A Question Of Time

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Not any more.” Then Jake burst out, pleading, demanding help: “Tell me, what’s going on?”

  “Right now,” said Camilla, “this is.” She turned away to close the bedroom door firmly, and then turned back. Then, standing right in front of him, she began to undress.

  * * * * * *

  Jake woke up several times during the night. On each occasion he alternated between wondering whether he was going mad, and deriving considerable comfort from the warm presence of Camilla sleeping at his side. Once Jake got out of bed and wandered naked from one dark room to another of the small house, looking for the shotgun. For some reason it was preying on his mind. He found the weapon at last where Camilla must have left in, in the main room, leaning casually in a corner. Jake put his fingers on the cool metal of the double barrel, and then decided to leave the shotgun where it was.

  He checked the door leading outside, and discovered that it was unlocked. In fact, as Jake now discovered, there appeared to be no way to lock it.

  Holding the door open, looking out, Jake could see a steady glow of electric light from the direction of the quarry. Faintly he could hear the metallic sounds of the workman at his unceasing labor.

  Despite Jake’s weariness, hours passed before he was able to sleep soundly.

  * * *

  On waking to broad daylight, with a sharp start, from some dream that vanished even as he tried to grasp it, he found himself alone in the neat little bedroom. The sun was coming in around the edges of a flowered window curtain. Now he could see more plainly the colors and the kinds of decoration in the room, and now he was no longer too stunned and tired to think about them. This was a woman’s room, all right. There were no man’s clothes or things about.

  Sitting naked on the edge of the bed and doing his best to take stock of his surroundings, Jake confirmed last night’s impression that the little house boasted real glass windows. There were even window screens, though they fit poorly. The interior walls were formed of the flat sides of split logs, neatly smoothed and whitewashed. There were two pictures hanging on the walls, one was of flowers in a basket, another small boats in a harbor. They were in the same style as sketches he had seen Camilla make. Small shelves attached to the walls held knickknacks. There was even a good carpet, looking practically new, on the plank floor. But the clothing Camilla had dropped on the floor last night was gone. Jake opened the door of a small closet. Some men’s clothes here, shirts and pants, but he recognized one of the shirts; Camilla had worn it on their second meeting. There was also a single dress, light blue, hanging by itself. The shelves and the floor in the closet were dusty. On one shelf stood an alarm clock, hands stuck at five minutes to twelve. Jake picked up and shook the timepiece, but it remained silent.

  Somebody had put in a hell of a lot of work, building this place and fixing it up. But now Jake had the impression that it was starting to run down.

  Hoping to find a bathroom, Jake tried the unopened door in the bedroom wall. Instead, to his surprise, he found an even smaller bedroom, as neatly fixed up as the room where he had slept, but furnished with a child’s bed instead of a regular sized one. There was a child-sized rocking chair as well. This room was even wallpapered, in a pattern of teddy bears and clowns, and a lone, forlorn toy animal sat on a shelf. The stuffed rabbit looked as if it might have been there for a long time.

  On a small table stood the child’s lunchbox that had so aroused Edgar’s anger.

  * * *

  Jake found the bathroom just off the main room, the logical site from the point of view of whoever had done the plumbing, where pipes could be economically coupled to those of the sink in the kitchen area. Water had been piped in from the creek. And someone must have gone to the trouble of putting in some kind of septic tank.

  On coming back into the main room he also took note of the small electric refrigerator and even a tiny electric stove. Neat. But on the wall, as Jake now noticed for the first time, hung a calendar, just three years wrong, informing him that this was June of 1932.

  Camilla wasn’t here, or anywhere in the house.

  Jake got into his clothes and went exploring outdoors, taking note in passing of how a couple of cottonwoods had been strategically planted where they would shade the house on summer afternoons. There was still no sign of Camilla. Fortunately or not, there was no sign of the old man either.

