"Oh, please don't insist, Charles! You know I never really wanted to go. You go alone, and I'll spend the time choosing rugs and curtains for the new house."
After more talk, Redmond gave in, saying: "Oh, all right, darling, if you don't mind my going alone."
So we made arrangements to whisk him, and one other sahib who had signed up for that slot, back to the Cretaceous. By this time we were well-enough organized so that it wasn't necessary for both Aiyar and me to go on every time safari. He was out in the Pliocene, and when he got back I should take Redmond and our other client while the Raja held down the office. I call Chandra Aiyar "Raja" because by descent he actually is lord of some place in India called Janpur, though nowadays that's purely honorary. He swears he wouldn't go back there and king it even if the Janpuris came and begged him to. He's safe in saying that, because we all know that will never happen.
Redmond signed up and then launched into a sales talk on Superior Motors and their new off-trail vehicle, the Cayuse. He was a hard man to say "no" to. Some people just have that ability. They become presidents, dictators, leaders of cults and religions, or tycoons like Redmond. At last, to shut him up as much as anything, I agreed to come round to his sales room nearby and at least take a look at the Cayuse.
What's a Cayuse? I understand it's the name of some tribe of Red Indians—Native Americans, they call them nowadays. Then the word was used for the horses the Native Americans rode in the old days, before the whites beat them into submission; and in the western states it's often used as a slang term for any horse.
Anyway, I left the office in charge of Miss Minakuchi and went down the street with the Redmonds to their agency and showroom. There in the center of the floor with a big sign stood the Cayuse. I can best describe it as a four-wheeled motorcycle, with two seats in tandem and no top.
"You see, Reginald," said Redmond. He followed the Yank sales pitch of immediately calling prospects by their given names as if they were old friends. "You see, it meets the objection you cited, of taking up too much room in the transition chamber. It's as compact as it can be made."
"What's its fuel?"
"Diesel 432."
"How far does it get on a liter?"
"Eighteen on a paved road. That's almost as good as some motorcycles."
He went on and on and finally said: "Look, Reginald, I have an idea. I'll arrange to give you a Cayuse, free, if you'll take it on our safari and let us get some publicity out of it.
"Just think of the freedom it would give you! Back in the Cretaceous you won't have to worry about some environmentalist nut popping up to say: You can't shoot that critter; it's an endangered species! Or another eco-freak saying: You can't run your jeep here: it'll tear up a fragile environment! You're free of all that long-haired nonsense, the way our ancestors—yours and mine—were when they first settled empty continents."
It struck me that the Native Americans and the Native Australians might see the process a little differently, since to them North America and Australia weren't "empty" at all. But it would not have been good business to argue the point. It was also plain that Redmond was the kind of businessman who would regard as "long-haired nonsense" anything that interfered in the slightest with the sale of his product. I did say:
"And suppose we're in the Cretaceous outback, and your Cayuse breaks down? Are you a bonzer mechanic, who can fix it?"
He hesitated. "Not really, Reginald. I can change a tire and things like that, but I'm not up to fiddling in the vehicle's guts. Tell you what! We've got a first-class mechanic here at the agency, Joe Voth. I'll bring him along with us."
"At the usual rates?" I said, not wanting him to come the raw prawn with me.
"Sure," he said. "Since Melissa's not going, it won't cost me any more than I'd already budgeted. Less, in fact, since the company will pay and it'll be income-tax deductible."
He started another sales pitch, about the wonders of Superior Motors and the Cayuse in particular. I cut him off, saying:
"Thanks a lot, Charles. I shall have to discuss your offer with my partner, who gets back from the Pliocene later this week. Now I've got to return to the office."
Actually, I didn't go back to the office. I went round to the Herald Building. I had a friend on the Herald, who had looked up the other sahib's record for me; and now I asked him to look up Redmond's.
The other client? He'd already signed up. He was Rex Ligonier, and what I learned through my journalistic friend was that he had inherited a stack, blown it by high living and bad investments, and tried to make it up by marrying an heiress. He hadn't held a steady job since, because this wife was always jerking him away to fix the plumbing in their summer home and the like.
Time was when a man in his situation would have simply settled down to enjoy life as a gentleman of leisure, but no more. Nowadays any grown man feels he has to do something to justify his existence: either to earn money or, if he's already rich, to volunteer for some unpaid do-good post. The Yanks started it with their Protestant work ethic; or maybe it was the Germans. In any case, it's spread to the rest of the Western world. I don't know if it's got to your country yet; but if it hasn't, it will.
Poor Rex Ligonier had tried several jobs, which his connections among the upper crust and pleasant personality enabled him to get despite lack of special training. But none had lasted long, because the wife would snatch him away. I'm no psychiatrist, but I suspect she did that as much as anything to prevent him from getting too independent and to keep him under her thumb. So now he suffered guilt about living on his wife's money without earning any of his own.
He had signed up with Rivers and Aiyar because, like the Redmonds, the Ligoniers had just built a big new house—a mansion, really. I thought my wife and I had a nice house, but Rex's made ours look like a dunny. Mrs. Ligonier thought the space over one of the fireless fireplaces needed the head of some prehistoric beast. She didn't care whether it was Permian or Pleistocene, so long as it was big and ugly—a "conversation piece." So she sent Ligonier to us.
Come to think, I suppose the Raja and I are as responsible as anyone for this new rich man's fad of hanging heads of extinct animals on their walls. A century or two ago, it was common to mount the heads of game animals—mostly deer of one kind or another, with glass eyes. But people who could afford the travel often mounted Asian and African species, like buffalo and rhinoceros.
Nowadays that's practically impossible, since what little wildlife is left is confined to preserves and sanctuaries, and the rangers are likely to shoot first and ask if you're a poacher later. I've turned down offers for the Raja and me to go back by ourselves and fetch the head of some particular prehistoric species, so one of these blighters can hang it up and tell tall tales of how he got it.
But that's not sporting. I tell 'em, if you want a dinosaur head, you can bloody well come back with us and collect it yourself. I shan't say I mightn't weaken if the bribe were big enough; I've got two children in college. But so far it hasn't been.
As for Rex Ligonier, he was a pretty average bloke in size and appearance; but younger than Redmond, with more hair. Redmond had lost most of his, and what remained was silvery gray. Ligonier had a much less aggressive manner than Redmond; in fact, downright modest and retiring. Where Redmond was ready to argue anything, especially if he could work in a plug for Superior Motors, Ligonier avoided argument. If you gave him a hot sell on the idea that the world was flat, he'd only say: "I'm sure you're right."
As for Charles Redmond, what I learned on the business side was all to the good. He was honest, fair, shrewd, and had energy enough for two.