A Question of Time d-7

by Fred Saberhagen

  "Beagle?"

  "That's his name. He was my own pet kitten once. Or a cat that I remember as looking just like that one. My father got it for me. I remember wanting a kitten, and wanting one so much, and I think I remember telling my father… a cat can live twelve years, can't it?"

  "Sure. I think so."

  When the visitors reached the door of the cottage, Cathy tried the latch and found it open. There was no other lock. She started to go in.

  Maria took a step back. "Are you sure this is all right?"

  "Of course it is. I live here."

  "But you don't any more." Maria raised her hands, rubbed her eyes, shook her head, and looked about her. "What am I doing here? Where are we, anyway?"

  But Cathy had already disappeared into the darkness inside the little house.

  There were electric lights, in the main room at least, and Cathy knew where to find the switch.

  "Just like I remember it," she murmured, looking around the large room. "Except that everything's so small. I seem to remember even the furniture. This chair—" She dragged a hand across the rough-carved wooden back.

  Maria was looking out one of the windows into gathering dusk. She said: "Someone's coming."

  Cathy turned. The man, dressed in dusty workman's clothes and looking calmly angry, was already standing in the door. His was the righteous look of a homeowner confronting unexpected intruders.

  "Father?" The word burst from Cathy at once, impulsively. "Then you are still alive!"

  The man's face was changed, scarred and darkened, from the face that she remembered. But in her mind there could be no doubt.

  The man in the doorway froze into position for a long moment. Then he glanced briefly at Maria, before fastening a penetrating gaze on Cathy. His face now betrayed little or nothing of what he might be feeling.

  He asked, in a rasping voice: "Who are you?"

  It was as if Cathy did not even hear the question. She stood where she was, her hands on the back of one of the wooden chairs, gazing back at him. "Daddy?"

  "My God—is it possible?" Still staring at her, the man stepped forward, groping for the nearest chair. When he had it in hand he pulled it to him and sat down. His sitting was a sudden movement, as if his knees were no longer to be trusted.

  He said, slowly: "What do you call me?"

  "You are my father, aren't you? You must be. I can remember you—and I remember this house." She looked around her. She looked back at him. "I lived here, once."

  "What's your name, girl?" It was an old, old voice.

  "I'm Cathy. Don't you know me? I can remember you as if it were yesterday. You haven't changed—not much."

  "Cathy. For a moment I thought that you were young Sarah, somehow finding her way back to me. It's a wonder—a marvel—how much you resemble your mother."

  At once, as if the question could be held back no longer, the girl demanded: "Why did you desert me and my mother?"

  "Desert you? I?"

  "She left me in an orphanage, when I was four or five years old. That much I know. She wouldn't have had to do that, if you hadn't deserted her. Am I mistaken?" Cathy seemed anxious to be told that she was.

  Edgar Tyrrell drew himself up straight in his chair. "I deserted her? And abandoned you? Who told you that?"

  "It seems obvious. Am I mistaken? I can remember the two of you quarreling. Up on the rim, the day—someone—was being buried."

  The man in the chair looked old. After a moment he said: "Your sister was buried up there. I'm surprised you can remember that." He shook his head slowly. "After that, your mother walked out on me. She blamed me, somehow. She took you with her and walked out on me one bright day, without warning. And she never came back."

  After a pause Cathy asked: "What was she like? My mother?"

  "In her youth, you mean? You speak of her—in the past tense."

  Cathy stared at him. "She's dead!"

  Old Tyrrell stared back. Then he looked about the room, remembered something, and in an instant was on his feet, in a fluid movement that belied his look of age.

  "Where is your companion?" he demanded sharply.

  Cathy needed a moment to understand. "Maria? I don't know. She was right here a moment ago."

  Tyrrell stood listening, in concentration. "It doesn't matter," he said at last. "She will not have got far. She doesn't matter." His gaze fixed on Cathy again. "You matter, though."

