The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  Chaney turned away.

  He prowled through the high grass, looking for anything. Arthur Saltus had found no trace of the Major but yet Chaney could not help himself; he searched for any trifle that would indicate the man’s presence on the scene. It was impossible to give up Major Moresby without some effort, some attempt to place him there.

  From somewhere in the distance the shrill, playful shout of a child pierced the morning.

  Chaney jumped with astonishment and nearly lost his footing on a chunk of metal buried in the grass. He turned quickly to scan the corner of the station he thought empty, then searched backward over the route he’d traveled from the motor pool. The child was heard again — and then a woman’s voice calling to it. Behind him. Down the slope. Chaney felt an eager, mounting excitement as he spun about and ran to the fence. They were out there beyond the fence.

  He found them at once: a man, a woman, and a child of three or four years, trudging along the railway tracks in the middle distance. The man was carrying nothing but a stout stick or club, while the woman was toting a bag. The youngster ran along behind them, playing some game of his own devising.

  Chaney was so glad to see them he forgot his own danger and yelled at the top of his voice. The rifle was a burden and he dropped it, to wave both hands.

  Ignoring the barbed wire, he climbed part way up the fence to show himself and gain their attention. He shouted again, and beckoned them to come toward him.

  The result left him utterly dumbfounded.

  The adult members of the family looked around with some surprise, stared up and down the tracks, across fields, and discovered him at last clinging to the fence alongside the talismans. They stood motionless, frozen by fear, for only a tick in time. The woman cried out as though in pain and dropped the bag; she ran to protect the child. The man sprinted after her — passed her — and caught up the child in a quick scooping motion. The stick fell from his hands. He turned only once to stare at Chaney hanging on the fence and then raced away along the tracks. The woman stumbled — nearly fell — then ran desperately to keep pace with the man. The father shifted his small burden to one shoulder, then used his free hand to help the woman — urging her, hurrying her. They ran from him with all the speed and strength they possessed, the child now crying with consternation. Fear ran with them.

  “Come back!”

  He clung to the prickly fence and watched them out of sight. The billboard and high grasses hid them, shut them off, and the childish crying was hushed. Chaney hung there, his fingers curling through the holes of the fencing.

  “Please come back!”

  The northwest corner of the world stayed empty. He climbed down from the fence with bloodied hands.

  Chaney picked up the rifle and turned away, plowing a path through the weeds and grass toward the distant road and the cluster of buildings at the heart of the station. He lacked the courage to look back. He had never known anyone to run from him — not even those beggar children who had squatted on the sands of the Negev and watched him pry into the sands of their forgotten history. They were timid and mistrustful, those Bedouin, but they hadn’t run from him. He walked back without pause, refusing to look again at the stripped automobiles, the recreation area with its pool-sized midden, the burned out barracks and the attending wildflowers — refusing to look at any of it, not wanting to see anything more of the world that had been or the new one discovered today. He walked with the taste of wormwood in his mouth.

  Elwood Station was an enclosed world, a fenced and fright-inducing world standing like an island of dogged isolation amid the survivors of that violent civil war. There were survivors. They were out there on the outside and they had fled from him — on the inside. Their fears centered on the station: here was the devil they knew. He was the devil they’d glimpsed.

  But the station had a resident — not a visitor, not a raider from beyond the fence who plundered the stores in the wintertime, but a permanent resident. A resident devil who had repaired the fence and hung out the talismans to keep the survivors away, a resident christian who had dug a grave and erected a cross above it.

  Chaney stood in the middle of the parking lot.

  Before him: the impenetrable walls of the laboratory stood out like a great gray temple in a field of weeds. Before him: a mound of yellow clay heaped beside the Nabataean cistern stood out like an anachronistic thumb, with a single grave hard by. Before him: a two-wheeled cart made of reclaimed lumber and borrowed wheels.

  Somewhere behind him: a pair of eyes watching.

  SIXTEEN

  Brian Chaney took the keys from his pocket and unlocked the operations door. Two lanterns rested on the top step, but no bells rang below as the door swung. A rush of clammy air fell through the doorway to be lost in the crisp, cleaner air outside. The sun rode high — near the zenith — but the day stayed chilly with little promise of becoming warmer. Chaney was thankful for the heavy coat he wore.

  Quiet sun, clean sky, unseasonably cold weather: he could report that to Gilbert Seabrooke.

  He propped the heavy door open by shoving the cart against it, and then went below for the first armload of rations. The rifle was left beside the cart, all but forgotten. Carton after carton of foodstuffs was hauled up the stairs and piled in the cart, until his arms were weary of carrying and his legs of climbing; but medicines and matches were forgotten and he made another trip. A few tools for himself were included as a tardy afterthought. Chaney very nearly overestimated himself: the cart was so heavily loaded after the last trip that he had difficulty moving it from the doorway, and so a few of the heavier boxes had to be left behind.

  He left the parking lot, pushing the cart.

