by Jerry Sohl
“Pretty in theory, darling, but hardly practical. They happen to be in the driver’s seat.”
He put the car in gear, started it rolling out of the woods.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll try it your way for a while. If we make it to Utah, perhaps I can think of something.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Virginia said. “But I think it’s a lost cause.”
Chapter 13
For a long time the old man stood on the crag of weathered rock, leaning against the lone juniper tree, peering down into the valley, occasionally spitting a stream of yellow juice which splattered on lower slopes.
Wisps of clouds scudded low in the sky as if they were left behind by some greater formation and were hurrying to catch up. The sun was warm on the terraced red ledges of the foothill ridges and the valley that swung in a slow bend to the north.
A gentle breeze every now and then tucked at the man’s denim shirt sleeves, played with the limp brim of the man’s battered hat, but he did not take his eyes off the tiny cabin in the valley, although it was almost hidden from view because it was in a ravine down which rain must have rushed from the near-by ridges in the spring; it was a wonder it had never been washed away.
After a while the man left the tree, stretched, took another chew of tobacco and, skirting the striated outcropping, went plowing down the side of the hill, leaving a haze of hovering dust to be caught by fresh winds.
He was a small man, an old man whose tobacco-stained white beard fell to his chest and was sometimes caught by his combined motion and the wind to fly to one side and then the other.
With unconscious skill he avoided the deep layers of detritus, moving with ease over loose stones around boulders and through stands of pinons. His quick blue eyes never left the cabin.
“There’s someone,” Virginia said, looking up from her chair and dropping her darning into her lap.
“I felt it, too,” Martin said. “It isn’t one of them, is it?”
“I don’t think so.”
Both went to the cabin doorway and, looking up the slope of Tessie Valley, saw the figure moving down it, the plume of dust that rose behind him as he worked toward the greener plateau at the top of the ravine. He disappeared from their sight behind the clumps of young cottonwoods at the edge of the gulch.
“He’ll be coming over in a few minutes,” Martin said. “If he’s not one of them, I wonder what he wants.”
“If he’s all right he’ll be our first visitor,” Virginia said. “We ought to have a welcome mat.”
“I don’t trust anybody. I wish he weren’t coming,” Martin declared.
Virginia laid a hand on his arm. “You’ve changed, darling,” she said. “Don’t. I liked you as you were.”
“But I keep thinking—”
“Don’t think, then. Don’t try to carry the weight of the world on your back, Martin. After all, we’ve got to live out our lives you know. Start worrying like that and you won’t be around very long.”
He walked away from the door, left her standing there.
“What about what’s in those?” he said, gesturing toward a small stack of newspapers. “Even you admit there’s something going on.”
“But I don’t fret about it,” she said, coming over to him and putting her arms around him, locking her hands on his chest. “Dad’s dead. But that doesn’t mean he’s gone. They no doubt removed him because he became so involved in what was going on at Park Hill. Now they can hamper the project some other way—mental possession to block thinking down a specific avenue that would lead to discovery of the secret of regeneration, for example. It’s been done before.”
“Not a line about what really happened,” Martin said.
“The military wouldn’t let them say anything.”
“What about your brother?”
“Bobby?” Virginia shrugged. “He’ll take care of himself somehow.”
He turned to her. “It seems so strange. Here your father is dead and you don’t seem much to care.”
“We’ve been through that. He isn’t dead. He is only now really alive, unhampered by a physical being in your sense. He has, in a way, shuffled off his mortal coil for something better.”
“Is it better?” he asked bitterly.
“Not without you,” she said, kissing him lightly.
“But what about the others? You admit it’s strange so many of your people are dying.”
“I’ll admit it has me worried. But perhaps it is only that now I’m much more aware of it; I keep looking for their names in the newspaper. The same number may have died right along, only there was no reason before for my thinking it anything but natural.”
“I hear our friend.”
They walked again to the doorway.
“Anybody to home?” the old man yelled down from the crest of the ravine wall a hundred yards away. He was a bright, sunlighted figure of a man who now took off his hat and scratched his head with the hand that held it.
They waved to him.
“Come on down,” Martin cried.
“That I will. That I will.” With amazing agility for an old man, white beard scrambled down the steep slope, jumped across the rivulet in the shallow and ambled up to them.
“Evenin’ folks,” he said.
“Won’t you come in?” Martin said, stepping to one side of the door. “It’s not much of a place yet, but you’re welcome.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” the old man said, coming forward with an extended hand. “My name’s John Collins, though most folks call me Toby, I guess on account of I’m always a-chewin’ terbaky. Been doin’ it since I was a kid.” He spat a blob into a clump of grass.
“I’m Steve Miller,” Martin said, shaking the hand. The hand was firm. “This is my wife, Nancy.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Toby said, doffing his hat.
“Come in, Mr. Collins,” Virginia invited.
“Rather you’d call me Toby,” he said, going through the doorway. “Say, you’ve gone and fixed this place up. Used to pass this way pretty often and once I thought of movin’ in. Now I wish I had of.”
“That’s Nancy’s handiwork,” Martin said, following him inside.
