“Sorry again. You’re right. But I may slip; I’ve gotten in the habit of thinking in it—all that translating. So allow me a few slips.”
“I’ll always allow you a few slips. Speaking of slips—Did you? With Kitten?”
“No.”
“Why not? I wouldn’t have minded. Well, not much anyhow. She was sweet. She would baby-sit for me any time I would let her. She loved our boys.”
“Barbara, I don’t want to think about Kitten. It makes me sad. I just hope whoever has her now is good to her. She didn’t have any defenses at all—like a kitten before it has its eyes open. Helpless. Kitten means to me everything that is utterly damnable about slavery.”
She squeezed his hand. “I hope they’re good to her, too. But, dear, don’t hurt yourself inside about it; there is nothing we can do for her.”
“I know it and that’s why I don’t want to talk about her. But I do miss her. As a daughter. She was a daughter to me. ‘Bedwarmer’ never entered into it.”
“I didn’t doubt it, dear. But—Well, look here, my good man, maybe this place is too cramped. All right, we’re going to live through it; we go on. Then don’t let me catch you treating me like a daughter! I intend to keep your bed very warm indeed!”
“Mmm—You want to remember that I’m an old man.”
“‘Old man’ my calloused feet! We’ll be the same age for all practical purposes—namely something over four thousand years, counting once each way. And my purposes are very practical, understand me?”
“I understand you. I suppose ‘four thousand years’ is one way to look at it. Though perhaps not for ‘practical purposes.’”
“You won’t get out of it that easily,” she said darkly. “I won’t stand for it.”
“Woman, you’ve got a one track mind. All right, I’ll do my best. I’ll rest all the time and let you do all the work. Hey, I think we’re there.”
The box was moved several times, then remained stationary a few minutes, then surged straight up with sickening suddenness, stopped with another stomach twister, seemed to hunt a little, and then was perfectly steady.
“You in the experimental chamber,” a voice said out of nowhere. “You are warned to expect a short fall. You are advised to stand up, each of you hold one brat, and be ready to fall. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Hugh answered while helping Barbara to her feet. “How much of a fall?”
There was no answer. Hugh said, “Hon, I don’t know what they mean. A ‘short fall’ could be one foot, or fifty. Protect Joey with your arms and better bend your knees a little. If it’s quite a fall, then go ahead and go down; don’t try to take it stiff-legged. These jokers don’t give a hoot what happens to us.”
“Bent knees. Protect Joey. All right.”
They fell.
22
Hugh never did know how far they fell but he decided later that it could not have been more than four feet. One instant they were standing in a well-lighted, cramped box; the next instant they were outdoors, in the dark of night, and falling.
His boots hit, he went down, landing on the right side of his rump and on two very hard rolls of silver dollars in his hip pocket—rolled with the fall and protected the baby in arms.
Then he rolled to a sitting position. Barbara was near him on her side. She was not moving. “Barbara! Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t think so. Just knocked the breath out of me.”
“Is Joey all right? Hughie is, but I think he’s more than wet now.”
“Joey is all right.” Joey confirmed this by starting to yell; his brother joined him. “He had the breath knocked out of him too, I think. Shut up, Joey; Mother is busy. Hugh, where are we?”
He looked around. “We are,” he announced, “in a parking lot in a shopping center about four blocks from where I live. And apparently somewhere close to our own proper time. least that’s a ’sixty-one Ford we almost landed on.” The lot was empty save for this one car. It occurred to him that their arrival might have been something else than a bump—an explosion, perhaps?—if they had been six feet to the right. But he dropped the thought; enough narrow squeaks and one more didn’t matter.
He stood up and helped Barbara up. She winced and in the dim light that came from inside the bank he noticed it. “Trouble?”
“I turned my ankle when I hit.”
“Can you walk?”
“I can walk.”
“I’ll carry both kids. It’s not far.”
“Hugh, where are we going?”
