair, which had been a mere fuzz at first-the process being effective in recreating the hair roots, but not the hairs, which are dead structures-rapidly grew to normal length. At the end of three weeks he was enough his old self to snarl at Staples when the geologist entered his cage. It was a most impressive snarl, sounding rather like tearing a piece of sheet iron in two.

After that I was careful about getting too near him or turning my back on him. But he didn't give us much trouble, though he never became what you'd call friendly. I always liked him for one reason: Platt's daughter had a fluffy dog that liked to bite people's ankles-no provocation necessary. After one of my kids had been nipped, the girl and I had a real row about the excrescence. Before we could have another, the dog went out one day and yapped at the dire wolf. Mr. Wolf sprang against his bars and growled-once. That was the last we saw of that accursed pooch.

Six months later, Platt and Staples hoisted out of its tank a specimen of Arctotherium, the immense bear from the California Pleistocene. Staples had had the busiest six months of his life, between helping the preparation of patent applications and getting the reification of more fossils started. There had been several failures-important parts of the skeletons missing, or insufficient organic matter in the surrounding rocks, or reasons unknown. This proved to be one of the last: the bear looked normal enough, but refused to come to life. Staples confessed that, looking at the thing's bulk, he had been more afraid of success than of failure. It was later mounted in the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

They had made things as easy as possible by starting with the Canis, a moderate-sized species of recent date. They worked in two directions from there: backward in time, and upward in size. Platt had a number of fossils from the Miocene of Nebraska. They were successful in reifying a Stenomylus. .h.i.tchc.o.c.ki, a small guanacolike ancestral camel. Seeking a more exciting specimen, they went to work on Platt's pride and joy, a new species of Trilophodon, the smallest and oldest proboscidean found in America. It was probably the first member of the elephant group to arrive from Asia. The animal turned out to be a female, rather like a large s.h.a.ggy tapir, with long tapering jaws and four tusks.

After their partial failure with the Arctotheriuin, they succeeded with a bear-dog, Dinocyon gidleyi. When Staples looked at the result his throat felt a little dry. The thing was built on the general lines of a polar bear, only bigger than even the Kodiak grizzly. Its large ears gave its head a wolfish appearance, and it had a long bushy tail. It weighed 1,978 pounds, and it didn't like anybody. Platt was delighted. "Now if I could only get an Andrewsarchus!" he beamed. "That's a still bigger carnivore, an Asiatic Oligocene creodont. One skull measured thirty-four inches."

"Yeah?" said Staples, still looking at the bear-dog. "You can have him. I haven't lost him. This thing we have here is quite big enough for me."

They had hired an old circus man named Elias to help them with their growing zoo. They had built a concrete barn for the animals with a row of cages down one side. It looked strong enough, until one afternoon Staples went out to investigate a racket from the cages. He found the bars of the bear-dog's cage bowed out-the lower ends had come out of the green concrete easily-and no Dinocyon. Staples had a horrible visioh of the bear-dog wandering over Kosciusko County and eating everything he could catch.

The beast was not, however, far away. He was, in fact, just around the corner looking for a way to get into the Stenomylus cage. In a few seconds he reappeared. He looked at Staples. The geologist could have sworn that the expression in his big yellow eyes said: "Ah, dinner!" The bear-dog growled like a distant thunderstorm and started for Staples.

Staples knew that the animal could run circles around him on level ground, and moreover that if he caught him he wouldn't be satisfied to run circles around him. Staples' best idea was to swarm up the bars around the Trilophodon's enclosure. He couldn't have climbed those bars ordinarily, but he did this time.

Arrived at the top, he couldn't stay there unless he wanted the beardog to rear up and scoop him off his perch. On the other hand, the inside of the cage didn't look inviting. The "little" mastodon-standing five feet at the shoulder and weighing slightly over a ton-was half crazed with fear. She was gallumping around the enclosure making noises like a pig under a gate. An elephant's fear of dogs is not unreasonable when the elephant and the dog are about the same size.

Just before the bear-dog arrived, Staples jumped off and landed astride the Trilophodon's neck. He didn't feel like a movie hero who 'umps off a balcony onto his horse. He was scafed stiff. He got a good grip on his mount's scalp hair and hung on desperately, knowing that he'd be trampled to jelly in no time if she bucked him off.

Staples heard a rifle go off, several times, and got a glimpse of Gil Platt shooting out of the workshop doorway. The Dinocyon gave a coughing roar and went over to see about it. Staples was too busy to watch closely, but got a few glimpses of the bear-dog running around the shop, trying to climb in the windows-which were too small. He finally settled down to dig under the house. All this time Platt was popping out of doors and windows to fire and popping back again. Staples had time to reflect that the bear-dog's insides must be taking a terrible beating from the soft-nosed bullets, but that such was his vitality that you could shoot holes in him all day before he'd give up.

