Shuteley Castle had stood on Castle Hill, the one piece of high ground on the north side of the river, just above the Old Bridge. A ridge ran along the south side, but on the north, only at the eastern extremity of the town did the ground rise to any height. There the castle stood -- or had stood.
It had glowered across the town from a curious round mound which looked so artificial that historians argued about the possibility that Saxon serfs had piled Castle Hill high with nothing more than picks and shovels.
Anyway, the fire had spread round the bracken which fringed the hill. It seemed that the bracken itself had held up the hill, for when it was gone, the castle and most of Castle Hill had collapsed into the river, taking the Old Bridge with it.
Above the obstruction the river tumbled into a hole which had not been there before, making a small but quite impressive waterfall before dashing itself against the huge mound of rubble which was all that remained of the castle and the hill on which it had stood. The river tried to climb over the mound, which was ten feet too high, and then took the path of considerable, but least resistance and streamed off southwards in about a dozen rivulets through a gap in the south ridge.
Until then I had not worked out that I'd either have to cross this side of the obstruction or cross twice, first the diverted river and then the river itself.
I didn't like the look of the streams rushing behind the ridge. They were shallow but very fast. It would be impossible to keep my feet if I tried to wade through, and when water flings you about you're liable to crack your head on a stone.
It would be hazardous to try to cross the river bed on the west side of the mount of rubble, because it was steep and very loose. And back the way I had come the heat across the river was too fierce. Only close to the blockage, where what remained of Castle Hill afforded some protection from the heat, and where there was nothing left to burn on the other side, crossing might be possible.
So I started picking my way across the obstruction itself.
After I'd gone about ten yards, climbing toward the top of the mound, I found I couldn't go back. Loose earth and stones were sliding down the slope under my feet, and the best I could do was slip two feet back and gain three. If I tried to go back, I stood an excellent chance of being buried alive.
I had a moment of sheer panic as I neared the peak of the mound and the rubble sliding beneath me threatened to sweep me off on the dry side of the blockage. I saw myself falling about fifty feet over rubble which would come with me, almost certainly burying me beyond any hope of rescue (if I happened to be alive when I reached the bottom) and far beyond any possibility of digging myself out.
I fought against the slide, running against it like a man on a treadmill over a precipice. The light was tricky and my sense of direction was not all it might have been. The glare of the fire cast long moving shadows, smoke stung my eyes, and on the other side of the mount the darkness was so intense that I couldn't even see the white water.
I overdid it.
One moment I was fighting clear of the drop into the dry bed. The next I was teetering over blackness, flicked by spray from the blocked river below. And all the time the rubble beneath me cascaded this way and that, now into the dry bed, now down the slope to the south bank, now into the foaming river.
Suddenly there was nothing beneath my feet at all. Then I was in water. Then the whole world exploded.
I came to soaked, cold, shivering, with an aching head and the rush of water in my ears. For a moment I was blind.
Dazed and deafened, I nevertheless realized where I was. I was somewhere in the middle of the delta of streams rushing into the blackness of the south side of Shuteley. The water rushing past me was not more than a few inches deep.
It seemed to take a long time before I worked out what to do and where to go. The huge mound of debris in the river bed cut off all heat and so much light that I found it hard to recover any sense of direction. And after being toasted for so long I could have sworn the water all round me was only one degree above freezing point.
At last I realized that if I forced my way through streams flowing from left to right I must come to dry land. Then all I'd have to do was cross a normal river that didn't know what trouble it was going to run into farther on.
I got across the streams somehow -- and then couldn't find the river. I seemed to be in a kind of marsh with rivulets running in all directions. Only the glow of the fire, cut off by the pile of rubble which had stopped a river, enabled me to find my way back to the bank of a more or less normal Shute.
I made my way along the bank.
Dizzy and with a head which seemed to be cloven in two, I shied away from the very thought of attempting to swim across the river. I'd probably be swept down to the whirlpool which had already knocked me silly. The Shute had always been a placid river, and in this hot summer it had been more placid than ever. But any river becomes angry if it's balked and not allowed to follow the course it has taken for centuries.
Presently, stumbling upriver, I became aware that one of my discomforts had gone. I was still soaked, but I was no longer shivering. It was, as usual, a hot night.
My house ought to be visible in the reflected glow. Yet it wasn't. Ahead of me, nothing was visible.
This was very strange. By comparison with the glare behind me, I was walking into darkness. Nevertheless, the red glow, the heat of which I could still feel on the back of my neck and through my wet clothes, should have lit up the river ahead at least as far as my house.
And ahead there was nothing.
