Highway of Eternity (8 page)

He was right. There was nothing. The land was empty except for the black dots that he had spotted earlier and had recognized as grazing game herds.

The traveler lay at the foot of one of the buttes that thrust up here and there across the plain. Somewhat less than halfway up the slope stood a small grove of scraggy trees—junipers, more than likely. Except for the clump of trees and ragged haphazard carpets of grass, the butte was bare. Occasional stratified ledges of sandstone poked out of the bareness.

Enid came up beside him, saying nothing.

“We have it to ourselves,” he said. “The traveler knew what it was doing. Except for a desert area, it picked the most out-of-the-way place it could find.”

“The traveler had nothing to do with it,” she said. “It was just happenstance.”

The sun was halfway down the sky—Boone took it to be the western sky. Why he thought so, he didn't know.

A lone bird drifted above, not moving its wings, coasting on a thermal; a scavenger out to spot a meal. Small boulders lay here and there. Out from behind one of them came a wriggler. It wriggled its way across the sand, moving away from them.

“He and his kind are what we have to watch out for,” said Boone.

“A snake? What kind?”

“A rattler. A rattlesnake.”

“I never heard of that kind. My acquaintance with snakes has been limited. I don't think I have seen more than one or two in all my life.”

“Some of them can be dangerous. Not necessarily deadly, but dangerous.”

“The rattlesnake?”

“Dangerous. Sometimes deadly. But he warns you, buzzing at you with the rattles on his tail. Not always, but usually.”

“You asked what we should do. I said I had no idea. How about you?”

“It's early yet,” said Boone. “We've barely gotten here. You bought us some time. Let us use it.”

“You mean to stay here?”

“Not for long. There is nothing to keep us, nothing here at all. But here we can sit quietly for a while, collect our thoughts, and talk things over. In the meantime, let's look around a bit.”

He started off, along the base of the butte. Enid trotted to keep up.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing, actually. Just the lay of the land, to get some idea where we are and what might be here. It's just possible there might be a spring flowing out of the butte. That's sandstone up there on the slope. Water percolates down through sandstone. Sometimes, when it hits a less porous stratum, it flows out.”

“You know the strangest things.”

“Just simple woodcraft. Knowing how nature works.”

“You're a barbarian, Boone.”

He chuckled. “Yes, of course I am. What did you expect?”

“Our people were barbarians, too, up in the time we were born in. But not like you. We had lost touch with what you call nature. Up in our time there is little nature left. Wild nature, that is.”

A jagged spur of limestone jutted out of the side of the butte. As they were circling around it, a gray animal jumped out from behind the outthrust of stone, ran for fifty feet or so, then swung around to have a look at them.

Boone laughed. “A wolf,” he said. “One of the big prairie wolves. He's puzzled about what we are.”

The wolf did look puzzled. He sidled cautiously away from them, dancing a humorous little jig, then, apparently satisfied that they represented no danger, sat down with all deliberation, wrapping his tail comfortably around his feet. Watching them closely, he lifted his upper lip in the beginning of a snarl, then let it relax, covering the fangs he had displayed.

“There will be others around,” said Boone. “Ordinarily, wolves don't travel alone.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Hungry enough, I suppose they could be. This one looks well fed.”

“Wolves and rattlesnakes,” said Enid. “I'm not sure I like this place.”

As they rounded the spur of sandstone, Boone halted so suddenly that Enid, following close behind, bumped into him.

The spur of sandstone curved inward, back into the butte, then curved out again, forming a rocky pocket. On the inside curve of the pocket stood a massive beast.

A great, black, woolly head with a pair of heavy horns, six feet or more from tip to tip, faced them. Its head hung low. A heavy beard hanging from the lower jaw swept the ground.

Boone grasped Enid by the arm and slowly backed away. The red-rimmed eyes of the beast glared at them out of a tangle of wool.

“Easy,” warned Boone. “No quick moves. He could charge us. The wolves have been pestering him. He is old and desperate.”

Reaching the point of the spur they had rounded to step into the pocket, Boone stopped. He let loose of Enid's arm and, using both hands, lifted the rifle to ready.

“A buffalo,” he said. “A bison. Americans called them buffalo.”

“He's so big!”

“An old bull. He'll run a ton or better. Not the bison of the twentieth century. An earlier type.
Latifrons
, maybe. I don't know.”

“But wolves, you say. Wolves are no match for him.”

“He's old and probably sick. In the end they'll wear him down. Wolves have the patience to wait. He's got his back to the wall, making his last stand.”

“There are a couple of wolves over there. Another partway up the slope.”

“I told you,” said Boone. “They hunt in packs.”

“That poor bull,” she said. “Is there anything we can do to help him?”

“The kindest thing would be to shoot him, but I can't do that now. He still may have a chance to get away, although I doubt it. You see that bird up there?”

“I saw it a while ago, just floating in circles.”

“He's waiting. He knows what the end will be. Once the wolves are done, there'll be something left for him. Come on away. We'll look for water elsewhere.”

A short time later, they found water, a small seepage trickling out from under a sandstone ledge. It went nowhere, soaking into the thirsty ground, forming a small spot of wetness before it disappeared into the soil. Boone scraped out a hole into which it could collect. They went back to the traveler to find something that would serve as a water bucket. All they could find was a small saucepan. When they returned to the pool Boone had dug, enough water had collected to fill the pan.

Boone saw that he had been right about the sun. It had been in the western sky. It had moved appreciably closer to the horizon.

“There'll be wood up in that juniper thicket,” he said. “We'll need a fire.”

“I wish we had an axe,” said Enid. “I went through the stuff Horace flung into the traveler. Food, blankets, this saucepan, a frying pan, a fire-starter, but no axe.”

