A Question of Time d-7

by Fred Saberhagen

  Sighing, Bill pulled out the device. Speaking into it in a low voice, he tried to make contact with home base but, for the moment, failed.

  Stuffing the useless device back into his pocket, he dejectedly reversed course and started back uphill—only to come to a halt before he had climbed ten yards, his way blocked by a mass of boulders. Now it seemed that he was going to have trouble even finding the trail, or faint imitation of a trail, on which he had just come down.

  That he should have become confused was, in the circumstances, easy enough to understand. But he didn't consider that that gave him an excuse for doing so. Well, as long as he kept climbing, whether on a trail or not, he had to be going in at least approximately the right direction.

  Detouring around the immediate obstruction, Bill ascended patiently, one step after another. But soon he got into difficulties again. Sidestepping again, he climbed some more—only to come to a halt, looking warily about him and turning on his light. Now, in a place where he seemed to remember a steep but smoothly rising slope, a minor precipice dropped off. His light revealed the tips of tall pine trees, yards below his boots.

  Mentally rerunning the brief sequence of his headlong pursuit downhill, Bill couldn't convince himself that it had lasted more than a couple of minutes. And now, only now, he became aware that something else was wrong. The lights of Canyon Village ought to be bright and fairly close above him. He could see no lights at all up there.

  Frowning and muttering to himself, he began to use his flashlight steadily. The beam was thoroughly spoiling whatever night vision he might have left, but he'd given up the chase now anyway. Right now he'd have to be content with finding his way home.

  He was now making his way along what seemed to be a kind of minor ridge, gradually getting higher. Following this spine up until it ran into a more sharply ascending mass of rock, Bill resigned himself to finding his way through completely unfamiliar territory. His hopes were raised when he encountered what appeared to be another faint trail, and followed it uphill for a short distance. But again, suddenly, there was no more trail.

  By now Bill had climbed enough to be once more well above the depth where the fog still held sway. But somehow his surroundings were not in the least familiar. That dark mass above him, discouragingly remote, making a sharp line of demarcation against the stars, naturally had to be the rim. But, incredibly, this rim still bore no sign of the clustered lights of Grand Canyon Village.

  Were they suffering some kind of power failure up there? What next?

  Sighing, Bill doggedly resumed his effort to get up the hill down which he had so briskly run. All right, it wasn't quite the same hill. He could no longer even find that one. For some reason, this slope was vastly, incredibly different. Now barriers of rock loomed where he could swear none had existed only a few minutes earlier.

  Soon he came to a halt again, this time swearing under his breath. Unfamiliar terrain or not, he couldn't have gotten lost as stupidly as this. He never had, not since he was six years old. It would have made him angry had anyone even suspected that he was capable of such a failure.

  And again he climbed.

  Having gained a little altitude, and, as he thought, perhaps surmounted some interfering wrinkle in the landscape, he tried his two-way radio once more. Again the device brought him at first only a little noise—and then, at last, the noise was followed by a half-familiar voice.

  "This is the house," Maria was saying, speaking very distinctly in an evident effort to make herself understood at all costs. "Bill, is that you? Come in."

  Pressing a key, Bill reluctantly described his problems. He told Maria it looked like he was going to have to sit tight until daylight.

  "Sit tight, then," said her small, distorted voice, sounding relieved. "Anything you need?"

  He told her that there was not, but he couldn't be sure that he was getting through. All he got back was some more static.

  Switching off, he stuck the radio back into his jacket pocket. Partially unzipping the jacket, still muttering and swearing, he told himself that at least the air was notably warmer down here than up on the rim. Maybe his chase had lasted longer than he'd thought. Hell, that must be the explanation. Though that didn't explain why he could no longer see even a glow from the Village lights…

  Despite what he'd told Maria, he kept trying. Making very slow progress uphill, Bill at last admitted to himself (in some embarrassment, not lessened by being so far private) that it looked like he was going to have to wait until morning to find his way back to the Tyrrell House and the hotel.

