A Question Of Time

by Fred Saberhagen

  “What, then?”

  “What I have to know, Jake, is can I depend on you? If I asked you to do something really hard, would you do it for me? Don’t just blurt out yes. Take your time and think about it.”

  He took a little time. “I’d do it if I could. Anyway I’d break my ass trying.”

  Camilla seemed to be going through the various stages she needed to make her own decision final.

  “All right,” she said at last. It was almost as if she were talking to herself, though the dark glasses looked at Jake. “Come here,” she said. And she began to undo the buttons of her shirt.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, lying naked beside this woman he didn’t know, on a patch of soft, dry, shaded sand at the very foot of the side canyon’s western wall, Jake was saying lazily: “I just can’t figure it, is all. A girl like you, as good-looking as you are, smart and everything, why do you want to get hooked up with a guy like me?”

  Their clothing was scattered every which way around them. Along with everything else, Camilla had taken off her dark glasses, revealing a pair of greenish eyes much like those that Jake saw daily in his shaving mirror. Now she reached out for the glasses and put them on again.

  Through the glasses she looked at him strangely. She asked: “What’s wrong with you? I don’t see anything wrong with you. I told you what I wanted, and you said okay.”

  Jake ran a possessive hand down her smooth side, along the ribs and down her hip. She was better looking, by far, than any other girl or woman he’d ever before managed to persuade to lie down and spread her legs.

  He said: “You didn’t really tell me what you wanted. Not yet.”

  Suddenly she seemed tenderly uncertain. “Oh Jake. I’m not sure where to start.”

  “How about starting with where you live? You wouldn’t even tell me that much last week.”

  Camilla hesitated, then gestured. “Right now I’m living a little ways up this canyon.”

  Jake raised himself on one elbow, squinting in that direction. He saw no sign of habitation. “You mean up on the South Rim?”

  “No, not quite that far. Just a little ways from where we are. Half a mile maybe.”

  “Jeez, the Rim is a lot farther than that. And I didn’t know anyone lived in the Canyon. Except us poor slobs in the camp. Live with your parents?”

  That made Camilla smile. “No. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “A lot of girls live with their parents. Hey, you’re not married, are you?”

  “No.”

  Jake, somewhat reassured, lazily wondering what to ask next, reached out again with a large, sun-darkened, callused hand. This time he just extended a forefinger and traced patterns on Camilla’s marvelous, taut white belly. At the touch her belly contracted slightly with some kind of tickle reflex. So white and smooth…

  “Got a cigarette?” she asked him, with a sudden, wistful yearning.

  “Poverty got me out of the habit.”

  Whatever else was worrying her wouldn’t let her fret about cigarettes for long. She was framing another question for Jake: “Would you still help me, if I was married? Not that I am.”

  “Sure. Damn right I would.”

  Camilla lay there in silence, letting him have fun tickling her belly.

  “So, you’re not married … what’s the story, then? You live alone?”

  Camilla heaved a deep sigh. “No, not that either, I’m afraid.”

  I was beginning to figure something like this, thought Jake. Otherwise this would have been too simple. His right hand kept on exploring, testing the fact that he was now allowed to put his hand anywhere he wanted. Anywhere at all. Wonderful.

  When Camilla spoke again, she seemed to want Jake’s full attention on her words, and so she first reached down her own hand and caught his exploring fingers and held them in a grip of surprising strength. Then from behind her dark glasses she asked Jake: “Did you ever hear of a man named Edgar Tyrrell?”

  “No, can’t say I have. Should I?”

  “No special reason why you should. He’s a sculptor. A man who carves statues.”

  “I know what a sculptor is.”

  “Sorry. Edgar’s pretty well known, among people who study art. Not really famous.”

  “All right. So you live with Edgar Tyrrell. I bet he’s used you for a model.”

  Camilla had nothing to say about modeling. She extended her right arm gracefully, turning her body a little, pointing almost vertically up behind her. “He used to live up there on the rim, near Grand Canyon Village, in a little house built right on the edge. He was there for something like thirty years. And then one day he left his house and his family and disappeared from human society. That was before I met him. He says he just walked down into the Canyon one day and never went back.”

  Camilla fell silent, looking at Jake. It was hard for him to tell with the dark glasses still covering her eyes, but he got the feeling she was hoping he would understand—something, whatever it was—without her having to spell it out for him.

  But he wanted to hear her spell everything out, tell him just what she wanted from him. “So this fella disappeared from human society.”

  “That’s how he puts it.”

  “And when was this?”

  “About a couple of years ago. A few months before I met him. That’s what he tells me.”

  “Maybe he disappeared, but he still socialized enough to get acquainted with you.”

  “I let him pick me up.” Camilla gave a sudden, nervous little laugh. She let go Jake’s hand and sat up abruptly. “I don’t know how to tell it. Let’s get dressed. It’s a long story. I’ll take you to see where I live. Maybe that’ll make it all easier to explain.”

  So far, it didn’t sound so awfully complicated to Jake. He said: “I’d rather look at everything you’re showing me right now.” But Camilla was already on her feet, brushing sand from her sweaty skin, picking up her clothes. Jake sighed and went along.