  "Father?" Cathy, letting go of her chair, came toward him, at first tentatively, then in a little rush that ended in an awkward embrace. Tyrrell's arms, at first raised as if to ward her off, closed about her slowly, gently.

  "You are my father," she said against his shoulder.

  Gently and slowly he disengaged to hold her at arm's length.

  "I am—I was—your stepfather, child. When I first saw you, you were perhaps two years old. Your sister was a babe in arms. Your mother was—or is—the only woman—perhaps the only person—I have ever truly loved. You—and your sister—were the only children I could ever have. Therefore you matter to me. And you always will."

  He added gently, "You told me just now that your mother was dead?"

  "My real mother? She's been dead since I was six." Cathy paused, suspicion being born. "Hasn't she?"

  Tyrrell ignored the question for the moment. "When did you leave the Rim, in what year? And how did you get here, into the Deep Canyon? The way should not be open."

  "The way was open for me," Cathy said simply. "Because I lived here once, I remembered how to find the turning. I came looking for you."

  "What year? Tell me, what year?"

  "I don't know what you mean. This year? This year is nineteen ninety-one."

  "Ah," the man said.

  Moving past him to the open door, looking out into the gathering night, the young woman sampled the air, the strangeness of the place, with a deep breath. Smells strange and familiar at the same time, unknown since childhood, keyed into her memory.

  She said: "I could always remember this place—very much like this. Except now the house and everything seems so much smaller. But when I remembered these things I thought my memory was playing tricks on me. There were other things, too, that didn't seem to fit. Cars, and radios, that I gradually realized looked like they were from the thirties. Old-fashioned clothes and toys. When things like that puzzled me, I always thought my memory was playing tricks."

  She looked at her companion closely. "And there were even stranger things. Things that I saw you do, or seem to do, that would have been impossible for anyone."

  "My dear…"

  Cathy indicated with a gesture that she had not finished. "Not only my memory," she added. "People have been lying to me all my life. I didn't know if this place was real. When I tried to talk about it, no one would pay attention. My mother abandoned me in an orphanage, and you, my father, never tried to find me—did you?"

  "No," the man said, after a silence, "because I came to realize that your mother was right to take you away from here."

  "Why was she right?"

  "It was a dangerous place for you. I realize that now."

  "Now you live here all alone?"

  Tyrrell looked faintly surprised. "Alone? No, far from alone."

  The girl asked: "What year did she leave you?"

  "Who?"

  She stared at him. "My mother!"

  "Nineteen thirty-four."

  "Nineteen thirty-four?" A moment of mental calculation. "That isn't possible!"

  "Ah, but it is."

  "No. It's the time, you see—Father. You're saying that Mother left you in nineteen thirty-four. But I'm only seventeen. How could I possibly be…?"

  "My whole life is a question of time, Cathy. Time does not run smoothly for me. Nor does it for anyone who lives in the Deep Canyon—as you did. It's as if there were rapids in the flow. Like those in the river, you see—do you remember my showing you the river?"

  "I remember—the river. Yes!"

  "And I m
ust have shown you the white rocks? The rocks as old as the earth, that make big rapids in the flow of time? I have spent my life at work upon those rocks—the spirit of the earth is in them."

  Cathy cared little about rocks. "Father—it was Aunt Sarah, my grandaunt, who left you in nineteen thirty-four."

  "It was Sarah, your mother, who left me—ah, I begin to understand."

  "But—how could—"

  Tyrrell walked to the bedroom door. "Come here, girl. Let me show you something."

  A minute later the two of them were in the room that had been briefly hers in her young childhood. Entering, the man touched a switch beside the door. A lamp came on.

  "I don't remember there being an electric light."

  "I put that in a few years after you were gone. There was some—trouble with the kerosene lamps."

  Reaching into the closet, Tyrrell took down the stuffed animal and showed it to Cathy.

  "Do you remember this, daughter?"

  "Yes, yes!"