“Why, home, of course.” He looked in the window of the bank, tried to spot a calendar. He saw one but the standing light was not shining on it; he couldn’t read it. “I wish I knew the date. Honey, I hate to admit it but it does look as if time travel has some paradoxes—and I think we are about to give somebody a terrible shock.”
“Who?”
“Me, maybe. In my earlier incarnation. Maybe I ought to phone him first, not shock him. No, he—I, I mean—wouldn’t believe it. Sure you can walk?”
“Certainly.”
“All right. Hold our monsters for a moment and let me set my watch.” He glanced back into the bank where a clock was visible even though the calendar was shadowed. “Okay. Gimme. And holler if you need to stop.”
They set off, Barbara limping but keeping up. He discouraged talk, because he did not have his thoughts in order. To see a town that he had thought of as destroyed so quiet and peaceful on a warm summery night shook him more than he dared admit. He carefully avoided any speculation as to what he might find at his home—except one fleeting thought that if it turned out that his shelter was not yet built, then it never would be and he would try his hand at changing history.
He adjourned that thought, too, and concentrated on being glad that Barbara was a woman who never chattered when her man wanted her to be quiet.
Presently they turned into his driveway, Barbara limping and Hugh beginning to develop cramps in both arms from being unable to shift his double load. There were two cars parked tandem and facing out in the drive; he stopped at the first one, opened the door and said, “Slide in, sit down, and take the load off that ankle. I’ll leave the boys with you and reconnoiter.” The house was brightly lighted.
“Hugh! Don’t do it!”
“Why not?”
“This is my car. This is the night!”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he said quietly, “I’m still going to reconnoiter. You sit here.”
He was back in less than two minutes, jerked open the car door, collapsed onto the seat, let out a gasping sob.
Barbara said, “Darling! Darling!”
“Oh, my God!” He choked and caught his breath. “She’s in there! Grace. And so am I.” He dropped his face to the steering wheel and sobbed.
“Hugh.”
“What? Oh, my God!”
“Stop it, Hugh. I started the engine while you were gone. The keys were in the ignition, I had left them there so that Duke could move it and get out. So let’s go. Can you drive?”
He sobered down. “I can drive.” He took ten seconds to check the instrument board, adjusted the seat backwards, put it in gear, turned right out of his drive. Four minutes later he turned west on the highway into the mountains, being careful to observe the stop sign; it had occurred to him that this was no night to get stopped and pulled off the road for driving without a license.
As he made the turn a clock in the distance bonged the half hour; he glanced at his wrist watch, noted a one-minute difference. “Switch on the radio, hon.”
“Hugh, I’m sorry. The durn thing quit and I couldn’t afford to have it repaired.”
“Oh. No matter. The news doesn’t matter, I mean; time is all that matters. I’m trying to estimate how far we can go in an hour. An hour and some minutes. Do you recall what time the first missile hit us?”
“I think you told me it was eleven-forty-seven.”
“That’s my recol
lection, too. I’m certain of it, I just wanted it confirmed. But it all checks. You made crêpes Suzettes, you and Karen fetched them in just in time to catch the end of the ten o’clock news. I ate pretty quickly—they were wonderful—this looney old character rang the doorbell. Me, I mean. And I answered it. Call it ten-twenty or a little after. So we just heard half-past chime and my watch agrees. We’ve got about seventy-five minutes to get as far from ground zero as possible.”
Barbara made no comment. Moments later they passed the city limits; Hugh put the speed up from a careful forty-five to an exact sixty-five.
About ten minutes later she said, “Dear? I’m sorry. About Karen, I mean. Not about anything else.”
“I’m not sorry about anything. No, not about Karen. Hearing her merry laugh again shook me up, yes. But now I treasure it. Barbara, for the first time in my life I have a conviction of immortality. Karen is alive right now, back there behind us—and yet we saw her die. So somehow, in some timeless sense, Karen is alive forever, somewhere. Don’t ask me to explain it, but that’s how it is.”
“I’ve always known it, Hugh. But I didn’t dare say so.”
