Time Storm

9

My heart jumped when I saw it; but after watching it closely for a little while, I calmed down. Clearly, the wall was standing still. We continued on up along the road, with its vertical, white face getting closer and closer, until finally we were far enough along to see where it ended. It did indeed cut across the road at last, about a quarter mile ahead of where we were; but it only continued beyond that point of intersection for about a hundred yards. By going off the asphalt to the left just a short distance, we could get around the end of the cloud-high curtain. Not only could we bypass it safely; but after going a little further, we would be able to get where we could see what was behind it, without ever having to set foot in what might be dangerous territory. I kept us moving.

We stopped finally and left the road, a good fifty or a hundred feet short of the point where it was intersected by the mistwall. Up this close to the wall, we could see it seeming to reach clear out of sight above us; and we could feel the peculiar breeze and the dust that always eddied from it, like the peppering of a fine spray on our face and hands. We struck off into the trees and brush to the left of the road, with the car in low gear and moving along level with the face of the wall.

It did not take long to reach the end of it. I kept on a little further, however, not wanting to turn the corner until I could see behind it. But though we kept going further and further, we still did not seem to quite clear the end. Finally, I saw why. We were not going to be able to see behind that mistwall after all. Here at what I had thought was its point of termination, it had either bent to the right and continued, or run into another mistwall going off at an angle in that direction.

At first, all I felt was disappointment that I was not going to get a look behind it. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the reason neither mistwall nor mistwall section had been moving had been because each had butted up against the other; and the two time change lines coming together had somehow created an unusual state or condition that had halted them both.

The moment that I thought it, I was hungry to see what was behind the intersection of those two mistwalls. Ever since, lying on the lizard raft, I had come up with the idea that perhaps those of us who were still here on the earth might be individually immune to the time changes, I had been playing with the idea of not avoiding the next mistwall we met, but deliberately walking into it, to see if I could get through and survive. Now I had a double reason to try going through the one before me. It was not merely to find out if I could get through with nothing worse than the unconsciousness I had experienced the first time, but to discover if there was something special or strange about the situation where one time change line ran into another. I stopped the Volvo.

I got out and looked at the wall. I also looked forward along the other angle of the second, or continued, mistwall to see where the road emerged once more from it, only about a couple of hundred yards away. It occurred to me that all I had to do was get back on the road and keep going, and the three of us would continue to stay safe, united, and happy. Or, I could turn and go through the mistwall; and I might, just might, learn something—that is, if I made it through all right.

I stood there. And the longer I stood, the stronger grew the desire in me to try going through the wall. It was exactly the way it had always been, from my earliest childhood, when my mind fastened on to a question and would not let it go without finding the answer. The phenomenon was like every time since I’d first let that relentless mental machinery in my head get its teeth into a problem. I remembered perfectly the terrible feeling I had felt during the initial seconds of that first time change, when I had thought I was having another heart attack. I remembered the miserable, helpless, empty sensation all through me after I had come to. I remembered every bit and part that had been bad about it; and still... still... as I stood there the wanting to go through that wall and find out what I did not know was like a sharp, sweet taste on my lips and a hunger that used me up inside like fire.

I turned back at last to look at the girl and Sunday. If I went through the wall and never returned, what would happen to them? I told myself that I owed them nothing, and something inside me called me a liar. At the same time, the thought of any responsibility I might have toward either of them had about as much deterrent effect on the hunger that was eating me up as a cup of water tossed on a burning building. I had no real choice. I had to go through that wall if I-and they-died for it. I turned back to the leopard and the girl, both of whom were still sitting in the car.

“Stay here!” I said. “You understand me? Stay right here. Don’t take as much as one step after me. Stay where you are!”

They both stared at me silently. One of the girl’s hands twitched —that was all. I turned and walked away from them, toward the mistwall, until I had to squint my eyes against the flying dust of it. Just before I reached the actual mist of the wall, I turned and looked back. The girl still sat with Sunday beside her, both watching me. Neither had moved a muscle.

I turned back again, closed my eyes to the sting of the dust, and walked blindly forward.

But the hard part was not the dust. The hard part was that it was like walking into an emotional tornado. It was bad. It was very bad. But, somehow, it was not as bad as I remembered it from the first time, outside cabin. Maybe this was because my first time through had left me with a sort of immunity; as if I had been inoculated against the effects I felt. Maybe it was easier because I now had some idea what to expect and was braced for it. Basically, I felt as if my soul had been ripped out of my being. I felt naked, sick and frightened. But, you know, it was not the kind of fear I feared—if that statement makes any sense to you. I stayed on my feet and came out the other side, walking.