“A woman’s a mighty handy thing to have around, son. Us old coots don’t have a way with frilly things like they do. You’re mighty lucky, young feller, to have a girl like Nancy. Yep, mighty lucky. And so purty, too.” He smiled and the white teeth shone brightly in the red, weathered face.
“Thank you, Toby,” Virginia said. “Can I offer you something? Tea? Coffee? We don’t have anything stronger.”
Toby sat down in a wooden chair at the table, slapped his thigh and laughed. “Now what made a thing like that pop into your head? Will you answer me that? I ain’t touched a drop of anythin’ stronger’n tea in nigh onto ten years.”
Virginia stirred up the fire in the small cookstove and put on a teakettle.
“Where you folks from?” Toby asked, spitting into the fireplace.
Martin looked closely at the man. There was nothing suspicious in his makeup; it seemed a logical question.
“I’m on a sabbatical from the university,” Martin said. “Nancy and I thought we’d rough it out here for a while. I’m a geology teacher and we thought we might collect a few specimens around here.”
“Knew a fellow out here once who dug up old bones for a museum back East. Great country for that, they say. May be I can help you. I know every cranny in the state of Utah and every lizard by its first name. Danged if I don’t.”
“And where do you live?” Virginia asked.
“A likely question, ma’am. A likely question.” His eyes twinkled. “I have so many places I set down in I don’t know which to call home. My best place is on the other side of Three Forks.”
“You’re a long way from home, Toby.”
“Heard tell you folks was a-holin’ up out here. Thought I’d come out personal to see what you looked like.”
“Where did you hear that, Toby?” Martin asked.
“It’s all over Three Forks,” Toby said. “Folks there allow as how it’s downright funny you two comin’ in together all the time. You scared to stay here by yourself, ma’am?”
“No,” Virginia said. “We just want to spend as much of our year together as possible.”
“Wall, now, that’s real purty, ain’t it? Yep, that’s what I’d call sure, real purty. You mind what I say, son. You’re a lucky one, all right. Mind if I take off my shoes? My feet’s a-killin’ me.”
“No. Go ahead,” Martin said.
Virginia poured three cups of tea and set a plate of sweet rolls on the old table.
Toby took off his engineer’s boots, wiggled his sock-covered toes. “This place is better’n mine now,” he said. “Windows are clean, floor’s been swept. I could have all that if I’d of married. But I couldn’t stay in one spot long enough to get a woman to take my courtin’ serious. It wasn’t ‘cause I wasn’t handsome. No, sir, not old Toby. I was a high flyer and had a way with the girls. Would you believe that, ma’am?”
“Yes, I would believe it,” Virginia said. “You still could sway the ladies, I’ll bet.”
“Now, ain’t that nice! Right nice of you, ma’am. Now, if your husband wouldn’t mind, I’d like to be sayin’ you’re just the kind of girl I used to go for. That nice black hair, those pretty blue eyes. You ought to let your hair down, really you ought, ma’am. It don’t look just right up in a bun the way it is.”
Martin lighted his pipe, inhaled the smoke.
“Chewin’ is much better’n smokin’, mister,” Toby said, turning to Martin. “Where’d you learn to do that? Never saw a pipe smoker draw in the smoke exactly like that before. You just change from cigarettes?”
Martin brought the pipe out of his mouth slowly, let his hand fall with it. Virginia rose from her chair.
“Why do you ask that?” Martin said, eying the old man who returned the steady gaze.
“Thought that was it,” Toby said. “That sure goes to show what a man will get out of just lookin’ at things. I’d of never learned that out of a book.” He dunked part of a roll in his tea, munched it with gusto.
Martin chanced a look at Virginia, but she did not seem too concerned. He had felt nothing out of the way with Toby, but the man did have a way of putting things bluntly—and correctly.
Toby took up his cup and made a sucking noise as he drew in the hot tea. He set it down again.
“You’re probably aimin’ to chink this place, ain’t you? I can see holes that are sure going to need it when the winter wind starts blowin’. If you need help, I’ll be glad to lend a hand. Want to be right neighborly. Everybody ought to be that way.”
“I’d appreciate a hand,” Martin said. “How can I get in touch with you?”
Toby laughed. “Oh, I’ll be around. I’ll just drop in once in a while. You just wait and see. Yep, you just wait and see.”
Toby finished his tea, brushed his lips with a shirt sleeve that gave evidence of having been used this way before. After he had taken a fresh chew of tobacco and thanked them for their hospitality, he left the cabin. He turned at the top of the ravine and waved to them with his hat. Then with his customary alacrity, he strode from sight.
“Well, what do you make of him?” Martin asked, leaning against the doorjamb and idly watching the spot where the old man had disappeared.
“He could be doing as I am,” she said. “I’ve blocked off my Capellan identity. As I’ve said, to a Capellan I’d appear, both outwardly and inwardly, a woman of this world. I was born as any Earth child, you know, except that I existed before that time.”
She cleared the table, dumped the cups and saucers into a pan, emptied the teakettle water on them. “Toby could be holding his real identity from us. Capellans do not do this habitually, since there is no reason. But under these circumstances, he might be, if he is a Capellan,” she declared.
