A Question Of Time

by Fred Saberhagen

  Tyrrell stood listening, in concentration. “It doesn’t matter,” he said at last. “She will not have got far. She doesn’t matter.” His gaze fixed on Cathy again. “You matter, though.”

  “Father?” Cathy, letting go of her chair, came toward him, at first tentatively, then in a little rush that ended in an awkward embrace. Tyrrell’s arms, at first raised as if to ward her off, closed about her slowly, gently.

  “You are my father,” she said against his shoulder.

  Gently and slowly he disengaged to hold her at arm’s length.

  “I am—I was—your stepfather, child. When I first saw you, you were perhaps two years old. Your sister was a babe in arms. Your mother was—or is—the only woman—perhaps the only person—I have ever truly loved. You—and your sister—were the only children I could ever have. Therefore you matter to me. And you always will.”

  He added gently, “You told me just now that your mother was dead?”

  “My real mother? She’s been dead since I was six.” Cathy paused, suspicion being born. “Hasn’t she?”

  Tyrrell ignored that question for the moment. “When did you leave the Rim, in what year? And how did you get here, into the Deep Canyon? The way should not be open.”

  “The way was open for me,” Cathy said simply. “Because I lived here once, I remembered how to find the turning. I came looking for you.”

  “What year? Tell me, what year?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. This year. This year is nineteen ninety-one.”

  “Ah,” the man said.

  Moving past him to the open door, looking out into the gathering night, the young woman sampled the air, the strangeness of the place, with a deep breath. Smells strange and familiar at the same time, unknown since childhood, keyed into her memory.

  She said: “I could always remember this place—very much like this. Except now the house and everything seems so much smaller. But when I remembered these things I thought my memory was playing tricks on me. There were other things, too, that didn’t seem to fit. Cars, and radios, that I gradually realized looked like they were from the thirties. Old-fashioned clothes and toys. When things like that puzzled me, I always thought my memory was playing tricks.”

  She looked at her companion closely. “And there were even stranger things. Things that I saw you do, or seem to do, that would have been impossible for anyone.”

  “My dear…”

  Cathy indicated with a gesture that she had not finished. “Not only my memory,” she added. “People have been lying to me all my life. I didn’t know if this place was real. When I tried to talk about it, no one would pay attention. My mother abandoned me in an orphanage, you, my father, never tried to find me—did you?”

  “No,” the man said, after a silence. “because I came to realize that your mother was right to take you away from here.”

  “Why was she right?”

  “It was a dangerous place for you. I realize that now.”

  “Now you live here all alone?”

  Tyrrell looked faintly surprised. “Alone? No, far from alone.”

  The girl asked: “What year did she leave you?”

  “Who?”

  She stared at him. “My mother!”

  “Nineteen thirty-four.”

  “Nineteen thirty-four?” A moment of mental calculation. “That isn’t possible!”

  “Ah, but it is.”

  “No. It’s the time, you see—Father. You’re saying that Mother left you in nineteen thirty-four. But I’m only seventeen. How could I possibly be…?”

  “My whole life is a question of time, Cathy. Time does not run smoothly for me. Nor does it for anyone who lives in the Deep Canyon—as you did. It’s as if there were rapids in the flow. Like those in the river, you see—do you remember my showing you the river?”

  “I remember—the river. Yes!”

  “And I must have shown you the white rocks? The rocks as old as the earth, that make big rapids in the flow of time? I have spent my life at work upon those rocks—the spirit of the earth is in them.”

  Cathy cared little about rocks. “Father—it was Aunt Sarah, my grandaunt, who left you in nineteen thirty-four.”

  “It was Sarah, your mother, who left me—ah, I begin to understand.”

  “But—how could—”

  Tyrrell walked to the bedroom door. “Come here, girl. Let me show you something.”

  A minute later the two of them were in the room that had been briefly hers in her young childhood. Entering, the man touched a switch beside the door. A lamp came on.

