A Question of Time d-7 Read online

  A Question of Time

  ( Dracula - 7 )

  Fred Saberhagen

  A private detective is hired to locate a missing girl -- the great niece of an eccentric sculptor named Edgar Tyrell. But Tyrell is nosferatu, and he can sculpt in the sands of reality itself. So the detective must call on Dr. Strangeways, an Old Friend of the Family and Lord of the Vampires to battle an undead menace from beyond time.

  From Publishers Weekly

  Saberhagen, whose Thorn mixed Arthurian legend, time travel and vampires, once again blurs genre distinctions in this horror fantasy featuring that beloved SF device, time travel. Joe Keogh is a Chicago-based private investigator who is hired to find a teenager lost in the Grand Canyon in 1991. He brings three assistants, as well as one "Mr. Strangeways." Ominously, two other people-- a Civilian Conservation Corps worker in 1935 and a woman in 1965 --were kidnapped by a vampire named Edgar Tyrell in the same part of the canyon where Keogh searches nearly six decades later. The two plots, linked by Tyrell (who is the missing teenager's father), come crashing together in a climax that is more confusing than exciting. Although the cast is crowded (two of Keogh's assistants could have been removed to no effect), the nosferatu Strangeways--a Saberhagen regular whose other name is Drakulyasp correct --is a fascinating character, and the novel's quick pace holds reader interest.

  A Question of Time

  Fred Saberhagen

  Chapter 1

  1935

  Jake Rezner had never owned a watch, but the lack had rarely worried him, and he didn't mean to let it bother him today. Squinting up at the first direct rays of the morning sun, just coming clear of an eastern cliff, he thought that today the sun would let him tell time well enough. He might get back to camp too late for evening chow, but that wouldn't really matter. All he really had to worry about today was getting back before it got too dark to walk the Canyon trails. If he should get caught out overnight, or was so late returning that the camp authorities started to organize a search for him, they might begin to be uncomfortably curious about where he'd been.

  For Jake the seven days since last Sunday had dragged almost as if he were in prison, or as if there could be something wrong with all the clocks and watches in the camp, and with the calendar that had spent this week, like every other week, hanging on a pole in the orderly tent.

  Anyway, Sunday had at last come round again, and right after morning chow Jake had got hold of a canteen and come down here to the creek to fill it. At the moment he was squatting on the rocky lip of Bright Angel Creek, his right hand holding the two-quart vessel under water, air bubbles coming up in a way that made it look like he might be drowning a small animal. The canteen was surplus military equipment, like Jake's khaki clothes, like his sturdy boots and his round-brimmed fatigue hat, all on loan from the army to help the Civilian Conservation Corps get going in these dark days of the Depression.

  Early June sunlight, hot but not nearly as hot as it was going to be in a few hours, sparkled off the surface of the noisy creek, glinting in the small patches where the water wasn't too chopped up by turbulence to be anything but white froth. The dazzle of sunlight on rushing water suggested moving pictures, and was the kind of thing that on a dull Sunday might have tempted Jake to sit here for an hour and just watch—but today, whatever happened, was not going to be dull. Not for him.

  Small rapids, both upstream and downstream, generated unending hollow noises that sounded to Jake like a murmuring of many voices. In camp you could hear the rapids of the creek all day and all night, and on workdays along one trail or another they were sometimes audible. Since coming west to work for the CCC Jake had discovered that he could never listen for long to the voices of this or any other creek before they started making words. Right now the rapids upstream were louder than those below; and that seemed only natural, because the water upstream had just come tumbling all the way down from its source up on the North Rim, a mile higher and maybe ten crow-flight miles from this spot. Downstream from Jake, not more than fifty yards away, Bright Angel Creek plunged in a final subdued roar to its union with the wide, swift, silent Colorado at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon.

  All the rapids in the creek kept on shouting their imaginary words at Jake, but right now they sounded like people arguing in some foreign language. Only one of those words was at all clear. It was a certain name, a girl's name that he'd learned only two weeks ago.

  The last remnant of air came bubbling up out of the submerged canteen, and Jacob Rezner got to his feet, screwing on the container's metal cap. Jake at twenty-two was six feet tall and solidly built. His dark hair, kept cut short ever since he'd joined the CCC, still retained a tendency to curl. His greenish eyes had something in them that most people found a little startling, though very few could have said exactly why they were startled. The mobility of his mouth seemed to be connected somehow, perhaps sharing a kind of energy, with the strangeness in his eyes.

  Fastening the canteen to his webbed army belt, Jake returned to camp by recrossing the creek, on a narrow bridge that marked the foot of Kaibab Trail. Trudging a few feet uphill from the bridge, Jake entered what the army people called the company street of CCC Camp NP-3-A. The street was basically two rows of khaki tents, twenty-five of them in all, most of them housing four enrollees each. Now that the hot weather was coming on in earnest, at least a couple of each tent's canvas walls were hiked up to let air circulate. Headquarters and officers' tents were grouped at the northeastern, upstream end of the camp. Latrines, supply, and the mule corral were scattered downstream along the creek. Today the makeshift corral would more than likely remain empty; generally no pack trains came down on Sunday. As a rule the rest of the week saw fairly steady mule train traffic, because all supplies except water had to be packed down here from the South Rim.

