A Question Of Time Page 5

  The old lady’s eyes rested briefly on Bill Burdon, moved on and then came back to him. It was, Bill thought, as if he might have been recognized, or perhaps was in danger of being mistaken for someone else.

  The old woman turned her attention back to Joe. “Mr. Keogh, you are almost too late. I heard our Cathy’s voice just now.”

  Chapter Three

  Standing inside the mouth of the cave, in the glare of those electric floods, which were like no lights that twenty-two-year-old Jake Rezner had ever seen before, he managed to control his temper. He was certain now that the man before him was old, despite his violent behavior, and despite the fact that his hair, under its powdering of rock-dust, was still mostly dark.

  Jake asked the old man, mildly enough considering, just what the hell the old man thought he knew about how long Jake’s life was going to last.

  The old man grinned. “I’ll have more to say on that subject than you think, young fellow. What’s your name?” The voice coming from the figure white with rock-dust was a powerful rasp, and to Jake’s surprise it sounded British. His only experience with British voices was from the movies, but still he didn’t think he could be mistaken.

  “My name’s Jake Rezner. I work for the CCC.”

  The other blinked at him almost benevolently. “Ah yes, you’re in the thirties.”

  Jake blinked. “In the what?”

  “In the decade of the thirties—that’s all right. You’re the people who put in trails and bridges.” The tone of the last sentence was contemptuous.

  “We put in only one bridge,” Jake said, momentarily unable to think of any better comeback.

  The old man was surveying Jake with what appeared to be increasing disdain. “And now you’ve come to stay with us, have you?”

  Jake almost laughed. “Stay with you? No, I’m not planning to move in.”

  The other really did laugh at that, and the sound was harsh. “If you still don’t know, having been enticed along this far…”

  “If I still don’t know what?”

  Instead of answering that question, the old man, with the child’s lunch box still tucked under his arm, shook his head pityingly and turned to Camilla.

  “So,” he remarked to her, “you’ve not told this one very much as yet. I suppose he’s just now arrived?”

  Camilla, somewhat to Jake’s surprise, was just standing there with her arms down at her sides, her small fists clenched. Without looking directly at either man, she nodded fiercely in reply, as if for some reason she did not trust herself to speak.

  Jake, turning back to the old man, trying to put him at ease so it wouldn’t become necessary to punch him out, said tolerantly: “Don’t worry, I’m not staying.”

  “I’m not worried.” The other, irritated rather than soothed by tolerance, glared at Jake from under bushy, white-dusted brows. “Of course you’re staying.” It was a statement of fact, not hospitality. “On that point you no longer have a choice. What I’m interested in right now is whether you’re going to be worth anything as a worker.”

  “I tell you I’m not … a worker?” Jake’s tone changed in the middle of the sentence. It actually sounded like the old guy was offering him a job.

  The elder once more emitted his harsh chuckle. “I said worker. There’s a lot of work to be done here, important jobs, some of them too heavy for a girl—for this one at any rate—and I don’t have time to do them all myself. I’m much too busy.” His eyes judged Jake’s physique. “A strong young man who’s been building trails and bridges ought to be good with rocks. Ought to be able to break them as instructed, and to move them carefully.”

  The suggestion of a real job changed everything. Jake, like everyone else he knew in the CCC, would have stopped whatever else he was doing, at almost any time, to listen to a job offer. Had there been regular jobs available instead of a Depression, none of them would have been living in tents, breaking rocks and building roads on a make-work government project a thousand miles from home and at least a hundred from civilization. And thank God, the CCC wasn’t quite like the Army; if a better offer came along you could put down your tools and quit and walk away without being arrested.

  “I’m a good worker,” Jake said after a pause. His voice now had a different tone, serious and respectful. Still, with his food and shelter already being taken care of by Uncle Sam, he could afford to be a little choosy. “What’s the job, and what does it pay?”

  The old man looked from Jake to Camilla, leered at her, and then repeated his coarse laugh, that somehow to Jake did not seem to go with his British voice. “You want money as well?”