“We'll get along,” said Boone.

They made two trips to the junipers, hauling in more than a night's supply of wood. By that time the sun had set. Boone started a fire while Enid rummaged through the rucksack to find food.

“I think the best bet is the ham,” she said. “There also is a loaf of bread. How does that sound to you?”

“It seems excellent,” said Boone.

Sitting beside the fire, they munched ham sandwiches as night closed down. A wolf was lamenting somewhere nearby, and from farther off came other sounds Boone could not identify. As the dark deepened, stars came out, and Boone, staring up at them, tried to make out if there were any changes in the constellations. In a couple of instances he thought there were, but he was not well enough acquainted with the constellations of his own time to determine if there were changes or not. Some distance out beyond the fire, spots of light, side by side, showed up.

“Those are wolves?” asked Enid.

“More than likely. It's possible they may never have seen fire before. And they've never seen or smelled a human. They are curious, probably frightened as well. At least apprehensive. They'll sneak in and watch us. That is all they'll do.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Sure enough,” he said. “They have the bull staked out. When they get hungry enough, they'll close in on him. Maybe one or two of them will die, but the rest of them will eat. They're waiting for him to weaken a bit more before they have a try at him.”

“It's horrible,” she said. “This eating one another.”

“Just like us. This ham …”

“I know. I know. But the ham's a little different. The hog was raised for slaughter.”

“But when you get right down to it, one thing dies so that something else may live.”

“When you get right down to it,” she said, “none of us is very civilized. There's another thing I have wondered about. When you got free of the rosebush and were legging it for the traveler, with the monster breathing down your neck, I had expected you to disappear.”

“Disappear? Why should I disappear?”

“You told us about it, you remember. How you can step around a corner …”

“Oh, that. I guess the monster wasn't any real danger. You were waiting for me and the port was open. The stepping around a corner seems only to be a matter of the last resort.”

“And something else. In New York you stepped around a corner, hauling Corcoran with you, and were in Martin's traveler. Where did you go those other times?”

“Strange,” he said. “I don't actually remember. I probably was wherever I went for only a very short time. A moment or so and then I was back again. Into my own world.”

“It had to be more than a moment or two. You had to stay there long enough for the danger to get over.”

“Yes, you're right, but I never tried to get it figured out. I guess I didn't want to face it. It was so damn confusing, so unbelievable. I remember telling myself once that there must have been some factor of time disparity, but I didn't follow it up. It was too scary.”

“But where were you? You must have had some impression.”

“Each time it was terribly fuzzy, as if I were standing in a heavy fog. There were objects out there in the fog but I never really saw them. I only sensed there was something there, and it scared me. Why are you so interested?”

“Time, that's what I am interested in. I thought that probably you had moved in time.”

“I can't be sure I moved in time. I only thought I might have. It afforded an easy explanation for a procedure that was impossible. One always seeks for answers, usually easy, simple answers. Even when the easy answers aren't understandable.”

“We have time travel,” she said, “and none of us, I am sure, really understands it. We stole it from the Infinites. To steal time travel was the one way we could fight back, the one way we could flee. The human race had far space travel before the Infinites showed up. I think it was our far travel that aroused the interest of the Infinites in us. I've often wondered if some of the very primitive principles of time might not have made our many-times-faster-than-light travel possible. Time is somehow tied into space, but I have never known quite how.”

“You stole this time travel you have now from the Infinites. Yet you call yourselves barbarians. Hell, you're not barbarians. Anyone who can steal time factors and make them work …”

“There were others up there in the future, I am sure, who could have used time travel better. But they weren't interested. Mechanisms, even the sophisticated mechanism of time travel, were no longer concerns of theirs. They had reached a higher plane.”

“They were decadent,” said Boone. “They gave up their humanity.”

“What is humanity?” she asked.

“You can't believe that. You are here, not up there million years from now.”

“I know. And still how can anyone be absolutely sure Horace is always sure that he is right, of course, but Horace is a bigot. Emma is sure Horace is right. That's blind, stupid faith on her part. I'm not sure about David. He's happy-go-lucky. I don't think he really cares.”

“I think he does,” said Boone. “When it comes down to the crunch, he'll care.”

“There was so much else the human race could have done,” she said. “So many things yet that could be done. And then, if history is right, quite suddenly humanity lost interest in doing things. Could there have been some inherent braking system built into their intelligence, something that warned them to slow down? I've thought about it and thought about it. I go around in circles. I'm cursed with the kind of mind that is forced to see and consider all sides of a question, all the approaches that I can puzzle out.”

“You had better slow down,” said Boone. “You're not going to solve it all tonight. You should be getting some sleep, back in the traveler. I'll stay out here and keep the fire going.”

“The wolves will sneak up on you.”

“I sleep light. I'll wake at regular intervals to tend the fire; so long as there is a fire, the wolves will keep their distance.”

“I'd rather be out here with you. I'd feel safer.”

“It's up to you. You'd be safer in the traveler.”

“I'd suffocate in there. I'll go and get some blankets. You want a blanket, don't you?”

He nodded. “As the night goes on, it could get chilly out here.”

The moon was coming up, a great, bloated, yellow moon swimming up over the naked, ashen buttes. The land seemed empty. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Even the watching wolves were gone; no glowing eyes stared in from beyond the campfire. Then he saw the soft movement of a shadow through the moonlight. They still were out there, like so many drifting shadows. He felt some of the emptiness and the loneliness lift from the land.

Enid came back and gave him a blanket.

“Will one be enough?” she asked.

“Enough. I'll drape it over my shoulders.”

“You mean you'll sleep sitting up?”

“It'll not be the first time. It keeps a man alert. You might doze off, but if you do, you wake.”