Gordon Dickson - Time Storm

So, they and I got along pretty well, moving perhaps four hundred yards or so in front of Marie, Wendy and the rest. I was off by myself, as I liked it; but travelling with two dogs was not like travelling with Sunday. They would obey commands; Sunday almost never had—except by accident. They travelled at my pace; I had been used to travelling more or less at Sunday’s. They were deadly weapons I could control. Sunday had been almost uncontrollable and absolutely unpredictable.

But there was one great point of difference that outweighed all their virtues. The crazy cat had loved me—loved me for myself alone. It was a love induced by accident and the time change effect, but nonetheless it was there. And I—I had gotten used to it. Merry and Cox could have been as cheerfully working for Tek at this moment, if Marie had drilled them into obeying him instead of me.

So I put thoughts of Sunday out of my mind—I had not dared to think of the girl from the first. Now I allowed myself the thought that it was lucky she was on the far side of the river, and Tek with his men, on this. Hopefully she would run into some decent people on her side. People being naturally spread out over the spectrum of human character as they were, she had as good a chance of finding good people as she had of finding bad ones. I put her out of my mind, too. No man—and no girl—could have the world just the way they wanted it, always.

By noon of the second day after we had crossed the river, we moved out of the relatively open area beyond the river bluff on this side and began to come on rolling country covered by what was obviously farmland, scattered with deserted-looking farmhouses. The change was gradual enough so that it was impossible for us to tell whether the change from open country to cultivated earth was natural or the result of a time change. But in any case, the appearance of the area did not jibe exactly with Tek’s words about only a “couple of empty towns” on this side of the river. We passed by the deserted-looking farmhouses at a healthy distance; and at no time did the dogs give any kind of alarm.

So three days of travel went by quietly with no sign of Tek and his group, or any other humans, and no sign of trouble. Then, on the morning of the fourth day we spotted a mistwall standing off to our right, and I changed our line of march to angle toward it.

Marie objected to the whole idea. Her own instinct was to head away from the mistwall; and I could not blame her.

“All right,” I said, turning away. “You go on. I should catch up to you in a couple of days. If not, you’d better not wait for me.”

I took perhaps a half a dozen steps away from her before she made a sound; and then I heard her behind me.

“What can I do? What can I do?”

It was an aching, tearing sort of cry. I turned around and saw her, her eyes squeezed shut, her face white, her fists clenched at her sides, and all her body rigid. I went back to her.

Suddenly, I understood how it was with her. From her point of view, she had contributed to our partnership everything she had to contribute. She had abandoned what little security she still had left, following the time storm, to go with me—more for Wendy’s sake, I suspected, than for her own. She had been adjustable, faithful and hardworking, a good partner by day and night. She had trusted her dogs, herself—and even her daughter—to me. And still, here on some reasonless whim, as it seemed to her, I was going to risk everything on a chance that could just as easily be avoided.

I put my arms around her and tried to get her to soften up; but she was as rigid as ever the girl had been in one of her states of shock. But I simply stood there and kept holding her, as I had kept holding the girl in those instances, and after a while, I thought I felt some yielding in her. She shuddered and began to cry, in great, inward, throaty, tearing sobs that were almost tearless.

However, after a while, even these began to quiet down; and I began to talk, quietly, into her ear while I held her.

“Listen to me,” I said. “There only were three things I might not have gone along with you on; and now that Sunday and the girl are gone, there’s only one. But that’s something I’ve been stuck with all my life. Now that I’ve taken on the question of figuring out the time storm, I don’t have any choice. I’ve got to go through any mistwalls I find and see what’s on the other side of them—I’ve got to, you understand? There’s no choice for me when I come to something like this. There never has been.”

“I know you don’t love me,” she said into my chest. “I never asked for that. But where will we go if you don’t come back? What will we do?”

“You’ll do just fine,” I said. “All you have to do is sit down for half an hour and wait, while I step through the mistwall and take a look at what’s beyond it before I come back out.”

“All!” she said.

“That’s right. All,” I told her. “You’ll have to take my word for it; but with most of the mistwalls I’ve seen, the two sides of them were pretty much the same, front and back. The odds are against anything being there that’s either very good or very bad. If it’s bad, I’ll duck back right away. If it’s good, it could mean a new, safe future for all of us. You ought to be pushing me to go and look, not holding me back!”

“Oh, you’ll do what you want,” she said and pulled away from me. But evidently it was settled; we set off for the mistwall.

At the point where we came up to it, the mistwall crossed a little hollow crowned by trees on both sides, so that there was a sort of natural trough some sixty yards wide and perhaps a hundred long leading to it. I had picked this point as one where Marie, Wendy and the dogs could stay more or less hidden from anyone observing from the higher level of land surrounding them. We had spotted the mistwall early, and we reached the trough, or hollow, perhaps an hour before noon. The mistwall itself was completely unmoving—now that I thought of it, I had never seen a motionless mistwall begin to travel, or a moving one stop. It could be that there were two different varieties of time lines involved... now that was a new thought.

I got everyone down in the hollow and climbed back out to the surrounding level to make sure they were invisible from anyone looking across the outside plain. They were, and using the binoculars reassured me that there was no sign of movement between the clumps of trees on the plain itself. They should be perfectly safe for an hour or so while I was on the other side of the mistwall— certainly they would be safe for the time it would take me to go, turn around and. come back, if I found something on the other side I did not like.

Going back down into the hollow, I found myself trying to remember if I had ever seen anyone or anything alive moving voluntarily through one of the mistwalls. But I could remember none.

Marie held me tightly for a long moment before she would let me leave them for the mistwall itself—and even Wendy clung to me. The little girl had been getting over her shyness where I was concerned, these last few days since the girl and Sunday had been gone. I felt a sudden touch of discomfort at the realization that I had not reacted to the small overtures the child had been making in my direction. It came to me suddenly and heavily that it was some obscure connection between her presence and the absence of the other two, the girl and Sunday, that had kept me cool to her. Now, suddenly, I felt guilty. It was not Wendy’s fault that things were happening as they were.

At any rate, I broke away from Marie and her at last and walked into the dust and the mist, as tense as one of the dogs walking into a strange backyard. The physical and emotional feeling of upset took me before I had a chance to close my eyes against the dust—but again, as on that earlier time I had gone through the mistwall to find Marie’s place, the sensations were less than I had felt before. I found myself wondering if it was possible either to build up an immunity to going through the walls, or else simply to get used to the reactions they triggered in living bodies.