A Question Of Time

by Fred Saberhagen

  “I already told you once,” interrupted Preston. “I told you nice, go chase a squirrel. You wouldn’t listen. Okay.” He strode forward purposefully, heading straight for Mr. Strangeways.

  At the last moment, just before he reached his goal, a frown as of puzzlement appeared on Preston’s face.

  Then he reached out for the waiting Strangeways. But the grip he wished to obtain had been pre-empted. Mr. Strangeways already had him with both hands by the front of his furred jacket, and a fraction of a second after that Mr. Preston squawked aloud, in sheer surprise that his body had so rapidly become airborne. He made a shrill noise for such a large man. And for a mere breather he was quite well-coordinated, able to execute a kind of dance step in midair, a doomed attempt to regain balance that had, alas, already been lost forever.

  His body, carefully aimed, smote with considerable force the front end of the occupied but motionless vehicle. In the first phase of the impact, the flying man’s legs struck the hood. A fraction of a second later his bulky torso crashed into the sloping windshield. Strong glass caved in, but did not shatter. The hurtling body glanced from the deeply slanting surface, mounting almost straight up into the air for a distance of several car-heights before coming down on pavement covered with, so far, only a very inadequate padding of new snow.

  Even before Preston’s body had undergone this secondary impact, Drakulya was standing beside the driver’s door, pulling it open. Incautiously Mr. Smith had neglected to fasten his seat belt, a fact which did not escape his caller’s notice.

  Taking the back of his second subject’s neck firmly in one hand, and with the other seizing the steering column just below the wheel, Mr. Strangeways brought the two together with an effort that approached the maximum force he could exert.

  A fraction of a second later he was recoiling in startlement, and hissing his annoyance as he realized that this part of the exercise would have to be done over again. His effort with the steering column had only succeeded in popping an airbag, leaving Mr. Smith hardly worse than disconcerted, rather as if a shotgun loaded with creampuffs had been fired in his face. Smith tried to wave his arms, and let out a rabbit-like squeak that some listeners might have found comical.

  But Mr. Strangeways still had him by the back of the neck.

  Intent on concluding this distasteful business, the bearded man recovered his aplomb with commendable speed for one of his advanced years. The airbag had already deflated itself, and a second try with neck and steering column produced the desired result.

  Brainard, though physically almost intact, required help to leave the battered vehicle.

  “Thanks. My God, how can I thank you?”

  “You have just done so. That is sufficient.”

  “I didn’t see either of ’em watching the hotel. I thought I’d take a chance … now Cathy’s back, I didn’t want her getting messed up in my troubles.”

  After advising his client to try some snow on his burned neck, Strangeways methodically but quickly went through the pockets of Brainard’s tormentors. Preston, sprawled in the snow, still breathed, but painfully, and the examiner judged that that condition would not persist for long. In Smith it had already passed. Strangeways also rifled the more obvious places of storage in their car, looking for anything that might connect them with Brainard.

  He found nothing in that line, but did collect almost five thousand dollars in cash. Considering this the spoils of war, Strangeways handed it, in the form of an untidy bundle, to Brainard before sending him on his way.

  “Some of that’s my own money. They took it away from me just now.”

  “You may have the rest,” the rescuer said.

  “Can I pay you something, for your help?”

  “Decent of you to offer. But no, thank you. The weather is turning bad. I advise you to drive carefully.”

  “Thanks.” Brainard gingerly scooped more snow onto the back of his neck. “God, maybe my luck is turning at last.”

  * * *

  When Strangeways arrived back at the hotel suite, Joe Keogh asked him if he had seen Brainard.

  The bearded man nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact. When last I saw him he was driving peacefully toward the main exit from the Park. I have little doubt that he will be well on his way before the worst of the storm arrives.”

  “What about the people who were after him?”

  Strangeways looked at his well-kept nails. “Also on their way.”

  After a pause Joe asked: “Still after Brainard?”