  Admitting that he seemed to be lost was bad, but not as bad as stepping over a cliff would be. For a little while he sat on a comfortably placed ledge, and thought. Then for a longer time he stalked around in a safely explored little space, waving his arms, and with half his mind considered building a fire. But really, the air wasn't that cold, not any longer, and there was very little wind. Alternating periods of movement and resting, Bill even got a little sleep, sitting on one rock and leaning against another, hoping any rattlesnakes in the area would keep their distance.

  * * *

  Something roused him from an uncomfortable doze. Rubbing his stiff neck, he got to his feet. The stars were fading, which meant that dawn was coming at last. Stretching, moving about a little to keep warm, he watched the process. The eastern sky was now remotely gray, instead of nothing but a mass of sheer dull darkness. Then, forming itself by indefinable gradations, there appeared a broad line of pale light, following the almost flat horizon for a long way. Now, all around Bill, vast shapes of land, vaster extensions of sheer airy space, were beginning to take form out of mist and darkness…

  Dawn brought lighter grayness and then the beginnings of color in the sky, as you might see the sky almost anywhere on earth. But here the land being drawn gradually into existence by the dawn did not look like any known earthly territory. Bill pondered the remoteness of a butte, slowly turning redder and redder, even as the crimson faded from the sky. Was that particular upthrusting of the earth, surely shaped like no other portion of the planet, half a mile away, or a mile? Or perhaps two miles, or five?

  Moment by moment the complexity of the scene before Bill became clearer, and at the same time more incredible. He had seen pictures of the Canyon, of course, everybody had. But no picture, no model, could show this, or come close to showing it. This was genesis. The creation of the world.

  At last, reluctantly, he forced his thoughts back to business. In all this scenery there was no sign of the people he had been pursuing last night—or of anyone else.

  For all the indications that this view showed to the contrary, he, Bill, might well be the last person—or the first—on the planet.

  Awesome sights surrounded him, towering, grandly colored rock formations. He knew the Canyon was roughly ten miles across at this point, a broken, inhospitable, magnificent land, barely fringed here and there with vegetation, carved up into countless side canyons, looking utterly impossible to cross on foot, even though he knew that there were trails.

  The river, which Bill had more or less expected to become visible far below with daylight, remained concealed within the deepest part of the gorge. The upper edges of that final abyss, Bill estimated, lay at least a thousand feet below the ledge from which he was observing. At that depth a broad bench of land, studded with what looked like sagebrush, declined slowly to the lip of the ultimate split in the earth. Again, all heights and distances were hard to judge.

  Bill climbed again, for half an hour, and paused to look around him. As far as he could tell from any shifting of the more distant portions of the scenery during his climb, he might not have changed his position at all.

  Bill resumed climbing, then stopped, staring downward at a broad shelf of land, dotted with vegetation, that stretched perhaps a thousand feet below him. He had the distinct impression that he had just seen an elephant down there—had at least seen something, with an elephant-style trunk, stripping or at
least tugging at a tree-limb. He had rubbed his eyes and questioned his own sanity when he saw the thing again, or another creature very like the first. This time he watched the dark peculiar shape for several seconds, until it moved out of sight behind a fold of land.

  He moved on.

  Presently he got a look, a good enough look to really shake him up, at another creature, almost on his own level. The single-humped camel calmly returned his gaze, and moved along.

  It was then, trying to remember what might have happened to drive him mad, and having unconsciously given up the idea or hope of meeting anyone, he topped a small ridge and found himself looking at a girl who was sitting in front of a small modern tent with her back to him, gazing out over the depths.

  Beside the girl was a small fire, and it was plain that she had established a kind of camp. On the other side of her was a small cave, big enough to shelter one person in a pinch, whose entrance the fire guarded.

