Highway of Eternity (15 page)

“What is this place?” she asked of Horseface.

“Its only designation,” he said, “is a symbol on a chart. I would have no idea how to pronounce the symbol. Maybe it is a designation that is not meant for anyone to speak.”

“And how did we get here in so short a time and without any …”

“We were translated here,” he said and, having reached the ground, turned his back on her and said no more, going across the land in a loping fashion, with his grotesque shadow bouncing and bobbing, much blurred at the edges. The bloated red sun in the green haze of the sky shed too little light to make a sharp and proper shadow. The entire planet, Enid thought, was a mite too garish and not in the best of taste.

She climbed down a short way, then stopped to look the place over a little more closely. Horseface had disappeared into the distant haze, and she was alone. Below here, there was no sign of life she could detect except for the grass and trees. There was only the level sweep of the land and the scattered mounds.

She slid to the ground, surprised to find it solid under her feet. From the look of it, she had expected to find it spongy. She moved away from the net and began walking toward the nearest mound. It was a smallish one, looking like a pile of rocks. She had seen such piles on Earth where the husbandmen dug the stones from the ground and piled them to clear more land for planting. But those piles had been made up of dull-colored stones of all sizes, from pebbles to weighty boulders. Here the rocks seemed to be all small and many glinted in the sun.

When she reached the mound, she knelt down beside it and picked up a handful of the pebbles. She raised her hand and opened it, spreading out her fingers to make a flat palm, with the pebbles lying before her eyes. The stones, catching the light of the red sun, blazed back at her.

She held her breath, and her body tensed, then slowly relaxed. She knew nothing about gems, she told herself; she couldn't have distinguished a shattered piece of quartz from a diamond. And yet it was unbelievable that all the brilliance and fire of the stones could come from no more than common pebbles. A reddish one, a little smaller than a hen's egg, flashed brilliant red from a corner where a sliver had been broken off. Beside it, a pebble split in half seemed to quiver with a throbbing blue. Others gleamed with the glow of green, rose, amethyst, and yellow.

She tipped her hand and let them go, scintillating as they fell. If they were truly gems, they would bring a fortune back in certain periods of mankind's development. But not in the time from which the family had fled. In that time, alll precious things, all rarities, and all antiquities had lost their value. There had been no money and no jewels.

She wondered if Horseface had known of these piles of gems, heaped so carelessly and in such quantities by an unknown people. But no, she told herself—Horseface was seeking something here, but it was not these stones.

She started walking toward a second pile of pebbles, but did not stop when she reached it. There were other such piles, all alike except for some variation in size. She knew now what they were and what she'd find in them. Perhaps it was time to travel just a little farther to see what might lie beyond.

Although not aware of it at first, she must have been climbing a slight slope, for quite suddenly she came to where the land broke and fell away into a tangle of grotesque formations, cliff faces of raw earth, deeply eroded stream beds, and a group of pyramids, all straight lines that tapered to points.

She stood at the edge of the land where the slope broke and stared fixedly at the pyramids, remembering something she had once read—that there was no such thing in nature as a straight line; such straightness must suggest artificiality. The pyramids did have the look of architecture. The edges that marked the corners were definite, and the sides that led up to the apex were smooth.

As she looked, she saw the sparkle in them. But that would be impossible; to build such pyramids so exactly as they should be with pebbles or gems would be ridiculous, if it could be done.

She moved up the slope. As she came closer, there could be no doubt at all—the pyramids were built of gems, or what she guessed were gems. From close up, the whole structure before her quavered with a myriad of multicolored sparkles.

She advanced to the pyramid, blinking as it flashed red and green and purple in the light of the sun. She did not care for the purple—she had seen enough of purple, pink, and sickly green on this planet. But there was a yellow—a primrose yellow, clean and bright—that seemed to stop her heart and made her suck in her breath. It came from a stone larger than an egg and smooth, perhaps polished by some ancient river flowing over it.

