The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  The weapon underscored his apprehension.

  Chaney didn’t bother to check his watch: it lacked an illuminated dial and there was nothing to be seen on the wall. He quit the darkened room.

  He moved slowly down the corridor in a black eerie silence to the shelter; dust stirred up by his feet made him want to sneeze. The shelter door was found by touch and pushed open but the overhead lights failed in their automatic response. Chaney felt for the manual switch beside the door, flicked it, but stayed in darkness: the electric power was out and the lecturing engineer was a liar. He listened intently to the unseen room. He had no matches or lighter — the penalty paid by a non-smoker when light or fire was needed — and stood there for a moment of indecision, trying to recall where the smaller items were stored. He thought they were in metal lockers along the far wall, near the racks of heavy clothing.

  Chaney shuffled across the floor, wishing he had that cocksure engineer here with him.

  His feet collided with an empty carton, startling him, and he kicked it out of the way. It struck another object before it came to rest: Saltus had complained of sloppy housekeeping, and Katrina had written a memo. After a period of cautious groping the ungainly bulge in his jacket pocket struck the leading edge of the bench, and he put forth both hands to explore the working surface. A radio — plugged in and wired to the antenna — a lantern, a few small empty boxes, a large one, a number of metal objects his fingers could not immediately identify, and a second lantern. Chaney barely hesitated over the objects and continued his probe. His roving fingers found a box of matches; the fuel tanks of both lanterns jostled with reassuring sounds. He lit the two lanterns and turned to look at the room. Chaney didn’t like to think of himself as a coward but his hand rested in the gun pocket as he turned and peered into the gloom.

  The raider had returned to pilfer the stores.

  From the looks of the place the man must have spent the last few winters here, or had invited his friends in with him.

  A third lantern rested on the floor near the door and he would have knocked that one over if he had stepped sideways in the darkness. A box of matches lay ready beside it. An incredible number of empty food cartons were stacked along a wall together with a collection of water cans, and he wondered why the man hadn’t hauled the boxes outside and burned them to be rid of an untidy mess. Chaney counted the cans and boxes with growing wonder and tried to guess at the many years separating Arthur Saltus from his own recent arrival. That reminded him to look at his watch: five minutes before nine. He had the uneasy suspicion that the TDV had sent him askew once again. A plastic bag had been opened — as Saltus had reported — and a number of winter garments were missing from the racks. Several pairs of boots were gone from their shelves. The bundle of mittens was broken open and one had fallen to the floor, unnoticed in the darkness.

  But there was no spilled food on the floor despite the litter of cartons and cans; every scrap had been taken up and used. Nor were there signs of mice or rats.

  He whirled to the gun rack. Five rifles had been taken plus an undetermined number of the Army-issue automatics. He supposed — without count — that an appropriate amount of ammunition had gone with them. Major Moresby and Saltus would have accounted for two of the rifles.

  The tiny metal objects on the workbench were the insignia Moresby had removed from his uniform, and Saltus had explained the reason for their removal in combat zones. The empty boxes had contained reels of tape, nylon film, and cartridges; the one remaining larger box was his bullet-proof vest. The map revealed the usual layer of dust. The radio was now useless — unless the supply of batteries had survived the intervening years.

  Years: time.

  Chaney picked up both lanterns and walked back to the room housing the TDV. He crossed to the far wall and bent down to read the calendar and clock. Each had stopped when the power line went out.

  The clock read a few minutes of twelve noon, or twelve midnight. The calendar stopped measuring time on 4 Mar 09. Only the thermometer gave a meaningful reading: 52 degrees.

  Eight and one half years after Arthur Saltus lived his disastrous fiftieth birthday, ten years after Major Moresby died in the skirmish at the fence, the nuclear power plant serving the laboratory failed or the lines were destroyed. They may have destroyed themselves for lack of replacement; the transformers may have blown out; the nuclear fuel may have been used up; any one or a hundred things could have happened to interrupt transmission. The power was gone.

  Chaney had no idea how long ago it had failed: he knew only that he was somewhere beyond March 2009.

  The outage may have happened last week, last month, last year, or at any time during the last hundred years. He hadn’t asked the engineers the precise date of his target but had assumed they would fling him into the future one year following Saltus, to reconnoiter the station. The assumption was wrong — or the vehicle had strayed once more. Chaney ruefully concluded that it didn’t matter, it really didn’t matter at all. The ill-starred survey was nearly finished; it would be finished as soon as he made a final tour of the station and went back with his report.

  He carried the lanterns back to the shelter.

  The radio took his attention. Chaney dug out a sealed carton of batteries and fitted the required number into the conversion unit. The band selector was swept over the military channels and back again, without result. He turned up the gain to peak and held the instrument to his ear but it refused to give him even the airy whisper of dead air; the lack of hiss or static told him that the batteries had not survived the passage of time. Chaney dismissed the radio as of no further value and prepared himself for the target.

  He was disappointed there was no note from Katrina, as he’d found on the field trial.

  The bullet-proof vest went on first. Arthur Saltus had warned him of that, had shown him the valued protection of that: Saltus lived only because he’d worn one.

