Gordon R. Dickson (14 page)

"You stink!" he said
distinctly, in the girl's voice.—And that was the last I remember.

When I woke, someone was standing
over me. But it was neither Sunday nor the girl. It was Marie; and she handed
me a cup of hot coffee.

"Sorry to wake you," she
said. "But I can use your help if we're going to get off today."

"Get off today?" I echoed
stupidly. She stood there, looking down at me for a long second.

"That's what we talked about
last night, wasn't it?" she said. "Do you remember?"

I started to say I didn't. But then
it came back to me. She was right, of course. That was, indeed, one of the
things we had talked about last night. We had made plans to leave today—all of
us, together.

"Yes," I said. I lay
looking at her, part of me hating myself and filled with self-contempt at
letting myself be bought so easily; and part of me remembering last night and
looking forward to tonight. "I'll be along in a bit."

"Good," she said.

She went off. I got up and dressed.
The girl and Sunday were not to be seen. During the period on the lizard raft,
with no way to do anything about it, my beard had grown to a respectable
length. But I had always liked the feel of being clean-shaven, and as soon as
we found the lakeshore home, I had been happy to discover a razor and go back
to being naked-faced once more. Normally, I liked shaving. It was part of the
familiar ritual of coming awake in the morning—and I did not come awake in the
morning easily. But this morning the habitual scraping actions did not clean
off a layer of guilt left on me by the night before. In a sense, I had sold
Sunday and the girl down the river for the selfish satisfaction of my own
desires.

Sunday, of course, did not know what
was going on. But he was not going to have the old freedom he was accustomed
to, living with the dog-pack alongside him, whether he knew it or not. Also, he
was going to have to share me with a couple of extra humans— and that was not
going to make him happy, either. He had adjusted to the girl; but the girl
loved him—Marie and Wendy did not, and there was no guarantee that they ever
would. As for the girl, she had already made it plain how she felt about the
situation.

I washed the last of the soap off my
face and began to pump myself up with counter-arguments. We had been bound
eventually to bump into other people with whom we would want and need to
associate. Sunday had been destined to have to learn to share me with other
people, finally. The girl, likewise. The three of us could not go on forever
being exclusively insane together, as we had been until I faced the freshwater
sea and the fact that Swannee was gone for good.

It was not going to be easy
adapting, for me either, I told myself. But I was going to have to do it. So
were the girl and Sunday. That was life—you could not always have what you
wanted.

By the time I went over to get some
breakfast from Marie and help her prepare to move out, I had the top layer of
my mind—if nothing beyond that—thoroughly convinced that I was not only doing
the best thing for all concerned, but being considerably self-sacrificing to
boot.

It took us most of the day to get
ready. Marie had two carts fitted with bicycle wheels, which she had trained
certain of her dogs to pull. The carts themselves were obviously homemade, but
remarkably well put together. Marie, apparently, had a definite mechanical
talent. They were light and rolled easily. But they had one real drawback—no
springs except the bicycle parts that supported the wheels. They would be all
right on road surfaces, but I could not see them lasting more than a few days
loaded and going cross-country, as we were going to be doing sooner or later.
However, since we had nothing in the way of materials and tools around to provide
them with springs, I decided not to say anything. There was no point in
borrowing trouble.

We started out shortly after noon.
The girl—she had showed up in time for breakfast, after all—Sunday, and I made
up the advance guard, about fifty yards ahead of the rest. Behind us came
Marie, walking, and the two carts, with Wendy riding one and the other loaded
with food, water and gear for all of us, plus the .22, which I had given to
Marie. Three dogs pulled each cart; and all the rest moved in a tight and disciplined
patrol around the carts and Marie.

The others travelled at a fair
walking speed for cross-country; but they did not make as good time as Sunday,
the girl and I would have by ourselves, because they stopped more often for one
reason or another—and often, the reason was Wendy. The original three of us, up
in front of them all, however, could pretty well ignore the problems of these
others. It was almost like being off on our own again. Sunday, of course, did
not mind the slower pace at all. It gave him that much more time to explore
things. He and the dogs, I noticed, had already solved the problem of
coexistence in typical animal fashion—by ignoring each other. Once, when Sunday
lagged behind, one of the forward dogs trotted past him at a distance of less
than ten feet, and neither one so much as glanced at the other.

Several times I took advantage of
being alone with the girl to try getting her to talk some more. But she was not
in the mood, evidently. Nor would she look at me.

"All right," I told her,
at last. "You work it out by yourself, then."

I stepped out ahead, putting her
from my mind and concentrating on scouting for our whole group. A few hours
after we had left Marie's place, I ran across something like a logging road, or
a farmer's tractor path among the trees, and followed it up until I could see
through a thinning screen of forest to what was obviously a small town, down in
a small cup-shaped valley area surrounded by open fields. It was about three
hundred yards from the edge of the forest to the nearest buildings.

I turned about and headed back to
contact Marie. Just in case there was anyone in that town, I did not want us to
come strolling in followed by a leopard and a pack of dogs. Some nervous
citizen was liable to take a shot—at Sunday, in particular. The rest were a
fair distance behind me. Evidently, I had gained on them more than I had
thought. At any rate, we got together once more and together came up to the
edge of the woods to take a look at the town through some binoculars Marie had
brought.

Through the binoculars, the town
seemed deserted. There was no sign of movement, human or animal. I handed the
binoculars to Marie, who was beside me.

"Take a look," I said.

She did.

"That's Gregory, I take
it?" I said, when she put the binoculars down.

"Yes," she said. But she
was frowning. After a short pause she added, but slowly and still frowning,
"It's got to be."

