Our Children's Children (14 page)

“That may be it,” Billings admitted. “I haven't had the time to think it through. Even if it were true, it would make no difference. I still would have to do exactly what I'm doing.”

“You mean you intend to go ahead? Even knowing what it means to all of us. Stirring up the people, riding that great white horse.…”

“I have to do it, Steve. My conscience.…”

“You'll think it over? I can call again?”

For there was no use arguing further. No point in trying to talk reason to this pious madman. He'd known him, Wilson reminded himself, ever since their undergraduate years. And he should have known from the very first that it would be useless to try to make him see another point of view.

“Yes, call again,” said Billings, “if you wish. But I won't reconsider. I know what I must do. You cannot persuade me otherwise.”

“Good night, Jake. Sorry that I woke you up.”

“You didn't wake me up. I expect no sleep this night. It was good to hear your voice, Steve.”

Wilson hung up and sat quietly in his chair. Maybe, he thought, if he'd done it differently, if he'd not come on so strong, he might have accomplished something. Although he doubted it. There was no such thing as talking reason to the man; there had never been. Perhaps if he'd called him this afternoon, after he first had talked with the President, he might have been able at least to moderate Billing's action, but he doubted that as well. It had been, he told himself, a hopeless business from the start. Billings himself was hopeless.

He looked at his watch. It was almost two o'clock. Picking up the phone, he dialed Judy's number. Her sleepy voice answered.

“Did I wake you up?”

“No, I've been waiting for you. Steve, you're awful late. What happened?”

“I had to go to Myer and pick up some refugees. Scientists. They're here, talking to the Academy people. I won't make it, Judy.”

“You're not coming out?”

“I should stay in touch. There's too much happening.”

“You'll be dead on your feet, come morning.”

“I'll stretch out on a couch in the lounge and get some rest.”

“I could come down. Stand watch.”

“No need of it. Someone will get hold of me if I'm needed. You go to bed. Be a little late if you want. I can get along.”

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“It's not going good, is it?”

“It's too soon to tell.”

“I saw the President on TV. It'll be an awful mess. We've never faced anything like this before.”

“No, not quite like this before.”

“I'm scared, Steve.”

“So am I,” said Wilson. “It'll be different in the morning. We'll feel different in the morning.”

“I have a terrible feeling,” Judy said. “As if the solid ground were slipping out beneath my feet. I've been thinking about my mother and sister out in Ohio. I haven't seen Mom in a long, long time.”

“Phone her. Talk with her. You'll feel better.”

“I tried to. I tried and tried. But the circuits are jammed. Everyone is calling everyone. Like a holiday. The country is upset.”

“I just made a long-distance call.”

“Sure you did. You're the White House. They'd clear the lines for you.”

“You can call her tomorrow. Things will quiet down tomorrow.”

“Steve, you're sure you can't come out? I need you.”

“Sorry, Judy. Truly sorry. I have this horrible feeling that I should stay in reach. I don't know why, but I do.”

“I'll see you in the morning, then.”

“Try to get some sleep.”

“You, too. Try to shut this out, try to get some sleep. You'll need it. Tomorrow will be bad.”

They said good night and he put the receiver back into its cradle. He wondered why he was staying here. There was, at the moment, no real need to stay. Although one could never know. Hell could break loose any time.

He should try to get some sleep, he told himself, but somehow he resisted sleep. He didn't need it; he was too strung out, too tense to sleep. Later he'd need sleep, when there was no chance of sleep. Later, a few hours from now, it would all catch up with him. But right now his nerves were too tight, his brain too busy to allow for sleep.

He went out the door and around the walk to the front lawn. The night was soft, resting for the heat and turmoil of the coming day. The city was quiet. Far off a motor growled, but there were no cars on the avenue. The pillars of the portico gleamed softly in the night. The sky was clear and a million stars hung there. A red light went blinking across the sky and from far overhead came the thrum of motors.

A dark figure stirred at the edge of a group of trees.

“You all right, sir?” a voice asked.

“Yes,” said Wilson. “Just out for a breath of air.”

He saw now that the dark figure was a soldier, his rifle held aslant his chest.

“Don't go wandering,” said the soldier. “There are a lot of us out here. Some of the boys might be a little nervous.”

“I won't,” said Wilson. “I'll go back in directly.”

He stood listening to the quietness of the city, feeling the softness of the night. It was not the same, he told himself; there was something different. Despite the quiet and softness, a certain tenseness seemed to reach out to touch him.

29

A sound brought Elmer Ellis out of a sound sleep, sitting up in bed, befuddled, unable for a moment to orient himself. On the night table beside the bed, the clock was ticking loudly and beside him his wife, Mary, was levering herself up on her elbows.

Her sleepy voice asked, “What is it, Elmer?”

“Something's at the chickens,” he said, for now the reason for his waking came churning up into his consciousness.

The sound came again, the frightened, flapping, squawking of the chickens. He threw the covers back and his feet hit the cold floor so hard it hurt.

He groped for his trousers, found them, got his legs into them, pulled them up, slid his feet into his shoes, did not stop to tie the laces. The squawking still went on.

“Where is Tige?” asked Mary.

“Damn dog,” he growled. “He's off chasing possum.”

He charged out the bedroom door and into the kitchen Groping, he found the shotgun, lifted it down off the pegs. From the game bag that hung beneath the pegs, he got a handful of shells, jammed them in a pocket, found two more and thrust them into the chambers of the double barrel.

Bare feet pattered toward him. “Here's the flashlight, Elmer. You can't see a thing without it.”

She thrust it at him and he took it.

It was pitch black outside and he switched on the light to see his way down the porch steps. The squawking in the henhouse continued and there was no sign of Tige.