  “No. They had taken a different direction … careless, improvident men. I doubt that they have managed to get far. The roads are becoming treacherous.” He made a sighing noise, faintly reptilian. “For the careless, accidents are almost inevitable in such conditions.”

  “Oh,” said Joe; with finality. He had known the other for many years. After a moment he said: “Oh,” again.

  “Joseph?” the other asked him mildly.

  “Yes?”

  “Are a great many automobiles now equipped with airbags?”

  “Most of the new ones, I guess.”

  Drakulya nodded thoughtfully. “Now I must rest. All this activity by day is wearing, even in weather so beautifully gray—I can see why my compatriot Tyrrell was so drawn to this country, dangerous as it is for us.”

  “Why?”

  “The sun, Joseph. We, our kind, are much concerned with its presence, absence, and intensity.”

  “With avoiding it, I’d think.”

  “Yes, of course. Only with the full bulk of a planet between our bodies and the sun are vampires entirely shielded from all of the potentially harmful emissions and effects. Though it is still my contention that we may depend on some emission from the sun, as yet unknown to science, for much of our true nourishment…

  “But also we have no trouble in grasping the idea that something really odd might be expected to happen when the sun strikes directly, for the first time in a billion years, upon the freshly shattered surface of some deep rock…”

  “Who can say, Joseph, what would happen then? Perhaps most likely nothing. On the other hand, I can visualize strange possibilities…”

  “And Tyrrell was thinking along those lines when he came here.”

  “I am sure it was not idly, merely by chance, that he came to settle here in sun country, as it is called; on the contrary, anyone coming here as a vampire would require a strong reason.”

  “Connected with Darwin, maybe?”

  “With life, Joseph. Connected with nothing less than life itself.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lying side by side in bed, almost silent and almost motionless, Jake and Camilla had clasped hands, his left holding her right. Both were listening intently to the normal noises of late night in the Deep Canyon. Something that sounded almost like a coyote was howling in the distance. Through the open window of their bedroom there drifted, reassuringly, the work-sounds made by the old man, demonstrating that he was on the job as usual.

  Neither Camilla nor Jake was anywhere near sleep, though hours had passed since either of them had whispered a word. The night had been hell, any kind of sleep all but impossible. Sleep had become nearly impossible anyway in recent nights, with neither of them able to guess when their demonic master might appear suddenly in their darkened bedroom, demanding the blood, the life, of one or both of them.

  Both Camilla and Jake were nearing the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion.

  Jake could only thank God that Tyrrell had not intruded on them during the night just past. There was no working timepiece in the cottage. Until the sun actually rose the breathers had no choice but dumb endurance of the fear that the vampire had somehow discovered their plan. No relief from their suspicion that the satanic Tyrrell was only toying with them, that he would appear to confront them in the last hour, or perhaps even the last few minutes, before dawn. Jake kept going over and over in his mind everything that Tyrrell had said to him yesterday, every change of e
xpression on the vampire’s face—had Tyrrell guessed?

  One of the windows of the bedroom was on the east side of the house. Jake lay staring at the edge of the curtains, wondering for a long time whether the sky was really, at last, starting to lighten in that direction, or whether he was deluding himself with hope. When he was sure that the night was really fading, he reached out a hand silently and squeezed Camilla’s wrist. Thank God, thank God, at last!

  Moments later, the sounds of Tyrrell’s labors ceased. That was a sure sign that dawn was coming.

  Unless, this morning, he was quitting early to deceive them.

  “Listen!” Camilla had been lying as tautly awake as Jake.

  “Shh!”

  No more noise came from Tyrrell. Undoubtedly there was daylight in the east.

  Moments after reaching that decision, Jake was up and pulling on his clothes.

  * * *

  The sun had still not cleared the canyon’s eastern rim when Jake and Camilla began trying to break into the little shed in which the old man kept his explosives jealously, if not very effectively, locked up. Camilla said that she was certain, or almost certain, that Tyrrell usually wore the key to the explosives store on a chain around his neck. But the long crowbar in Jake’s hands proved quite adequate for wrenching away the padlock and its hardware.