"Got to be?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"

"I mean it
is
Gregory—I
recognize it," she said. "But I don't know... there's something
different about it."

"Nobody in sight," I
suggested.

"That, too," she said.
"But something else. It looks changed, somehow. Only I can't say
how."

I took the binoculars back from her
and studied the buildings I could see. Aside from their stillness in the late
afternoon sun, there was nothing that struck me immediately as unusual about
the town. Then I noticed a house with the blinds down on all of its windows.

I looked at the other houses. Those
nearby did not have their blinds drawn. If all had, of course, it could simply
have meant that a time change had come through the area at night and caught the
inhabitants after they had settled to sleep. But the houses close to the one
with the blinds drawn had theirs up—then, moving the glasses about, I found
first one, and then four more houses where all the shades seemed to be down.

It could mean nothing, of course.

"Do they know you in
Gregory?" I asked Marie.

"Oh, yes," she said.
"We did all our shopping here."

I turned to the girl.

"Hang on to Sunday. Keep him
with you," I said. "Marie, you and I can take a walk in with a couple
of the dogs—just a couple— and see if there's anyone there."

I left my rifle behind, and made
Marie leave hers. We stepped out into the sunlight and walked toward the
buildings. It was all so ordinary that I felt a little ridiculous; and then,
when we were about fifty feet out in the open, a figure came shambling around
the corner of the house with the blinds down and faced us.

I did not get a good look at it. It
was very big, either an unusually large man or woman all bundled up in loose
furs, or something else. Even its face was furry, or hidden by a beard. But it
came around the corner of the building and lifted one arm. There was a wink of
light from the end of the arm; and the dog furthest in front of us—leading the
rest of us by perhaps fifteen feet —leaped into the air with a howl that broke
off abruptly as it fell back on its side in the grass, to lie there still.

I dove to the ground, pulling Marie
down with me; and something sizzled over our heads as we lay there. A second
later, there were sounds like rifle shots from the town and the singing of
bullets over our heads.

"Back!" I said to Marie.
"Crawl! Back to the woods!"

We turned and went on our bellies.
The shots continued, and once or twice I heard the sizzle overhead again; but
nothing touched us. It seemed a long, long crawl. We were almost back when we
came across the second dog we had taken with us, a lean German shepherd-type
that had been named Buster, lying dead. In his case, it was a bullet from
behind that had gone in at the back of his head and taken off half of his lower
jaw when it came out. Flies were already buzzing around the corpse.

We crawled on, Marie and I, until
the shadows of the trees were about us. Even then, we continued on hands and
knees a little further before we risked standing up. Then we turned and went
back to join the girl and Wendy for a look at the town.

But there was nothing to see. The
fur-covered figure was no longer in sight; and the shooting had stopped.

"What was it?" said Marie.
She was shaking and her voice was tight.

"I don't know," I said. I
turned to the girl. "Did you get a look at it through the
binoculars?"

The girl nodded.

"Was it a man or a woman?"

The girl shook her head.

"Why won't you talk?"
Marie suddenly screamed at her.

"Easy," I said to Marie.
"Easy." I spoke to the girl again. "Not a man or a woman either?
You mean you couldn't tell?"

The girl nodded.

"You could tell?"

She nodded again.

"You could tell if it wasn't a
man or a woman?" I said. "What was it then?"

"I don't know," said the
girl, unexpectedly. "A thing."

She turned and walked off. I went
after her, but she would not even stand still to be questioned, let alone
answer, after that. Defeated, I went back to Marie.

"Maybe something out of the
future that wandered through its own mistwall into Gregory, here," I said
to her. "Anyway, whatever it is, it doesn't seem to want to come after
us—just seems to want us to leave it alone. I think we'd better go around this
town. What's the next one up the line called? And how far is it?"

"Elton," said Marie.
"And it's about five miles."

"That's where we'll head,
then," I told her.

We stayed within the cover of the
woods and made a circuit of Gregory. By the time we were around the town, the
afternoon was fairly well advanced; but we pushed on, hoping to reach Elton. We
never did, though. After nearly three more hours of travelling without a sight
of a road or a town, we came to bluffs overlooking a river. A big river; easily
a quarter of a mile across.

There was obviously no going farther
that day. We set up camp on the bluff, and in the morning I went down to the
river's edge to take a look at the situation.

The water was fresh and cold. The
edge where I stood was overgrown with willows and seemed to drop off deeply;
but a little farther downstream the river made a bend, and there was a sandy
beach and shallow water. I explored that far, accompanied by Sunday and the
girl. The current of the water seemed to slow, going around the curve, and
there was plenty of driftwood on the beach to make into a raft. I went back to
Marie on the bluff. She was making coffee and she gave me a cup.

"So you want to cross the
river," she said; after I had told her what it was like, there.

I shrugged.

"We don't have to," I
answered. "We can go upriver, or downriver, and we may even run into a
bridge, somewhere, crossing it. But summer isn't going to last forever; and the
more I think about it, the more it seems to me that we ought to keep heading
due east. It's our best chance to find some large civilized group that's
survived the time storms."

So it was settled—more or less. I
did some planning, out loud, with Marie and the girl listening. The dogs could
swim, of course. So could Sunday and we adults—or, rather, we two adults and
the one near-adult, who was the girl. Wendy, the equipment and the supplies
could be rafted over. Reducing the raft load to Wendy and our possessions meant
we would need only a relatively small raft. Luckily we had a hammer and even
some nails along, although, actually, I had decided to save the nails and chain
the logs of the raft together with the dog chains, for maximum safety.