A Question of Time

Chapter 19

Maria on straying out of the cottage into the dusk followed the same call that had brought her down into the Deep Canyon. She went exploring, looking for the source of the attraction.

The call was voiceless and soundless, but somehow unmistakable and almost irresistible, like the voices of friends, and—this struck Maria as very odd—of devoted pets. It led her past the workshop-cave, all dark and silent, and upstream along the little creek.

She walked on in the certainty that something—glorious—was waiting for her, just a little farther upstream. Something—she did not know what—but something truly glorious.

The afternoon of New Year's Eve had arrived on the South Rim. The last hours of 1991 were running out.

"All right," Joe Keogh said. "They're both gone. Cathy left a note, this time. Is anyone going to argue that Maria might have just wandered off by accident?"

No one of the group assembled in the main room of the Tyrrell House was going to defend that theory.

The gathering included Sarah, Bill, and John, as well as Joe himself, and Mr. Strangeways. Mounted predatory heads looked down with bared fangs from the log walls.

Curious stone animals, the work of Edgar Tyrrell, stared from shelves and tables.

Old Sarah looked at Mr. Strangeways. She said: "Cathy has gone down into the Deep Canyon again. Can you get her back this time? Somehow I doubt it."

Drakulya did not immediately respond. He was in a particularly dark mood. The signs were subtle, but to Joe, who had known him for years, they were unmistakable.

John Southerland started to say: "Maria must have followed Cathy—"

The bearded man turned from the window, where he had been watching occasional snowflakes, with an outburst of anger. "No!"

"No?"

"No. The two young women may be together, but only accidentally. I ought to have recognized the hand that was on her!"

"On Maria?"

"Of course!"

Cathy, standing in the entrance to the workshop-cave and looking out, was astonished and frightened to see Maria approaching, in the company of a whirl of lights, a monstrous, glowing presence.

At first glance it had appeared to Cathy that the figure walking at Maria's side was a young man in work clothes. But amid a swirl of lights he disappeared, to be immediately replaced by the image of a young woman with red hair, similarly dressed.

Cathy retreated a step, reaching for Tyrrell's arm. "What is it, Father?"

Tyrrell's eyes were glowing, his voice was reverent. "It is the life of the planet, daughter. The light of the world."

For just a flash of time a new shape was visible among the lights: a saber-toothed tiger. Cathy thought she could not have been mistaken. Then all three figures reappeared in rapid succession, followed by a flurry of others, less distinct.

With the onset of this kaleidoscopic display, Maria seemed to pull free of whatever influence had made her walk so trustingly beside this incredible companion. Catching sight of Cathy and Tyrrell standing at the entrance to the workshop-cave, she ran toward them.

"I don't know where I am!" she cried. "Cathy, help me. I don't know what's happening!"

Cathy would have stepped forward to try to help, but her father's hand on her arm, immovable, held her back.

Maria looked desperately from one of them to the other. She made a choking noise, and in a moment had gone running off into the darkness.

Stalking slowly, unhurried, the thing of light began to follow her. Once more its shape was simply that of a young man, walking.

"Father, what is it?" This time Cathy made the question an intense demand.

"Your friend will not be harmed, girl. Perhaps she will be allowed to feel the embrace of the earth, of life itself. Perhaps she will even be granted a kind of immortality. What happier fate could any of us hope for?"

Cathy stared at her father. Then, suddenly terrified, she broke away and ran impulsively down-canyon, going in the opposite direction from that taken by Maria and her leisurely pursuer.

Cathy's father was shouting something after her. But he made no move to bring her back.

Up in the Tyrrell House on the South Rim, Drakulya was insisting that the rescue operation be methodically organized, even if they delayed the start a little.

He warned those who were going with him that they were volunteering for a perilous foray into a territory where none of them had ever been before: the territory of the vampire Edgar Tyrrell.

"More importantly, we are going into the domain of a unique creature. One that is stranger than any vampire I have ever known—and in some ways, at least, more dangerous."

Joe Keogh said: "One of my people is missing. We all understand it's dangerous; now how soon do we get started?"

"You do not get started, Joseph. You remain here, on the Rim."

"My ankle is all right."

"It is not. Great agility may be needed down below. More than two or three people will not be needed." Strangeways looked at John Southerland and Bill Burdon. "You two will come with me."

"The more people we have," said Joe, "the better we can search."

Bill, unconsciously ignoring the man who was still formally his employer, acknowledged the orders of the new leader with a businesslike nod. John, who had some idea of what he might be getting into, looked very thoughtful. But he nodded too.

"I've still got Brainard's gun," Joe said suddenly.

Drakulya looked at him again. "Then I think you should give it to whichever of these young men you think better able to use it. We may also face mundane perils below, against which firearms could be helpful."

"Once we get down there," Bill was volunteering, "I can probably find my way back to the place where I found Cathy's camp."

"That may be useful. We shall see."

Meanwhile Joe was pulling out the parts of the revolver. He had carried it, disassembled, in his coat pockets to this meeting, on the chance it might be wanted. "It'll just take me a minute to put this back together."