I sniffed, and not because I smelled something. Quite the reverse. There was a sudden startling absence of smell. I was puzzled as a sleeper awakening to silence is puzzled, before he realizes that a clock has stopped.
Voices upriver gave me a clue. I had moved into a region of odorless vapor which didn't sting the eyes, had no smell, and cut visibility. I moved on. The voices grew louder.
Then I stopped,
I had almost reached my house. It was invisible, but it could be no more than a hundred yards away. I had followed the river to the copse -- and there, just in front of me, was a bridge where there had never been a bridge. And there were people on it, crossing from the other side to the copse.
Not for the first time that night I acted without thought. I went closer, but along the bank, stealthily. I slipped silently into the water. Cautiously, carefully, I paddled under the bridge.
The people I had seen on the bridge were giants, in plastic suits with the hump I had already noticed, and baffled, bedraggled, frightened people who could only be refugees from the Great Fire of Shuteley.
The bridge was as startling in its way as luxon.
It was only a catwalk perhaps a foot wide with two rails three feet apart. There were no supports and no reinforcements of any kind. It lay across the river like a plank, but I felt it, pushed against it, and it was solid as a rock.
There was little or no risk that I'd be seen under the bridge. The smokescreen, or whatever it was, that the giants were using as cover cut visibility very effectively. It was not like fog or mist. You could see ten yards very distinctly, twenty to thirty yards vaguely, and beyond that was blackness. Sound, too, was muffled.
All the giants wore plastic suits and small, quite neat boots. Underneath they all wore as little as possible, and nevertheless seemed to be bathed in sweat.
The dark goggles their eyes would need in the center of a conflagration were folded down across their chests. Wearing them, out of the fire, they would be blind.
The others, the people who had come from Shuteley, wore a simpler sort of plastic suit, loose pants and tunics which, unlike those of the giants, were thrown open. Instead of the hump the giants had, they had merely a small black box apparently stuck to the inside of the plastic.
I thought suddenly of Jota and his part in all this. Had the giants recruited him, or was he lying drugged in one of the tents at the camp?
Miranda was not among thos
e I saw.
Vague recollections of time stories I had read raced through my mind. Of course, I had never taken time travel seriously . . . it was the kind of thing which, if it ever happened, was never likely to impinge on me and affect my life.
One of the assumptions made in such stories suddenly assumed significance. You couldn't steal a man from the past, because of the effect his disappearance would have in his future, your past and present. But a man whose life was over, through accident -- a man about to be destroyed in an explosion, buried forever by an avalanche, engulfed in a mine disaster . . . such a man, on the point of ceasing to exist, could be plucked from his time without affecting subsequent events significantly.
Was that what the giants were doing?
I wanted to hear what was being said, and that posed a problem. In the river I was too near the flowing water to be able to make anything out, and if I crawled up the bank, the giants coming along the other side and crossing the bridge might see me.
So I drew back a little and swam across the river far enough downstream to be invisible from the bridge. As I neared the other side, the bank, though not high, hid me.
Then I crawled along the bank until I was under the north end of the bridge, still hidden by the bank, and pulled myself partly out of the water.
I heard: " Well, you'd be dead otherwise."
"But what are you going to do with us? Where are we going?"
" You'll be safe."
"This is the Mathers place. Where's Mr. Mathers?"
" In his house asleep."
"My wife . . . what about my wife? I haven't seen her since . . . "
" She'll be all right."
"I don't want to go. I want to go back and . . . "
The giants' voices were slightly muffled by their suits, but on the whole easier to make out than those of the frightened, anxious, shocked refugees. I could hear only snatches, of course, as people passed over my head.
"We'll never get back?"
" You'll be well looked after. Think of it this way -- you're going to heaven. "
"Heaven?"
" To you it'll be heaven. Nobody with a choice would stay here."
"What do you want us for? Did you start the fire?"
" No, we didn't start the fire."
"Why did you take us past Castle Hill and the dump? There was nobody there -- "
" We didn't want to be seen. If it meant being seen, we couldn't help you. "
"My Moira . . . I saw her catch fire. I'll never forget her scream. She blazed like . . . "
" We saved you, didn't we?"
"Why couldn't you save Moira?"
" Others were looking. People who aren't here. We couldn't let them see us. "
"If you can walk through the fire, why don't you . . . "
And then again: "This must be the Mathers place. Where the insurance manager lives. Is he in this somehow?"
" He couldn't be more out of it."
"You mean he's dead?"
" Just dead to the world."
The conversation went on, and I strained my ears to hear it, but the two who were talking were halfway across the bridge now and it was another snatch of talk I heard.