  The usual Sunday sounds of the camp surrounded Jake. Laughter and swear words and arguments, and the one ever-playing radio. The army chaplain hadn't made it down today for Sunday services; most weeks he failed to make it, because it was a seven-mile mule ride on switch-back trails from the South Rim, and a lot more miles than that from the nearest place that even pretended to be a town.

  Just below Camp NP-3-A, down on the cleared, relatively flat space of the creek's delta, some of the guys were starting a pickup softball game despite the growing heat. For most of the young enrollees this would be a day to play games, play cards, write letters, and just sack out. Here and there one of the guys would dig out a bottle he had secretly stashed away. Usually the officers and leaders looked the other way when that happened, unless someone showed up drunk for work, or too hung over to carve trails and haul rock.

  With the filled canteen hooked securely on his GI belt, Jake approached his own tent, halfway down the company street, and stuck his head inside. Three of the four military bunks, including his own, were empty. Joe Spicci, short and wiry, looked up from the fourth sack, where he lay reading last Sunday's sports section.

  Jake told him: "I'm going for a hike." He made the announcement reluctantly; but it made sense to let someone know he might not be back until late. He wouldn't want them starting a search if he missed evening chow.

  "Where?" Spicci sounded interested.

  "Just a hike." The answer was short; this was one hike on which Jake didn't want company. "See you at chow time. Or maybe even later."

  "Too damn hot out there for me today." Joe raised the sports pages in front of his face again.

  A hundred steps away from the tent, Jake had put the entire camp behind him. Hell, with a few more strides he was already practically out of sight of all the tents. The land down here at the bottom of the inner gorge was mostly barren rock, a real desert, but he was already around the ne
arest big outcropping shoulder. This formation, whose shape always put Jake in mind of a sheeted ghost, dwarfed the camp, even as it was dwarfed itself by the thousand-foot cliffs of the lower gorge. These cliffs mostly blocked out the view of the vastly greater and more colorful fantasies above. After living four months in a work camp at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, Jake had learned his way around the place a little bit, but he still hadn't got used to it in his mind. Maybe you never could, at least not if you had any imagination.

  But today, so far, he was hardly noticing the landscape. Because his mind was busy with something else. If any of the other men in camp had any idea… but none of them did. They couldn't, because Jake hadn't said a word to anyone.

  His secret destination lay downstream, along the south bank of the broad Colorado. To reach the south bank he had to cross the Kaibab suspension bridge, just outside of camp. This bridge was somewhat longer than a football field, and just about wide enough to accommodate one loaded mule. It was the only span of any kind to cross the river for more than a hundred miles upstream or down.

  The bridge sounded hollowly beneath Jake's boots. The river, here deep and smooth, rushed silently below. After Jake had crossed the bridge his way lay west, downstream along the newly constructed River Trail. He'd labored on this stretch of trail himself, worked hard, helping the experts set explosives here and there, digging and hauling broken rock.

  Though water was a life-and-death necessity in this heat, he thought he might possibly have managed today without borrowing a canteen, because there was the river to drink from. But along these miles of uninhabited shoreline, more often than not the edge of the Colorado was too abrupt, too steep and sharp-rocked, to let a thirsty man get close enough to drink or scoop up water.

  A man who fell in would be lucky to find a place where he could climb out again before the current knocked him against too many rocks. The mean and rugged riverbank was of a piece with the rest of the local landscape.

  When Jake had made a few hundred yards downstream he stopped at a bend in the trail. Pausing there, he looked back, to make sure that no one else was crossing the suspension bridge. He had no reason to think that anyone would be interested in where he went, or try to follow him, but just in case…

  He could be sure now. No one was following him.

  Jake moved on, briskly.

  For once he was oblivious to all the giants' handiwork around him. All he could think of were the same questions that had been tormenting him all week: Two Sundays in a row she's been there. If only she's there again. And if only she's still interested…

  When the time came to turn off the River Trail it was a matter of scrambling and climbing, finding his own way across rough landscape. There was not even a deer trail to follow here. But Jake had been this way enough times now to have worked out a passable route for himself through the harsh terrain.

  An hour and a half after leaving camp he was several miles downstream, moving quickly despite the day's growing heat. Here he was still inside the lower gorge, a thousand feet deep and comparatively narrow. Still its high edges almost totally cut off his view of most of the vaster, deeper rocky wilderness of the upper canyon, and of both distant rims. At irregular intervals side canyons came slicing into the main one from both north and south. Some of these tributary gorges had names: Zoroaster Canyon, Bright Angel Canyon, Travertine Canyon, among others. Most were dry most of the time, but in spring those on the north bank ran with snowmelt from the high North Rim. And the rangers who had been here for years said that summer rains would turn all of them on again. Greenery had established itself along certain of these watercourses, showing that their flow was continuous, fed by springs.

