Mastodonia

NINETEEN

On the return flight from Zurich, we had a layover in London. I bought a paper and there it was — a great screaming headline: mystery americans TRAVEL IN TIME’.

I bought other papers. The sober Times treated the story sedately, all the others thundered in bold, black type.

A lot of the facts were jumbled, but the stories essentially were correct. Rila and I were represented as a mystery pair. She was not to be located; rumor had it that she was living in a place called Mastodonia, No one knew exactly where Mastodonia might be, but some speculation came close to the truth. The popular speculation was that I had gone abroad, although no one knew exactly where. But that did not stop the newsmen from making what seemed to me rather fantastic guesses. Ben had been interviewed. He had acknowledged he was our American agent, but gave them little else. Herbert Livingston, Ben’s public relations officer, was quoted as saying, rather curtly, that the announcement was premature and that he would have nothing further to say until a more appropriate time. I wondered, as I read the story, just how in hell Herb suddenly had become our PR man. The story was based on what was described as an authoritative source without any attempt to pinpoint the source. But Safari, Inc., which somehow had been tied into the story, admitted that a film did exist of a dinosaur hunt staged in an era some seventy million years in the past. One movie company executive was even quoted as being at least marginally interested. The Safari people openly admitted their interest. Courtney was not mentioned and from this omission, I was fairly certain where the leak to the press had originated.

Four noted physicists, one of them a Nobelist, had been interviewed, each of them saying with varying degrees of smugness that time travel was impossible.

Each of the stories assumed that a time machine was involved — which was understandable since only five people, perhaps six, now that Herb was involved, knew that one was not. There was considerable agonizing among the so-called science writers of the various newspapers as to what kind of form the machine would take and what principles would be involved. Only one of the stories I read failed to mention H. G. Wells.

My first sight of the first paper with its blaring headline left me all tensed up, but before too long, having read some of the other stories, I had become mush inside. As long as only a few people had known about our time-travel capability, it had been possible for me to accept the idea as a sort of silly, almost boyish, secret. But the situation was different when our secret was shared by the entire world. I found myself looking around and behind me to see if anyone might recognize me, but that was rather foolish since none of the London papers had pictures of either Rila or me. But it would not take long, I knew, until our pictures would be splashed across the tabloids. In those early stories, there was no identification of who either of us might be, but before the day was over, the newsmen would run down exactly who we were and would then find photos of us.

I found myself wild with the wish to be in Willow Bend again, where I felt I would be relatively safe from the outside world. I regarded with something close to terror the prospect of those hours of travel still ahead. Foolishly, I suppose, I found a shop in the airport where I could buy a pair of dark glasses. I felt silly wearing them, for I never had before, even in the field. But they were something to hide behind, at least symbolically, and I put them on.

At first, I was going to leave the papers I had bought, having no wish even marginally to advertise the fact I might have some interest in the story. Then thinking of the kick Rila and Ben would get out of the stories, I bundled all the papers together and carried them underneath an arm.

My seat partner, a stuffy, middle-aged American I pegged as being a banker — although perhaps he was not — had a paper stuck in his jacket pocket, but seemed to have no wish to talk with me, for which I was extremely thankful. But after the steward brought us our evening meal, he loosened up and paid me the courtesy of acknowledging my presence.

“You read this rot,” he asked, “about someone traveling in time?”

“I noticed it,” I said.

“You know, that can’t be done,” he said. “I wonder how the papers fell for stuff like that. Newspapermen, you know, aren’t stupid people. They should have known better.”

“Sensationalism,” I said. “They’ll do anything to sell their papers.”

He didn’t answer me and I thought the conversation was at an end, but a few minutes later he said, not as if he were talking to me exactly, but more as if he were addressing the world in general: “Dangerous business, you know. Messing around in time could cause a lot of trouble. It could change history, even, and we can’t be doing that. Hard enough as it is without someone messing everything up.”

The rest of the way he said nothing further. He turned out to be a good seat partner.

I settled down to some steady worrying, which did me no good at all, but I couldn’t help myself. I wondered if the fence was up, if the floodlights were installed and working, if we had plenty of guards to patrol the fence. Courtney McCallahan, if he, in fact, had been the one who had tipped off the reporters, would certainly have checked to see that everything was ready at Willow Bend before giving out the story.