  Jake could feel his face getting red. “Money, of course I want money. I don’t work without pay.”

  “Oh, do you not? And if I were to pay you money, where do you think you’d spend it?”

  Jake, supposing the old man was trying to make some kind of joke, shook his head, and gave a puzzled little laugh. “Even if I did stay here for a while, I figure I’d get into town eventually.”

  “It’s not a matter of ‘if’, young fellow. You’re here and here you’ll stay. Unless and until I decide that you’re not worth your keep.”

  “Until you decide?”

  Edgar Tyrrell made soothing noises, as if to a child or an animal, and calming motions with his hand that did not hold the lunchbox. “I’ll pay you, I’ll pay you, never fear. What would you say to—five dollars a day?”

  Jake relaxed a little. “That’s all right.”

  “And some day before you die I may even let you go … but that isn’t likely, now you’ve seen my operation.” Folding his arms, the elder stared at him judicially.

  “What do you mean, you may let me go? What the hell are you talking about?”

  No answer.

  Jake locked eyes with the old man for a few moments; it was a grim and confident glare that Jake faced, and if he hadn’t been two or three sizes bigger and maybe forty years younger, it might have frightened him. Yes, the old guy was crazy. No use talking to a crazy man. Too bad, five dollars a day would have been good pay—but Jake wasn’t going to try working for a lunatic. No job here. No wonder Camilla wanted out.

  Jake sighed, and stood up a little straighter. He looked at Camilla, feeling sorry for her. She avoided his gaze. Yes, no wonder she was frightened, and wanted to get away.

  He said: “I’m going, then. You coming with me, kid? I think you’d better.”

  She still looked timid. Standing in the shade, she held her hat in front of her in both hands, and kept turning it round and round. Her voice when she finally spoke was small. “Jake? I’m sorry, you can’t go. You really can’t.”

  “Who says I can’t?”

  No one answered him. “Watch and see,” Jake added. Then he hesitated. “I think you better come with me,” he told the girl in a softer voice. Only now did he start to think about the complications that would result if Camilla did come with him. There was nowhere else to take her but the camp, and Jake couldn’t really predict what would happen at camp tomorrow if he showed up with a goodlooking redhead in tow, after being AWOL all night—but it would be interesting. She sure as hell wasn’t going to be allowed to move into camp with him. His days with the CCC would probably be over, and he’d have no job at all. But right now he thought it would be worth it.

  Camilla hesitated only for a moment, then, rather to Jake’s surprise, she said: “All right.” Somehow, given her sudden timidity as soon as the old man appeared, he’d expected her to choose staying here with a sure meal ticket, even if Mr. Tyrrell was more than somewhat cracked.

  Jake looked at the old man to see how he was taking this defection. There seemed to be no need to worry. The rock-dusty figure stood with its arms folded, regarding the two young people with a gaze rather more amused than angry.

  So it didn’t look like there was going to be any real trouble. Jake relaxed a little. “Hey,” he asked the old man, gesturing: “Where’d you get these lights?” The lamps on their p
oles really looked like something out of Buck Rogers, or almost. When Jake listened for the sound of the generator, he thought maybe he could hear it droning in the background, barely audible above the steady noise of waterfall and rapids.

  “Somewhere beyond the nineties,” the old man said. “I couldn’t be quite sure.”

  “Huh?”

  The old guy didn’t bother trying to explain. Instead he turned back into his quarry-cave, returning his attention to whatever strange tasks he needed the lights to help him with. Standing among the strange white shapes that his tools had called forth from the deep rocks, the old man picked up a steel chisel and a hammer, and looked ready to carve away some more.

  Camilla, talking to Jake and sounding resigned rather than eager, repeated: “I’m ready.”

  Tyrrell turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Better take a gun,” he suggested. “Just in case.”

  Jake, not sure that he had heard correctly, gave the old man an intent look.