  By the time he was dressed again, Camilla was already busy packing up her easel and stuff. “Give me a hand,” she pleaded. The down-canyon breeze was freshening, trying to make off with some of her sketches, though she had them weighted down with small black rocks.

  “Sure.” Jake corralled sheets of drawing paper which were on the brink of making an escape, and stuffed them under his arm, trying not to crinkle the papers too much. Now that he really thought about it, it wouldn’t have been believable that she lived all the way up on the Rim, and carried all this junk up and down with her on a fourteen-mile round trip every time she wanted to go sketching.

  They had Camilla’s art materials bundled up for transportation when, as if struck by a sudden thought, she demanded of Jake: “You didn’t tell anyone you were meeting me today, did you?”

  “Hell no. Tell those guys there’s a good-looking girl down here? Think I want an expedition following me out from camp?”

  “No, I didn’t think you’d want that … Jake, the creek water’s safe.” He had started to drink from his canteen.

  He shrugged and drank from the canteen anyway. “I can refill before I head back.”

  “Oh my God. You know what? I packed you a lunch and then forgot all about it!” Suddenly it was as if Camilla at the last minute wanted to delay taking Jake up to where she lived, and was thinking up ways to delay that trip. As if she was getting cold feet about something.

  Jake had also forgotten about food, but at the mention of it he was suddenly hungry. If Camilla wanted to postpone his tour of her living quarters, it was all right with him.

  Or maybe, Jake thought, she wanted him to be a thoroughly contented man before she took him there. From somewhere she brought out a metal lunchbox with flowers on it, like something a little girl might have carried to school, and opened it to reveal sandwiches neatly wrapped in waxed paper, and fruit, and a vacuum bottle she said held lemonade.

  The bread turned out to be home-made, the sandwich filling cheese and ham. Sit
ting on a rock, Jake ate and drank with a good appetite. All the better, because by now he had thoroughly resigned himself to missing evening chow. Not that he would have minded missing a few more meals, in a cause as good as that of getting laid by this girl.

  “You’re not eating anything,” Jake commented, chewing. “Want one of these?” He held out a wax paper packet.

  Camilla shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

  Jake shrugged. He thought vaguely that maybe she was dieting—though with a figure like hers he didn’t see any need for it.

  He asked: “So, how long have you been living in this mysterious place up-canyon?” Being diplomatic, as he thought, he didn’t say with this mysterious guy.

  Camilla started an answer, but broke it off. Then with seeming irrelevance she asked: “Have you ever been up on the South Rim?”

  He nodded. “Sure. When I first came to the Canyon, four months ago, they drove us in that far in a bus from Flagstaff, then marched us down the trail on foot—ever see our camp, up river at the foot of Kaibab Trail?” Jake took another bite of sandwich.

  Camilla nodded.

  Jake went on: “In four months I only been up out of the Canyon a couple of times, for a weekend. You have to ride a mule up Bright Angel trail, or else hike up. And each time we passed through the little village on the rim.” As he recalled, there had been about half a dozen buildings in view, including the railroad station where the Santa Fe spur line ended. And of course the big log hotel, with a few more structures scattered back among the trees. “What about it?”

  “I came in that way too. With Edgar, after he picked me up in a bar in Flagstaff.” Camilla paused there, looking at Jake from behind her dark glasses as if she were daring him to comment on this admission. He didn’t.

  She went on: “One of those houses up there on the rim is the one he used to live in. He used to have different models all the time, until he finally married one of them. For all I know his wife and his kid are still living there. You have to get over a little west of the head of Bright Angel Trail to see the house, and you might easily miss it even from there.”

  She was, Jake decided, harping on Edgar Tyrrell and his house because she was having a hard time deciding how to approach whatever it was she really wanted to explain. This decision was harder for her than the decision she had made when she took off her clothes.

  She added wistfully: “I’ve never seen that Rim again.”

  Then, shaking her head as if to clear it, she asked Jake: “Are you finished eating?”

  “Sure.” He was definitely getting curious.

  He closed up the lunch box, leaving the crumbs and remnants for the chipmunks and coyotes, and Camilla took the little box with the other stuff she was carrying, and started to lead the way along the little trail going upstream. Jake followed her, carrying a couple of her things.

  Before they had gone more than a hundred feet or so, she stopped and turned to Jake to say, in a voice that was growing strained: “See, there’s too much time down here, near the bottom of the Canyon.”

  “What?” He blinked and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Too much time? You mean you’ve got nothing to do?”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. Too much time is what Edgar says when I ask him about—about some funny things that happen down here. At first I didn’t know what he meant by too much time. But lately I can understand—I think. He says the river cuts open the earth, and the deep time comes spilling out of it like blood.” Then she smiled nervously at the expression that must have been growing on Jake’s face. “I’m not crazy, lover. You’ll see what I mean.”

  “Okay. I don’t think you’re crazy.” Actually the suspicion had very recently been born. But he wasn’t really worried about it yet.

  “Thank God,” said Camilla, and turned to once more lead the way up along the trail beside the creek.