  Because he didn’t know the season of the year — only the temperature — Chaney donned a pair of boots and helped himself to a heavy coat and a pair of mittens. He picked out a rifle, loaded it as Moresby had taught him to do, and emptied a box of cartridges in his pocket. The map was of no interest: the probes into Joliet and Chicago had been hastily cancelled and now he was restricted to the station itself. Check it out quickly and jump for home base. Katrina had said the President and his Cabinet were awaiting a final report before concluding a course of remedial action. They called it “formulating a policy of positive polarization,” whatever that was.

  A last tour of the station and the survey was ended; that much of the future would be known and mapped.

  Chaney slung a canteen of water over his shoulder, then stuffed a knapsack with rations and matches and hung it from the other shoulder; he didn’t expect to be outside long enough to use either one. He was pleased the aged batteries didn’t work — that was excuse enough to leave radio and recorder behind — but he fitted film into the camera because Gilbert Seabrooke had asked for a record of the destruction of the station. The verbal description offered by Saltus had been a depressing one. One last searching examination of the room gave him no other article he thought he would need.

  Chaney licked his lips, now dry with apprehension, and quit the shelter.

  The corridor ended and a flight of stairs led up to the operations exit. The painted sign prohibiting the carrying of arms beyond the door had been defaced: a large slash of black paint was smeared from the first sentence to the last, half obliterating the words and voiding the warning. Chaney noted the time, and set the two lanterns down on the top step to await his return. He fitted the keys into the twin locks and stepped out hesitantly into the open air.

  The day was bright with sunshine but sharply chill. The sky was new, blue, and clear of aircraft; it looked freshly scrubbed, a different sky than the hazy polluted one he had known almost all his life. Patches of light frost clung to the protected spots not yet touched by the sun.

  His wat
ch read 9:30, and he guessed the time was about right — the bright morning outside was still new.

  A two-wheeled cart waited in the parking lot.

  Chaney eyed the crude apparition, prepared for almost anything but that. The cart was not too skillfully made, having been put together with used lumber, an axle, and a pair of wheels taken from one of the small electric cars Saltus had described. Strands of machine wire had been employed to hold the four sides together where nails failed to do an adequate job, and to fasten the bed to the axle; the tires were long rotted away and the cart rode on metal rims. No skilled carpenter had fitted it together.

  The second object to catch his eye was a heaped mound of clay in the adjoining area that had once been a flower garden. Unusually tall grass and weeds grew everywhere, partially obscuring a view of the station and almost blocking sight of the yellow mound; the grass grew high around the parking lot, and beyond it, and in the open spaces surrounding the buildings across the street. Weeds and grass filled the near distance as far as the eye could see, and he was reminded of the buffalo grass said to have grown here when Illinois was an Indian prairie. Time had done that — time and neglect. The station lawns had long gone unattended.

  Moving warily, stopping often to scan the area around him, Chaney approached the mound.

  When he was yet a distance away he discovered a faint trail running from the edge of the lot, through the garden and toward the mound itself. The next discovery was equally blunt. Alongside the path — almost invisible in the high grass — was a water channel, a crude aqueduct made from guttering ripped from some building and twisted into shape to serve this purpose. Chaney stopped short in surprise and stared at the guttering and the nearby mound, already guessing at what he would find. He continued the stealthy approach.

  He came suddenly into a clearing in the rampant grass and found the artifact: a cistern with a crude wooden lid. A bucket and a length of rope rested beside it.

  Chaney slowly circled the cistern and the clay that had come from the excavation, to stumble over yet another channel made of the same guttering; the second aqueduct ran through the weeds and grass toward the lab building — probably to catch the run-off from the roof. The clay mound was not fresh. Struck with an overwhelming curiosity, he knelt down and pried away the lid to find a cistern half filled with water. The walls of the pit were lined with old brick and rough stone slabs but the water was remarkably clean, and he looked to see why. Filters made of screenwire torn from a window were fitted over the ends of each gutter to protect the cistern from incoming debris and small animals. The gutters themselves were free of leaves and trash, and an effort had been made to seal the joints with a tarry substance.

  Chaney put down the rifle and bent to study the cistern in wonder. It was already recognizable.

  Like the cart, it had not been fashioned by skilled hands. The shape of the thing — the lines of it — were easily familiar: the sides not quite perpendicular, the mouth not evenly rounded, and the shaft appearing to be larger near the bottom than at the top. It was odd, amateurish, and sunk without a plumb line — but it was a reasonably faithful copy of a Nabataean cistern and it might be expected to hold water for a century or more. In this place it was startling. Chaney replaced the lid and climbed to his feet.

  When he turned around he saw the grave.

  It shocked him. The site had been concealed from him until now by the high growth of the garden, but again a faint path led to it from the clearing at the cistern. The mound above the grave was low, aged, and covered by a short weedy grass; the cross above it was nailed together and coated with fading white paint. Dim lettering was visible on the crossarm.

  Chaney moved in and knelt again to read it.

  A ditat Deus K

  The gatehouse door had been loosed from its hinges and taken away — perhaps to build the cart.