Before she could think to stop herself, her hand went out and her fingers tightened around the stone. As she lifted it, the entire slope of the pyramid came down as if it were liquid. She skipped aside to escape the rush of rolling pebbles.

Something squeaked nearby. When she looked to see what it was that had made the noise, she saw them at the sagging corner of the pyramid, peering at her out of their popeyes. Their round, soft, fuzzy mouse ears quivered and they stood on tiptoe, horrified at what had happened to the pyramid.

They had popeyes, mouse ears, and a softness about the triangular faces, but their bodies were angular and harsh, with a vague hint of spiders carved out of wood. Carved, Enid thought, out of the seasoned driftwood that could be found beached along the shores of old rivers, gray, knobbed, and twisted wood with all the twists worn smooth and shiny as if someone had spent long hours giving it a polish.

She spoke to them in a kindly fashion, frightened and repulsed by the driftwood bodies, but drawn to them by their fuzziness of face, by the large and liquid eyes, and by the quiver of the ears.

They spooked away, their spraddling driftwood legs prancing, then switched around again to stare at her. There were a round dozen of them. They were the size of sheep.

She spoke again, as softly as before, and held out her hand to them. The movement of her hand did it—they swirled about and ran, in dead earnest this time, making no motion as if to halt and look at her again. They fled down the tortured slope and disappeared into one of the deep erosion gashes and she lost sight of them.

She stood there, beside the pyramid that was no longer neat. The green sky lowered over her and she clutched in one hand the large pebble with its glow of cowslip yellow.

I've made a mess of it, she thought, as I've made a mess of everything the last few days. She walked around the corner of the shattered pyramid and stopped in astonishment.

Spread out on the purple grass were rectangles of white fabric, and grouped among the spread-out rectangles were colorful hampers made, perhaps, of metal. And the thought came to her—the poor things were having a picnic when she had so rudely interrupted them.

She walked forward and nudged one of the pieces of fabric with her toe. It lifted off the ground, falling back in folds. As she had thought, it was fabric. Tablecloths, to be spread down upon the grass, forming a clean surface on which the food would have been spread out.

It was strange, she thought, that the concept of a picnic should have come into being on this planet as well as on the Earth. Although here, of course, all this might mean something else entirely—it might not even be concerned with eating out of doors.

She dropped the yellow stone into a pocket and bent to examine the contents of the hampers. There was no doubt that this picnic, if that was what it might be called, had to do with eating. There was no question in her mind that what she saw was food. There were fruits, apparently freshly picked from tree or bush. There were evidences of cooking—blocks and bricks and loaves—and in one of the hampers was placed a huge bowl of what probably was a salad, a tangled mass of leaves and gobs of quivering slimy matter. A fetid effluvium rose from the bowl.

Almost gagging from the smell, she stood up and stepped back, taking several deep breaths to clear her nose. Then, as she glanced around, she saw the box.

It was a small black box, perhaps a foot square and six inches in depth, lying on the ground just beyond what she had decided was the tablecloth. Most of it seemed to be of metal, but the side facing her was of what appeared to be a gray, opaque glass or crystal. She could see no way to open it. And she had no time to experiment with it. Horseface would soon be returning, and she didn't want him to find her gone.

She was still staring at the box when the face of it suddenly lighted, to show an image of Horseface toiling across the grass, bent almost double by the weight of a huge chest that he carried on his back.

Basic television, she thought, and another parallel with Earth. A picnic and a television receiver. On the plate, Horseface had slipped the chest from his back and set one end of it on the ground while he wiped his steaming face. The chest was apparently a heavy load to carry.

Had the driftwood spider-things been watching him all the time and could they have known of her as well? They had seemed genuinely surprised when they peeked around the pyramid to see her.

As she thought of them, she saw them in the plate. The image of Horseface flipped off, and there they were, toiling down the narrow bottom of a dry canyon. There seemed to be something grimly purposeful in their traveling.