“Dare say anything, damn it! I told you that long ago. So I no longer feel sorrow over Karen. I can’t feel any honest sorrow over Grace. Some people make a career of trying to get their own way; she’s one of them. As for Duke, I hate to think about him. I had great hopes for my son. My first son. But I never had control over his rearing and I certainly had no control over what became of him. And, as Joe pointed out to me, Duke’s not too badly off—if welfare and security and happiness are sufficient criteria.” Hugh shrugged without taking his hands from the wheel. “So I shall forget him. As of this instant I shall endeavor never to think about Duke again.”
Presently he spoke again. “Hon, can you, in spite of being smothered in babies, get at that clock thing on my shoulder and get it off?”
“I’m sure I can.”
“Then do it and chuck it into the ditch. I’d rather throw it away inside the circle of total destruction—if we’re still in it.” He scowled. “I don’t want those people ever to have time travel. Especially Ponse.”
She worked silently for some moments, awkwardly with one hand. She got the radiation clock loose and threw it out into the darkness before she spoke. “Hugh, I don’t think Ponse intended us to accept that offer. I think he made the terms such that he knew that I would refuse, even if you were inclined to sacrifice yourself.”
“Of course! He picked us as guinea pigs—his white mice—and chivvied us into ‘volunteering.’ Barbara, I can stand—and somewhat understand but not forgive—a straight-out son of a bitch. But Ponse was, for my money, much worse. He had good intentions. He could always prove why the hotfoot he was giving you was for your own good. I despise him.”
Barbara said stubbornly, “Hugh, how many white men of today could be trusted with the power Ponse had and use it with as much gentleness as he did use it?”
“Huh? None. Not even yours truly. And that was a low blow about ‘white men.’ Color doesn’t enter into it.”
“I withdraw the word ‘white.’ And I’m sure that you are one who could be trusted with it. But I don’t know any others.”
“Not even me. Nobody can be trusted with it. The one time I had it I handled it as badly as Ponse. I mean that time I caused a gun to be raised at Duke. I should simply have used karate and knocked him out or even killed him. But not humiliated him. Nobody, Barbara. But Ponse was especially bad. Take Memtok. I’m really sorry that I happened to kill Memtok. He was a man who behaved better than his nature, not worse. Memtok had a streak of meanness, sadism, wide as his back. But he held it closely in check so that he could do his job better. But Ponse—Barbie hon, this is probably a subject on which you and I will never agree. You feel a bit soft toward him because he was sweet to you most of the time and always sweet to our boys. But I despised him because of that—because he was always showing ‘king’s mercy’—being less cruel than he could have been, but always reminding his victim of how cruel he could be if he were not such a sweet old guy and such a prince of a fellow. I despised him for it. I despised him long before I found out about his having young girls butchered and served for his dinner.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you know? Oh, surely, you must have known. Ponse and I discussed it in our very last talk. Weren’t you listening?”
“I thought that was just heavy sarcasm, on the part of each of you.”
“Nope, Ponse is a cannibal. Maybe not a cannibal, since he doesn’t consider us human. But he does eat us—they all do. Ponse always ate girls. About one a day for his family table, I gathered. Girls about the age and plumpness of Kitten.”
“But—But—Hugh, I ate the same thing he did, lots of times. I must have—I must have—”
“Sure you did. So did I. But not after I knew. Nor did you.”
“Honey…you better stop the car. I’m going to be sick.”
“Throw up on the twins if you must. This car doesn’t stop for anything.”
She managed to get the window open, got it mostly outside. Presently he said gently, “Feeling better?”
“Some.”
“Sweetheart, don’t hold what he ate too much against Ponse. He honestly did not know it was wrong—and no doubt cows would feel the same way about us, if they knew. But these other things he knew were wrong. Because he tried to justify them. He rationalized slavery, he rationalized tyranny, he rationalized cruelty, and always wanted the victim to agree and thank him. The headsman expected to be tipped.”
“I don’t want to talk about him, dear. I feel all mixed up inside.”
“Sorry. I’m half drunk without a drop and babbling. I’ll shut up. Watch the traffic behind, I’m going to make a left turn shortly.”