  “I don’t remember there being an electric light.”

  “I put that in a few years after you were gone. There was some—trouble with the kerosene lamps.”

  Reaching into the closet, Tyrrell took down the stuffed animal and showed it to Cathy.

  “Do you remember this, daughter?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “And this?” He set the childish lunch box in front of her. “I brought this down from the Rim, for you, at your special request. It was something you remembered from the world outside, before you came here. And you wanted one, I don’t know why.” He paused. “Perhaps you still had hopes of going to school one day. Well, I suppose you’ve managed to do that.”

  “Yes, I’ve gone to school. I don’t know either—Father—why I wanted the lunch box. But it seems to me I remember that I did.”

  “And this.” Now he was opening a very different metal box, also taken from the closet. “I believe your birth certificate is still in here somewhere.”

  In a moment he had brought out an old paper. The folds in the document were stiff with age.

  “Dated May eighteenth, you see, nineteen thirty. Your mother had it with her, for some reason, when she came here.”

  Cathy looked at the paper. “ ‘Catherine Ann Young,’ ” she read aloud, wonderingly.

  “That’s you. Sarah’s maiden name was Young. She was never married, you see, to your biological father. She must have loved him, of course, to have two children by him. Perhaps he was a married man. I never asked her much about her past. I was content to have her as she was.” He paused. “More than content.”

  “But I can’t believe this.” Cathy was shaking her head. “This would mean that there were years—decades, out of the middle of this century—when I didn’t exist at all.”

  “You might also reflect that you were also absent from existence during the entire nineteenth century—and for a good many centuries, millenia, geological ages, before that.”

  “Of course, but—it’s so strange.”

  “I doubt, my dear, that your life is any stranger than my own.” Tyrrell took thought, and hesitated. “Well, perhaps it is, in some details. But I also doubt that either yours or mine is the strangest human life than anyone has ever lived.” He smiled. “Of course, neither of us have quite run our full course yet, have we?”

  * * *

  The birth certificate was marked by two tiny baby footprints in black ink, showing a left foot and a right.

  “Those prints would match yours,” said Tyrrell gently. “My dear, you were born more than sixty years ago. Evidently in California, as it says. Your mother can tell you the details, I’m sure.”

  “My mother. Then Sarah is my mother.”

  “Indeed she is. I’ll see that you get back to her safely.” Cathy’s eyes closed as she stood over the little table, and for a moment she looked faint.

  Then she reached out, groped, for her father and gave him a tighter hug than before.

  Again he responded awkwardly.

  Releasing him, she looked around. “I wonder where Maria’s got to?”

  “I must go to the cave,” Tyrrell said suddenly, as if the question about Maria had reminded him of something. “It will be safer for you if you come with me, rather than waiting here.”

  “Safer?”

  “The Deep Canyon is a dangerous place to visit, girl. You have been lucky, so far. A
nd when you were a child, you were well protected. Your baby sister—was not so fortunate. And for that your mother blamed me.” His voice had dropped to a kind of whisper. “Come with me. If your companion is important to you—perhaps we can still help her as well.”

  “Help her? What’s the matter?”

  “Come with me. Now.”

  * * *

  On reaching the entrance to the work-cave, Cathy paused just inside. “I remember this place,” she whispered. “It’s where you worked. My mother would tell me: ‘Daddy’s working.’ And I would come to the doorway and look in here—at the darkness.”

  “I still work here, daughter.” Tyrrell stood with his head turned slightly, listening carefully. “Your companion is not here now.” He turned on the lights.

  “What do you work on, Father?”

  “On the lifeblood of our planet, my dear. On life and death. On the ways that the two can come together. You see, neither can exist without the other.”

  “Father? What’s happened to you?” Here in the cave’s harsh electric lights, she could see how the old man’s face showed scars. What must once have been hideous burn marks had healed and softened with time, leaving little more than a suggestion of what must once have been disaster.