  The girl was dressed much as any well-to-do young camper might be dressed in the world to which Bill was trying to return. Both her jacket and her scarf fitted the description of clothing worn by Cathy Brainard. The wind toyed with her dark hair as she sat facing out over the Canyon, and something in her pose suggested to Bill that she was, or recently had been, weeping.

  Bill let one of his boots scrape on rock, and the girl's head whirled round. Blue-gray eyes under dark brows, filled with—anger? Fear? Shock?—confronted Bill.

  He said: "It's all right, Cathy. Your friends have found you."

  Chapter 8

  As Camilla left the cave with Jake, she tried to keep stalling him, but Jake was no longer to be put off.

  "Where is he now, and when'll he be back?"

  Camilla sighed. "Right now he's resting, I keep telling you. He'll be back soon as it gets dark; maybe a little before."

  "I know you keep telling me that, but resting where?"

  "I don't think now's the time to—"

  "Where?"

  Camilla slumped, giving up. "There's another cave, a smaller one. In the cliff on the other side of this canyon."

  "Well then, show me."

  With a sigh Camilla took him by the hand. As if she were a child, Jake thought, who needed to hold someone's hand for support. She led Jake across the creek and a little way up the slope on the opposite side.

  When she had brought Jake to the new cave where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep, and pointed it out to him, he said nothing for a moment. He looked carefully at Camilla, who seemed perfectly serious. Jake felt his scalp creep. It looked like he might have to face it: maybe she was really crazier even than the old man.

  The shallow cave she was pointing out might be big enough to house a sleeping man; but the entrance was almost completely blocked by a single huge block of limestone, a slab weighing tons. A cat might have squeezed past this barrier, but it was obvious that no human being could have done so.

  Jake made his voice quiet and reasonable. "No one could get in or out through that little crack. I could hardly put my foot in there. What're you telling me?"

  Camilla was unshaken. "I know it looks that way, but he's back there now. Really. He has room enough to get in and out, while the sun is down. The shape of his body changes. I've seen him do it. In daylight he can't get in or out."

  "There's another entrance, you mean."

  "No, I mean what I said. He comes in and out this way."

  Jake paused again, this time for a longer interval, and then he asked: "Look, Camilla, tell me again—how long have you been here with old Edgar?"

  She swallowed. "I've lost track. I know it's more'n a year."

  "And you haven't been out, away from this place, anywhere, in all that time?"

  Starting to weep, she shook her head. "I know how crazy it sounds. I'm about going crazy. But I'm not crazy yet. I'm just trying to tell you the truth about him. You'll see."

  The way Camilla was talking at the moment did little to dispel Jake's impression that she was really insane.

  "I'm not crazy," she repeated, as if she might be reading his thoughts. "You're the one who's acting loony, if you really want to know. You keep saying you're going to walk back to where you came from, when you know you can't."

  Jake swallowed. He said nothing.

  Camilla pursued him. "Edgar's right, you are going to stay here." It wasn't at all a question. "You don't have any choice. Any more than I do. Unless we can do something about it."

  Jake said a dirty word.

  "Honey, you've tried to leave, you've seen for yourself how well that works—just trying to walk away. Am I right?"

  Again, Jake didn't answer.

  At bottom he knew that she was right. It was crazy, but she was right. But his feelings were mixed up. Despite himself he found the idea of working and living here kind of intriguing, in a kind of crazy way. Sharing Camilla's bed every night would be part of it, and that would be great. But being free to leave was essential.

  He said: "You tell me old Edgar sleeps every day, all day."

  "That's right."

  "What about the days when you go out drawing and painting, like when we first met? You mean he was back here sleeping then? In that—that little hole?"

  Camilla hesitated briefly. "Right."

  "So you had a chance to get out then, didn't you? But you just sat there on a rock, drawing your pictures, talking to me when I came along. Why didn't you just walk out, if you're so anxious to leave? The way was open that day, right?"

  Camilla's answer was quite calm, and came with depressing readiness. "No, the way wasn't open, Jake. Not for me to go out. Only for you to come in."

