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

      “I guess I know what that one way is. I guess you’ve already told me. And you’re right, but I’m still afraid.”

      Jake didn’t want to speak. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the old man was just waiting behind a rock somewhere, listening to them, ready to pounce.

      “You know as well as I do, Jake. The only way to get ourselves out of here is—

      “Is.”

      “— is to kill him.”

      The words had been said again. Nobody pounced.

      “Kill him. Then we’ll have time to think, to look around, to find our way.”

* * *

      Camilla unpacked her sketchpad and some pencils. It was as if she had to do something with her hands. Now, at the same spot where Jake had first met Camilla, he once more watched her draw. They had a lot of planning to do, but neither of them said anything for a time.

      She was wearing her hat and sunglasses, but still, after a little while, she had to move closer to the cliffs, seeking the shade. It seemed to Jake that she was growing ever more sensitive to the sun.

      “Cam.”

      “What is it?”

      She had turned her head toward him, and he stared at her mouth, her slightly parted lips. “Nothing, I guess. Just now I thought there was something funny about your teeth.”

* * *

      Slowly, somehow, the real planning started between them.

      In all her months of living with Tyrrell, listening to him talk and observing him, Camilla had come, or believed that she had come, to understand not only the horror of the man but something of his weaknesses.

      Jake with a conscious effort was building up his nerve. “All right, I’m ready to kill the son of a bitch. Truth to tell, I’ve been ready for some time. Now tell me how. How’re we going to kill him?”

      Camilla needed only a few seconds to think—as if she had already asked herself this question. “There’s only one time—maybe two times—I’ve ever seen him hurt.”

      “Tell me.”

      “First time was only a little while after I moved in, when he got a wooden splinter in his hand, from the handle of one of his tools.”

      “That hurt him, huh?”

      “More than a shotgun charge could do. He started to suck the blood out himself, after he pulled the splinter out—then he saw me watching him—then he got me to—”

      Jake could all too readily visualize her, sucking blood. He made an effort to blot the picture out.

      Camilla shivered. From the look on her face now, Jake guessed that she’d found the act exciting also. She smiled sheepishly at Jake.

      “What was the other time?” he asked.

      “What…?”

      “You said that twice you’ve seen him hurt.”

      “Oh. Well, he wasn’t really hurt the other time … but he looked mighty uncomfortable. He was up late one morning, when the day dawned really cloudy. Then a hole opened up in the clouds suddenly, and the sun came through … Edgar looked sick for a moment, he looked really scared.”

      “Huh.”

      “And the next second he was gone. Not to the place where he always sleeps, but back into the cave. He spent that day in the cave with the lights out, making it as dark as he could. After sunset he came out, looking—tired. He’ll never take a chance of getting himself caught out in bright sunlight.”

      For a moment they stared at each other.

      Jake said at last: “No way we can make him do that.”

      “Doesn’t seem like it, does it?”

      Jake squinted at her. Presently he asked: “What about fire?”

      Camilla had to think longer on this point; perhaps it was a new idea to her. At last she reported that Tyrrell was at least not indifferent to fire. “I can’t remember seeing him stick his hand in flames, anything like that.”

      “Then let’s figure fire is something we might try.”

* * *

      Another hour of discussion brought no great enlightenment. There seemed to the two young breathers to be three possible means by which they might accomplish their oppressor’s destruction: wooden weapons, fire, or sunlight.

      “There’s another thing I’m worried about, Jake.”

      “What’s that?”

      “What if I got—pregnant?”

      “Jesus. Are you?”

      “I don’t think so, but—he asked if I was. That last time we were—we were in the back of the cave.”

      Jake was silent, pondering. Maybe this didn’t actually make his own situation any worse, but he didn’t like it.

      “And he was listening to me,” Camilla said.

      “Listening? What?”

      “Listening. Putting his ear against my belly.”

      “Can he tell that way?”

      “Said he couldn’t be sure. If I was, it was too early to be sure.”

      “Anyway, what does the old man care if you’re pregnant or not?”

      “I don’t know! I—don’t—know!”

      Jake took her in his arms. What began with the giving of mutual comfort and reassurance soon turned into passion.

      When Camilla opened her mouth to cry out in pleasure. Jake recoiled with horror, rolling away from her.

      “Jake, what happened? What is it?”

      “It’s—your teeth. They were—they looked like—”

      She sat up, her eyes wild with fear, her hands to her mouth.

* * *

      In the afternoon, Jake returned to work in the cave, digging and sweating and breaking rock, gathering the precious nodules. Somewhat to his own surprise, he found that he still wanted to work. That he was doing a good job, even taking pride in the fact.

* * *

      That evening, back in the cottage, Camilla found Jake standing in the child’s bedroom, contemplating the stuffed animal, and the forlorn lunchbox.

      “What’re you doing, lover?”

      “Thinking. Trying to think. But not getting anywhere.” He pulled open the door to the bedroom closet. There on a shelf was the small clock that no one ever wound, that no longer ran. A metal box, inconspicuous, sat on the same shelf. Jake took it down and opened it. Old papers and old photographs, looking like the kind of stuff that any family might save, but here somehow out of place.

      Camilla was alarmed. “Better put that back, Jake. Tyrrell doesn’t like either of us in this room, let alone going through his things.”

      Jake riffled through the stuff in the box, saw nothing that caught