The Enchanter Completed

Kilbrew was chill, formal to me. I suppose, even as mildly as I thought I'd spoken, I must've been the first person to disagree with him since he made his first billion. His pet thugs weren't any more friendly.

As much for a little punishment as anything else, I decided we'd build a blind near our nicely-reeking hypsilophodon that night, and hope for results the next morning. Some smaller sauropods had already been sniffing around the carcass, and I hoped for some luck.

It rained most of the night, and then dawn was chill, gray and foggy.

It's always a surprise to be reminded how softly a carnivore moves. One minute, there was nothing in the small clearing but a very dead dinosaur, then, almost as tall as the cycads around him, the dark gray bulk of our theropod was there.

It couldn't scent us… the rotting hypsilophodon would mask the stink of a regiment of Napoleonic infantry on the march.

I touched Kilbrew. He jerked… I think he was dozing… and saw the allosaur.

Kilbrew came up, just as Nicholas also saw the brute.

I moved to the side, and eased the safety off my.600 double.

But Kilbrew didn't panic.

The allosaur saw movement, turned, and its jaws gaped.

Kilbrew sent his first round down the beast's mouth.

It stumbled back, fell on its side, came back up, screaming rage, hate.

I was holding steady on where its tiny brain was, and Kilbrew's rifle went off again, putting a fist-size hole where I'd been aiming.

The allosaurus staggered, and Kilbrew's third round went in just below its eye.

It bellowed, and fell.

Kilbrew started forward.

"No!" I shouted, pulling at his arm, and then Hendrik had him.

"Reload," somebody shouted, probably me, and Kilbrew obeyed.

I stood, waiting, while the dinosaur thrashed about, its body taking a good long time to realize it was dead.

Finally it lay still.

"Now," I told Kilbrew. "Put one in the back of its head, to mak' siccar."

"No," he said. "I don't want to ruin the head any further."

I admired him as a cool one, even if a few minutes later, he had a very impressive case of the shakes.

The shots brought Black and the two handlers, with the butcher's kit, and in less than an hour we had the head and a good section of the snaky neck off.

We went back to the camp, and, right on schedule, Bruce was there with the chamber.

Even success didn't defrost Kilbrew.

It didn't matter much to me, other than I figured the bonus clients normally pay wouldn't come forth this time.

But it wasn't as if I'd expected many customer recommendations from Kilbrew anyway.

Surprisingly enough, not only did he pay the fee promptly, but there was a very fat bonus attached. I split my share with Beauregard, and told him it was for his vast brotherhood and gentility.

It was a good fifteen minutes before we stopped laughing.

We went back to business, and business was suddenly very good and very interesting.

Over the past few years, there had been transition chambers set up in other places than St. Louis: Australia; the Japanese one in Ulan Bator, Mongolia; and now the University of Nairobi was building one, a very big one. The one Rivers amp; Aiyar used was big enough only for people and a mule or two. No more.

Surprisingly, Professor Prochaska was mad enough to bite beer bottle necks.

Bruce Cohen explained why.

"He was one of the first consulted by Nairobi, and wasn't at all taken with the people in charge of the project."

"Why not?"

"The first thing is that he doesn't think they're that honest, which may or may not be the truth.

"But the second thing is really worrisome. The project is especially designed to benefit anthropologists and archeologists."

"Uh-oh," I said.

"Yeah," Cohen said. "There's been some interesting math theories done lately that suggest our nice and comfortable belief that nature won't allow a paradox may not be precisely true.

"So all of a sudden we're going to have these soft science… I'm not talking about archeologists here… wandering around Northern Africa."

"Looking," I said, "for a chance to get a really good look at primitive Man."

"Exactly," Cohen said. "Prochaska and I went to a conference a couple of months ago, and the savants, as I think they'd like to be known as, swear most piously they won't be bothering any early Man.

"But they might be hiding cameras in bushes.

"Someone ru

I nodded, then remembered a rather disastrous trip I'd made a few years ago.

"At least that'll shut up the bible-shouters."

"You wa

"I tell you, Reginald, I can see some really interesting problems coming up from all this."

I decided to do a little research.

The people with the trowels and dust brooms had slowly but surely inched man's begi

Right now, the oldest example of close-to-Man, Australopithecus afarensis, is about four million and a bit old, in the Middle Pleistocene.

One colony only, if that's what it should be called, some thirty, hairy shorties a bit more than a meter tall, but who were human enough to use appropriately-jagged flints for tools.

It had been labeled Awash man, after the Ethiopian National Park it was found in.

Interesting, but I always thought Cohen worried too much.

Chandra and I were quite busy, for with a whole new continent opening up, many of my longtime clients came swarming back, eager to blast an entirely new species.

I discovered something that made me a bit unsettled. This new time machine in Nairobi had been supposedly built for scientists. Scientists, of course, who could afford the rather steep ticket. Transition chambers use a lot of power, especially one big enough to hold a helicopter.

But all of a sudden, through hunting circles, I started hearing stories about hunters who'd managed to get themselves back to prehistoric Africa, hunters whose only claim to scientification was being able to calculate the cubic meters of their bank account.

I remembered what Cohen had said about Prochaska's worries, and started worrying myself.

Somebody might go back, and do something and suddenly I, and everybody I know, would be nonexistent. Or, on the other hand, we might all become peace-loving vegetarians, in tune with the Cosmos.

My bet went, very firmly, if cynically, on the former possibility.

But if there could be paradoxes, and if I could end up never having existed, it wouldn't be as if I'd have any time to get pissed, so I concentrated on getting some of my better-heeled clients on the list with Nairobi.

I did a little digging, and found the names of a couple of people who, if given an appropriately-sized check, would suddenly swear that you were a Doctor of Paleontology from the University of Fort Knox.

We'd been able to make two trips into Africa, when I got a call from Sir Peter Kilbrew, who wanted to hire me, instanter, to take him hunting again.

I'd seen his name on the news cha

I laughed til I pissed myself when the organizer of this back-to-Africa nonsense turned out to be a scam artist, and disappeared into the woodwork with nobody-ever-said-for-sure how much of Kilbrew's money.