  Jake pulled open the doors of the shed and took out the box of dynamite, stubby sticks wrapped in heavy, waxy paper that bore red warning labels. For a moment his heart sank as he thought the necessary blasting caps must have been hidden elsewhere; but no, there they were, another box, printed with warnings, way back on the top shelf. And there on the same shelf as the caps was the wire, several big spools of it; and down in the bottom of the cabinet the electric blasting machine, a little square box with a big handle sticking up on top, newer-looking than the one the CCC used.

  Why hadn’t the old man locked this stuff up more securely. He supposed it was because Tyrrell didn’t think his current slaves would have the wit and the nerve to do what they were doing.

  Now Jake could hear Camilla’s hurrying footsteps. She had already drawn kerosene from the drum behind the house, and she was carrying two containers full of the smelly liquid when she met Jake on the way to the little cave across the creek where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep. One container was the two-gallon can normally used to bring kerosene to the house and fill the lamps, the other their biggest cooking pot.

  The plan, worked out over a period of days, was to drench the sleeping vampire with kerosene, running the liquid in on him with hoses or a length of metal pipe. Then they would use dynamite in an attempt to blast Edgar out of his snug sunless hiding place—the blast, Jake calculated, might itself set fire to the drenching liquid. If not, they would have to ignite the kerosene by tossing burning rags or torches into the recess.

  Jake started carrying the blasting materials to the slab of rock that shielded the vampire. Meanwhile Camilla was busy filling all the glass jars she could find in the house with kerosene.

  As soon as she brought them across the creek, Jake took one, screwed the lid on tight, then hurled the container carefully into the vampire’s shady recess. The glass shattered quite satisfactorily, and the liquid splashed and dribbled inside the shaded recess. Cam and Jake looked at each other. As far as they could tell, the stuff had gone right where they wanted it.

  No reaction had been provoked inside the miniature cave. The smell of kerosene, oily and pungent, quickly filled the air.

  “He’s got to be covered with it now. He’s got to be.”

  “If he’s there. If he’s there.”

  “He’s there. He’s got to be.”

  Neither of them could be one hundred per cent sure of that. Yet there was nothing to be done but forge ahead. As Camilla tightened the lid on a second jar of kerosene, Jake wished aloud, not for the first time, that they had gasoline available.

  “Why?”

  “Burns hotter.”

  “This won’t work?”

  “Of course it’ll work. Kerosene burns hot enough. I wouldn’t be trying it otherwise. Give me that.” Jake hurled another missile, scoring another direct hit.

  Gasoline just wasn’t available, nor was diesel fuel. Tyrrell had no motor vehicles in the Deep Canyon, no need for the stuff, and so none was kept on hand. The generator ran on waterpower, and Jake had made sure that there was no auxiliary engine for it.

  He capped and hurled a third jar, and winced as this missile shattered on the stone atop the cave, wasting most if not all of the precious deadly stuff inside.

  Handing him the last filled jar, Camilla suddenly shouted a question. “Jake, goddam it, Jake, what if this doesn’t work?”

  “Too late now to worry about that.”

  “But what if—?”

  “You said you’d seen him hurt by burning.”

  Camilla shuddered. “No, what I said was I never saw him stick his hand in the fire.”

  “He’ll burn, he’s got to burn, goddam it. We’re going to kill him, one way or another, now we’ve started. We’ve got to.” He hurled the last jar into the cave.

  Their pitifully small collection of jars was used up already. Now it seemed to Jake that the jars hadn’t held nearly enough kerosene—it seemed to him crazy that he had ever thought they might. But no time to worry about that now. On to part two of the plan. A piece of garden hose taken from the little irrigation system was pressed into surface to convey the flammable liquid to where they wanted it.

