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

the process. The eastern sky was now remotely gray, instead of nothing but a mass of sheer dull darkness. Then, forming itself by indefinable gradations, there appeared a broad line of pale light, following the almost flat horizon for a long way. Now, all around Bill, vast shapes of land, vaster extensions of sheer airy space, were beginning to take form out of mist and darkness…

      Dawn brought lighter grayness and then the beginnings of color in the sky, as you might see the sky almost anywhere on earth. But here the land being drawn gradually into existence by the dawn did not look like any known earthly territory. Bill pondered the remoteness of a butte, slowly turning redder and redder, even as the crimson faded from the sky. Was that particular upthrusting of the earth, surely shaped like no other portion of the planet, half a mile away, or a mile? Or perhaps two miles, or five?

      Moment by moment the complexity of the scene before Bill became clearer, and at the same time more incredible. He had seen pictures of the Canyon, of course, everybody had. But no picture, no model, could show this, or come close to showing it. This was genesis. The creation of the world.

* * *

      At last, reluctantly, he forced his thoughts back to business. In all this scenery there was no sign of the people he had been pursuing last night—or of anyone else.

      For all the indications that this view showed to the contrary, he, Bill, might well be the last person—or the first—on the planet.

      Awesome sights surrounded him, towering, grandly colored rock formations. He knew the Canyon was roughly ten miles across at this point, a broken, inhospitable, magnificent land, barely fringed here and there with vegetation, carved up into countless side canyons, looking utterly impossible to cross on foot, even though he knew that there were trails.

      The river, that Bill had more or less expected to become visible far below with daylight, remained concealed within the deepest part of the gorge. The upper edges of that final abyss, Bill estimated, lay at least a thousand feet below the ledge from which he was observing. At that depth a broad bench of land, studded with what looked like sagebrush, declined slowly to the lip of the ultimate split in the earth. Again, all heights and distances were hard to judge.

      Bill climbed again, for half an hour, and paused to look around him. As far as he could tell from any shifting of the more distant portions of the scenery during his climb, he might not have changed his position at all.

      Bill resumed climbing, then stopped, staring downward at a broad shelf of land, dotted with vegetation, that stretched perhaps a thousand feet below him. He had the distinct impression that he had just seen an elephant down there—had at least seen something, with an elephant-style trunk, stripping or at least tugging at a tree-limb. He had rubbed his eyes and questioned his own sanity when he saw the thing again, or another creature very like the first. This time he watched the dark peculiar shape for several seconds, until it moved out of sight behind a fold of land.

      He moved on.

      Presently he got a look, a good enough look to really shake him up, at another creature, almost on his own level. The single-humped camel calmly returned his gaze, and moved along.

      It was then, trying to remember what might have happened to drive him mad, and having unconsciously given up the idea or hope of meeting anyone, he topped a small ridge and found himself looking at a girl who was sitting in front of a small modern tent with her back to him, gazing out over the depths.

      Beside the girl was a small fire, and it was plain that she had established a kind of base camp. On the other side of her was a small cave, big enough to shelter one person in a pinch, whose entrance the fire guarded.

      The girl was dressed much as any well-to-do young camper might be dressed in the world to which Bill was trying to return. Both her jacket and her scarf fitted the description of clothing worn by Cathy Brainard. The wind toyed with her dark hair as she sat facing out over the Canyon, and something in her pose suggested to Bill that she was, or recently had been, weeping.

      Bill let one of his boots scrape on rock, and the girl’s head whirled round. Blue-gray eyes under dark brows, filled with—anger? Fear? Shock?—confronted Bill.

      He said: “It’s all right, Cathy. Your friends have found you.”

Chapter Eight

      As Camilla left the cave with Jake, she tried to keep stalling him, but Jake was no longer to be put off.

      “Where is he now, and when’ll he be back?”

      Camilla sighed. “Right now he’s resting, I keep telling you. He’ll be back soon as it gets dark; maybe a little before.”

      “I know you keep telling me that, but resting where?”

      “I don’t think now’s the time to—”

      “Where?”

      Camilla slumped, giving up. “There’s another cave, a smaller one. In the cliff on the other side of this canyon.”

      “Well then, show me.”

      With a sigh Camilla took him by the hand. As if she were a child, Jake thought, who needed to hold someone’s hand for support. She led Jake across the creek and a little way up the slope on the opposite side.

      When she had brought Jake to the new cave, and pointed out to him the place where Tyrrell was supposed to sleep, he said nothing for a moment. He looked carefully at Camilla, who seemed perfectly serious. Jake felt his scalp creep. It looked like he might have to face it; as a fact, maybe she was really crazier even than the old man.

      The shallow cave she was pointing out might be about big enough to house a sleeping man; but the entrance was almost completely blocked by a single huge block of limestone, a slab weighing