Drakulya viewed the pieces of firearm with innate distaste, but nodded. "No doubt it will be effective against certain creatures of the Miocene, who as I understand have no respect at all for humanity. I expect to be fully occupied with other matters."

At this point old Sarah emerged from the bedroom, where she had changed into trousers and a woolen shirt.

"Mr. Strangeways, I am going with you."

No one said anything. Everyone present looked at Sarah's aged, frail form.

But she persisted. "How will you find the cottage, and the cave, if I do not show you? I think Cathy will have gone there, this time, and I suppose the other one is with her."

Strangeways gave his little reptilian sigh. "Your suggestion has merit," he conceded.

Joe was outraged. "If an eighty-year-old woman is going—"

The bearded leader silenced him, for the moment, with a raised hand.

"If you do not take me with you," continued Sarah, "I shall go down by myself, if I die on the way. Two young lives are at stake."

Drakulya studied her for a long moment, then bowed lightly. "As you wish," he said. "In the face of such determination—" He looked at Joe. "Very well, both of you. Provided you follow my orders."

A few minutes later, Drakulya led his four followers out of the house. Old Sarah, jacketed and booted like the rest, walked beside him, leaning lightly on his arm. Her eyes were dreamy, as if in her mind she had already completed this journey into the past. The little procession passed into the snow-hazed light of midafternoon, moving unnoticed among tourists toward Bright Angel trailhead.

Joe now had Brainard's revolver, reassembled, loaded and tucked into an inside pocket of his winter jacket. Everyone but Sarah was carrying a canteen and some trail food.

Cathy, fleeing into darkness from the lighted workshop-cave, turned to see her father apparently engaged in some kind of friendly discussion with the thing of lights and changing shapes—somehow, she thought, he must have called it back from following Maria.

But she, Cathy, could not go near the thing. Suppressing a sob, she turned and ran again. The night was not yet too dark for her to find a path. For whatever reason, she was not pursued.

The night, under a sky that held what looked like a million stars and an incredibly large crescent of a moon, never grew too dark for Cathy to find a place to walk. But the absence of familiar constellations was disconcerting, and the cacophony of unfamiliar animal noises even more so. Ignoring these oddities as best she could, she pushed on down the canyon. This was still her childhood home.

On the bank of the marvelous, starlit river she paused to rest, sitting on a boulder, thinking of what her father—she could not help still thinking of him as her real father—had told her about rapids in the flow of time.

Time passed. The sound of a footstep moving gravel jarred Cathy back to an awareness of her immediate surroundings.

It was only Maria, approaching in the starlight.

"Cathy? Thank God it's you. Help me. It—that thing—has stopped chasing me. But it wants me."

"Those people, moving in the light?"

"They're not really people, not any more. There are at least two of them in it now. They come out and talk sometimes, and I thought at first that they were real. But I'm sure now that they're not really people any more. They're just in there, with all those—animals. All part of one great—thing."

Maria came close, and stood directly in front of Cathy.

Cathy said: "My father wouldn't—" But then she remembered her father's vague warnings about danger in the Deep Canyon, what he had said about Maria's fate not mattering.

"Cathy."

"What?"

"Stay with me. How long is it till dawn?"

"I don't know."

"What are we going to do?"

"When it's light again we'll go back to the house."

"And then?"

"And then I don't know."

The five people slowly descending Bright Angel Trail had left the late twentieth century and its swarming tourists well behind them. Drakulya and his four followers moved through a shrunken, adolescent Canyon, among the flora and fauna that flourished a million years before they were born.

It was still daylight, or it was daylight again, under clouds. There was light enough to see a snarling, furry nightmare approaching among the rocks and scanty brush, to see it before it became an immediate threat. Joe, aiming to kill, sent a revolver bullet close enough to discourage the approach of a saber-toothed tiger.

Studying the landscape warily, he observed how something that looked like a wolf—and yet was somehow different from any other wolf that he had ever seen—watched this demonstration intently from a little distance.

"What was that?" asked John, pointing in another direction. "I thought I saw an elephant."

"A hairy elephant," confirmed Bill's voice. "Those tusks, they looked like shovels."

Joe carried the heavy pistol ready in his right hand. The group pressed on, with Drakulya in the lead, a leader who paid no attention to such mundane matters as a few restless predators. To him they were simply animals, not worthy of much concern. Sarah was still at the leader's side, and now, more often than not, he was carrying the old woman, lifting her over obstacles as if she weighed no more than a glove.

Meanwhile she gave directions in a weak but eager voice.

They had reached the very dooryard of the little house before Cathy came out to greet them.

"Mother," she said at once, when her eyes fell on old Sarah.

Tears were running in Sarah's eyes. "A very old and feeble mother, dear. Can you ever forgive me, Cathy? I tried to hide you, to protect you, to save you, and perhaps there was no need."

"Where is Tyrrell?" Drakulya demanded.

"My father rests during the day."