He made wonderful progress with his digging; he took the earth out like a bucket chain. Staples remembered that the shop had a thin wooden floor, which wouldn't offer much resistance if the animal got under the house. They needed a .~o-caliber machine gun, which they didn't have.

Before it came to that, Elias climbed out on the, roof and dropped a stick of dynamite alongside the bear-dog. That did the trick. The effect was rather like hitting a cantaloupe with a mallet. Staples had just gotten his animated calliope calmed down, and the explosion started her off again. It was a question of which would collapse from exhuastion first. The geologist won by a hair.

When he examined the remains of the Dinocyon, he asked Platt: "Why didn't you shoot him in the head?"

"But if I'd done that I'd have smashed the skull, and we mightn't have been able to reify him!"

"You mean . . . you're going to-" But Staples didn't finish. He already knew the answer. They gathered up the bear-dog, put him back together more or less the way he had been, and hoisted him into the biggest tank again. Some days later Staples was sorry to observe that the animal was making a record recovery. But Platt had a new cage built that not even this monster could break out of.

But with his size and enormous appet.i.te, Platt decided that he was too expensive and dangerous to keep. He sold him to the Philadelphia Zoo. After the zoo people became acquainted with him they probably regretted their bargain.

The sale attracted some attention, and the Philadelphia Zoo for a while had a capacity audience. Platt inquired about the market for more of his reified animals.

A couple of weeks after the sale, a sunburned man called at Piatt's. He said his name was Nively, and that he represented the Marco Polo Co. This, he explained, included all the wild-animal importers and dealers in the country. It was a members.h.i.+p corporation instead of a stock corporation, to get around the ant.i.trust laws.

Feeling that they could now afford some publicity, Platt and Staples showed him the place. He was duly impressed, especially with their new Dinohyus, a lower Miocene elothere. It was a piglike animal the size of a buffalo, with a mouth full of teeth like those of a bear. It ate practically anything.

Elias was a.s.sembling their biggest tank. Platt explained: 'That's for Proboscidea. We haven't one big enough for them now. And out in the storehouse I've got a magnificent Parelephas jeffersonhi. You know, the Jeffersonian mammoth. That's much bigger than the ordinary or woolly mammoth that the cavemen made such pretty pictures of. The woolly mammoth was a rather small animal, not over nine feet high."

"That so?" said Nively. They were on their way back to the office. "My word! I thought all mammoths were huge things. I say, Dr. Platt, I have a little matter I'd like to discuss in private."

"You can go right ahead, Mr. Nively. I haven't any secrets from Staples."

"Very well. To begin, is this process of yours protected?"

"Sure it is. At least, as far as you can protect any invention by patent applications. What are you getting at, Mr. Nively?"

"I think the Marco Polo might have a proposal that would interest you, Dr. Platt."

"Well?"

"We'd like to buy up your patent applications and all rights pertaining thereto."

"What do you want them for?"

"You see, our business requires considerable capital and involves a lot of risk. You load six giraffes on at Jibouti, and by the time you get to New York one of 'em is alive-if you're lucky. With your proc. ess we could put the animals in cold storage at the point of s.h.i.+pment, as it were, and-what's the word you use?-reify them in this country."

"That sounds interesting. Would you be interested in a nonexclusive license?"

"No, we want complete control. To . . . ah. . . keep up the ethical standards of the business."

"Sorry, but I'm not selling."

"Oh, come now, Dr. Platt-"

They argued some more, but Nively left without getting anywhere. A week later, just after the rock containing the mammoth had been hoisted into its tank, he was back.

"Dr. Platt," he began, "we're businessmen, and we're willing to pay a fair price-" So they went at it again-again without result.

After Nively had gone, Platt said to Staples: "He must think I'm pretty obtuse! The reason they're after my process is that they're afraid it'll break their monopoly. There isn't a circus or zoo in the country that wouldn't like one or two prehistoric animals."

The taciturn Staples opined: "I have an idea they'll get really riled when we get a couple of the same species and breed 'em."

"By Jove, I never thought of that! n.o.body buys wild lions nowadays. It's too easy to raise your own. That gives me another idea. Suppose we start a race of, say, elotheres, like our big piggy friend over there. And suppose civilization collapses, so that the record of our work here is lost. Won't the paleontologists of a few thousand years hence have a time figuring how the elotheres disappeared completely in the Miocene, and then reappeared again twenty million years later, warts and all?"