  But Camilla only nodded and turned away. She walked over to the little house, went in, and a few seconds later came out again, carrying a shotgun, but nothing else. She held the weapon casually on her shoulder, as if she were familiar with it.

  “I’m ready,” she said to Jake. “Let’s go.” It was as if she had no real intention of taking leave of the old man at all, or he of her. It was just as if she expected to be back here in ten minutes.

  Jake looked from her to the shotgun, to the old man. Tyrrell was once again busy with his own tasks, ignoring the young people.

  Looking back at his girl, Jake nodded.

  * * *

  Moments later Jake, with Camilla silently keeping close behind him, was descending the side-canyon trail, going back toward the river, following the little creek whose name he had never learned. Behind him, for a little while, Jake could still faintly hear the clink of the old man’s tools on rock; he was ignoring their departure.

  Fifty yards downstream, Jake, puzzled and unsatisfied, stopped and turned to ask his companion: “Why did he suggest you ought to take the gun?”

  Camilla stopped too. “For protection.”

  “Against what? There’s no animals in the Canyon that’ll hurt a person. Except a rattlesnake, and you don’t need a gun for them. Mountain lions stay clear.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Not protection against me, for God’s sake?”

  “Oh, Jake. No, no, not against you. Not against any person.”

  Jake shrugged, turned, and resumed his walk. Trudging downslope amid deepening shadows, descending now and then a natural step or two of rock, he pictured how he and Camilla were going to be spending the night without bed or blankets, under the stars. And he grinned at the prospect; tonight two were going to sleep a hell of a lot warmer than one, whatever might happen to them tomorrow.

  * * *

  They’d followed the side canyon back down toward the river for perhaps half a mile, Camilla keeping silently just behind him all the way, until they passed the place where he’d always found Camilla waiting for him. Immediately after that, Jake Rezner realized that neither the trail nor the canyon itself looked as familiar as they ought to, considering that he’d climbed up the same identical path less than an hour ago. It wasn’t a question of possibly having got onto the wrong trail; no way in the world they could have done that. There was only one side canyon coming up from the river to the old man’s house and workplace, and only one path running down the middle of that canyon, right beside the single tumbling, babbling stream.

  Only now Jake could not escape the feeling—more than a feeling, it was a certainty—that the path had changed. So had everything around him.

  Jake kept moving, listening to the rushing water. But for once a stream’s voices made no words in his mind.

  * * *

  Five minutes after Jake first began to sense a wrongness about the trail, he found himself emerging from the mouth of the little canyon, his steps slowing to a halt on the shore of the broad racing river. There was only one big river within five hundred miles, so this had to be the Colorado. But at the same time it couldn’t be. In this river, vicious rapids frothed and raged, extending at least fifty yards upstream and down from the inflow of the creek.

  On both shores of the river the mighty buttes and walls of the big canyon towered over Jake, just as he had seen them before—

  No, not like he had ever seen them. Now something was wrong with the walls and mesas and promontories of the big canyon too. Even its overall shape was indefinably wrong. Maybe it wasn’t really deep enough. And the rocks and the soil were the wrong color. The sun was lowering now and the light had changed, sure—but what had happened went far beyond any possible effect of changing light.

  Jake turned around uncertainly. “Wait. This—”

  Camilla was still holding the shotgun casually on her shoulder, like someone who had experience with weapons. She stood watching him and waiting.

  Jake let his verbal protest die away. He had to. Because there was no way to express in words the full extent of the wrongness that surrounded him. The shapes of the cliffs were all false, and though they were still high, they were no longer nearly high enough. And how had he ever managed to follow the Colorado downstream from camp to this point? He’d done that. Of course he had. But now, the way upstream on this side of the river was completely blocked.

  Night was approaching quickly now. Jake had the feeling that even the sun was sinking faster than it ought. But there was still light enough for him to see the landscape. It wasn’t the onset of dusk that was making everything look crazy. The whole landscape had really altered, so much that he thought he was going mad.