  Jake walked closer to the mouth of the cave. He had to duck his head a little to see inside, but past the entrance the height opened up. The space inside, or what Jake could see of it, was now silent and dark except for what sunlight got in past the overhang. Evidently old Edgar had tired himself out at last and gone to his rest somewhere. He certainly wasn’t anywhere in the house.

  Standing just inside the entrance to the cave, confronted by invisible depths of shadow, Jake thought of calling for Edgar, but decided against that course for the time being. Peering into the dimness, he was unable to see anything that gave him any help.

  He didn’t know where else to look for either Camilla or Edgar. But he swore to himself that he was going to demand some answers from the old man as soon as he got the opportunity.

  Returning to the little house, Jake noticed something he must have somehow missed the first time through this morning. A note was lying on the large table in the main room.

  The message was very short, printed in pencil on the back of an old envelope:

  Jake: I’ve gone fishing.

  Love,

  Cammy

  Love, huh? Jake thought about that word, and then he thought about all the other words of the message individually. Then he let the paper fall back on the table. Suddenly he was hungry. He opened the door of the electric refrigerator and was glad to find some food available.

  There were tired-looking apples and a couple of oranges, and some other less interesting things wrapped up in wax paper. Two unopened quart bottles of beer, and a few six-ounce nickel bottles of Coke. Cheese and ham and bread, leftovers from the making of yesterday’s sandwiches. There were also some eggs in a cardboard carton, but Jake didn’t feel like trying to cook.

  He made himself a breakfast sandwich of ham and cheese, adding a little mustard, and continued to look around. So far this morning he was quite successfully keeping his big problem, the fact that he was lost, in the back of his mind. Without thinking very much about the problem directly he had almost convinced himself that once he set about getting back to camp in daylight, when he was rested, he’d have no trouble finding the right route.

  In kitchen cabinets Jake discovered cloth bags of rice and beans, heavy paper bags of flour, a small bin of potatoes. Higher up, three or four shelves were packed with cans containing what looked to him like just about everything edible.

  The smell of coffee led him to a pot, keeping warm on the stove, and he found cups on a shelf and sugar in a jar. Things were looking up. At last, having eaten and dosed himself with caffeine, he took a deep breath and went outside.

  Now when Jake, fed and rested, looked around him calmly and rationally in full daylight, the little canyon appeared to have nothing particularly remarkable about it. Not as scenery in the Grand Canyon went. There was no reason why a man shouldn’t be able to get home from here. Puzzled more than ever, now unable to fully credit his disorientation of the night before, Jake once more started downstream along the faint riparian path.

  In morning brightness, with birds singing, the side canyon held no surprises. The only trouble was, he couldn’t distinguish his memory of the canyon as he’d come up it looking eagerly for Camilla, from that of the twilight canyon he’d hiked up and down during his abortive attempt to leave.

  At least Jake was soon able to confirm that the changes had not been only in his imagination. Consistent with his experience at twilight, Jake this morning needed only a few minutes to walk down to within sight of the Colorado. If this river was indeed the one he’d known for four months by that name. This was last night’s transformed torrent complete with
unexpected rapids, not the Colorado he’d followed down here yesterday from camp.

  Detouring slightly, he stopped to look at the place where he seemed to remember Camilla shooting the peculiar bear. The remains of the beast were still there, and something had been chewing on it during the night. What was left was starting to draw flies and ants.

  Jake stood there for some time looking at the mess. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, it was still there.

  In broad daylight the peculiar landscape along the big river was no less strange than it had been at nightfall—in a way it was even stranger now, because now Jake could see the unfamiliar formations all too plainly.

  * * *

  Still gazing at these geographical impossibilities, his mind a numbed blank, he heard a sound, and saw Camilla, dressed mostly in yesterday’s clothes, approaching him from a little way downstream along the riverbank. Against the morning sunlight she was wearing a broad-brimmed woman’s gardening hat. She really had been fishing, and was carrying the proof, a rod and line, and three fair-sized trout by a willow twig threaded expertly through their gills. The fish still had enough life left in them to twitch their tails.