  "I don't get that."

  She made a helpless gesture. "It's the way Edgar had things arranged. He can open the doors and close them. He opened a door for you."

  "He knew I was coming? You knew?"

  "How could either of us have known that? Did you know yourself where you were going when you started out that day on a hike? But he left a door open—so someone could come in."

  Jake had to admit that on the day he first met Camilla it was only chance that had brought him hiking down the south bank of the big river, to Deep Canyon. But yesterday you did know I was coming."

  "Sure, you told me you'd come back on Sunday."

  "Did Edgar know?"

  "I—I had to tell him that I'd met you, Jake."

  "Was he angry?"

  "No. He wanted someone to work for him. Anyway, he doesn't care if I—have a friend. As long as I do what he wants me to do."

  "And you're saying he actually wants us both for something more than work."

  She nodded silently. Then she burst out: "But I had to bring you anyway. Don't you see, Jake? I needed you, never mind what Edgar wants."

  Jake pressed on. "But the first two times I met you, it was in the same place, and I wasn't trapped like this. I could still go back to the camp. I did go back."

  "Those first two times you didn't follow me up here to the house. Coming this far up Deep Canyon was what got you in too deep to turn around."

  "So. You sucked me into this deliberately. I'm just wanting to make sure."

  She nodded slowly. "But I couldn't help myself."

  And Camilla cried again. She looked so pitiful that Jake couldn't make himself be rough with her.

  Under the circumstances he couldn't bring himself to he tender, either. Not right away. Leaving Camilla weeping on the sofa in the big room of the little house, Jake spent the last hours of daylight roaming up and down the little canyon, never getting more than a hundred yards or so from the house and cave, looking for something. He didn't really know what he was looking for. Anything, anything that might connect this place with the world he knew, the universe in which he'd spent the first twenty-two years of his life.

  As sunset drew near, moments of panic came over Jake. He kept feeling caught in a cage whose walls he couldn't even locate with any precision. He'd already looked, reasonably, upstream and down for a reasonable way
out. Now he circled the steep amphitheater made by the widening of the side canyon, seeking intently for any way up the walls. Except for the place he'd already climbed, near the waterfall, they looked impossible. He'd have to be desperate to try them, and even if he succeeded, he'd only find himself up on the impossible version of the South Rim again.

  He wasn't yet completely desperate. But there were moments when he was getting close.

  The sun had disappeared behind the western cliffs, though daylight still held the sky. Jake paused in his restless, almost pointless prowling, still hoping for a sudden insight that might solve his problems. At best he was going to be more than a full day AWOL from camp—but that was rapidly getting to be the least of his worries.

  Coming back to stand between the house and the cave, he once more surveyed Tyrrell's workplace. The more Jake stared at the entrance to the grotto-cave, and the futuristic electric lights within, the more intrigued he was with what he saw, though almost against his will.

  Returning to the house, he found the shotgun still standing in its corner in the main room. Jake picked up the weapon and broke the action open. The chambers were loaded, all right, with what looked like regular shells.

  Camilla, her face looking swollen from weeping but eager to please, had come to stand close beside him, watching.

  Jake made his voice gentle when he spoke to her. "Camilla? If Edgar thinks he's keeping me a prisoner, how come he's so accommodating as to leave this for me?"

  She went back into the kitchen, where, as Jake now noticed, she had started the process of baking bread. " 'Cause it won't do you any good."

  "What if I pointed it at him? Told him he was gonna do what I want, from now on?"

  "You could point it all you want. You could even shoot it at him, and it wouldn't help. I've seen that done." Camilla, pausing with bread-dough on her fingers, nodded.

  "Somebody took a shot at Edgar? With this?"

  Another nod.

  "Who?"

  "Somebody who was here before you were."

  Then he wasn't the first one she'd enticed in here. Well, that hardly mattered now. There were moments when Jake thought all three of them must be crazy—Camilla, the hard-to-find old man, and not least himself.