  “What are those scars?” Cathy repeated. “I don’t remember them.”

  “Someone attempted to kill me.” Her father turned from his workbench to answer tersely. “Actually they wanted to burn me to death.”

  His look softened when he saw his daughter’s reaction.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he assured her. “They failed. And that was a long time ago. Here, here are the rocks I work on. Not the silly things I carve from ordinary stone, for Brainard to sell. I gave up most of that sort of work a long time ago.”

  Tyrrell broke off, listening. He looked at Cathy, and his face grew worried. Moments passed before she could hear what he heard, approaching voices, sounding like those of two women and a man.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the bright sunlight of midafternoon Jake stood helpless, momentarily immobilized by the screams that poured out ceaselessly from behind the chipped and blasted but still solid barrier of rock. The man Jake was trying to kill obviously still survived.

  Camilla, standing beside her breathing lover, had covered her ears with her hands, but now she added scream after scream of her own to Edgar’s.

  Anger brought Jake out of his momentary paralysis. He slapped Camilla viciously, trying to knock her out of her hysteria.

  A moment later she was clinging to him, sobbing, and he was trying to comfort her. Then he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. Almost shouting to make himself heard above Edgar’s cries of agony, he commanded: “We’ve got to try the dynamite again. We’ve got to finish him off.”

  Camilla shuddered. “I know, I know—I’m all right now.”

  Already Jake had picked up his hammer and drill again; the only practical hope was another attempt at blasting. He still had dynamite, and wire, and blasting caps.

  Camilla had an inspiration. “We forgot about the kerosene in the lamps in the house. I can get that.”

  “Good idea. Throw the lamps back there. Keep that fire burning.”

  She ran off.

  Hastily Jake ran his hands over the barrier rock, selecting the spots where he wanted to drill the next set of holes. In a few moments he had begun hammering again. The failure of his first attempt had made him more keenly aware than ever that he didn’t really know what he was doing when it came to blasting rock.

  In a couple of minutes Camilla was back, walking now, carefully carrying three kerosene lamps. She hurled these accurately, one at a time, the glass bowls shattering inside the cave. The fresh shower of flammable liquid made the black smoke pour forth with increased volume.

  Then she came to help Jake. “It’ll go faster if I hold the drill.”

  “Yeah.”

  She gripped the steel tool, rotating it after each blow as she had seen Jake do. Jake was able switch to a bigger hammer, as he had before. A slowly growing frenzy of fear and horror fueled him with energy. The work went faster.

  * * *

  When Jake and Camilla prepared to start the second new hole, he happened to look back into the little cave. What had been a deeply shadowed recess was now well lit by flames. To Jake’s horror, he was able to see a portion of Tyrrell’s head, scorched gray hair and blackened skin, at about knee level. The old man in his torment must somehow have managed to pull himself up on hands and knees.

  Black smoke obscured at least half of what the orange flames were trying to reveal, but still Jake could see that Tyrrell’s clothing was largely burned away, at least around his neck and shoulders, and the vampire was looking out at his assailants. His eyes, set in the scorched ruin of his face, were glassy and staring. His blackened lips writhed, uttering strange sounds.

  On Jake’s next swing his hammer missed the drill completely, fortunately missing Camilla’s hands as well. She yelled at him in fright and dropped the tool.

  Jake bellowed back at her, until she picked up the drill again.

  Then suddenly it was all too much for her. Screaming, she dropped the tool clanging on rock and started to run, heading down the side canyon in the direction of the river.

  Jake’s shout of desperation— “Cam, get back here! I can’t do this alone!” —stopped her in her tracks.

  Quivering, she came back. But then she slumped weakly to the ground, unable or unwilling to do any more to help.

  Again he gripped the drill in his own left hand, though both his arms were trembling with fatigue. Again he swung the smaller hammer with his right.

  The drilling progressed, slowly. Time passed. Tyrrell’s screams slowly subsided into hideous moans, as the fire in the recess burned itself out, the black smoke diminishing to a greasy trickle in the air. Jake could not believe that the moans were ever going to stop.