"If I can face this clouded daylight, he can do as much. Where does he rest?"

The young woman in the doorway shook her head. "I don't know."

What Drakulya might have said or done next, Joe was never to learn.

Two voices were heard, coming from down canyon. In a moment Maria came into view in that direction. She was walking hand in hand with the glowing image ofEdgar Tyrrell.

"He has given himself to it," Drakulya muttered. "Or it has taken him."

The walking, glowing man, guiding an apparently willing Maria by the hand, came within easy hailing distance, and called out: "Welcome, Prince of Wallachia."

"I do not come in peace, or in friendship."

"Then let your fate be on your own head, Drakulya." Tyrrell's image glowed and wavered. He dropped Maria's hand, and she began to edge away from him.

Tyrrell's voice boomed out. "You see, I need fear the sun no longer," he proclaimed. "I am no longer nosferatu." And with that he disappeared—

—to be replaced by a green-eyed young man. "I am no longer a mere breather," this one said. And in turn vanished—

—to be replaced by the red-haired young woman, whose lips moved but whose words could not be heard. And then replaced by one older human figure, and another, their faces and outlines blurred, so that no one could see what they might have looked like in full life.

—and, when his turn in the cycle came round again, Tyrrell was back.

He said: "This is our planet's life that dances before you, Drakulya. It was madness on my part to think that I could ever capture the essence of earth's life in a carved rock—"

Drakulya's voice rang out. "Tyrrell, if you have still enough of your mind left to understand, hear me. What you have done is madness. The madness of the artist is allowable, even necessary. But you have gone beyond that. Human lives, not only your own, have been destroyed. The damage you have done to the planet's spirit must be undone."

"Human lives?" The artist was scornful. "What are they? What is any human life, even yours or mine, compared to this?"

"Speaking as a human, I consider my own life a very great thing indeed."

Drakulya had done with arguing. He spread his arms, and murmured magic.

To Joe Keogh, standing by with Brainard's pistol ready, the language sounded something like simple German. But he knew it must be more than that.

Suddenly, the ground of the Deep Canyon quivered underneath Joe's feet. Others were feeling a great change too; uneasiness spread among the group.

"Hello. I'm Jake."

Tyrrell was gone again. Now the creature showed the face of the green-eyed young man, whoever he had been in life. It called itself by Jake's name, and then once more by Camilla's.

Camilla and Jake appeared in rapid alternation, each of them calling for the other. For a brief time their voices sounded desperate.

Then the young man, whose cheerfulness seemed to have been fully recovered, held the stage again. "This is Jake, everybody. We're going to be friends."

Maria had been slowly making her way to join her rescuers. Like most of them, she watched in awe and fear.

Drakulya's arms were still extended, his lips still murmured words.

The creature was visibly beginning to dissolve under the magical assault—the powers of the earth, Joe thought, were re-ordering themselves. Sequentially the thing of light disgorged a number of animals. Joe could recognize bears and deer. His mind recoiled from less familiar shapes.

Tyrrell had not yet been vanquished. He reappeared again, shouting something to Sarah—Joe could not understand the words. He called his daughter's name for a last time.

Cathy did not seem to hear. Her full attention was somewhere else.

"I need tools, physical tools," Drakulya cried to her, and to Sarah. "Where are they kept?"

"The workshop!"

Willing young feet dashed away. Young hands were soon back, laden with heavy, mundane miner's tools.

"Those are my tools!" screamed the wraith of Jake, looming amid boiling light.

Drakulya grabbed up a miner's pick.

The man who had been called Strangeways struck at the ground with iron, using all his strength. The tormented earth buckled up, sending people staggering, exposing a sharply demarcated seam between two layers of rock.

"The Great Unconformity," murmured Sarah.

The seam writhed in the earth, as if it sought to position itself below the creature. The being, the thing, the structure of light, was beginning to unravel. In a startlingly brief time it was gone.

The ground beneath the feet of the survivors ceased to heave convulsively. Instead it was bending, as if a hollowness were under it. The strata of rocks, no longer hard and dense, were stretching, changing uncontrollably.

"Back, get back!" Drakulya had abandoned magic and was shouting at his friends. "Withdraw, retreat uphill!"

Joe was still half-crippled, but with the adrenaline flowing and John Southerland's strong shoulder offering support he could force himself to run uphill, through a rapidly altering landscape, out of the Deep Canyon. Drakulya ran beside him, carrying Sarah, with Cathy hovering nearby. Others were running on their own power, under a sky that suddenly and repeatedly changed its cloud-configuration and modified its light.

Bill Burdon, feeling safe enough to turn for a look back, beheld a churning, upswelling mass of light and shadow, tones reversed as in a photographic negative, rapidly, silently, filling in the depths from which they had just climbed. He cried out in alarm: "Is that lava?"

Their leader grunted: "No, only energy, but quite as dangerous. Stay ahead of it!"

Rushing and scrambling, the visitors from the late twentieth century did their best to accomplish that.

At last the rocky ground regained stability. Around them, mundane snow began to fall.