  Jake, staying close behind her, was nagged by the feeling that the voices of the nearby stream were trying to tell him something. But he was distracted from pursuing that thought by the movement of Camilla’s hips. Even if her jeans were a loose fit.

  “So,” he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the sound of rushing water, “you live with Edgar?”

  “I don’t sleep with him. Not any more.” Camilla paused, glancing back. “He’s a—strange man.”

  “Yeah? He must be pretty old now if he lived up on the Rim for thirty years.”

  “He’s pretty old.”

  They climbed on. Jake couldn’t see the sun from down here in the narrow canyon, but judging by the angle of the shadow on the east wall they still had a good many hours to go before sunset.

  Camilla led Jake on, up along what was no longer really a trail at all. Glancing to right and left, Jake noted that the steep and winding walls of this little side canyon displayed basically the same strata of rock as those in the tremendous walls of the big one; there was no other way it could be, he supposed. That pale layer was limestone and the somewhat darker one just below was shale. For the last couple of months he had been picking up some knowledge of geology from the rock experts back at camp.

  Presently he called again to Camilla: “You and old Edgar live in a pretty isolated place back here.”

  For some reason that made her pause and turn, to study him through her dark glasses. Then she emphatically agreed with what he’d said and went beyond it. “Not one in a thousand people hiking downriver the way you did could find this canyon.”

  “Well, it’s not that hard to find. I didn’t have much trouble.”

  “Only because you’re something special. It is that hard to find.” For some reason her voice quavered. “Not one in a thousand. Maybe not one in a million. How many other hikers and boaters do you suppose have gone right past the entrance to this canyon where you turned in, and never seen it there?”

  Jake blinked at her, wondering. “That’s easy. Not very damned many. There wouldn’t be a hundred people hike or boat past the mouth of your little canyon in ten years. This place is not exactly populated like a city park, you know.”

  Camilla smiled at him silently, as if she wanted to be reassuring—or perhaps be reassured—and then turned back to her climb.

  Jake went back to watching the hypnotic movement of her hips.

  * * *

  Another minute or so of staring at that movement, and Jake caught up with her and tugged gently on her belt.

  Camilla stopped and turned and held out her arms. A moment later he was kissing her, and feeling up under her shirt again. How marvelous when there was no resistance!

  * * *

  Afterward they sat naked in the chill shallow water of the creek, letting it rush over their bodies, splashing each other.

  Jake said: “In a way it’s funny, your talk about how hard this canyon is to find.”

  “Why is it funny?” Camilla, who had been laughing at something else he’d said, stopped suddenly. At the moment they were in shade, and she’d left her dark glasses off.

  “Because yesterday I looked at the big map back at camp. And I couldn’t see this canyon on it anywhere. This isn’t Pipe Creek we’re sitting in, and it isn’t Horn Creek, right? Because there are rapids in the Colorado where Horn Creek comes in. And there’s not supposed to be any side canyon with a permanent water flow between those two. But here we are.” Jake gestured at the steep enclosing walls.

  Camilla wasn’t surprised to hear about the map. Instead she just looked melancholy and thoughtful. All she said was: “I bet there are a lot of things your map doesn’t show.”

  * * * * * *

  When they were dressed again, they climbed on, while the canyon that had swallowed them turned this way and that like a great snake. The bends were getting sharper. Jake could no longer see farther than about fifty yards ahead at any point.

  Once Camilla paused to tell him, as if in afterthought: “Edgar calls this place Deep Canyon.”

  Rounding the next turn, they came to a place where
the canyon straightened out and expanded into a steep-sided amphitheater, the size of a small football stadium. The land inside was relatively level, half-overgrown with typical canyon bush and a few trees. At the far end of the amphitheater the creek fell into it in a high waterfall. Jake saw to his surprise that someone had neatly built a tall, narrow waterwheel into this cataract. And at the foot of the drop, getting splashed a little by the spray, stood a little stone building that looked like it ought to house a generator. Sure enough, wires ran on poles from the generator housing to another small building. This one was constructed of neatly trimmed logs, and actually appeared to be a house.

  For the time being Jake took less notice of a kind of grotto, or cave, opening into the base of the western cliff, at the level of another layer of rock that Jake could recognize. The camp geologist had called this one Tapeats Sandstone, and had said it lay just over what he called the Great Unconformity, a term whose meaning Jake had never grasped.

  At first sight the cave was only a shallow concavity, with a low, rather inconspicuous entrance; at second glance it looked deeper.

  But right now Jake was paying attention mainly to the neatly constructed little house, which was sited high enough above the creek to avoid floods. No prospector’s cabin, certainly. Not a shack or a hut, but a real house, boasting stone walls, glass windows, and a real shingled roof.

  Camilla was standing right beside Jake, looking at him as if judging his reaction.

  He asked her: “You live here?”

  Camilla said: “I do.”

  “With Edgar.”

  “Yes.” She cast a nervous look around, and lowered her voice. “But I don’t want to live with him any longer.”

  “Leave.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. You’ll see.”

  “He hasn’t got you locked up.”

  Camilla said nothing.