‘At first,’ said Daniels, ‘I was petrified. Not only was I scared,
physically scared — frightened for my safety, frightened that I’d fallen
into a place from which I never could escape — but also afraid that I’d
gone insane. And there was the loneliness.’
‘What do you mean — loneliness?’
‘Maybe that’s not the right word. Out of place. I was where I had no
right to be. Lost in a place where man had not as yet appeared and would not
appear for millions of years. In a world so utterly alien that I wanted to
hunker down and shiver. But I, not the place, was really the alien there. I
still get some of that feeling every now and then. I know about it, of
course, and am braced against it, but at times it still gets to me. I’m a
stranger to the air and the light of that other time — it’s all
imagination, of course.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Thorne.
‘But the greatest fear is gone now, entirely gone. The fear I was
insane. I am convinced now.’
‘How are you convinced? How could a man be convinced?’
‘The animals. The creatures I see — ‘
‘You mean you recognize them from the illustrations in these books you
have been reading.’
‘No, not that. Not entirely that. Of course the pictures helped. But
actually it’s the other way around. Not the likeness, but the differences.
You see, none of the creatures are exactly like the pictures in the books.
Some of them not at all like them. Not like the reconstruction the
paleontologists put together. If they had been I might still have thought
they were hallucinations, that what I was seeing was influenced by what I’d
seen or read. I could have been feeding my imagination on prior knowledge.
But since that was not the case, it seemed logical to assume that what I see
is real. How could I imagine that Tyrannosaurus had dewlaps all the colors
of the rainbow? How could I imagine that some of the saber-tooths had
tassels on their ears? How could anyone possibly imagine that the big
thunder beasts of the Eocene had hides as colorful as giraffes?’
‘Mr. Daniels,’ said Thorne, ‘I have great reservations about all that
you have told me, Every fiber of my training rebels against it. I have a
feeling that I should waste no time on it. Undoubtedly, you believe what you
have told me. You have the look of an honest man about you. Have you talked
to any other men about this? Any other paleontologists or geologists?
Perhaps a neuropsychiatrist?’
‘No,’ said Daniels. ‘You’re the only person, the only man I have talked
with. And I haven’t told you all of it. This is really all just background.’
‘My God, man — just background?’
‘Yes, just background. You see, I also listen to the stars.’ Thorne got
up from his chair, began shuffling together a stack of papers. He retrieved
the dead pipe from the ashtray and stuck it in his mouth.
His voice, when he spoke, was noncommittal.
‘Thank you for coming in,’ he said. ‘It’s been most interesting.’
3
And that was where he had made his mistake. Daniels told himself. He
never should have mentioned listening to the stars. His interview had gone
well until he had. Thorne had not believed him, of course, but he had been
intrigued, would have listened further, might even have pursued the matter,
although undoubtedly secretly and very cautiously.
At fault, Daniels knew, had been his obsession with the creature in the
stone. The past was nothing — it was the creature in the stone that was
important and to tell of it, to explain it and how he knew that it was
there, he must tell about his listening to the stars.
He should have known better, he told himself. He should have held his
tongue. But here had been a man who, while doubting, still had been willing
to listen without laughter, and in his thankfulness Daniels had spoken too
much.
The wick of the oil lamp set upon the kitchen table guttered in the air
currents that came in around the edges of the ill-fitting windows. A wind
had risen after chores were done and now shook the house with gale-like
blasts. On the far side of the room the fire in the wood-burning stove threw
friendly, wavering flares of light across the floor and the stovepipe, in
response to the wind that swept the chimney top, made gurgling, sucking
sounds.
Thorne had mentioned a neuropsychiatrist, Daniels remembered, and
perhaps that was the kind of man he should have gone to see. Perhaps before
he attempted to interest anyone in what he could see or hear, he should make
an effort to find out why and how he could hear and see these things. A man
who studied the working of the brain and mind might come up with new answers
— if answers were to be had.
Had that blow upon his head so rearranged, so shifted some process in
his brain that he had gained new capabilities? Was it possible that his
brain had been so jarred, so disarranged as to bring into play certain
latent talents that possibly, in millennia to come, might have developed
naturally by evolutionary means? Had the brain damage short-circuited
evolution and given him — and him alone — these capabilities, these
senses, perhaps a million years ahead of time?
It seemed — well, not reasonable but one possible explanation. Still, a
trained man might have some other explanation.
He pushed his chair back from the table and walked over to the stove. He
used the lifter to raise the lid of the rickety old cook stove. The wood in
the firebox had burned down to embers. Stooping, he picked up a stick of
wood from the woodbox and fitted it in, added another smaller one and
replaced the lid. One of these days soon, he told himself, he would have to
get the furnace in shape for operation.
He went out to stand on the porch, looking toward the river hills. The
wind whooped out of the north, whistling around the corners of the building
and booming in the deep hollows that ran down to the river, but the sky was
clear — steely clear, wiped fresh by the wind and sprinkled with stars,
their light shivering in the raging atmosphere.
Looking up at the stars, he wondered what they might be saying but he
didn’t try to listen. It took a lot of effort and concentration to listen to
the stars. He had first listened to them on a night like this, standing out
here on the porch and wondering what they might be saying, wondering if the
stars did talk among themselves. A foolish, vagrant thought, a wild,
daydreaming sort of notion, but, voicing it, he had tried to listen, knowing
even as he did that it was foolishness but glorying in his foolishness,
telling himself how fortunate he was that he could afford to be so inane as
to try to listen to the stars — as a child might believe in Santa Claus or
the Easter Rabbit. He’d listened and he’d heard and while he’d been
astonished, there could be no doubt about it, no doubt at all that out there
somewhere other beings were talking back and forth. He might have been
listening in on a party line, he thought, but a party line that carried
millions, perhaps billions, of long-distance conversations. Not words, of
course, but something (thought, perhaps) that was as plain as words. Not all
of it understandable — much of it, as a matter of fact, not understandable
— possibly because his background and his learning gave him no basis for an
understanding. He compared himself to an Australian aborigine listening to
the conversation of a couple of nuclear physicists discussing a new theory.
Shortly after that, when he bad been exploring the shallow cave down on
Cat Den Point, he had picked up his first indication of the creature buried
in the stone. Perhaps, he thought, if he’d not listened to the stars, if
he’d not known he could listen to the stars, if he’d not trained his mind by
listening, he would not have heard the creature buried deep beneath the
limestone.
He stood looking at the stars and listening to the wind and, far across
the river, on a road that wound over the distant hills, he caught the faint
glimmer of headlights as a car made its way through the night. The wind let
up for a moment, as if gathering its strength to blow even harder and, in
the tiny lull that existed before the wind took up again, he heard another
sound — the sound of an axe hitting wood, He listened carefully and the
sound came again but so tossed about by the wind that he could not be sure