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The sign on the wall burned in the darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
“Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?”
“We guarantee nothing”, said the official, “except the dinosaurs.” He turned. “This is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He’ll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting. If you disobey instructions, there’s a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars plus possible government action on your return.”
“Hell and damn,” Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. “A real Time Machine.” He shook his head. “Makes you think. If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be here now running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He’ll make a fine President of the United States.”
“Yes,” said the man behind the desk. “We’re lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we’d have the worst kind of dictatorship. There’s an anti-everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if Deutscher became President, they wanted to go live in 1492. Of course, it’s not our business to conduct escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway, Keith’s President now. All you got to worry about is …“
“Shooting the dinosaur,” Eckels finished for him.
“A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Thunder lizard, the damnest monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we’re not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry.
They moved silently across the room, taking their guns with them, toward the Machine.
First a day, then a night and then a day and then a night, then it was day-night-day-night-day. A week, a month, a year a decade! A.D. 2055. A.D.2019, 1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine roared.
The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur. The Machine stopped.
The sun stopped in the sky.
“Christ isn’t born yet.” Said Travis. “Moses has not gone to the mountain to talk with God. The Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler – none of them exists. That” – Mr. Travis pointed – “is the jungle of sixty million two thousand and fifty-five years before President Keith.”
“And that,” he said, “is the Path, laid by Time Safari for your use. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in any way. Stay on the Path. Don’t go off it. For any reason! If you fall, there’s a penalty. And don’t shoot any animal we don’t okay.”
“Why?” asked Eckels.
“We don’t want to change the Future. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a small bird, a flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing species. Say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the future families of this mouse are destroyed, right? And all the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible mice!”
“So what?”
“Well, what about the foxes that’ll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice a fox dies. For want of ten foxes, a lion starves. Fifty-nine million years later, a cave man goes hunting sable-tooth tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on a single mouse. So the cave man starves. And the cave man is an entire future nation. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!”
“Of course maybe our theory is wrong. Maybe Time can’t be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in little subtle ways.”
“How do we know which animal to shoot?” “They’re marked with red paint. We kill animals with no future that are never going to mate again. You see how careful we are?”
Out of the silence of the jungle, with a sound of thunder, Tyrannosaurus Rex appears. The Thunder Lizard is so huge and horrible that Eckels gets shocked and scared. He decides to return to the Machine. On his way back, without knowing it, he runs off the Path and walks on the grass. Finally, he finds his way to the Machine. The others kill the dinosaur and come back too.
Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels. “This son of a bitch nearly killed us. But it isn’t that so much. Hell, no. It’s his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. God knows what he’s done to Time, to History!
1492.1776.1812. 1999. 2000. 2055.
The Machine stopped.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. … There was a feel. What sort of world it was now, there was no telling.
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first entering.
Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair.
“Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels. It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing.
“Who - who won the presidential election yesterday?”
The man behind the desk laughed. “You joking? You know damn well. Deutscher, of course! Who else?
Eckels dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers.”Can’t we take it back, can’t we make it alive again? Can’t we start over? Can’t we …“
He did not move. He heard Travis shift his rifle.
There was a sound of thunder.
Lesson 9, Ex.2b)
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