“Suppose we turn it off and find out,” he said suddenly.
“No, not for your life!” she squeaked. “Who knows what would happen?”
“Nobody will know what would happen if we don't find out.” He studied persuasion into his voice. “You and I have had the experience, but both of us had it when we were alone. Mrs. Fothergill thought you were dreaming. I don't think I dreamed, but I wonder. If we turned out this light, and that other landscape came to us in the dark when we were together, we'd be sure of it.”
“But it frightens me,” she whimpered, her head sunk low, her face half-hidden in her dark flood of hair.
“Naturally it does, or you wouldn't have good sense. Let's try it, Miss Connie.”
“Well, then.” She lifted her head up. “Maybe I won't be so frightened if you're with me.”
“I'll be with you every moment, and I'll be prepared.”
He searched in his smaller satchel and brought out a flashlight no bigger than a fountain pen. This he clipped in the upper pocket of his robe.
“Constance Bailey,” he said, “are you ready?”
“Yes, all right.”
Thunstone sat on the edge of the bed. Constance Bailey came and sat close beside him. He could feel her body tremble.
“Now,” he said, and put his hand to the light and turned the switch.
Darkness hurried through the air around them.
CHAPTER 8
And Thunstone knew at once that he was somewhere outside, knew it as he had known it the night before. The rain that had clattered at the window was gone, and so was the window. Dimly he saw the landscape he had seen that previous night, dimly but more clearly than the first time. It was the place where Claines stood, but no Claines was there. Overhead winked stars, and the moon was only a curved scrap where it had been greatening to the full. And no streetlights on Trail Street, no Trail Street either. But he could see the dim, night-shadowed upward climb of Sweepside, and upon the surface there the outline of Old Thunder, with some sort of glow upon it to pick out the white perimeter.
"Constance,1” he said, "where are you? Do you see?”
"I can see,” came her voice out of the dark beside him, smothered with awe. "You can see too, is that right?”
They were sitting together on a hummock of something, certainly not the bed. He lowered his hand to explore. It seemed to be rock, with a coating of what must be shaggy lichen. He turned and saw Constance Bailey there, a darker shape in the dimness. He felt her nervous grip upon his arm.
"We both see,” he decided. "That means it’s not imagination, not delusion. Not mass hypnotism; I’ve never believed in mass hypnotism, anyway. We both see what we see.”
"This is Claines, but there's no Claines,” she said. "Nor a house, not a street. We're in the open. I can see Old Thunder, shining like. And over there, where Chimney Pots ought to be—”
He looked in that direction.
Light showed over there, as of several ruddy fires. Around the fires clustered dark shapes, uncouth shapes even in the distance. He heard, far off, a jumble of voices, and they were not particularly merry voices. If they sang, they were discordant. He had time by now to feel that the air was chilly, not like July in Claines.
“Constance/’ he said, “listen carefully to what I say. I’m going out there to get a better look at what’s going on.”
“Oh no, don’t!” she wailed, the words stumbling over each other. “Listen carefully,” he urged her again. “I’m only going to where I can see and hear them better. I won’t go all the way, and I’ll come back here to where we’re sitting. This is the point where we must be when I turn on a light and fetch us back to our right time and place.” “Don’t go,” she besought him, and clung to his arm and shoulder. “I’m going,” he said, more sternly than he wanted. “But you stay here, right where you are. Don’t move hand or foot until I come back.”
“If you do come back!”
“I’ll be coming back,” he promised. “And when I call out to you, answer me loud and clear, to guide me again. Do you understand?”
“Ye-es.”
“And you understand everything? And you’ll do what I say?”
“Ye-es,” again. “But—what if you don’t come back?”
“I said I would, but, yes, suppose I don’t. Here, take this.”
He pushed the pencil flashlight into her hand. “Don’t turn it on, not now. Just wait for me. Watch me the best you can in this darkness. You ought to be able to see my coming and going. But if something does happen to me and you think I can’t make my way back, turn on that flashlight and then turn on the light in the room, and you’ll be safe.”