We'd better get out of here, she told herself. Somehow she had the feeling that the sooner gone the better. She'd go back to the net and wait for Horseface. As soon as she thought of him, he was on the plate, again trudging along under the weight of the chest.

Strange—as soon as she thought of someone, he was on the screen. Mental tuning? She could not know. But this box was more than simple television. It was, perhaps, a spying apparatus that could penetrate into unguessed places and unknown situations.

She lifted the box, which was not heavy, and started rapidly down the slope, suddenly realizing that she might have betrayed a trust in leaving the net unguarded. When she finally saw it still there, a flood of relief flowed through her and she began to run.

She glanced to her right to see Horseface still plodding toward the net with the chest upon his shoulder. She felt an unexplained urgency to leave this planet quickly and assumed that Horseface must share her feeling, perhaps with good reason. The chest could not be his. He was stealing it.

She reached the edge of the net and tossed the television box onto it. The box was large enough to fit firmly there. Now Horseface was running heavily toward her, gasping and panting, with the chest bouncing on his shoulder.

She leaped on the net, balancing on it, reaching out to seize the chest and steady it as he hoisted it from his shoulder, thrusting it toward the net. She caught hold of a leather handle on one end of it and braced herself, hauling on the handle to make sure the chest stayed on the net and did not slide off it.

It struck the net and bounced, beginning to slide toward the edge. She dug in her heels and hauled at the chest, pulling it sidewise to stop the slide.

Out of the corner of an eye she saw the writhing of something deep purple rear out of the purple grass, and tentacles reached out. Horseface bleated in terror and ducked away, leaping for the net. His hands caught the edge, and he pulled himself part way up it, his legs dangling in the air. Enid grasped one of his arms and hauled. The purpleness fell toward them. Enid stared, stricken, at the gape of mouth, the sharp and gleaming teeth, the writhing of tentacles, and the malicious glint of what could have been an eye. Under them, the net jerked violently as a tentacle grasped its trailing edge.

Feet set, Enid heaved on Horseface and he came into the net, sliding along it. The net was rising, the purpleness dangling from it, clear of the ground now, but almost indistinguishable against the purple of the grass. The tentacle still grasped the net. Enid's hand fumbled blindly in her pocket for the yellow gemstone. She raised it and slammed it down against the tentacle. The purpleness shrilled in pain and the tentacle fell away. She watched but did not see the purpleness hit the ground. It was a purpleness blending into purpleness, and there was nothing to be seen.

Horseface was crawling swiftly up the net. He had grasped one of the leather handles of the chest and was hauling it behind him.

The net was rising in the air, and Enid began crawling on it, getting away from the edge. The televisor was sliding toward her and she reached out to grasp it. It flickered at her; when she looked down at it, Boone was there. He was in a place of grayness and seemed to be gray himself and there was a gray wolf with him.

“Boone!” she cried at him. “Boone, stay there! I will come to you!”

8

Corcoran

Jay Corcoran stepped out of the traveler into a marvelous late-April springtime. The traveler lay in a small mountain meadow. Below it was a narrow valley with a silver streak of water. Above it towered the knife-edge hills. New leaves with the soft greenness of early growth clothed all the trees, and the meadow wore a carpet of pastel-blooming wildflowers.

David came up to stand beside him. “We traveled a bit further than I had intended,” he said. “I had no time to set a course. I just got out of there.”

“How far?” asked Corcoran. “Not that it matters very much.”

“Actually, I don't suppose it does,” said David. “Closer, however, than I'd really like to the era from which we came. We're now, in round figures—take or give a few hundred either way—975,000 years beyond the beginning of your reckoning. As to where, probably somewhere in what you would call the colony of Pennsylvania. Perhaps you've heard of it.”

“In my day,” said Corcoran, “it was no longer a colony.”

“Give me a little time to figure it and I can pinpoint where we are within a mile or two and the time within a year or less, if you are interested.”

Corcoran shook his head. He pointed at the ridgetop up the slope from the meadow where they stood.