"That's easy," retorted Staples. "They'll invent a sunken continent in the Pacific Ocean, where the Elotherid~ hung out during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. And then a land bridge was formed, enabling them to spread over North-Hey, don't throw that! I'll be good!"

Nively's third visit was sometime later, when the mammoth was almost ready to be hoisted out of his tank. The sunburned man came to the point right away.

"Dr. Platt," he said, "we have a big business, built up with a great deal of effort, and we shan't sit around and watch it destroyed just because some scientist gets a bright idea. We'll make you a perfectly fair offer: We buy your patent application, under an agreement whereby you can practice your process, provided you name us exclusive agent for the sale of your animals. In that way you can continue your scientific work; we retain control of the commercial field; everyone's happy. What do you say, old chap?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Nively, but I'm not in the market for such an arrangement. If you want to talk nonexciusive licenses, I might be willing to listen."

"Now look here, Dr. Platt, you'd better think twice before you turn us down. We're a powerful organization, you know, and we can make things very unpleasant for you."

"I'll take a chance on that."

"A wild-animal collection's a vulnerable piece of property, you know. Accidents-"

"Mr. Nively"-here Platt's color wandered down the spectrum toward the red end-"will you please get to h.e.l.l out of here?"

Nively got.

Platt, looking after him, mused: "There goes my temper again. Perhaps I should have stalled."

"Maybe," agreed Staples. "He wasn't actually muttering threats when he went out, but he looked as if he were thinking them."

"It's probably bluff," said Platt. "But I think I'll take on another man. We need somebody up and around all the time."

In due season they hoisted the mammoth out of his bath and started his heart. They were nervous, as he was by far the largest animal they had tried the process on. Platt whooped and threw his hat in the air when Parelaphas showed signs of life. Staples whooped, too, but he didn't throw his hat in the air.

They named the mammoth Tec.u.mtha, after the famous Shawnee chief. He stood eleven feet six inches, which is about as big as the biggest modern African elephant. He had helically twisted tusks that almost crossed at the tips. When he became fully conscious he made some rumpus, but after a while calmed down like a modern elephant. During his recovery period he grew a thick coat of short, coa.r.s.e brown hair.

Platt had, as he had said he would, taken on another man to help Elias. Early one morning Tec.u.mtha had a slight stomach ache. This new man, Jake, went out to see what he was squealing about. Jake dissolved his medicine in an elephant highball-one bucketful, equal parts of gin and ginger extract-and took it in to him. Tec.u.mtha was sucking it up his trunk and gurgling happily, and Jake had stepped out of sight, when Nively materialized. He walked up to the enclo sure and shot Tec.u.mtha through the upper part of his bead with a Birmingham .303.

That was a mistake. The Birmingham .303 is much too light a rifle for shooting elephants. And the upper part of an elephant's head is merely a cellular bone structure to anchor its huge neck muscles. Its brain is much lower down. Nively had done all his field work in South America and didn't know that about an elephant's construction. The bullet went through Tec.u.mtha's head, but it merely made him very, very angry. He trumpeted. That is a most startling sound the first time you hear it, like twenty men blowing bugles full of spit.

Jake heard the commotion and ran out. He took one look at Tec.u.mtha and made for the gate. In his hurry he left it open. Nively took one more shot, which went wild. Then he ran, too, with Tec.u.mtha after him. He had no chance to reach his car. The mammoth would have caught him right there if he hadn't spotted Elias' bicycle leaning against a tree.

The noise brought Kenneth Staples out of bed. He got to the window in time to see Nively and the bicycle whirl down the driveway with Tec.u.mtha close behind, and disappear on the highway headed for Carriesville.

Staples did not wait to dress, but ran downstairs and out to the garage. He did pause long enough to s.n.a.t.c.h a hat from the rack in the hall. He took the truck Platt had bought for moving laige animals, and started after Nively and Tec.u.mtha.

He had not gone a mile when he was stopped by Popenoe, the local state highway cop.

"Oh," said Popenoe, "it's you, Mr. Staples. Well, what the h.e.l.l do you mean by-"

"I'm looking for my mammoth," Staples told him.

"Your what?"

"My mammoth-you know, a big elephant with hair."

"Well, I've sure heard funny excuses in my time, but this beats anything. And in your pajamas, too. I give up. Go ahead and chase your elephant. But I'll follow you, and he better turn out to be real. You sure he wasn't pink, with green spots?"

The geologist said he was sure, and drove on to Carriesville. He found a good part of the town turned out around the public square, although n.o.body seemed anxious to get close.