  Chaney peered warily through the opening, alert for danger but dreading the possibility of it, then stepped inside for a closer examination. The room was bare. No trace remained of the men who had died there: bone, weapon, scrap of cloth, nothing. Some of the window glass had been knocked out but other panes were intact; the screenwire had been taken from two of the windows. An empty place.

  He backed out and turned to stare at the gate.

  It was shut and padlocked, effectively blocking admittance to all but a determined climber, and an effort had been made to repair the damage done to it. Chaney noted all that in a single glance and went forward to study the additional stoppers — the added warnings. Three grisly talismans hung on the outside of the gate facing the road: three skulls, taken from the bodies of the men who’d died in the gatehouse so long ago. The warning to would-be trespassers was strikingly clear.

  Chaney stared at the skulls, knowing the warnings to be as old as time; he knew of similar monitions which had guarded towns in Palestine before the Roman conquest, monitions which had been used as late as the eighteenth century in some of the more remote villages of the Negev.

  He saw no one in the area: the entrance and its approaches were deserted, the warning well taken. Weeds and waist-high grass grew in the ditches and the fields on either side of the road leading to the distant highway but the grass had not been disturbed by the passage of men. The blacktopped road was empty, the white line down the center long since weathered away and the asphalt surface badly damaged by the years. An automobile using that road now would be forced to move at a snail’s pace.

  Chaney photographed the scene and quit the area.

  Walking north with an easy stride, he followed the familiar route to the barracks where he’d lived that short while with Saltus and Moresby. The site was almost passed over because it was covered by a tangle of weeds and grass; no buildings rose above the jungle.

  Forcing his way through the tangle — and flushing from its nesting place a quick, furry thing he tardily recognized as a rabbit — Chaney stumbled upon the burnedout base of a building nearly lost in the undergrowth. He couldn’t recognize it as his own barracks, nor point to the location of his small room if it had been the barracks; only the long narrow rectangle of the foundation suggested the kind of dwelling it was. Chaney peered over the wall. A narrow band of frost lined the cement blocks at the groundline on the north side, pointing up the chill in the air. Patches of blue wildflowers grew in the sunlight and — much to his surprise — other patches of wild, red strawberries sprouted everywhere along the sunnier side of the foundation. He thought to glance at the sky, measuring the progress of the sun and the season, then stared again at the strawberries. It should be early summer.

  Chaney photographed it and went back to the street. An abandoned place. He continued north.

  E Street was easily identified without the need of the rusted sign standing on a pole at a corner. He stayed alert, walking cautiously and listening hard for any sound around him. The station was quiet under the sun.

  The recreation area was harshly changed.

  Chaney crept silently in the entrance and across the broken concrete patio to the rim of the swimming pool. He looked down. A few inches of dirty water covered the bottom — residue from the rains — together with a poor collection of rusted and broken weapons and an appreciable amount of debris blown in by the wind: the pool had become a dumping ground for trash and armament. The sodden corpse of some small animal floated in a corner. A lonely place. Chaney very carefully put away the memory of the pool as he’d known it and backed away from the edge. The area now seemed unkempt, ugly, and not a scene to be compared with more pleasant times.

  He left quickly, bearing north and west. The far corner was a mile or more away as he remembered the map of the station, but he thought he could walk the distance in a reasonable time.

  Chaney found the motor pool before he’d progressed a half dozen long blocks. Less than twenty cars littered the great blacktopped lot, but not one was operable: they had been wantonly stripped of parts and many of them were no more than burned-out shells. The hood of ev
ery vehicle was propped open, and the batteries taken; not one of the small motors was left intact to provide him with an idea of the plant. Chaney poked about the lot because he was curious, and because Arthur Saltus had told him about the little electric cars. He wished he could drive one. There were no trucks on the lot nor had he seen one anywhere on the station, although a number of them had been working the post during his training period. He supposed they had been transferred to Chicago to meet the emergency — or had been stolen when the ramjets overran the station.

  Chaney emerged from the lot and stopped abruptly on the street. It may have been an illusion brought on by tension, but he thought he glimpsed movement in the high grass across the street. He slipped the safety on the rifle and walked to the curb. Nothing was visible in the heavy undergrowth.

  There were no holes in the fence at the corner.

  The burned and rusted shell of a truck occupied a place that had once been a hole, but now that truck was a part of the repaired fence. Barbed wire had been strung back and forth across the opening, pulled taut over, under, and through the wreck itself in such fashion that the truck became an integral part of the barrier; yet other strands of wire were laced vertically through the fencing, making it impossible for even a small boy to crawl through. He went along the fence to examine the second hole. It had been repaired and rebuilt in as thorough a manner as the first, and an old cavity in the ground had been filled in. The barricade was intact, impenetrable.

  Everywhere the weeds and grass grew tall, actually concealing the lower third of the fence from a man standing only a few feet away. Chaney was not surprised to find the same gruesome talismans guarding the northwest corner; he had expected to find them. The skeletal owners of the skulls were missing, but nowhere on the station had he seen a human body — someone had buried them all, friend and foe alike. The three skulls hung at the top of the fencing, glaring down at the plain below and at the rusted railroad beyond.