  Slowly, slowly, the last hole that Jake would have time to drill deepened in the limestone. Somehow the sun had passed the zenith and was going down. Despite oddness of the way time was passing, and the urgency of passing time, he had to pause frequently to rest his arms.

  He didn’t look into the cave again, but with the wind blowing the last traces of smoke away he knew that now the fire was out. Whatever damage the burning kerosene was capable of doing had been done, and their enemy had somehow survived it.

  “Jake, I’m sorry, lover. I’ll help you now, I’ll help.” Camilla had pulled herself together and come back to stand beside him.

  Jake nodded and smiled, saving his breath for work. He put down his hammer for a moment, leaning against the barrier rock to rest, wiping sweat from his forehead, and from his face, long days unshaven, with the sleeve of his work shirt.

  Camilla came to give him an embrace.

  Without warning, Tyrrell’s scorched hand came groping out of the recess, after his tormentors. The thin limb struck like a black snake wearing the ashen remnants of a sleeve, the arm extending itself unbelievably far. The grab missed Jake’s arm by a fraction of an inch, and caught Camilla by the collar of her shirt.

  Jake let out an incoherent sound of horror, dropped his hammer and jumped back. But the vampire’s groping hand had now fastened on Camilla—she was being dragged helplessly into the small aperture between two unyielding surfaces of rock. The sound she made now was less a scream than a prolonged sob.

  Jake stepped forward again. He picked up the metal drill, half as long as a baseball bat, and heavier, and swung it directly against Tyrrell’s almost skeletal wrist—to no effect. The sensation of impact that traveled back up the drill and into Jake’s own hands was as if he had struck the massive rock itself. The blackened hand did not release its grip.

  Camilla’s body was braced, all her muscles straining as she struggled to keep herself from being forced, crushed, into the narrow aperture. Her sobbing made coherent words: “No, Jake, use wood! Use wood!”

  Jake dropped the d
rill. He grabbed up the longest hammer, and tried pounding with the handle at Tyrrell’s arm. When that had no effect he changed his tactics, using the handle like a lever, jamming it into the narrow crevice between rocks, making a fulcrum one angle of the big rock slab. With all his strength he forced Tyrrell’s burned wrist against another rock.

  Once more, the man in the cave screamed horribly.

  His blackened, bony fingers still refused to release Camilla’s collar, but now the fabric of the shirt was ripping.

  Part of the garment, collar and shoulder and sleeve, tore completely away. With a final cry, as if she might be dying, the young woman fell to the ground, out of the vampire’s reach.

  Jake grabbed her under the arms, pulled her even farther from the blackened arm that still groped in search of breathing flesh.

  * * *

  “Come on, Cam, we’re not done yet. Come on, you’ve still got to help me. We still have to drill another hole.” It would have to be done, obviously, in a place where Tyrrell could not possibly reach them as they worked.

  “All right.” Camilla dragged herself back to her feet.

  They worked, in a nightmare of heat and exhaustion, in a persistent numbing stench of kerosene, while the treacherous sun slid swiftly down the sky. Sometimes, from the corners of their eyes, they saw one of Tyrrell’s ruined arms come groping desperately out again.

  There came a time when Jake had to rest. Camilla, now almost wholly recovered as far as he could tell, brought him food while he rested.

  At last Jake, measuring with the drill, decided that the final hole was deep enough to hold a charge.

  Once more, with shaking fingers, he crimped high explosives and blasting caps together, along with one end of a length of wire.

  “Hurry, hurry.” Camilla, in a shaking whisper, had begun to chant a litany.

  It seemed to Jake that time was going crazy. How could a full day of sunlight have slipped away so quickly? Shadows were lengthening, the hours of daylight almost gone.

  Inside the cave, darkness was firmly re-established, and the man in there had ceased to struggle visibly. He had fallen completely silent.