Every few minutes Susan had to stop herself from asking Matt how long he thought it would take to put the machine into reverse and step on the gas, floor the son of a bitch full-speed into the twenty-first century. If he had any idea, she knew he would have told her, and simply to ask the question was to invite the impossible answer, the answer she didn't think she could bear to hear: How long? It will be thousands of years before we, or our bones, reach the twenty-first century.
Clothing could be a problem. They didn't know what time of year it was now. Who could even tell if summer would be hot or winter cold? The climate had changed a lot in thousands of years. Both of them were lightly dressed in what they had thrown on when Matt got the call. It seemed pleasant enough for now, but it had been chilly last night, Susan remembered. What if this was summer? What if the Los Angeles Basin got a lot of snow in December? What about tonight, for that matter? They must find water soon, and that meant that if the elephants didn't find some close by, they would likely be spending the night in the open, on the ground, and they didn't have so much as a blanket.
More frightening than the idea of getting cold, though, was the idea of getting eaten. Susan had spent some time years ago camping out, but Matt had hardly ever slept outside of a building. Neither of them knew much survival lore. And there were sure to be things out there happy to make a meal of them. She looked at the big elephant gun lying there on the table, and almost wanted to laugh.
Five years ago, an ill-treated elephant had run amok in Los Angeles. It killed three police officers and soaked up a ton of LAPD lead before a weapon powerful enough to kill it had been brought to the scene. The city council enacted a law requiring anyone keeping elephants to have such a weapon handy at all times. Susan had scoffed at the time, but dutifully took the thing—she had no idea of the maker or the caliber, except that it fired bullets that seemed almost as big as beer cans—to an indoor range and fired it... twice. The first time knocked her down and badly bruised her shoulder. The second shot was to prove to herself she could master it. She had, and never intended to fire it again.
"How are you doing over there?" she called to Matt.
He glanced up, and shrugged.
"I've got a good program roughed out for the computer to run. But I'm flying blind. Give me another few minutes."
She went back to her list.
The ax would be handy for cutting firewood, if they needed heat. As far as building a shelter, she thought staying in the warehouse would be the best idea, unless water was too far away.
There had not been a vehicle within range of whatever force had taken them through time. She thought a mid-sized SUV would be able to handle most of the primeval terrain of Los Angeles. Hell, with the machines Howard had installed in Matt's lab, he could probably build an SUV, given time. She hoped they wouldn't have that much time.
She looked across the room to the door to the giant refrigerator. She wondered if she should add that to her list: FOOD: TEN TONS OF MAMMOTH MEAT. In a few days it would be thawed and rotting.
She couldn't stand it anymore, so she got up and stood behind Matt. He had the case open, and was carefully pushing the hypercube here and there, in different combinations. Nothing was happening, nothing at all. She got the impression he could keep at it for hours, maybe days.
"What do you say we get moving?" she said.
He looked up at her, and closed the case. "You're right. Let's go."
LEARNING to get on the back of an elephant wasn't as easy as Susan had hinted. He had stepped on Queenie's trunk, as instructed, and then felt she was going to toss him right over her back, the ride upward was so swift, his weight so negligible to the giant animal. He ended up sprawled across the elephant's head, which couldn't have been too comfortable for her, but she displayed endless patience as Susan grabbed his arm and helped him get seated behind her. Then, off they went, at the head of a row of pregnant pachyderms that would have made P. T. Barnum proud. The view was spectacular, and the ride wasn't too uncomfortable. He already preferred it to his one ride on a horse.
"This is no good," Susan said, giving Queenie the touch command that made her stop. "We're going to have to walk."
"And I was having such a good time. Why not ride?"
"Too many reasons. These are all former circus elephants, but I didn't train them, and they're all rusty. Queenie is responding to most of my commands, but she's slow, I think she's forgotten some. And she's edgy."
It was a new environment, and he imagined it was full of new and exciting and probably disturbing smells. He had noticed all the elephants were raising their trunks frequently. It stood to reason that with ten feet of nose, they smelled things he couldn't even imagine. What if something scared her?
"You've convinced me," he said.
So they got down, and Matt quickly found the elephants set a pace a lot quicker than he had realized. So high off the ground, it didn't seem so fast.
Susan walked alongside Queenie, guiding the great beast with touches of a wooden broom handle, trying to slow her down. But the other elephants weren't having any of it.
"I was hoping they'd accept her as the herd leader," Susan told him. "She's the oldest. But Queenie has never been dominant. They won't follow her."
"So who's the leader of the pack?" Matt asked, already starting to pant from the pace the
elephants were setting.
"That would be Becky, the one with the notch in her left ear."
"Why not go to Becky, slow her down?"
"Becky doesn't like me. We never hit it off."
She tried to slow Becky, but soon the great gray moving wall of flesh had had enough, and
ignored further commands. She set her own pace, which was too fast for the humans to keep up with.
"They're getting away," Matt observed, bent over trying to catch his breath.
"Probably for the best."
"You think so?"
Susan shrugged, but he could see she was upset. "Matt, they had to go free sooner or later. I can't feed them, I can't water them. They'll have to fend for themselves. Which shouldn't be hard; this land is full of things they can eat, so long as they find water."
She pointed to the retreating tails of her former charges. A fleet of trucks might have just passed, tearing up shrubs, breaking branches off trees, leaving deep indentations in the soil. Tracking a herd of elephants didn't require the services of Tonto.
"I'm pretty sure they're on the scent of it. All we need to do is follow, and hope it's not a three-day trip."
So they set off at a comfortable walking pace. Soon the elephants disappeared over a rise, and when they got to the top of it, the herd was nowhere to be seen.
THEY stopped several hills later and sat down to eat a few bags of peanuts and candy bars and wash it down with cans of warm root beer. Susan kept watch for predators while Matt opened the time machine once again to glare uselessly at the gleaming, frozen innards. There had been no change. He shut it again in disgust.
Susan looked around at the empty landscape. So far they hadn't seen so much as a prehistoric bunny rabbit, but any one of those clumps of trees could conceal a whole herd of saber-toothed cats. Did cats come in herds? Prides? She vaguely remembered reading of a North American lion, which had been bigger than the saber-tooths. Her fingers worked nervously on the stock of the elephant gun. Did the big cats hide in trees and jump down on their prey? Or did they wait in ambush on the ground, or stalk and pounce? Did they hunt at night, or during the day? She didn't know, and didn't think even an archaeologist could have told her. But she'd have given a lot to have one around just then.