Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

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.