  “Good morning,” Camilla said tentatively, as if she and Jake were two people who barely knew each other. And maybe, he thought, that was the truth.

  “ ’Morning,” he responded.

  “I caught some fish for breakfast.”

  “I’ve had mine. Thanks for the coffee. I’m going home. Back to camp. Come with me if you want. I expect I can find the way in daylight. If not, you can show me.”

  Her face fell and her voice became hushed. “I wish to God I could do that, Jake.”

  He stood looking at her, not knowing what to do or think or say.

  “Jake?” She put a hand on his arm, almost timidly. “Walk me back to the house, sweetie, before you go. I have to talk to you.”

  Again he let her lead him. The thought crossed his mind that it wasn’t any good pretending that he could do anything else right now.

  Back at the house, Camilla immediately got to work cleaning the fish, working outdoors, on a rough wooden table just outside the kitchen window. A calico housecat, acting about halfway tame, appeared from somewhere and took a keen interest in the proceedings.

  Wielding a small cleaver, Camilla expertly whacked off a fish head. Then she took up a sharp thin-bladed knife and began to gut the slippery body. Her face looked grim, but Jake didn’t think it was because of the messy work.

  Jake said: “Go ahead and talk.”

  “I’m sorry…” she began, then didn’t know how to continue.

  Before she could say anything more Camilla began to cry. With the fish in one hand and knife in the other, she couldn’t deal with her tears very well, and wound up wiping her eyes on the sleeve and then the shoulder of her man’s shirt.

  Jake’s heart sank, feeling sorry for her. Whatever that old bastard had done, he had done now to both of them…

  The cat, its interest now concentrated in the fish guts Camilla had thrown to the ground, was getting itself entangled in pink and yellow strings.

  All these tears weren’t doing Jake any good. To get Camilla talking rationally again he asked her: “What’ll happen if I hike upstream along the creek instead of down?”

  “Same thing. I mean you won’t be able to get nowhere.” As Camilla got more upset, Jake noticed, her grammar deteriorated.

  He said: “Eat your fish for breakfast if you want. Then I want you to come away from here with me. Or anyway we’ll give it a good try.”

  She hesitated. Then she said: “All right,” in a defeated tone, and resumed her work.

  When the trout were cleaned Camilla took them into the house and dipped them in flour, then fried them with a touch of bacon grease.

  She tried to persuade Jake to eat at least one of the fish; presently he gave in, thinking he didn’t know when his next meal might be. No doubt about it, the fresh-caught trout was good.

  Still there was no sign of Edgar, in or around the house. Neither Camilla or Jake had mentioned him.

  When breakfast was over, Camilla started to scrub out the frying pan.

  “What do you want to do that for? Let the old fart clean up after you for once.”

  Again, as if she were only humoring Jake, she said: “All right.” She ran some water in the pan and left it soaking in the sink.

  Then the two of them went outside again, Camilla carrying the shotgun with her as before.

  This time Jake led the way, upstream along the creek, in silence. There were places, away from the creek, where the little cliff down which the waterfall came tumbling didn’t look too difficult to climb. Before he left the creek to start climbing he remembered to refill his canteen.

  Climbing after Jake, Camilla on reaching a difficult place handed up the shotgun for him to hold.

  Jake accepted the weapon and looked it over. Everything seemed in order. “Edgar won’t care if I have a shotgun, huh?” He reached down with his free hand to pull Camilla up beside him.

  “He won’t mind that, no.” Her voice was sweet and soothing.

  Jake stared at her and shook his head.

  Soon they had reached the top of the small cliff. There were no more cliffs in sight above this one, no more big climbs, only a jumble of rocks, all sizes up to that of a small house, stretching away in every direction, across terrain that on the large scale was generally level.

  He wanted to go east, of course, but still the way was practically blocked.

  Jake persisted, and a few minutes’ additional clambering brought him all the way atop a minor rise that had to be the absolute rim. But this rugged height was as impossibly close to the house as the river was close to the house in the opposite direction. As if the great depth of the Canyon had not yet been established, and the rim were no more than a few hundred feet above the Colorado.