“Don’t go,” she pleaded again, almost tearfully.
“Stop talking like that,” he commanded, and freed himself from her trembling hands. He rose to his feet and moved carefully in the gloom toward the fires and the chanting groups there.
He walked carefully, setting his feet flat to the ground, for he could feel a strew of pebbles under the thin soles of his slippers. He had no sense of being brave, though he did ask himself if he were not foolish. But Judge Pursuivant would approve of what he was doing, and so would Jules de Grandin, the brilliant little Frenchman he knew and admired. They, too, would want to see and hear and know. It was natural, it was human, to find things out. Mankind's poor underprivileged cousins, the apes and monkeys, had that prodding curiosity. And curiosity had grown into man’s giant exploration of things, his search for the stuff of which reality is made, his will to cross oceans, cross space even, and find things out even while he dreamed of finding out more. Compulsive had to be the word, though Thunstone felt it was a word overused and misunderstood.
In the dark he came to what seemed to be the crest of a rise, and there he stopped. He strained his eyes to see what went on at those fires. The creatures there—they must be people—moved in a circle around the flickering flames. They moved in a ring. Thunstone remembered what he and Constance Bailey had talked about, witches dancing in a ring. If these people danced back to back, he could not see clearly. He did see that they tossed their arms. Several held long poles, perhaps spears.
They kept up a hubbub of voices. “Ohh, ohh, ohh,” they seemed to chant. “Hai, hai, hai.” Into their song came the sound of a thudding drum, and the bubbling skirl as of a wind instrument. Thunstone remembered the bone flute Ensley had shown him.
He had better come no closer, or he would lose his way back. He turned and tried to make out the lichen-shagged rock on which he had sat. “Constance!” he called loudly. “Constance Bailey!”
“Here, here,” drifted back her voice.
At that, the singing by the fires beat up more strongly. Closer to Thunstone three figures bobbed into view. He could make out a shagginess to them, perhaps the clothes they wore. They stood for a moment; they seemed to peer in his direction. Then they moved purposefully toward him.
He backed away toward where Constance Bailey had hailed him. Once his foot slipped on a loose stone, his ankle almost turned. “Constance Bailey!” he called to her again.
“Here I am!”
At that, one of the approaching shaggy figures said something in a language he had never heard, and flexed itself and threw something.
The something whizzed close, struck earth with an abrupt whack. It was there almost against him, jutting upward. He seized it, dragged it free of the earth, and headed swiftly back. He came close enough to make Constance Bailey out, huddled on the boulder. He reached her side and sat down himself, then looked back along the way he had come.
The figures were approaching.
“Give me the light,” he said, and took it from Constance Bailey’s hand. He touched the switch, and his room sprang into view around him. Reaching for the light above his bed, he turned it on, and they were back in familiarity.
Rain clawed at the window, the rain that had not been there just now, when they had been outside in some other time of the world’s long life. Again t
hey sat together on the edge of the bed, Thunstone and Constance Bailey.
Still she cowered against him. Her trembling lips moved as though to form silent words. Perhaps she prayed.
“Steady,” Thunstone urged her. “We’re safe now. What I saw out there, in whatever long-ago time it was, looked like people dancing, sounded like people singing. But they’re not out there now. The light brought us back here.”
“The light,” she echoed him. “The darkness—it was terrible.”
“We’re safe,” he insisted. “Look here; they threw this at me.”
He still held it in his hand, and he himself looked at it for the first time.
It was a spear, with a wooden haft nearly five feet long, straight as a ruler and oiled to darkness. Its point was of stone, beautifully chipped, a reddish quartz, perhaps jasper. The lashing was of stout, dull sinew.
“They threw it at me,” he said again.
“They might have killed you.”
