A Question Of Time Fred Saberhagen (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

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