  "And this?" He set the childish lunch box in front of her. "I brought this down from the Rim, for you, at your special request. It was something you remembered from the world outside, before you came here. And you wanted one, I don't know why." He paused. "Perhaps you still had hopes of going to school one day. Well, I suppose you've managed to do that."

  "Yes, I've gone to school. I don't know either—Father—why I wanted the lunch box. But it seems to me I remember that I did."

  "And this." Now he was opening a very different metal box, also taken from the closet. "I believe your birth certificate is still in here somewhere."

  In a moment he had brought out an old paper. The folds in the document were stiff with age.

  "Dated May eighteenth, you see, nineteen thirty. Your mother had it with her, for some reason, when she came here."

  Cathy looked at the paper. " 'Catherine Ann Young,' " she read aloud, wonderingly.

  "That's you. Sarah's maiden name was Young. She was never married, you see, to your biological father. She must have loved him, of course, to have two children by him. Perhaps he was a married man. I never asked her much about her past. I was content to have her as she was." He paused. "More than content."

  "But I can't believe this." Cathy was shaking her head. "This would mean that there were years—decades, out of the middle of this century—when I didn't exist at all."

  "You might also reflect that you were also absent from existence during the entire nineteenth century—and for a good many centuries, millennia, geological ages, before that."

  "Of course, but—it's so strange."

  "I doubt, my dear, that your life is any stranger than my own." Tyrrell took thought, and hesitated. "Well, perhaps it is, in some details. But I also doubt that either yours or mine is the strangest human life that anyone has ever lived." He smiled. "Of course, neither of us have quite run our full course yet, have we?"

  The birth certificate was marked by two tiny baby footprints in black ink, showing a left foot and a right.

  "Those prints would match yours," said Tyrrell gently. "My dear, you were born more than sixty years ago. Evidently in California, as it says. Your mother can tell you the details, I'm sure."

  "My mother. Then Sarah is my mother."

  "Indeed she is. I'll see that you get back to her safely."

  Cathy's eyes closed as she stood over the little table, and for a moment she looked faint.

  Then she reached out, groped for her father and gave him a tighter hug than before.

  Again he responded awkwardly.

  Releasing him, she looked around. "I wonder where Maria's got to?"

  "I must go to the cave," Tyrrell said suddenly, as if the question about Maria had reminded him of something. "It will be safer for you if you come with me, rather than waiting here."

  "Safer?"

  "The Deep Canyon is a dangerous place to visit, girl. You have been lucky, so far. And when you were a child, you were well protected. Your baby sister—was not so fortunate. And for that your mother blamed me." His voice had dropped to a kind of whisper. "Come with me. If your companion is important to you—perhaps we can still help her as well."

  "Help her? What's the matter?"

  "Come with me. Now."

  On reaching the entrance to the work-cave, Cathy paused just inside. "I remember this place," she whispered. "It's where you worked. My mother would tell me: 'Daddy's working.' And I would come to the doorway and look in here—at the darkness."

  "I still work here, daughter." Tyrrell stood with his head turned slightly, listening carefully. "Your companion is not here now." He turned on the lights.

  "What do you work on, Father?"

  "On the lifeblood of our planet, my dear. On life and death. On the ways that the two can come together. You see, neither can exist without the other."

  "Father? What's happened to you?" Here in the cave's harsh electric lights, she could see how the old man's face showed scars. What must once have been hideous burn marks had healed and softened with time, leaving little more than a suggestion of what must once have been disaster.

  "What are those scars?" Cathy repeated. "I don't remember them."

  'Someone attempted to kill me." Her father turned from his workbench to answer tersely. "Actually, they wanted to burn me to death."

  His look softened when he saw his daughter's reaction.

  "It doesn't matter now," he assured her. "They failed. And that was a long time ago. Here, here are the rocks I work on. Not the silly things I carve from ordinary stone, for Brainard to sell. I gave up most of that sort of work a long time ago."

  Tyrrell broke off, listening. He looked at Cathy, and his face grew worried. Moments passed before she could hear what he heard, approaching voices, sounding like those of two women and a man.