“Well, it was dark out there for throwing.” He got up and leaned the spear in a comer. “That came back from that ancient time, and it proves that we saw and heard and felt what we thought we did. Listen to me, Constance, don’t mention this spear to anybody for the time being.”
“I won't,” she promised.
"And now you can go to your room, and see if you can get a night's rest.''
"My room’s up steps,” she chattered. "A flight of stairs, and dark all the way up. I'm afraid.”
"I'll come and stand at the foot, and shine my flashlight up for you,” he offered. "When you’re in the room, turn on your light and everything will be normal. Sleep with your light on if you want to.”
"I will, and thank you.”
"Don’t thank me,” he said.
"I do thank you, thank you for being what you are.”
She went into the hall. He followed to where she opened a door that showed gloomy, steep steps. Standing there, he leveled the lean beam of his flashlight along the way she must climb. She mounted, not confidently, and opened a door above. He saw the light there as she turned it on. Then she closed her door and he returned to his own room. There he sat down to think.
What had it been, this experience? Time travel, as H. G. Wells had imagined it? If so, how did it work?
Because it had worked, with him and with Constance Bailey as a witness. He had been back in time and had returned, and yonder was a stone-headed spear to prove it.
Time travel had been a matter for speculation for many years. Theorists had considered it long before H. G. Wells had popularized it with his novel The Time Machine, published in 1895 as Thunstone remembered. He mused over the introduction to that curious tale, in which Wells had called time another dimension, had said that if man could somehow win free of his cramping world of length, breadth, and altitude he could travel in time, backward or forward. Here in Claines was no machine to take one through centuries. It seemed to be an accomplishment possible to only a few like himself and Constance Bailey, as extrasensory perception is the gift of only certain persons with a special aptitude.
Indeed, time travel might be something like extrasensory perception. Anyone could look back in memory to experiences of the past. And vividly you could imagine, rationalize the future—choose a winner in a race, divine a course of action that would bring you a success in a day or a year. And your dreams, they could give you a glimpse of the long ago. Maybe they even gave you glimpses of the future, those visions of tremendous, intricate cities, with the air crystal clear above remote towers, strange traffic on strange streets.
If he had been able to journey through time, what time was it he had seen here, under the conditions that must be right for it? The immemorial past, before ever there was a Claines? He had seen Old Thunder in that strange time. Or might it be a distant future when the houses of Claines had been rubbed away from their landscape, but when Old Thunder still showed there?
Possibilities were infinite. Jakob Bohme had said that anything was possible, even the most bizarre improbability. Thunstone yawned. He decided to leave his light on, as he had advised Constance Bailey to leave hers on. He went sound asleep under its glow.
If he dreamed, he did not remember dreaming when he woke next morning. He turned off the light and looked at his watch; it was halfpast seven, as it had been when he had wakened the day before. The rain had gone; the sun was bright at his window. He donned his robe and went out and to the bathroom door, but it was locked and he could hear running water inside. He returned to his room, filled and smoked a pipe, then sought the bathroom again. Now it was empty. He showered quickly, brushed his teeth and shaved, and returned to his room to dress.
Downstairs, he found Mrs. Fothergill in her sitting room. She held a cigarette in her left hand, its filter daubed with lipstick, and in her right she cuddled a cup.
“Have a coffee with me, Mr. Thunstone?,, she greeted him. “It's yet a few minutes to eight and our other guests aren't down for breakfast." She set down her cup, lifted the pot from the side table and filled another cup for him. Thanking her, he sat and sipped. Again he reflected that Mrs. Fothergill, at least, provided good coffee in England.
“It's turned out to be a lovely morning," she said. “Did that storm keep you awake last night?"
“No, not much,” he replied. “I turned in fairly early and slept straight through.”
“I'm glad to hear you say so. My own rest was a good one, but poor Connie seems to have had a restless night. She has such strange imaginings.”