“There’s no way of telling, then.” He sighed, turning into the cabin to help her.
She flashed him a smile as he came near. “Stop worrying, Martin. Remember the first time you kissed me?”
He took her head in his hands. “Sorry to be so tragic, Virginia. I’d just hate to lose you, that’s all. As for remembering when I first kissed you, how could I ever forget the Twenty-third MP Battalion and what they did for us at Park Hill?”
“Why can’t you forget, darling?”
“Because.” He brushed her lips lightly with his, then drew her head to his, hard. Her arms went around him and he could feel the dampness of her hands through his shirt.
He watched her wash dishes, then leaned against the table, a towel in his hand. His gaze went from habit to the window and the wonderland beyond with its green grass on each side of the small stream that disappeared behind the face of a large wall of rock. There were frogs and lizards side by side out there and if they were quiet they could hear the trickling and gurgling of the tiny mountain stream.
It was an ideal spot. Up the ravine on the plateau he had camped with an army unit once and the men with him thought it was strange that he would explore the area. He had ventured to the gulch then and had seen the cabin for the first time, wondering whose it was and who had built it. He had not thought then that he would some day be living in it. He might have imagined that if he had tried, but he could never have imagined the circumstances under which he would come to it.
Yes, if it had not been for the ever-present danger of discovery, it would have been an idyllic spot, a lush setting for two lovers, something out of a movie: the greensward of the valley floor, the bright, clear stream, the majesty of the mountains all around with their snow-topped peaks often lost in the clouds.
The last contact with the contemporary world had been with the car they had left five miles away in a small glen, for the people of Three Forks seemed not of this age; they were not touched by the hand of shutter-clicking, heavy-spending tourists—there were too many publicized attractions near by. When they walked the few miles down the stream to the village for their supplies, bought with the money from the cashed Travelers Checks, the people looked at them curiously, but not hostilely, and had offered unquestioning co-operation.
But then came Toby, small, white-bearded Toby who evidently knew the people at Three Forks. It was conceivable he was an emissary of the villagers, chosen by them because of his familiarity with the area and, more probably, because he would be direct and unashamed to ask his questions. Toby might be a man who, by virtue of his ramblings through the valleys and byways, felt he had a right to know who was living in the places he frequented.
But could he have been so astute?
“Penny for your thoughts, darling. You’ve been dreaming out that window for nearly five minutes.”
“Oh, the usual,” Martin said, turning to the dishes to dry them. “I guess the trouble with me is I’ve never had to hide from anyone. I’ve always been the hunter, a hunter for facts, ideas, news. It’s against my nature to do this kind of thing, to run away from something and someone. I can’t get used to it.”
“Give yourself time, Martin. You’re just too honest. You’ve always done what your conscience has decreed is right. Now you’re in an impossible situation and you can’t believe that it is impossible.”
“It’s that Toby,” he said. “I don’t trust him. His remarks about your hair, for example, as if he knew you had dyed it and made it into an upsweep. And that business about my pipe, as if he knew I had changed from cigarettes.”
“He explained that pretty well, I think, the way you inhale. In all his travels, Toby probably has become a good judge of men and prides himself on noticing things like that. As far as my hair is concerned, I agree with him. I think it would look better down. I’d wear it that way, if it weren’t for—”
Martin grunted. “For the Capellans. Star people who came here fifty-thousand years ago, fashioned an animal called homo sapiens and used him and now they’re th
rough with him.”
“Why do you say they’re through with him?”
“You know. You’ve told me yourself the Capellans are leaving their Earth existences, going back. What else can you assume from that?”
“You’re right, I suppose. I should have kept track all along; then I would know whether or not the number who have died of heart attacks, like father, and the myriad other diseases, means anything.” She paused for a moment. “But there is one thing, Martin.”
He looked at her.
“I did not start it all.”
“Of course not, darling. I’m not blaming you.”
“I think,” she said, crossing the room to a box under the bed, “that it’s about time we opened the bottle.” She withdrew a quart of wine. “This will do both of us good.”
A harvest moon rode high in the heavens, shining brightly on the mountain stream, turning it into a ribbon of twisting, shimmering silver. A gentle breath of night air wafted the thin plume of smoke from the cabin chimney across the ravine to the plateau and it glided wraithlike up the valley.
Inside the cabin the fading embers in the fireplace frequently burst into temporary flame when wood, turning completely to ash, gave way to weight above it, sending sparks up the chimney as it fell and giving to the room a fitful, brief splash of eerie light.
The two of them lay asleep on the bed; the wine had hastened their slumber and made their sleep deep. They did not often move.
It was only when Toby spoke softly that Martin stirred ever so slightly.
“You were plenty obligin’,” Toby said quietly. “Plenty obligin’ on the first time around. I didn’t put you out none.”
“No,” Martin said, sitting up. “You didn’t put us out.”
“You wanted to be real friendly-like.”
“Of course we wanted to be friendly.”
“And to be real friendly you’ve got to be real truthful. Anybody knows that. Now ain’t that right?”
Martin nodded. “That’s right. Right as rain.” That was silly. Pretty soon I’ll be talking like the old duffer.