  Jake's steps—and his pulse—quickened as he came at last to the familiar mouth of the particular side canyon that he wanted. If this one had a name, he didn't know it. Its entrance was a lovely, inviting place in contrast to the stark, dark, almost eternally shaded rock by which it was surrounded. From a narrow opening the ravine, its floor green with shady vegetation, went curving up into the towering south wall. The stream issuing from this side canyon was only a trickle, up to Jake's ankles when he splashed in, but steady, and felt as cold as the Colorado itself. Here at the entrance the bed of the stream, flowing between natural pillars that Jake's imagination could easily see as carven monsters, offered the only place to walk.

  A few yards up the side canyon the footing became easier, and a little trail appeared, paralleling the stream. From here on Jake really had to climb, now and then mounting gigantic stair-steps of tumbled rock. His boots squelched water for a while but the dry heat quickly dried them.

  Half an hour after entering the side canyon, Jake was clambering up the last—for a while—of the series of steps. Then, on an interval of almost level ground, he moved forward among cottonwoods and willows. Here the narrow canyon bulged out a little on both sides, having at this point ascended to a softer layer of light-colored rock that Jake had learned was sandstone. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, letting out a silent sigh of great relief. Fifty yards away he could see and recognize a human figure, that of a young woman who wore jeans and a man's work shirt. Camilla was there, almost exactly where he'd pictured her, waiting for him.

  Today she had perched herself on a handy ledge of sandstone, deep within the shadow of the enormous cliff, not far from where the creek came down over a series of ledges that made a waterfall. Even at this distance Jake could see the startling pallor of her skin; he'd mentioned that to her last Sunday, and she'd told him how badly she burned if the direct sun got at her.

  Camilla's reddish hair, lovely, long, and curly, stirred in the breeze that today as usual was moving down the side canyon. Even though she was sitting in the shade, dark glasses shielded her eyes, and she had one hand raised to shade them further as she turned her head to look for him—as if, despite the waterfall, she might have heard Jake approaching.

  Just as on the last two Sundays—could their first meeting have been only two weeks ago?—she had her easel set up in front of her, and her drawing tools and papers were scattered about on nearby rocks.

  Jake waved an arm in greeting, got an answering wave, and moved forward, trotting now despite the heat. Camilla got up from her ledge of rock and came a little distance toward him, stopping just within the shadow of the cliff.

  Despite the dark glasses, which pretty effectively concealed her eyes, he thought there was something odd in the way she looked at him today. Maybe it was the angle of her head. Whatever it was caused him a moment of uncertainty, of shyness. He stopped just close enough to Camilla to reach for and clasp her outstretched hands.

  "Hello." To Jake's surprise his own voice sounded shy, as if this were the first time he had ever spoken to this girl, or touched her. Last week she'd kissed him for the first time—a single kiss, gentle and quick—as he said goodbye.

  "Hello, yourself." Camilla's husky voice was just as he'd remembered it—almost, he thought, with a deep sense of the incongruous, like Mae West's. She was about six inches shorter than Jake, and yeah, she was really built as nicely as he remembered.

  She added, with a wistful tone: "I was afraid you weren't going to make it."

  "Hell, I'll make it. I always do, when I say I will. I was worried you wouldn't be here."

  "And I told you I'd be here." She paused, and with the dark glasses it was hard to tell what she was thinking. "Didn't I?" She paused again. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"

  Something was different about Camilla today, as if she'd come to some kind of a decision. The kiss was everything Jake had been imagining, hoping and praying for, for the last week. Ten seconds into it, his right hand moved up for her left breast.

  She let him get far enough to discover that under the man's shirt there was nothing on her skin but a little sweat, before she broke off the kiss and pulled away. The rejection was not violent, but it was firm.

  "No," she said, in a suddenly uncertain voice.

  Jake turned
away and looked around. He turned in a complete circle. He had the sudden feeling that every rock in the walls of the narrow canyon, and every plant along the stream, was somehow watching them.

  Now he was facing Camilla again. "Why the hell not?" His objection came out rougher-sounding than he'd intended.

  She shook her head, making her red hair bounce. "Not yet."

  "Then when?"

  Camilla said: "Maybe after I know some more about you. Don't you want to know about me? You don't even know my last name."

  "I don't care what your last name is. Tell me if you want."

  She was quiet. Upset, maybe, though not at him. Still pretty much in control, of herself and of the situation. "You're right, names don't matter. Jake, I mean I have to be sure of you first. I have to be very sure."

  "Sure of me? Sure of me how?"

  "I have to know whether I can depend on you. Whether you want me enough to—take some chances for me."

  Jake tried to think. All he could come up with at the moment was that this girl might be talking about getting married. It didn't really sound to him like she meant that, but what else could it be? He hesitated, making an effort without much success to see her eyes through the dark glasses.

  He said uncertainly: "I tried to tell you last week what I'm like, what my situation is. If I had a real job, if I had any money, I wouldn't be here in the CCC."

  "I know that. I understand about the CCC. If I'd had any money a year and a half ago, I wouldn't be here either." She paused, as if to contemplate her own situation, still mysterious to Jake. "That's not what I'm asking, whether you've got any money."

  "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."