I was thinking of the grants we could get, of the publicity, of all that it would mean to Dad. I was seeing the look of consternation on the dean’s face.
But Dad took a different view of the matter. He said firmly, ‘Not a word, son. If this gets out, we’ll have twenty research teams on the trail of the Chrono-funnels, cutting off my advance. No, once I’ve solved the riddle of the funnels, you can make all the announcements you want. Until then – we keep silent. Son, don’t look like that. I’ll have the answer in a year. I’m sure of it.’
I was a little less confident, but those eggs, I felt convinced, would arm us with all the proof we’d need. I set up a large oven at bloodheat; I circulated air and moisture. I rigged up an alarm that would sound at the first signs of motion within the eggs.
They hatched at 3 A.M. nineteen days later, and there they were – fourteen wee kangaroos with greenish scales, clawed hindlegs, plump little thighs, and thin, whiplash tails.
I thought at first they were tyrannosauri, but they were too small for that species of dinosaur. Months passed, and I could see they weren’t going to grow any larger than moderate-sized dogs.
Dad seemed disappointed, but I held on, hoping he would let me use them for publicity. One died before maturity and one was killed in a scuffle. But the other twelve survived – five males and seven females. I fed them on chopped carrots, boiled eggs, and milk, and grew quite fond of them. They were fearfully stupid and yet gentle. And they were truly beautiful. Their scales-
Oh, well, it’s silly to describe them. Those original publicity pictures have made their rounds. Though, come to think of it, I don’t know about Mars-Oh, there, too. Well, good.
But it took a long time for the pictures to make an impression on the public, let alone a sight of the creatures in the flesh. Dad remained intransigent. A year passed, two, and finally three. We had no luck whatsoever with the Chrono-funnels. The one break was not repeated, and still Dad would not give in.
Five of our females laid eggs and soon I had over fifty of the creatures on my hands.
‘What shall we do with them?’ I demanded.
‘Kill them off,’ he said.
Well, I couldn’t do that, of course.
Henri, is it almost ready? Good.
We had reached the end of our resources when it happened. No more money was available. I had tried everywhere, and met with consistent rebuffs. I was even glad because it seemed to me that Dad would have to give in now. But with a chin that was finn and indomitably set, he coolly set up another experiment.
I swear to you that if the accident had not happened the truth would have eluded us forever. Humanity would have been deprived of one of its greatest boons.
It happens that way sometimes. Perkin spots a purple tinge in his gunk and comes up with aniline dyes. Remsen puts a contaminated finger to his lips and discovers saccharin. Goodyear drops a mixture on the stove and finds the secret of vulcanization.
With us, it was a half-grown dinosaur wandering into the main research lab. They had become so numerous I hadn’t been able to keep track of them.
The dinosaur stepped right across two contact points which happened to be open – just at the point where the plaque immortalizing the event is now located. I’m convinced that such a happenstance couldn’t occur again in a thousand years. There was a blinding flash, a blistering short circuit, and the Chrono-funnel which had just been set up vanished in a rainbow of sparks.
Even at the moment, really, we didn’t know exactly what we had. All we knew was that the creature had short-circuited and perhaps destroyed two hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment and that we were completely ruined financially. All we had to show for it was one thoroughly roasted dinosaur. We were slightly scorched ourselves, but the dinosaur got the full concentration of field energies. We could smell it. The air was saturated with its aroma. Dad and I looked at each other in amazement. I picked it up gingerly in a pair of tongs. It was black and charred on the outside, but the burnt scales crumbled away at a touch, carrying the skin with it. Under the char was white, firm flesh that resembled chicken.
I couldn’t resist tasting it, and it resembled chicken about the way Jupiter resembles an asteroid.
Believe me or not, with our scientific work reduced to rubble about us, we sat there in seventh heaven and devoured dinosaur. Parts were burnt, parts were nearly raw. It hadn’t been dressed. But we didn’t stop until we had picked the bones clean.
Finally I said, ‘Dad, we’ve got to raise them gloriously and systematically for food purposes.’
Dad had to agree. We were completely broke.
I got a loan from the bank by inviting the president to dinner and feeding him dinosaur.
It has never failed to work. No one who has once tasted what we now call ‘dinachicken’ can rest content with ordinary fare. A meal without dinachicken is a meal we choke down to keep body and soul together. Only dinachicken is food.
Our family still owns the only herd of dinachickens in existence and we are the only suppliers for the worldwide chain of restaurants – this is the first and oldest – which has grown up about it.
Poor Dad! He was never happy, except for those unique moments when he was actually eating dinachicken. He continued working on the Chrono-funnels and so did twenty other research teams which, as he had predicted would happen, jumped in. Nothing ever came of any of it, though, to this day. Nothing except dinachicken.
Ah, Pierre, thank you. A superlative job! Now, sir, if you will allow me to carve. No salt, now, and just a trace of the sauce. That’s right. . . . Ah, that is precisely the expression I always see on the face of a man who experiences his first taste of the delight.
A grateful humanity contributed fifty thousand dollars .to have the statue on the hillside put up, but even that tribute failed to make Dad happy.
All he could see was the inscription: The Man Who Gave Dinachicken to the World.
You see, to his dying day, he wanted only one thing, to find the secret of time travel. For all that he was a benefactor of humanity, he died with his curiosity unsatisfied.
Obituary
My husband, Lancelot, always reads the paper at breakfast. What I see of him when he first appears is his lean, abstracted face, carrying its perpetual look of angry and slightly puzzled frustration. He doesn’t greet me, and the newspaper, carefully unfolded in readiness for him, goes up before his face.
Thereafter, there is only his arm, emerging from behind the paper for a second cup of coffee into which I have carefully placed the necessary level teaspoonful of sugar – neither heaping nor deficient under pain of a stinging glare.
I am no longer sorry for this. It makes for a quiet meal, at least.
However, on this morning the quiet was broken when Lancelot barked out abruptly, ‘Good Lord! That fool Paul Farber is dead. Stroke!’
I just barely recognized the name. Lancelot had mentioned him on occasion, so I knew him as a colleague, as another theoretical physicist. From my husband’s exasperated epithet, I felt reasonably sure he was a moderately famous one who had achieved the success that had eluded Lancelot.
He put down the paper and stared at me angrily. ‘Why do they fill obituaries with such lying trash?’ he demanded. ‘They make him out to be a second Einstein for no better reason than that he died of a stroke.’ If there was one subject I had learned to avoid, it was that of obituaries. I dared not even nod agreement.
He threw down the paper and walked away and out of the room, leaving his eggs half-finished and his second cup of coffee untouched.
I sighed. What else could I do? What else could I ever do?