  It cost him more than three hours and most of his determination to reach the northwest corner of the fence the second time that day. The load moved fairly well as long as paved streets served him but when he left the end of the street and struck off through the high grass on his own back trail, progress was miserable. The cart was only slightly easier to pull than push. Chaney didn’t remember seeing a machete in the stores, but he wished for a dozen of them — and a dozen bearers to work in front of him hacking a trail through the weedy jungle. The load was back-breaking.

  When at last he reached the fence he fell down and gasped for breath. The sun was long past noon.

  The fence was assaulted with a crowbar. The task seemed easier where the fencing had been patched over the remains of the truck; it was not as stout there, not as resistant to the bar as the undamaged sections, and he concentrated on that place. He ripped away the barbed wire and pulled it free of the truck shell, then pried out the ends of the original fencing and rolled it back out of the way. When it was done his hands were bleeding again from many cuts and scratches, but he had forced an opening large enough to roll the cart through beside the truck. The wall was breached.

  The heavy cart got away from him on the downward slope.

  He ran with it, struggling to halt the plunge down the hillside and shouting at it with an exhausted temper but the cart ignored his imprecations and shot down through tall grass that was no barrier at all — now — until at last it reached the plain below and flipped end for end, spilling its load in the weeds. Chaney roared his anger: the Aramaic term so well liked by Arthur Saltus, and then another phrase reserved for asses and tax collectors. The cart — like the ass, but unlike the collector — did not respond.

  Laboriously he righted the cart, gathered up the spill, and trudged across the field to the railroad.

  The dropped walking stick was a marker.

  His small treasure was left there for finding, laid out along the railroad right-of-way for the frightened family or any other traveler who might pass that way. He put the matches and the medicines atop the largest carton and then covered them with his overcoat to protect them from the weather. Chaney spent only a little while scanning the distances along the tracks for sight of a man — he was certain his shouting and his cursing would ha
ve frightened away anyone in the area. As before, he was alone in an empty world. From somewhere in the timber he heard a bird calling, and he would have to be content with that.

  In the late afternoon hours when the thin heat of the sun was beginning to fade he pulled the empty cart up the hill and through the gaping hole in the fence for a last time, stopping only to retrieve the crowbar. Chaney didn’t dare look back. He was afraid of what he might find — or not find. To suddenly turn and look, to discover someone already at the boxes would be his undoing — he knew he would behave as before and again frighten the man away. But to turn and see the same untenanted world again would only deepen his depression. He would not look back.

  Chaney followed his own trail through the verdant grass, seeking the beginning of the paved road. Some small animal darted away at his approach.

  He stood at the edge of the parking lot, looking at the abandoned garden and thinking of Kathryn van Hise. But for her, he would be loafing on the beach and thinking of going back to work in the tank — but only thinking of it; perhaps in another week or so he’d get up off his duff and look up train schedules and connections to Indianapolis, if they still existed in an age of dying rails. The only weight on his mind would be the reviewers who read books too hastily and leaped to fantastic conclusions. But for her, he would have never heard of Seabrooke, Moresby, Saltus — unless their names happened to be on a document coming into the tank. He wouldn’t have jumped into Joliet two years ahead of his time and found a wall; he wouldn’t have jumped into this dismal future, whatever year this might be, and found a catastrophe. He would have plodded along in his own slow, myopic way until the hard future slammed into him — or he into it.

  He thought he was done here: done with the aborted survey and done with the very quiet and nearly deserted world of 2000-something. He could do no more than tell Katrina, tell Seabrooke, and perhaps listen while they relayed the word to Washington. The next move would be up to the politicians and the bureaucrats — let them change the future if they could, if they possessed the power.

  His role was completed. He could tape a report and label it Eschatos.

  The mound of yellow clay claimed his attention and he followed the gutter through the grass to the cistern, wanting to photograph it. He still marveled at finding a Nabataean artifact thrust forward into the twenty-first century, and he suspected Arthur Saltus was responsible: it had been copied from the book he’d lent Saltus, from the pages of Pax Abrahamitica. With luck, it would trap and hold water for another century or so, and if he could measure the capacity he would probably find the volume to be near ten cor. Saltus had done well for an amateur.

  Chaney turned to the grave.

  He would not photograph that, for the picture would raise questions he didn’t care to answer. Seabrooke would ask if there’d been an inscription on the crossarm, and why hadn’t he photographed the inscription? Katrina would sit by with pencil poised to record his verbal reading.

  A ditat Deus K

  Down there: Arthur or Katrina?

  How could he tell Katrina that he’d found her grave? Or her husband’s grave? Why couldn’t this have been the final resting place of Major Moresby?

  A bird cried again in some far off place, pulling his gaze up to the distant trees and the sky beyond.

  The trees were in new leaf, telling the early summer; the grass was soft tender green, not yet wiry from the droughts of midsummer: a fresh world. Gauzy clouds were gathering about the descending sun, creating a mirage of reddish-gold fleece. Eastward, the sky was wondrously blue and clean — a newly scrubbed sky, disinfected and sterilized. At night the stars must appear as enormous polished diamonds.

  Arthur or Katrina?

  Brian Chaney knelt briefly to touch the sod above the grave, and mentally prepared himself to go home. His depression was deep.

  A voice said: “Please… Mr. Chaney?”

