Рэй Брэдбери - The Fox and the Forest

And now here was this stranger doing likewise, doing a thing that only a man from the Future would do who had been starved for liquors and cigarettes for many years.

Susan and William sat and ordered a drink.

The stranger was examining their clothes, their hair, their jewelry-the way they walked and sat. «Sit easily,» said William under his breath. «Look as if you've worn this clothing style all your life.»

«We should never have tried to escape.»

«My God!» said William, «he's coming over. Let me do the talking.»

The stranger bowed before them. There was the faintest tap of heels knocking together. Susan stiffened. That military sound! — unmistakable as that certain ugly rap on your door at midnight.

«Mr. Roger Kristen,» said the stranger, «you did not pull up your pant legs when you sat down.»

William froze. He looked at his hands lying on either leg, innocently. Susan's heart was beating swiftly.

«You've got the wrong person,» said William quickly. «My name's not Krisler.»

«Kristen,» corrected the stranger.

«I'm William Travis,» said William. «And I don't see what my pant legs have to do with you!»

«Sorry.» The stranger pulled up a chair. «Let us say I thought I knew you because you did not pull your trousers up. Everyone does. If they don't, the trousers bag quickly. I am a long way from home, Mr.-Travis, and in need of company. My name is Simms.»

«Mr. Simms, we appreciate your loneliness, but we're tired. We're leaving for Acapulco tomorrow.»

«A charming spot. I was just there, looking for some friends of mine. They are somewhere. I shall find them yet. Oh, is the lady a bit sick?»

«Good night, Mr. Simms.»

They started out the door, William holding Susan's arm firmly. They did not look back when Mr. Simms called, «Oh, just one other thing.» He paused and then slowly spoke the words:

«2155 A.D.»

Susan shut her eyes and felt the earth falter under her. She kept going, into the fiery plaza, seeing nothing.

They locked the door of their hotel room. And then she was crying and they were standing in the dark, and the room tilted under them. Far away firecrackers exploded, and there was laughter in the plaza.

«What a damned, loud nerve,» said William. «Him sitting there, looking us up and down like animals, smoking his damn cigarettes, drinking his drinks. I should have killed him then!» His voice was nearly hysterical. «He even had the nerve to use his real name to us. The Chief of the Searchers. And the thing about my pant legs. My God, I should have pulled them up when I sat. It's an automatic gesture of this day and age. When I didn't do it, it set me off from the others; it made him think. Here's a man who never wore pants, a man used to breech uniforms and future styles. I could kill myself for giving us away!»

«No, no, it was my walk-these high heels- that did it. Our haircuts-so new, so fresh. Everything about us odd and uneasy.»

He turned on the light. «He's still testing us. He's not positive of us-not completely. We can't run out on him, then. We can't make him certain. We'll go to Acapulco leisurely.»

«Maybe he is sure of us, but is just playing.»

«I wouldn't put it past him. He's got all the time in the world. He can dally here if he wants, and bring us back to the Future sixty seconds after we left it. He might keep us wondering for days, laughing at us.»

Susan sat on the bed, wiping the tears from her face, smelling the old smell of charcoal and incense.

«They won't make a scene, will they?» «They won't dare. They'll have to get us alone to put us in that Time Machine and send us back.»

«There's a solution then,» she said. «We'll never be alone; we'll always be in crowds. We'll make a million friends, visit markets, sleep in the Official Palaces in each town, pay the Chief of Police to guard us until we find a way to kill Simms and escape, disguise ourselves in new clothes, perhaps as Mexicans.»

Footsteps sounded outside their locked door.

They turned out the light and undressed in silence. The footsteps went away. A door closed.

Susan stood by the window looking down at the plaza in the darkness. «So that building there is a church?»

«Yes.»

«I've often wondered what a church looked like. It's been so long since anyone saw one. Can we visit it tomorrow?»

«Of course. Come to bed.»

They lay in the dark room.

Half an hour later their phone rang. She lifted the receiver. «Hello?»

«The rabbits may hide in the forest,» said a voice, «but a fox can always find them.»

She replaced the receiver and lay back straight and cold in the bed.

Outside, in the year 1938, a man played three tunes upon a guitar, one following another.

During the night she put her hand out and almost touched the year 2155. She felt her fingers slide over cool spaces of time, as over a corrugated surface, and she heard the insistent thump of marching feet, a million bands playing a million military tunes, and she saw the fifty thousand rows of diseased cultures in their aseptic glass tubes, her hand reaching out to them at her work in that huge factory in the Future; the tubes of leprosy, bubonic, typhoid, tuberculosis, and then the great explosion. She saw her hand burned to a wrinkled plum, felt it recoil from a concussion so immense that the world was lifted and let fall and all the buildings broke and people hemorrhaged and lay silent. Great volcanoes, machines, winds, avalanches slid down to silence and she awoke, sobbing, in the bed, in Mexico, many years away….

In the early morning, drugged with the single hour's sleep they had finally been able to obtain, they awoke to the sound of loud automobiles in the street. Susan peered down from the iron balcony at a small crowd of eight people only now emerging, chattering, yelling, from trucks and cars with red lettering on them. A crowd of Mexicans had followed the trucks.

«Que pasa?» Susan called to a little boy.

The boy replied.

Susan turned back to her husband. «An American motion-picture company, here on location.»

«Sounds interesting.» William was in the shower, «Let's watch them. I don't think we'd better leave today. We'll try to lull Simms. Watch the films being made. They say the primitive film making was something. Get our minds off ourselves.»

Ourselves, thought Susan. For a moment, in the bright sun, she had forgotten that somewhere in the hotel, waiting, was a man smoking a thousand cigarettes, it seemed. She saw the eight loud happy Americans below and wanted to call to them: «Save me, hide me, help me! Color my hair, my eyes; clothe me in strange clothes. I need your help. I'm from the year 2155!»

But the words stayed in her throat. The functionaries of Travel in Time, Inc., were not foolish. In your brain, before you left on your trip, they placed a psychological bloc. You could tell no one your true time or birthplace, nor could you reveal any of the Future to those in the Past. The Past and the Future must be protected from each other. Only with this psychological bloc were people allowed to travel unguarded through the ages. The Future must be protected from any change brought about by her people traveling in the Past. Even if she wanted to with all her heart, she could not tell any of those happy people below in the plaza who she was, or what her predicament had become.

«What about breakfast?» said William.

Breakfast was being served in the immense dining room. Ham and eggs for everyone. The place was full of tourists. The film people entered, all eight of them-six men and two women, giggling, shoving chairs about. And Susan sat near them, feeling the warmth and protection they offered, even when Mr. Simms came down the lobby stairs, smoking his Turkish cigarette with great intensity. He nodded at them from a distance, and Susan nodded back, smiling, because he couldn't do anything to them here, in front of eight film people and twenty other tourists.