The hours spun out and finally I fell asleep and did not wake until we were coming down at Kennedy.

I half expected, illogically, of course, that I might find newspapermen waiting for me at Kennedy, but apparently no one had any idea I’d be on the plane.

I grabbed a New York Times as fast as I could and there were our pictures, Rila’s and mine, on the front page. Both were photos that had been taken some years ago, but I suppose we could have been recognized by them.

I debated whether I should phone Rila or Ben or maybe even Courtney in Washington, then decided not to. If there were no newsmen waiting in New York, there’d probably be none at Minneapolis. Rila and Ben knew what plane I would be on and one of them would be at the airport waiting for me.

Neither one of them was. Waiting for me instead was EIrod Anderson, manager of Willow Bend’s one supermarket. I would have passed right by him, for I didn’t know him that well, but he grabbed me by the arm and told me who he was. Then I recognized him.

“Ben couldn’t get away and neither could Rila,” he said. “There are newspapermen hip deep in Willow Bend and if either Ben or Rila had driven off, they would have followed them. Ben phoned me and asked me to pick you up. He said this way you may have a chance of sneaking in without anyone knowing who you are. I brought along some clothes you can change into and some false whiskers.”

“I don’t know if I’ll go for the whiskers,” I said.

“I thought maybe you wouldn’t,” said EIrod, “but I brought them anyhow. They’re real good. Look like the real thing. There is a big crowd gathering and more coming all the time. I don’t know what they expect to see. Some of them are already disappointed because there really isn’t much to see. A few of them came in campers, as if they were planning to stay for a while. Ben is renting out space for the campers on that farm be bought just east of you, and he has a big parking lot there, too, for the other cars. I don’t mean Ben is doing the work himself. He is hiring people to do it. Old Limpy Jones is in charge of the parking lot and Limpy hasn’t worked for almost thirty years. Best man at ducking a job I ever saw. But Limpy is working now. Likes all the excitement, he says. Probably raking something off the top of the money he takes in. But he won’t get away with that.

Ben will catch him, sure as shooting. Ben is about the sharpest operator I have ever seen.”

“I suppose the fence is finished,” I said.

“Yup,” said Elrod, “a couple of days ago. And the building is up, too. It has a big sign across the front that says Ben Page, Agent for Time Associates. What is that all about? I thought it was you that figured out how to go skating around in time. How come Ben has such a big hand in it?”

“Ben is our agent,” I said. “For the United States, maybe even North America.”

“But you are there, too. Or, at least, in a little while you will be. And this woman of yours, Rila, she is there. Why ain’t you two handling it?”

“Fact is we don’t live there any more,” I said.

“The hell you don’t. Where do you live?”

“In Mastodonia.”

“My goodness,” he said, “I did hear something about that. Where at is this Mastodonia?”

“It’s back in time. About one hundred fifty thousand years back in time. Mastodons live there. That’s how come the name.”

“Is it a nice place?”

“It should be,” I said. “I’ve never seen it.”

“You’re living there. How come you’ve never seen it?”

“Rila and Hiram set it up and moved there after I left for Europe.”

“What has Hiram got to do with all this?” Elrod asked. “He’s a trifling sort of fellow and never seemed too bright.”

“He has an awful lot to do with it,” I said.

The morning sun was shining brightly out in the parking lot. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in sight.

Elrod settled behind the wheel and backed out of his space.

“Ben told me to drop you off at the parking lot at home,” he said. “Said for you to get into the crowd of tourists and wander up to the gate. The sheriff has some deputies guarding it and sort of keeping order.

Tell them who you are. They’ll be expecting you and will let you in. I have an old pair of work pants and a denim jacket and an old felt hat. You can put them on before you get there. If you don’t waste any time, no one will recognize you. They’ll think you’re just another country boy come to see what is going on. I think you should wear them whiskers, too.”

Five miles or so out of town, we pulled into a town-ship road and parked while I got into the clothes. But I didn’t put on the whiskers. I couldn’t bring myself to do so.