Although it was strange. In a flare of anger, he had said the dog was out hunting possum and that couldn't be true. Tige never went out hunting on his own. He was too old and stiff in the joints and he loved his bed underneath the porch.

“Tige,” he said, not too loudly.

The dog whined from underneath the porch.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” asked Elmer. “What is out there, boy?”

Suddenly, he was afraid—more afraid than he'd ever been before. Even more afraid than that time he had run into the Vietcong ambush. A different kind of fear—like a cold hand reaching out and gripping him and holding him and knowing he'd never get away.

The dog whined again.

“Come on, boy,” said Elmer. “Come on out and get them.”

Tige did not come out.

“All right, then,” said Elmer. “Stay there.”

He went across the farmyard, shining his light ahead of him, picking out the henhouse door.

The frightened squawking was louder than ever now, insane and frantic.

Long ago, he told himself, he should have repaired the henhouse, plugging up the holes. With the shape that it was in, a fox would have no trouble gaining entry. Although it was strange, if it were a fox, that it should still be there. At the first flash of light, the first sound of a human voice, a fox would have been gone. A weasel, maybe, or a mink. Even a raccoon.

Outside the door he paused, reluctant to go on. But he couldn't turn back now. He'd never be able to live with himself if he did. Why, he wondered, should he be so frightened? It was Tige, he thought. Tige was so scared that he refused to come from beneath the porch, and some of that fright had rubbed off on him.

“Damn that dog,” he said.

He reached out and lifted the latch, slammed the door back against the side of the building. He balanced the gun in his right hand and directed the flash with his left.

The first thing he saw in the circle of light were feathers—feathers floating in the air. Then the running, squawking, flapping chickens and in among the chickens.…

Elmer Ellis dropped the flash and screamed and in midscream jerked the gun to his shoulder and fired blindly into the henhouse, first the right barrel, then the left, the shots so close together that they sounded as one explosion.

Then they were coming at him, leaping from the open door, hundreds of them, it seemed, faintly seen in the light of the flash that lay upon the ground—horrible little monsters such as one would never see except in some sweating dream. He reversed the gun, scarcely realizing that he did it, grasping the barrels in both his hands, using it as a club, flailing with it blindly as they came swarming out at him.

Jaws fastened on an ankle and a heavy body struck him in the chest. Claws raked his left leg from hip to knee and he knew that he was going down and that once he was down they would finish him.

He sagged to his knees and now one of them had him by the arm and he tried to fight it off, while another clawed his back to ribbons. He tipped over on one side and ducked down his head, covering it with his one free arm, drawing up his knees to protect his belly.

And that was all. They no longer chewed or ripped him. He jerked up his head and saw them, flitting shadows, moving out into the dark. The beam of the fallen flashlight caught one of them momentarily and for the first time he really saw the sort of creatures that had been in the henhouse and at the sight of it he bawled in utter terror.

Then it was gone—all of them were gone—and he was alone in the yard. He tried to get up. Halfway erect, his legs folded under him and he fell heavily. He crawled toward the house, clawing at the ground to pull himself along. There was a wetness on one arm and one leg; and a stinging pain was beginning in his back.

The kitchen window glowed with a lighted lamp. Tige came out from beneath the porch and crawled toward him, belly flat against the ground, whining. Mary, in her nightgown, was running down the stairs.

“Get the sheriff,” he yelled at her, gasping with the effort. “Phone the sheriff!”

She raced across the yard and knelt beside him, trying to get her hands beneath his body to lift him.

He pushed her away. “Get the sheriff! The sheriff has to know.”

“But you're hurt. You're bleeding.”

“I'm all right,” he told her fiercely. “They're gone. But the others must be warned. You didn't see them. You don't know.”

“I have to get you in. Call the doctor.”

“The sheriff first,” he said. “Then the doctor.”

She rose and raced back to the house. He tried to crawl, covered a few feet, and then lay still. Tige came crawling out to meet him, edged in close to him, began to lick his face.

30

Once the men were seated around the table in the conference room, Dr. Samuel Ives opened the discussion.

“This meeting,” he said, “despite the solemnity of the occasion which brings us together in the dead of night, marks what for all of us of the present must be an exciting event. All of our professional lives most of us have at times puzzled over the fundamental nature of time irreversibility. A couple of us, myself and Dr. Asbury Brooks, have spent a great deal of time in its study. I am of the opinion that Dr. Brooks will not take it badly if I say we have made little, if any, progress in our studies of this fundamental question. While the lay person may question the validity of such study, viewing time as a philosophical rather than a physical concept, the fact remains that the physical laws with which all of us work are embedded in this somewhat mysterious thing that we call time. We must ask ourselves, if we are to completely understand the concepts that we employ, both in our daily lives and our continuing investigations into many areas of science, what may be the physical interrelationships underlying the expansion of the universe, information theory, and the thermodynamic, electromagnetic, biological and statistical arrows of time. In the description of any physical phenomenon, the time variable is a parameter, at the most elementary level. We have wondered if there were such a thing as universal time or whether it may be only a feature of boundary conditions. There are some of us who think that the latter may be the true explanation, that in the universe the time factor was perhaps rather randomly set at the moment of the beginning of the universe and has persisted ever since. And all of us, I think, are aware that our thinking about time must be overwhelmingly prejudiced by our intuitive notions about the direction of time flow and that this may be one of the factors which has made it so difficult for us to understand and formulate any real theories about this thing that we call time.”

He looked across the table at the three men from the future. “I must beg your indulgence for this sort of introduction to our discussion, remarks that, in view of what you have learned, may sound somewhat silly. But I did think it important to set out our own views and study into some sort of perspective. But now that I have said this much, I think that it is your turn to talk and I assure you that all of us will listen most attentively. Which one of you would like to begin?”