  Again, this time wordlessly, he looked to Camilla for help. She had nothing to say either, but only stood gazing at him calmly but sadly, as if these weird changes in the world, and his reaction to them, were no more than she’d expected.

  Then Jake’s head jerked around. “What in the hell was that?” It had been a howl, loud and not far away, like nothing he’d ever heard from any Canyon animal in the months he’d spent here living in a tent.

  “Just an animal,” Camilla assured him, in her recently acquired apologetic voice. Looking alert but not particularly excited, she shifted her grip on the shotgun slightly, and stood scanning the wilderness of rocks and scanty brush behind him.

  There was no help to be had from her. A moment later Jake had started trying to make his way upstream along the roaring Colorado’s bank, despite the absence in this version of the world of anything like a path along the shore. Before he’d gone ten yards he had to stop, blocked by sheer slick walls of rock. There just wasn’t any trail here. No way to get through, unless maybe if you were a mountain climber. Although, of course, there had to be a way. Because he’d come down river this way, somehow, no more than an hour or two ago…

  Again he had to ask himself: Could he now be standing on the bank of a whole different goddammed river? Hell no, no way that could happen. There were a great many miles between big rivers, in this southwestern country.

  This whole situation, this series of incomprehensible changes, just couldn’t be happening. But it was happening. Therefore—

  Therefore what?

  Presently Jake found himself retreating up into the mouth of the side canyon again. He moved in this direction without any conscious plan, only because this had become the most familiar part of an almost completely unfamiliar world.

  The creek, one seemingly constant factor amid a multitude of changes, still gurgled down among the broken rocks to pour itself into the altered river. In Jake’s mind the voices of the creek were making only nonsense words.

  Fair-skinned, redhaired Camilla looked more comfortable now that the sun was down, and she had taken off her dark glasses. She carried her shotgun with nonchalance and continued to watch Jake patiently, as if she felt sorry for him—and perhaps, he thought, responsible.

  Finally he gave up, for the time being anyway, trying
to figure out for himself what the hell was going on. He asked her humbly: “What’s happening? Why am I lost?”

  “I’m sorry, Jake.” Her voice was still quiet, but a little louder than before. “I can’t explain it very well. I wish I could…”

  There was a rustling noise behind Jake, a scrambling that moved low among dry brush and over loose rock. He turned to see a striped bear the size of a dairy cow, a monster that looked capable of swallowing a large dog. Black stripes ran fore-and-aft over a brown background, with one dark line passing right between the eyes. The teeth, a brilliant white, looked somehow not quite the right shape to belong to any animal or monster that Jake had ever seen, even in a picture. The red mouth distended itself, the shaggy form came lumbering toward them, not too fast but utterly unafraid.

  Camilla muttered something. She raised her shotgun, at the same time sidestepping to get Jake out of her line of fire. A moment later the twelve-gauge blasted, twice in quick succession.

  Jake saw, or thought he saw, small fragments of dark fur, white bone, and bloody brains go flying. The hulking shape had crumpled and was crashing about in the sparse brush, twisting and straightening. Camilla worked the pump-grip once more, loading the chamber for a third shot, but held her fire. Jake, who had scrambled to one side, giving her more shooting room, turned back and cautiously approached the creature she’d hit.

  He stood and stared in disbelief. The bear—he didn’t know what else to call it—was obviously dead now, its most peculiar head a bloody mess, white bits of skull protruding, almost detached from the body by the double impact. Either buckshot, though Jake, or else a load of rifled slugs. The heavy limbs still twitched.

  Jake took a couple of uncertain strides closer to the body, and stood there marveling.

  He turned his head to Camilla. “What—?”

  She shook her head. “I call ’em canyon bears. I know you don’t have ’em round your CCC camp, but here there’s quite a few. No fear of human beings, they’ll walk right up and eat you if you let ’em. Except they’ve learned to keep clear of our house; Edgar scares them off somehow. Most aren’t this big, but I’ve seen a few bigger. Edgar says we might as well kill ’em when we have a chance. That’s why he said to take the shotgun.”