Chapter 2

President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Mastodonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return.

“I tell you, Wes,” said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury and war, “this is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can’t get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along.”

“We had to stay,” Adams said. “You know what would happen to this camp and our supplies if we weren’t around here to guard them.”

“The only thing that’s given us any trouble is that old mastodon. If he comes around again, I’m going to take a skillet and bang him in the brisket.”

“That isn’t the only reason, either,” said President Adams, “and you know it. We can’t go deserting this nation now that we’ve created it. We have to keep possession. Just planting a flag and saying it’s ours wouldn’t be enough. We might be called upon for proof that we’ve established residence. Something like the old homestead laws, you know.”

“We’ll establish residence sure enough,” growled Secretary Cooper, “if something happens to that time unit or the helicopter.”

“You think they’ll do it, Johnny?”

“Who do what?”

“The United States. Do you think they’ll recognize us?”

“Not if they know who we are.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Chuck will talk them into it. He can talk the skin right off a cat.”

“Sometimes I think we’re going at this wrong. Sure, Chuck’s got the long-range view and I suppose it’s best. But maybe what we ought to do is grab a good, fast profit and get out of here. We could take in hunting parties at ten thousand a head or maybe we could lease it to a movie company.”

“We can do all that and do it legally and with full protection,” Cooper told him, “if we can get ourselves recognized as a sovereign nation. If we negotiate a mutual defense pact, no one would dare get hostile because we could squawk to Uncle Sam.”

“All you say is true,” Adams agreed, “but there are going to be questions. It isn’t just a matter of walking into Washington and getting recognition. They’ll want to know about us, such as our population. What if Chuck has to tell them it’s a total of three persons?”

Cooper shook his head. “He wouldn’t answer that way, Wes. He’d duck the question or give them some diplomatic double-talk. After all, how can we be sure there are only three of us? We took over the whole continent, remember.”

“You know well enough, Johnny, there are no other humans back here in North America. The farthest back any scientist will place the migrations from Asia is 30,000 years. They haven’t got here yet.”

“Maybe we should have done it differently,” mused Cooper. “Maybe we should have included the whole world in our proclamation, not just the continent. That way, we could claim quite a population.”

“It wouldn’t have held water. Even as it is, we went a little further than precedent allows. The old explorers usually laid claim to certain watersheds. They’d find a river and lay claim to all the territory drained by the river. They didn’t go grabbing off whole continents.”