  Standing here on this version of the South Rim, and looking in the general direction of the morning sun, Jake could see for miles. It wasn’t very much like the South Rim he’d known for the past four months, and there was no sign of Canyon Village in the distance. For all he could tell from here, this strange and unnatural landscape before him was totally uninhabited.

  He made a tentative attempt to do some exploring, at least, to the east. But the tilted slabs of rock that so obviously blocked his path simply continued to do so, and no hidden pathway became apparent. He was effectively prevented from travelling in that direction. The creek had disappeared—it must, thought Jake, have its source under some of these slabs. He could try looking for that source. But he was going to get some answers first.

  He considered trying to go west instead, then circling around. But going west across this field of jagged rocks was no more feasible than going east. There had to be some better way.

  Carefully Jake descended from the little rise, and made his way with difficulty, climbing over tilted slabs, back to the top of the waterfall-cliff.

  Camilla was waiting for him there, just where he’d left her.

  He set down the shotgun and took her by both arms—not a hard grip, just firm. Very firm. “All right, tell me. You knew that once I came up Deep Canyon I’d—I’d get stuck here, in this—this place. That’s when it happened, isn’t it?”

  Camilla tried to pull away, but Jake wasn’t letting her do that. So she relaxed and said: “That’s when it happened, when you came up the canyon with me. Jake, I’m sorry—but I couldn’t help myself. I had to do something.”

  His breakfast was turning to lead in the pit of his stomach. “You mean you knew once you brought me here, I couldn’t get out?”

  “I had to bring you, Jake. Because I needed you.”

  “Needed me for what?”

  Her voice dropped. “To get out. To get away from Edgar. He thinks I brought you here to be his helper, because he told me he needed a helper. But that wasn’t why I did it. The real reason was, with two of us here, I figured we could find some way
to get out.”

  He kept on staring at her, in silence.

  Camilla tried to smile brightly. “Besides, now I love you, Jake, I couldn’t let you go. You know you can have me anytime you want. It’s great. I like when you do it to me.” She did her best to give her hips a sprightly wriggle.

  “That’s what you need me for?”

  “No, but I like it. Do it to me now. We can go in the house, or do it right here. There’s nobody to see. Nobody anywhere—” Camilla’s voice broke on the last word, and she was weeping again.

  Jake stared at her for what felt like a long time. He had an impulse to take her in his arms and comfort her, but the thought of what she’d done to him, trapping him here, kept him from doing that.

  At last he said: “Right now there’s a couple of other things I want to do first.”

  * * *

  At Jake’s request Camilla took him on a tour of the cave where the old man worked at night. He had her turn on the bright lights in the cave, convincing him that Tyrrell wasn’t sleeping in there somewhere.

  Then Jake’s interest centered briefly on the lamps themselves. “Where’d these electric lights come from? I never saw anything like ’em.”

  “Edgar says…”

  “What?”

  “He told me once he got them from ‘sometime past 1990.’ Those were the words he used. I told you time runs funny down here.”

  “He was just sayin’ that,” said Jake without conviction. “Making up a story to have a little joke.”

  “Maybe,” said Camilla, after a pause. “You know where he says we are now? Where all the canyons are not as deep as they ought to be, and with all the peculiar animals?”

  “Where?”

  “Edgar says: ‘About one million BC.’ And then he laughs.” Her voice caught. “I don’t know if he means it or not.”

  * * *

  Maybe, thought Jake, that idea about being a million years in the past was something that needed thinking about. Well, if so, he wasn’t up to the task right now. Instead he went into the cave again and wandered the several rooms and alcoves, which took up at least as much room as a small house. He stared at everything by Edgar’s bright electric lights, but being able to see clearly did nothing to clear up the mystery. Trying to get a better idea of what the old man was up to here, Jake looked at the long workbench, the pits in the floor, the fragmentary carvings, so many of the latter that some must have been started and abandoned.