  The shock immobilized him. He was afraid that if he turned quickly or leaped to his feet, a nervous finger would jerk the trigger and he would join Moresby in the soil of the station. He held himself rigidly still, aware that his own rifle had been left in the cart. Oversight; carelessness; stupidity. One hand rested on the grave; his gaze remained on the small cross.

  “Mr. Chaney?”

  After the longest time — a disquieting eternity — he turned only his head to look back along the path.

  Two strangers: two almost strangers, two people who mirrored his own uncertainty and apprehension.

  The nearer of the two wore a heavy coat and a pair of boots taken from the stores; his head and hands were bare and the only weapon he carried was a pair of binoculars also borrowed from the stores. He was tall, thin, lanky — only a few inches less than Chaney’s height, but he lacked the sandy hair and muscular body of his father; he lacked the bronzed skin and the silver filling in his teeth, he lacked the squint of eye that would suggest a seafarer peering into the sun. He lacked the buoyant youthfulness. If the man had possessed those characteristics instead of lacking them, Chaney would say he was looking at Arthur Saltus.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “You are the only one unaccounted for, sir.”

  “And you had my description?”

  Softly: “Yes, sir.”

  Chaney turned on his knees to face the strangers. He realized they were as much afraid of him as he was of them. When had they last seen another man here?

  “Your name is Saltus?”

  A nod. “Arthur Saltus.”

  Chaney shifted his gaze to the woman who stood well behind the man. She stared at him with a curious mixture of fascination and fright, poised for instant flight. When had she last seen another man here?

  Chaney asked: “Kathryn?”

  She didn’t respond, but the man said: “My sister.”

  The daughter was like the mother in nearly every respect, lacking only the summer tan and the delta pants. She was bundled in a great coat against the chill and wore the common boots that were much too large for her feet. A pair of binoculars hung around her neck: he felt closely observed. Her head was bare, revealing Katrina’s great avalanche of fine brown hair; her eyes were the same soft — now frightened — delightful shade. She was a small woman, no more than a hundred pounds when free of the bulky boots and coat, and gave every appearance of being quick and alert. She also gave the appearance of being older than Katrina.

  Chaney looked from one to the other: the two of them, brother and sister, were years beyond the people he had left in the past, years beyond their parents.

  He said at last: “Do you know the date?”

  “No, sir.”

  Hesitation, then: “I think you were waiting for me.”

  Arthur Saltus nodded, and there was the barest hint of affirmation from the woman.

  “My father said you would be here — sometime. He was certain you would come; you were the last of the three.”

  Surprise: “No one else, after us?”

  “No one.”

  Chaney touched the grave a last time, and their eyes followed his hand. He had one more question to ask before he would risk getting to his feet.

  “Who lies here?”

  Arthur Saltus said: “My father.”

  Chaney wanted to cry out: how? when? why? but embarrassment held his tongue, embarrassment and pain and depression; he bitterly regretted the day he’d accepted Katrina’s offer and stepped into this unhappy position. He climbed to his feet, avoiding sudden moves that could be misinterpreted, and was thankful he hadn’t taken a picture of the grave — thankful he wouldn’t have to tell Katrina, or Saltus, or Seabrooke, what he’d found here. He would make no mention of the grave at all.

  Standing, Chaney searched the area carefully, looking over their heads at the weedy garden, the parking lot, the company street beyond the lot and all of the station open to his eye. He saw no one else.

  Sharp question: “Are you two alone here?”

  The woman had jumped at his tone and s
eemed about to flee, but her brother held his ground.

  “No, sir.”

  A pause, and then: “Where is Katrina?”

  “She is waiting in the place, Mr. Chaney.”

  “Does she know I am here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She knew I would ask about her?”

  “Yes, sir. She thought you would.”

  Chaney said: “I’m going to break a rule.”

  “She thought you would do that, too.”

  “But she didn’t object?”

  “She gave us instructions, sir. If you asked, we were to say that she told you where she would wait.”

  Chaney nodded his wonder. “Yes — she did that. She did that twice.” He moved back along the path by way of the cistern and they carefully retreated before him, still uncertain of him. “Did you do this?”

  “My father and I dug it, Mr. Chaney. We had your book. The descriptions were very clear.”

  “I’d tell Haakon, if I dared.”

  Arthur Saltus stepped aside when they reached the parking lot and allowed Chaney to go ahead of him. The woman had darted off to one side and now kept a prudent distance. She continued to stare at him, a stare that might have been rude under other circumstances, and Chaney was very sure she’d seen no other man for too many years. He was equally certain she’d never seen a man like him inside the protective fence: that was her apprehension.

  He ignored the rifle resting in the cart.

  Brian Chaney fitted the keys into the twin locks and swung the heavy door. His two lanterns rested on the top step, and as before a rush of musty air fell out into the waning afternoon sunlight. Chaney paused awkwardly on the doorsill wondering what to say — wondering how to say goodbye to these people. Only a damned fool would say something flippant or vacuous or inane; only a damned fool would utter one of the meaningless clichés of his age; but only a stupid fool would simply walk away from them without saying anything.