  As Jake had foreseen, using the hose was very awkward. First one end of it had to be pushed over the barrier slab of rock, well back into the cave where Tyrrell supposedly was sleeping.

  (Would the eyes of the vampire open? Jake wondered. Would he see what was coming at him? You’d think he’d have to smell it, anyway, unless he was completely dead.)

  Then the other end of the hose had to be elevated, held high by straining human hands, while kerosene was poured into it by other hands, through the funnel which was normally used to fill the two-gallon can from the drum. Jake had to run to the house to get a chair for Camilla to stand on while she poured.

  Between episodes of these lifting and pouring efforts for which all four of their hands were needed, Camilla went running back, again and again, eventually drain all of the kerosene from the storage drum into their pot and can. Jake was cutting the wire that he’d found, and closely inspecting the slab of limestone that guarded Tyrrell’s refuge, picking out the places where he wanted to put the dynamite. He thought two sticks should do it.

  As soon as they had done all that they could do with kerosene, Jake started hand-drilling the holes for the explosive. In his left hand he gripped the drill, a simple hand tool shaped like a long chisel with a steel shank and a star-shaped cutting end. With his right arm he swung one of the middle-sized hammers from the workshop. Dust and fine chips spouted from under the biting end of the drill with every blow, and after each blow Jake rotated the cutter slightly.

  The drill, driven by no more than human muscle, sank into the rock with painful slowness, a small fraction of an inch with every blow. The workshop boasted a few electric tools, but there was no way to get power to any of them back here.

  Camilla stood by him, watching for the most part in silence, and stinking, as he did, of kerosene. Their clothes were wet with the stuff. All either of them needed was for someone to strike a match.

  “What can I do to help?” she pleaded.

  “Nothing, right now.”

  The smell of kerosene saturated the air. Jake could imagine the puddle of it that must lie back in among the rocks all evaporating, dissipating into the atmosphere before they were ready to put a flame to it. He told himself such thoughts were foolishness, and labored on.

  At last, the first of his hand-drilled holes was deep enough. Thank God it was only limestone that he was trying to drill, and not granite, nor the strange black Vishnu schist.

  Camilla asked again: “What can I do?”


  “Okay. Here, you hold the drill.”

  Now, starting the second hole, he could use a bigger hammer, and grip it with both fists. The work went faster. Once he hit the drill only a glancing blow, and it leaped free of Camilla’s grip to clang with what seemed awful loudness on the rocks. She screamed at Jake to be careful what he was doing, not to hit her arms.

  At last they had drilled the holes. Putting the dynamite and blasting caps in place was not all that difficult, but the job had its tricky aspects. Really, Jake knew very little about this, only what he had picked up before he came to the Deep Canyon, watching the experts employed by the CCC.

  He was tamping a blasting cap and its attached wire in on top of the first charge, when Camilla said suddenly: “I have to see him dead, Jake, it won’t be enough to just think he’s probably burned up back in there. If I don’t see him with my own eyes today, I’ll die waiting for it to get dark tonight—not knowing if he’s really dead, or if he’s coming out after us.”

  Jake grunted and went on working.

  Finally the dynamite was set, tamped into both of the drilled holes with wire and blasting caps in place.

  Jake was ready to set it off. There was no reason to delay.

  He had set up the blasting machine in what he thought would be a sheltered place, behind a huge rock a hundred feet from Tyrrell’s sanctuary. He attached the wires to the machine and raised the handle to deliver a jolt of electricity when Camilla clutched at his arm.

  “What was that?” she demanded in a whisper.

  As soon as she called his attention to the sound he could hear it, sure enough. It was an inhuman or half-human sound, and Jake was sure that it came from the direction of Tyrrell’s little cave. It reminded Jake of the time when as a child he’d come across a car dying with its foot caught in a rat trap.

  There was no use waiting.

  “Here goes nothing,” Jake muttered to himself. Camilla, seeing what he was about to do, crouched down.

  Jake said: “Put your head down…”