Towns like Carricsville almost always have a gra.s.sy spot in their middle, and on the gra.s.sy spot either a statue or a gun and a pile of cannonb.a.l.l.s. A typical combination is that of a Krupp 1 s-centimeter howitzer, Model 1916, and a pile of four-inch iron roundshot of the vintage of 184g. Carriesville had an equestrian statue of General Philip Sheridan on a tall granite pedestal in front of the courthouse. The sun was just rising, and its pink rays shone on Mr. Nively, who was perched on General Sheridan's hat. Tec.u.mtha was shuffling around the base of the statue and trying to reach Nively with his trunk.

Staples learned later that one local citizen had emptied a pistol at Tec.u.mtha, but the mammoth hadn't even noticed it. Then somebody shot him with a deer rifle, which annoyed him. He took after the shooter, who went away. n.o.body tried any more shooting. While Tec.u.mtha's attention was distracted, Nively started to climb down, but the mammoth returned before he had a chance to do so.

Staples drove the truck up near the courthouse and got out. Tec.u.mtha took a few steps toward him. Staples prepared to retreat, but the mammoth recognized him and went back to Nively. He paid no attention to Staples' calls. He figured how to get his head against the pedestal without his tusks being in the way, and with one good heave, over went little Phil Sheridan. As the statue toppled, Nively caught a branch of a big oak nearby and dangled like an oriole's nest. Tec.u.mtha waltzed around underneath and made hostile noises.

Staples drove the truck up alongside the mammoth. He let down the tailboard and called to Nively to swing over so he'd land on the roof of the cab, and stay there. Nively did so. Tec.u.mtha tried to reach him there, but couldn't quite make it. He strolled around the truck. Seeing the tailboard, he ran up it into the body to get closer to Nively. Staples hoisted the tail into place and barred it. Then he went around to the front end and climbed up on the hood.

Nively was sitting on the roof of the cab, looking remarkably pale for such a sunburned man. Staples foresaw difficulties in getting back to Platt's, and he couldn't go around as he was. He thought, it's a shame to take advantage of a man who's so all in, but he has it coming to him. Aloud he said: "Lend me your pants and your money."

Nively protested. Staples was not given to lengthy arguments. He climbed up beside Nively and grabbed his arm. "Want to go over on top of your playmate?" he growled.

Nively was a hard man physically, but he winced under the geolo gist's grip. "You . . . you extortioner!" he sputtered. "I could have you arrested!"

"Yeah? So could I have you arrested for trespa.s.s and vandalism, not to mention stealing a bicycle. Come on, hand 'em over. I'll see that you get them back, and your car, too."

Nively looked at Tec.u.mtha's trunk, which had crawled up over the front wall of the truck body and was feeling around hopefully, and gave in. Staples left him enough money to get back to Chicago, and he departed.

About this time Popenoe, the state policeman, and two of the town's three local cops had gotten up their courage to approach the truck. One of the latter carried a submachine gun.

"Better get out of the way, Mr. Staples," he said. "That there's a dangerous wild animal, and we're gonna kill him."

"Oh, no, you're not," answered Staples. "He's also a valuable piece of property and a scientifically important specimen."

"Don't make no difference. Munic.i.p.al Ordinance No. 486-" He was peering under the edge of the canvas cover on the side of the truck body. He got the mammoth's location, stepped back, and raised his gun.

Staples did not see that sitting in the cab while his charge was filled with lead would serve any useful purpose. He backed the truck off the courthouse lawn and drove away. All three cops yelled. Staples couldn't go back the way he had come, because the road was blocked by cars and people. He took the opposite direction, toward Warsaw and Chicago. After two blocks he turned off and into a garage where he was known. Half a minute later he had the satisfaction of seeing two police cars shoot past the intersection with sirens going. In a few minutes they came scooting back, evidently thinking that Staples had sneaked around and made for home.

He telephoned Platt and told him what had happened. Platt said: "For G.o.d's sake, don't come back now, Ken. There's a state trooper out front waiting for you-or rather, for Tec.u.mtha."

"Well, what'll I do? I've got to take care of him somehow. He'll be getting hungry, and he has a couple of gunshot wounds that need looking at."

Platt paused. "I'll tell you: Drive him up to Chicago and sell him to the zoo. The director's name is Traphagen. The cops won't be expecting you to go that way, and if you bring Tec.u.mtha back here it'll just make more trouble."

As Staples hung up, the garage man asked: "Vho's that Tec.u.mtha you was talking about, Mr. Staples?" He was leaning against the truck. At that instant the mammoth gave one of his spine. chilling toots. Kennedy, the garage man, jumped a foot straight up.