  Chapter 18

  In the bright sunlight of midafternoon Jake stood, momentarily immobilized by the screams that poured out from behind the chipped and blasted but still solid barrier of rock. The man Jake was trying to kill obviously still survived.

  Camilla, standing beside her breathing lover, had covered her ears with her hands, but now she added scream after scream of her own to Edgar's.

  Anger brought Jake out of his momentary paralysis. He slapped Camilla viciously, trying to knock her out of her hysteria.

  A moment later she was clinging to him, sobbing, and he was trying to comfort her. Then he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. Almost shouting to make himself heard above Edgar's cries of agony, he commanded: "We've got to try the dynamite again. We've got to finish him off."

  Camilla shuddered. "I know, I know—I'm all right now."

  Already Jake had picked up his hammer and drill again; the only practical hope was another attempt at blasting. He still had dynamite, and wire, and blasting caps.

  Camilla had an inspiration. "We forgot about the kerosene in the lamps in the house. I can get that."

  "Good idea. Throw the lamps back there. Keep that fire burning."

  She ran off.

  Hastily Jake ran his hands over the barrier rock, selecting the spots where he wanted to drill the next set of holes. In a few moments he had begun hammering again. The failure of his first attempt had made him more keenly aware than ever that he didn't really know what he was doing when it came to blasting rock.

  In a couple of minutes Camilla was back, walking now, carefully carrying three kerosene lamps. She hurled these accurately, one at a time, the glass bowls shattering inside the cave. The fresh shower of flammable liquid made the black smoke pour forth with increased volume.

  Then she came to help Jake. "It'll go faster if I hold the drill."

  "Yeah."

  She gripped the steel tool, rotating it after each blow as she had seen Jake do. Jake switched to a bigger hammer, as he had before. A slowly growing frenzy of fear and horror fueled him with energy. The work went faster.

  When Jake and Camilla prepared to start the second new hole, he happened to look bac
k into the little cave. What had been a deeply shadowed recess was now well lit by flames. To Jake's horror, he was able to see a portion of Tyrrell's head, scorched gray hair and blackened skin, at about knee level. The old man in his torment must somehow have managed to pull himself up on hands and knees.

  Black smoke obscured at least half of what the orange flames were trying to reveal, but still Jake could see that Tyrrell's clothing was largely burned away, at least around his neck and shoulders, and the vampire was looking out at his assailants. His eyes, set in the scorched ruin of his face, were glassy and staring. His blackened lips writhed, uttering strange sounds.

  On Jake's next swing his hammer missed the drill completely, fortunately missing Camilla's hands as well. She yelled at him in fright and dropped the tool.

  Jake bellowed back at her, and she picked up the drill again.

  Then suddenly it was all too much for her. Screaming, she dropped the tool clanging on rock and started to run, heading down the side canyon in the direction of the river.

  Jake's shout of desperation—"Cam, get back here! I can't do this alone!"—stopped her in her tracks.

  Quivering, she came back. But then she slumped weakly to the ground, unable or unwilling to do any more.

  Again he gripped the drill in his own left hand, though both his arms were trembling with fatigue. Again he swung the smaller hammer with his right.

  The drilling progressed, slowly. Time passed. Tyrrell’s screams slowly subsided into hideous moans, as the fire in the recess burned itself out, the black smoke diminishing to a greasy trickle in the air. Jake could not believe that the moans were ever going to stop.

  Slowly, slowly, the last hole that Jake would have time to drill deepened in the limestone. Somehow the sun had passed the zenith and was going down. Despite oddness of the way time was passing, and the urgency of passing time, he had to pause frequently to rest his arms.

  He didn't look into the cave again, but with the wind blowing the last traces of smoke away he knew that now the fire was out. Whatever damage the burning kerosene was capable of doing had been done, and their enemy had somehow survived it.

  "Jake, I'm sorry, lover. I'll help you now, I'll help."