She did so and after they had turned off on a state road, narrower and not as well graded, he said, “I’ve figured out where we’re going. At first I was just putting distance behind us. Now we’ve got a destination. Maybe a safe one.”
“Where, Hugh?”
“A shutdown mine. I had a piece of it, lost some money in it. Now maybe it pays off. The Havely Lode. Nice big tunnels and we can reach the access road from this road. If I can find it in the dark. If we can get there before the trouble starts.” He concentrated on herding the car, changing down on the grades both climbing and on the occasional downhill piece, braking hard before going into a curve, then cornering hard with plenty of throttle in the curves.
After a particularly vicious turn with Barbara on the hair-raising outside, she said, “Look, dear, I know you’re doing it to save us. But we can be just as dead from a car crash as from an H-bomb.”
He grinned without slowing. “I used to drive jeeps in the dark with no headlights. Barbie, I won’t kill us. Few people realize how much a car will do and I’m delighted that this has a manual gear shift. You need it in the mountains. I would not dare drive this way with an automatic shift.”
She shut up and prayed, silently.
The road dropped into a high alp where it met another road; at the intersection there was a light. When he saw it Hugh said, “Read my watch.”
“Eleven-twenty-five.”
“Good. We are slightly over fifty miles from ground zero. From my house, I mean. And the Havely Lode is only five minutes beyond here, I know how to find it now. I see Schmidt’s Corner is open and we are low on gas. We’ll grab some and groceries, too—yes, I recall you told me you had both in this car; we’ll get more—and still make it before the curtain.”
He braked and scattered gravel, stopped by a pump, jumped out. “Run inside and start grabbing stuff. Put the twins on the floor of the car and close the door. Won’t hurt ’em.” He stuck the hose into the car’s tank, started cranking the old-fashioned pump.
She was out in a moment. “There’s nobody here.”
“Honk the horn. The Dutchman is probably back at his house.”
Barbara honked and hon
ked and the babies cried. Hugh hung up the hose. “Fourteen gallons we owe him for. Let’s go in. Should roll in just ten minutes, to be safe.”
Schmidt’s Corner was a gasoline station, a small lunch counter, a one-end grocery store, all of the sort that caters to local people, fishermen, hunters, and the tourist who likes to get off the pavement. Hugh wasted no time trying to rouse out the owner; the place told its own story: All lights were on, the screen door stood open, coffee was simmering on a hot plate, a chair had been knocked over, and the radio was tuned to the emergency frequency. It suddenly spoke up as he came in:
“Bomb warning. Third bomb warning. This is not a drill. Take shelter at once. Any shelter, God damn it, you’re going to be atom-bombed in the next few minutes. I’m damn well going to leave this goddam microphone and dive for the basement myself when impact is five minutes away! So get the lead out, you stupid fools, and quit listening to this chatter! TAKE SHELTER!”
“Grab those empty cartons and start filling them. Don’t pack, just dump stuff in. I’ll trot them out. We’ll fill the back seat and floor.” Hugh started following his own orders, had one carton filled before Barbara did. He rushed it out, rushed back; Barbara had another waiting, and a third almost filled. “Hugh. Stop one second. Look.”
The end carton was not empty. Mama cat, quite used to strangers, stared solemnly out at him while four assorted fuzzy ones nursed. Hugh returned her stare.
He suddenly closed the top of the carton over her. “All right,” he said. “Load something light into another carton so it weighs this one down while I drive. Hurry.” He rushed out to the car with the little family while the mother cat set up agonized complaint.
Barbara followed quickly with a half-loaded carton, put it on top of the cat box. They both rushed back inside. “Take all the canned milk he’s got.” Hugh stopped long enough to put a roll of dollars on top of the cash register. “And grab all the toilet paper or Kleenex you see, too. Three minutes till we leave.”
They left in five minutes but with more cartons; the back seat of the car was well leveled off. “I got a dozen tea towels,” Barbara said gleefully, “and six big packs of Chux.”
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