"What happened to the fire brigade? Why didn't they . . . "
A very common word on the lips of these poor bewildered survivors was "why." If they didn't ask why God had permitted such a disaster, they asked why they had escaped, why others hadn't escaped, why the strangers, if they could do so much, couldn't do even more, like putting out the fire.
From the giants' replies it was obvious that to them, as to Miranda before I managed to get through to her, the people of Shuteley were little more than characters in a play. The answers were quiet, soothing, apparently truthful as far as they went, which wasn't far.
"Where did you come from?"
" You'll see."
"You're the kids that I saw in town yesterday, aren't you?"
" Yes."
"If I thought you had anything to do with the fire. . . " A stream of invective followed, empty, hopeless obscenity, for the man who was speaking knew perfectly well he could do nothing but curse. He couldn't even fight the giants or resist them -- the giants, girls and boys, had spread themselves out among these refugees to prevent protest or rebellion.
I realized that there were a great many more of the giants than I had ever seen, far more than there could have been at the camp. I had not known of more than about a score of them. There must have been at least forty crossing the bridge, not counting any who might have crossed before I arrived on the scene.
I knew from the snatches of conversation I heard that the giants had been careful to be observed by no one who was going to live through the fire. They had led these people through the fire, in their simpler fire-suits (probably simpler so that they could be put on quickly and with no risk of mistake), and by a route chosen to avoid being seen. The crowds of people who must have escaped the fire would not gather about the north-east end of town at the rubbish dump, but at the other end, where the roads were, and the straggling cottages which must have escaped the fire, and the nearest farms. That could have been confidently predicted.
Presently the procession ended. There was a gap, and then three more figures appeared, two huge, one small. They were Greg, Wesley and Miranda.
Wesley reached the bridge, just above me, and spoke.
Oddly enough, it still surprised me, after all that had happened, that the giants' language, when they were speaking to each other and not to us, was not the English of the mid-20th century. It was English, and I could understand most of it by listening to the sense rather than the sound. But many of the words were not quite right, several of the vowels had changed, and since the speech was colloquial there were many phrases that were hard to figure out.
What Wesley said, roughly, was: "That's . . . (the lot?) now. We've left nothing but the stasis and the two . . . (?) in it. Who's going back?"
"I am," said Greg.
"We're both going back," said Miranda.
I couldn't see Wesley, but I sensed his uncertainty. "Okay," he said, after a pause. "I'll go on and tell them to . . . (?) everything but the stasis, is that right?"
"And the stasis just before dawn," said Miranda.
"Sure. You've got to be there then. If you're not -- "
Greg said a word which was entirely new to me, and yet the meaning couldn't have been more obvious. The politest translation would be "Go away."
Wesley went away, crossing the bridge and disappearing into the copse.
Moving slightly, I could see Greg and Miranda quite well, for they had stopped short of the bridge and were not looking at it. Keeping my eyes on them, I could duck out of sight at any moment before I could be seen, if they turned their heads.
They wore suits exactly like the others. The briefs they wore underneath seemed to be pink or gray. Seeing them both running with sweat, I wondered why they didn't take off their plastic suits or at least open them up. I also wondered why a technology capable of constructing flimsy suits which could withstand the highest temperatures couldn't go a step farther and make them comfortable as well.
Miranda said: "Let's go back, then."
And wait till dawn?"
"Yes."
Greg laughed. "So that you can keep your eye on me, darling. Waiting for a wrong move."
"The next wrong move," said Miranda steadily.
He laughed again. "You idiot," he said. "You're all idiots, you and the others behind this . . . (?). When you found you couldn't keep me out of it, you should have canceled it. You knew I'd kill it."
"We knew," said Miranda, and I heard the defeat in her voice. "But you might fail. Lots of things might have happened. Maybe they still will. Jota might have -- "
For the third time, irritatingly, Greg bellowed with laughter. It was the laughter of a vandal, a spoiled kid with an inflated idea of his own value in the world. It was the laughter of a bully.
"Jota," Greg said,
"has a little talent. I have the Gift. Nevertheless, Jota may be as important as you think. I think he is. That's why I had to see that your plans for Jota didn't work out."
"Greg," said Miranda quietly, "listen to me for a minute. Please listen."
"Go ahead. There's plenty of time. I'll listen."
"You're not necessarily bad. You never had a chance. That sounds trite, and it is. You were not only bigger and . . . (?) and better-looking than anybody else, as far back as you can remember, but when girls began to interest you, you didn't have to bother to be nice to them or even go to the trouble of deceiving them. You had it all . . . You've often thought about how you're different from ordinary people, Greg. Have you ever thought about how ordinary people are different from you?"
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