Noise of feet on the stairs, and a couple entered, then another. Mrs. Fothergill twittered at them hospitably.
“Good morning, good morning!” she cried. “Mr. and Mrs. Haring, and Mr. and Mrs. Inscoe—”
Thunstone was on his feet as Mrs. Fothergill made introductions. The Harings were taffy-haired, pink-faced, spruce; they looked as though they might be blood relatives instead of husband and wife. The Inscoes were older and wore American sports clothes. Inscoe was bald in front and had immense silver-rimmed spectacles. Mrs. Inscoe looked rather gaunt and intense, and wore her dull black hair in a bushy bob. They asked polite questions. Thunstone told them that he lived in New York but had been in Michigan several times, had visited Ypsilanti. He mentioned two professors at Eastern Michigan University there, friends and correspondents of his, but the Inscoes had never heard of either of them.
Breakfast was served them by Constance Bailey, looking rather wan. She spoke in a tired whisper to answer Mrs. Fothergill, and looked at Thunstone only a single time, at once stealthily and admiringly.
Haring enthusiastically praised what he ate, the fried egg, the toast and jelly, the links of sausage. He declared that breakfast was a meal greatly esteemed in the Netherlands, and sought to explain a sort of pancake, complete with bacon fried into it, which he called spekpan- nekoken. When Mrs. Fothergill displayed interest in this dish, Mrs. Haring told her in accented detail the method of mixing and preparing it. Mrs. Fothergill only blinked her eyes as she listened. Inscoe, too, ate all that was served him, but his wife ate only the egg and toast liberally jellied. To Thunstone she confided that she did not eat meat, and added that the world’s great thinkers and planners practiced a like abstention.
Breakfast over, the Inscoes hurried their luggage into the hired Datsun and went bustling away—to Bath, Thunstone thought they said. The Harings lingered and walked outside with Thunstone. From the yard they gazed up to where, on Sweepside, two dogs showed where a pair of workers busied themselves at redefining the outlines of Old Thunder.
“Now, sir, that is an amazing grotesque,” declared Haring to Thunstone. “What might it be called?”
“Its name is Old Thunder, and each year at this time they dig its outline clear again, to let the chalk show through,” said Thunstone. “Nobody knows how old that image is, only that it seems to go back before history.”
“Indeed so? I feel an impulse to climb up there and see it at the closer quarters.”
“I’m afra
id that it's on jealously guarded private property,” Thunstone felt it necessary to say. “The owner has posted signs to warn trespassers away, and he has a harsh word for those who do come up without his say-so.”
“Ah? Then I think we go somewhere else. The Roman Wall, perhaps. That is not forbidden to the public.”
The Harings energetically loaded their bags into their car. Thunstone made his way across Trail Street and along past the shops that had become familiar to him. He went into the post office to mail his letters and to buy a small pouch of smoking tobacco. The postmistress called him by name and asked him how he was enjoying his stay. It seemed to him that he was accepted in Claines.
Outside the post office, he met Dymock, who pushed along his bicycle as usual.
“Good morning, Mr. Thunstone,” Dymock greeted him. “If I may say so, I’m glad that last night’s little matter turned out with no more trouble. Albert Porrask got a lesson he’s needed for some little while. I made a report on the matter to headquarters and was told to set it down as terminated.”
“It’s terminated as far as I’m concerned,” nodded Thunstone. “Tell me, how did you rest last night?”
“Rest last night?” Dymock said after him. “As it so happens, not very well. Late on, about half an hour to midnight, a big van stalled on Trail Street; it slewed around so as to block the way. I was out there to see that it got back in action, and then I was wakeful and walked here and there in the dark to wear myself out so I could sleep.”
"You say you were in the dark. How did the town look to you?” "About as usual,” said Dymock. "There was quite a shower of rain, and the clouds up there to hide what would have been a fine moon.” "And all the houses were there as usual?” asked Thunstone. "The whole town as you know it?”
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