Living Fossil
L. Sprague de Camp
WHERE the rivers flowed together, the country was flat and, in places, swampy. The combined waters spread out and crawled around reedy islands. Back from the banks, the ground rose into low tree-crowned humps.
The May flies were swarming that day, and as thousands of them danced, the low afternoon sun, whose setting would bring death to them all, glinted on their wings. There was little sound, other than the hum of a belated cicada and the splashing of an elephantlike beast in the southern tributary.
The beast suddenly raised its head, its great mulish ears swiveling forward and its upraised trunk turning this way and that like a periscope. It evidently disapproved of what it smelled, for it heaved its bulk out of its bath and ambled off up a creek bed, the feet on its columnar legs making loud sucking noises as they pulled out of the mud.
Two riders appeared from downstream, each leading an animal similar to the one he rode. The animals' feet swished through the laurel beds and went squilch-squilch as they struck patches of muck. As they crossed the creek bed, the leading rider pulled up his mount and pointed to the tracks made by the elephantine beast.
"Giant tapir!" he said in his own harsh, chattering language. "A big one. What a specimen he'd make!"
"Ngoy?" drawled his companion, meaning approximately "Oh, yeah?" He continued: "And how would we get it back to South America? Carry it slung from a pole?"
The first rider made the grating noise in his throat that was his race's equivalent of laughter."I didn't suggest shooting it. I just said it would make a good specimen. We'll have to get one some day. The museum hasn't a decent mounted example of the species."
The riders were anthropoid, but not human. Their large prehensile tails, rolled up behind them on the saddle, and the thick coats of brown and black hair that covered them, precluded that. Their thumblike halluces or big toes jutted out from the mid-portion of their feet and were hooked into the stirrups, which were about the size and shape of napkin rings. Below the large liquid eyes in their prognathous faces there were no external noses, just a pair of narrow nostrils set wide apart. The riders weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds each. A zoologist of today would have placed them in the family Cebidae, the capuchin monkeys, and been right. They would have had more difficulty in classifying the zoologist, because in their time the science of paleontology was young, and the family tree of the primates had not been worked out fully.
Their mounts were the size of mules; tailless, round-eared, and with catlike whiskers sprouting from their deep muzzles. They absurdly resembled colossal guinea pigs, which they were; or rather, they were colossal agoutis, the ordinary agouti being a rabbit-sized member of the cavy family.
The leading rider whistled. His mount and the lead pack agouti bucked up the creek bank and headed at their tireless trot toward one of the mounds. The rider dismounted and began poking around between the curiously regular granite blocks scattered among the green-and-brown-spotted trunks of the sycamores. Grasshoppers exploded from under his feet as he walked.
He called, "Chujee!"
The other rider trotted up and got off. The four agoutis went to work with their great chisel teeth on the low-drooping branches.
"Look," the first rider said, turning over one of the blocks."Those faces are too nearly parallel to have been made that way by accident. And here's one with two plane surfaces at a perfect right angle. I think we've found it."
"Ngoy?" drawled the other."You mean the site of a large city of Men? Maybe." Skepticism was patent in his tone as he strolled about, poking at the stones with his foot. Then his voice rose. "Nawputta! You think you've found something; look at this!" He uprighted a large stone. Its flat face was nearly smooth, but when it was turned so that the sun's rays were almost parallel with the face, a set of curiously regular shadows sprang out on the surface.
Nawputta—he had a given name as well, but it was both unpronounceable and unnecessary to reproduce here—scowled at it, trying in his mind to straighten the faint indentations into a series of inscribed characters. He fished a camera out of his harness and snapped several pictures, while Chujee braced the stone. The markings were as follows:
NATIO..... ..ANK OF ...TTSBURGH
"It's an inscription, all right," Nawputta remarked, as he put his camera away."Most of it's weathered away, which isn't surprising, considering that the stone's been here for five or ten million years, or however long Man has been extinct. The redness of this sand bears out the theory. It's probably full of iron oxide. Men must have used an incredible amount of steel in their buildings."
Chujee asked: "Have you any idea what the inscription says?" In his voice there was the trace of awe which the capuchins felt toward these predecessors who had risen so high and vanished so utterly.
"No. Some of our specialists will have to try to decipher it from my photographs. That'll be possible only if it's in one of the languages of Man that have been worked out. He had dozens of different languages that we know of, and probably hundreds that we don't. The commonest was En-gel-iss-ha, which we can translate fairly well. It's too bad there aren't some live Men running around. They could answer a lot of questions that puzzle us."
"Maybe," said Chujee." And maybe it's just as well there aren't. They might have killed us off if they'd thought we were going to become civilized enough to compete with them."
"Perhaps you're right. I never thought of that. I wish we could take the stone back with us."
Chujee grunted."When you hired me to guide you, you told me the museum just wanted you to make a short reconnaissance. And every day you see something weighing a ton or so that you want to collect. Yesterday it was that bear we saw on the cliff; it weighed a ton and a half at least."
"But," expostulated Nawputta, "that was a new subspecies!"
"Sure," growled the guide."That makes it different. New subspecies aren't really heavy; they only look that way. You scientific guys! We should have brought along a derrick, a steam tractor, and a gang of laborers from the Colony." His grin took the sting out of his words."Well, old-timer, I see you'll be puttering around after relics all day; I might as well set up camp." He collected the agoutis and went off to find a dry spot near the river.
Presently he was back."I found a place," he said."But we aren't the first ones. There's the remains of a recent fire."
Nawputta, the zoologist, looked disappointed."Then we aren't the first to penetrate this far into the Eastern Forest. Who do you suppose it was?"
"Dunno. Maybe a timber scout from the Colony. They're trying to build up a lumber export business, you know. They don't like being too dependent on their salt and sulphur— Yeow!" Chujee jumped three feet straight up."Snake!"
Nawputta jumped, too; then laughed at their timidity. He bent over and snatched up the little reptile as it slithered among the stones."It's perfectly harmless," he said."Most of them are, this far north."
"I don't care if it is," barked Chujee, backing up rapidly."You keep that damn thing away from me!"
Next day they pushed up the south tributary. The character of the vegetation slowly changed as they climbed. A few miles up, they came to another fork. They had to swim the main stream in order to follow the smaller one, as Nawputta wished to cast toward the line of hills becoming visible in the east, before turning back. As they swam their agoutis across the main street, a black-bellied cloud that had crept up behind them suddenly opened with a crash of thunder, and pelting rain whipped the surface to froth.
As they climbed out On the far bank, Nawputta began absent-mindedly unrolling his cape. He almost had it on when a whoop from Chujee reminded him that he was thoroughly soaked already. The rain had slackened to a drizzle and presently ceased.