Damon Knight - Orbit 20

After a moment, Sam shook her and said, “Well, whatever it was we’ll probably never know. That horse sure isn’t going to tell us.” Farley was standing before them with the horse. He led it to the others, hobbled it, and returned. He looked stunned, and bewildered, and he looked frightened.

“What was it?” Sam asked brusquely.

Farley said, “We—we’ll all have to go across that fence and hear it. You can’t hear it from here.”

“The river!” Victoria cried.

Farley nodded. “You can hear the river over there.”

For a moment no one moved as they listened to the still desert. Then they went through the gate together and stopped a few feet from the fence.

Victoria strained to hear, but there was nothing. Everything looked the same, yet different, the way it always looked unchanged even while changing. She thought Sam was cursing under his breath. He strode ahead, holding himself too stiff. Angry, she thought, and disappointed. Abruptly Sam stopped, gazing upward at the ridge.

“Farley, look!”

A woman had appeared on the ridge, making her way clumsily through the jumbled boulders. She glanced backward once and hurried even more. A flicker of light appeared around the rocks.

Victoria felt Farley clutching her arm too hard. “It’s me,” she breathed. His grip tightened.

The other Victoria ran wildly down the slope of a hill they could not see. She was dashing panic-stricken through the air, and behind her, gaining on her, came the cloud of lights. The cloud flickered all about her, like a swarm of fireflies. The light did not illuminate, it obscured the racing figure.

Now she was coming down the ridge, drawing near the edge of the cliff, stumbling, falling, rising only to stumble again. Suddenly she flung herself down and drew up her legs in a tightly curled position. The swarm of cold lights settled over her, seemed to expand and contract with her breathing. Minutes passed. The expansion was less noticeable, the lights more compactly together. Suddenly the woman stirred and rose, moving like a sleepwalker. She looked straight ahead and started to walk slowly, carefully down the side of the mesa. The swarm of lights stayed with her, but she was oblivious of them. At the bottom she turned toward the ranch road where Sam’s camper was parked. Moving without haste, she passed the camper, opened the gate, returned to the vehicle, got in and drove through. Ten or fifteen feet from the gate the light swarm stopped, hovered in air for a few moments, then streamed back up the cliff, like a focused light beam that could move around curves with ease.

Victoria felt the frozen, supporting rigidity leave her. She sank to the ground.

“Me too,” Farley muttered, his arm still about her. They sat huddled together.

“I’m going over there,” Sam said. He started in the direction of the camper, stopped after a dozen or so paces. He came back to them and also sat down. “Gone. It’s not there.”

Victoria freed herself from Farley’s arm and stood up. “We have to go up to the ridge,” she said. She felt almost detached.

“Okay,” Farley said, “but first we go to camp and get flashlights and jackets. We may be out for hours, and it can get damned cold.”

Impatiently Sam started back to camp; Victoria and Farley followed more slowly.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She really was, she realized. Since they had seen something, too, the strangeness must be in the land, in the valley, not in her; her relief made her almost giddy.

At the campsite, Sam already had his jacket on and his day pack slung over his shoulder. He handed Victoria her pack and tossed the third over to Farley, who knelt and started to rummage through it. Victoria snatched up her jacket. Farley moved to the big packs.

“Come on,” Sam said. “You put flashlights in. I saw you do it.” He turned and strode toward the gate again. Victoria hurried after him.

“I’m getting my camera,” Farley called. “Be right with you.”

“Ass!” Sam said. “Like a goddamn tourist.”

The gate was still open and they left it that way for Farley.

“I think the best way up is—” Sam stopped, his hand on Victoria’s arm. “Jesus!”

It was different. The crystalline light was changed: a pale mist dimmed the moonlight; the air was soft and humus-fragrant, the coolness more penetrating. To the right Ghost River thundered and splashed and roared. Victoria looked behind them, but the gate was no longer there. The ranch road was gone. Underfoot the ground was spongy; wet grass brushed her legs. She looked to the ridge that had become a wooded hill, and over the crest of the hill streamed the light swarm, winding sinuously among the trees toward her and Sam.

Farley hesitated at the gate, then left it standing open; the horses were safely hobbled, and a quick retreat might be necessary. He was carrying his camera, his pack over his shoulder, not strapped yet. He began to hurry. He hadn’t realized the other two had gotten so far ahead of him.

“Sam! Victoria!” His echo sounded as dismal and lonesome as a coyote’s call. He stopped to study the cliff up to the ridge, and he felt a chill mount his back, race down his arms. The cliff was almost vertical, the road they had been on was gone; ahead the cliff curved, and the narrow terrace ended dead against the wall. He backed up a few steps, denying what he saw. He strained to hear the river, and heard instead a low rumble, and felt the ground lift and fall, tilt, sink again; the rumble became thunder. He was thrown down, stunned. The thunder was all around him. Something hit him in the back and he pulled himself upright, only to find the ground really was heaving and the thunder was an avalanche crashing down the cliff all around him. Frantically he ran, was knocked down again, ran, fell, until he was away from the cliff. He stumbled to the horses, groped blindly to untie them, and he fell again and this time stayed where he fell.

He dreamed he and his mother were having a picnic at Fort Rock. The Fort was a natural formation, an extinct volcano, the caldera almost completely buried; what remained formed an amphitheater where he was on stage, she his audience of one. He recited for her and she applauded enthusiastically; he sang and danced, and when he made his last bow she came to him with tear-filled eyes and hugged him. She was very pretty, the wind blowing her hair across her face, her cheeks flushed under the dark tan, her eyes shining blue and happy. She opened a beach umbrella and they stayed under it out of the sun, while she read to him and he dozed.

He dreamed he was in the hospital. He had taken her place, had released her. People kept wanting to talk to him, kept wanting him to speak, but he wouldn’t because then they would learn they had the wrong patient.

He woke up and felt a terrible confusion because he was in a hospital bed; his father was sleeping in an armchair at the window. For a long time Farley didn’t speak, hoping that if he remained perfectly still he might wake up again in his own bed.

He studied the peaceful face of his father. The late afternoon sun gave his pale face a ruddiness that had faded months ago. His father was fifty-seven and until recently had always looked ten years younger than he was. Relaxed now, he looked as he had when they used to go on all-day outings—like the trip to Fort Rock ... A memory stirred, a dream surfaced, and he realized why his father was here, in his room, not in hers.

He started to get up, and grunted with pain.

“Farl! You’re awake?” Will Chesterman moved with such effortless speed that people often thought of him as a slow man, very deliberate. He awoke, crossed the room and was leaning over Farley all in one motion.