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

      He got to his feet and hobbled. A moment later, Maria’s voice was speaking from the instrument in his hand: “Boss? We’ve just heard from Bill.”

      Joe’s two visitors were listening as attentively as he was. “Where is he?” Joe demanded.

      Maria sounded enormously relieved. “Don’t know exactly, but we were talking to him, and he sounded good. He says he’s now definitely on the right track home. He’ll be coming up Bright Angel within an hour.”

* * *

      It was almost noon when Bill Burdon, looking somewhat dazed, finally emerged physically from the depths. John and Maria both went about a hundred yards down Bright Angel to meet him, as he appeared against the solemn background of a Canyon almost fully visible, a panorama grand enough to distract any newcomer at least briefly from any task.

      “What the hell happened to you?” demanded John, getting angry now that it seemed the missing man was safe.

      “You won’t believe it.” Bill stared at him, then at Maria, shook his head and started past them up the trail. They fell in beside him. When he was a little below the Tyrrell House he stopped again, to gaze up at the odd structure as if expecting some kind of a revelation.

      Maria hardly noticed Bill’s behavior. She was looking downhill, past an antlike mule-train of tourists on a switchback far below. She was frowning, as if considering something in the distance.

      Neither of the men was paying her any attention. John, regarding Bill intently, abruptly remarked: “You didn’t have a beard last night.” That got Maria’s attention back.

      Bill only shook his head again. Then he reached out and took each of his discoverers briefly by the arm, as if to assure himself that they were real. He smiled at their solidity.

      “Where’s the Boss?” he demanded. “I’ve got a report to make.”

* * *

      An hour or so later, Bill was seated with Joe at a table on the balcony overlooking the lobby of El Tovar, and its massive genuine Christmas tree. Holiday music was playing somewhere, tourists by the hundreds were enjoying themselves, or trying to. And Bill was halfway through the second version of his report. Joe had bought him a drink, and was getting him to start over, because the first version of the report had been notably lacking in coherence. Joe’s newly purchased cane stood leaning against the table at his side.

      Bill’s beard was drawing curious glances. He had started to shave it off, then decided he had better let it be for the time being, as providing some kind of corroboration of the story he had to tell.

      “—and she was just there, camping out to be alone, was the impression I got. Trying to get her head together, like we used to say.”

      Briefly Bill balanced a couple of Polaroid photos in his strong right hand. Then, with the air of a gambler playing cards which he did not really expect to win, he tossed them face-up on the table in front of Joe.

      Joe picked up the photos and examined them. “That does look like the girl who was described to us.”

      Bill gestured at the pictures. “Oh, that’s Cathy Brainard, all right. I don’t have the least bit of doubt. She seemed unhappy with her family, and she didn’t want to come back to them. At least she didn’t want to come back with me. She was very firm on that point, and there was no way I could drag her.”

      “No, I can see that. So what did you do then?”

      “She pointed me in what turned out—I guess—to be the right direction, and I—walked out.” Bill paused for a long time. He swallowed half his drink, and grimaced. “Now comes the part you’re not going to believe.”

      Joe sipped from his own glass. “You might be surprised. Try me.”

      “All right. I found my way—or I thought I found my way—back to the Tyrrell House. Except it wasn’t this Tyrrell House. Not the one that’s sitting over there on the rim right now.”

      “Go on,” said Joe encouragingly.

      Bill said defiantly: “It was the Tyrrell House in the thirties, before it became a museum. And Tyrrell himself was still living there, with his family.”

      “Wait a minute. You’ve talked to Tyrrell?”

      “No.”

      “What, then?”

      “His family. Including—including Mrs. Tyrrell.”

      Joe was silent for a moment. “You mean the same Mrs. Tyrrell we’re working for?”

      Bill nodded slowly. “I think it’s the same woman, boss. Only the Mrs. Tyrrell who hired us is about sixty years older. And then…”

      “Then what?”

      “There was a little girl, too, with young Mrs. Tyrrell. Her daughter, I assume. Maybe four years old.”

      “And?”

      “And this little girl had what I’d call a strong family resemblance with Cathy.”

      Joe smiled faintly at Bill’s anxious gaze. “Let’s go talk to the old lady,” he said.

* * *

      Leaving the hotel, going west once more along the rim walk, Bill paced slowly beside Joe, who hobbled with his cane. They found old Sarah warming her hands before a fire in the main room of her house.

      “Mrs. Tyrrell? I was wondering—can you remember ever meeting Bill, here, before you were introduced last night?”

      The old woman looked from one man to the other. “I feared there might be complications,” she said at last. “Is there trouble with time now, gentlemen?”

      “I don’t know,” said Joe. Bill, his mouth slightly open, stood looking from one of them to the other.

      “Young man,” said Sarah, looking at Bill. “I thought last night that we might possibly have met before. But a great many strange things happened to me in the comparatively brief time that I lived with Edgar Tyrrell.”

      Haltingly, at Joe’s urging, Bill told the story of his recent wanderings.

      Sarah heard him out. “I suppose that what you say is not impossible, young man. The house as you describe it sounds correct. Perhaps a young man, who seemed out of place, did once drop in when I lived there. Perhaps I was able to advise him as to which way to walk, to get home—before the sun