I was suddenly assaulted by the clamor of dogs barking not far in front of me. I opened my eyes and saw them—more than a dozen of them, all tied to short leashes, but all barking, snarling and leaping against their tethers to get at me. They were tied to leashes anchored to thick stakes driven into the earth, in front of a slice of a house about fifty yards away, a house sitting on a chunk of a lawn in the interior angle of the two mistwalls. Behind the house was forest, and the house itself was a two-story frame building that looked as if it would be at home surrounded by a mid-western farmyard. As I looked, the door opened, and a woman came out with a rifle already at her shoulder, pointed at me.

“Drop your gun.” Her voice was a low, carrying soprano, soft but positive.

“Wait a minute,” I told her. “How about talking about this?”

I had no intention of dropping my gun. She was standing behind the dogs, in the open, with no rest or other support for her rifle, but with the weapon up and aimed. If I had to shoot her to live myself, I would. At that distance, unless she was a natural marks-woman, holding her gun steady enough to hit me would not be easy. Even from where I stood, I could see the end of the barrel waver slightly in the sunlight.

I was more concerned about her dogs; and I was not about to drop the one weapon that could defend me against them. In fact— the situation framed itself in my mind and produced its own inescapable conclusion—if she turned the dogs loose on me, I was going to shoot her first. They were dogs of all sizes, but the least of them must have gone at least forty pounds, which is heavy enough to be a potential man-killer. I could shoot three-quarters of them, and there would still be enough left to pull me down and finish me off. Nor did I think she would be able to pull them off in time to save my life, once she had set them on me.

“Listen!” I called to her. “I’m just here by accident—”

“I said put down your gun!” she cried. Her rifle went off, and a bullet whistled wide of me into the mistwall beside me.

“Quit that!” I said, raising the .22. “Or I’ll have to start shooting back.”

She hesitated—or if it wasn’t hesitation, at least she did not pull her trigger again. Perhaps the first shot had been more accidental than otherwise. I kept talking.

“Look,” I told her over the noise of the dogs. “I don’t want to bother you. I just happened to stumble on your place here, and I’ll be glad to be on my way again. Why would I want to be any trouble to you anyway? You’re armed, you’ve got your dogs; and I’m all alone. Now, why don’t we just both point our rifles to the ground and talk for a moment—”

Her gaze, which had been focused on me, shifted suddenly. Her rifle barrel changed its aim slightly.

“Alone?” she shouted back. “Do you call that alone?”

I turned to look; and sure enough, her question was a good one. If there was one thing I could count on—if there was one damn thing under the sun that I could absolutely be sure of with Sunday and the girl—it was that they would do exactly what I had told them not to. Somehow they had worked up the courage to come through the mistwall on their own, and now they were standing right behind me.

Of course, this changed the situation entirely. The woman had three times as much target, now. She might not hit me, but her chances of hitting one of our group was tripled. I felt a touch of something not far from panic. Add to what was happening the fact that with Sunday in view and scent, the dogs were now really going crazy; while Sunday’s own back was beginning to arch like the stave of a drawn bow. He did not like dogs.

But for all that, he would not leave me to face them alone. He pressed close against my leg and snarled softly in his throat, watching the dogs. It was magnificently touching and, at the same time, monumentally exasperating to know that the crazy cat would stay beside me, even if I tried to drive him back with a club.

I looked again at the woman—just in time. She had grown arm-tired of holding the rifle to her shoulder and was moving now to untie the nearest dogs. There was no time for me to debate the ethics of the situation. I put a shot from my own rifle into the dirt between her and the animal she was approaching. She froze.

“Don’t try letting any of them go!” I called to her. “I don’t want to hurt you; but I’m not going to let us be chewed up by your animals. Step back now and put your own gun down.”

She backed up, but without letting go of her rifle. I put another shot from the .22 into the frame of the doorway behind her. She checked, hesitated, and let the gun slip from her hands to the earth at her feet.

“All right!” I said. “Now, I’m not going to hurt you, but I’ve got to make sure you’re not going to hurt us. Stay where you are and don’t move.”

She stood still. I turned to the girl.

“Hold, Sunday!” I said. “Stay right where you are, both of you. This time, I mean it!”

I went forward, holding the .22. The dogs had their tethers stretched taut, trying to reach me, so that it was possible for me to see where I needed to walk to stay out of reach of each one of them as I went through their pack. I came up to the woman, bent and picked up her gun. It was a 30.06, a good, clean, hunting rifle. With that in my hands, I felt more secure.

I knew what I had to do, then—and that was shoot the dogs while they were all still safely tied up. But when I raised her rifle I found I could not do it. It was not just that the woman would be vulnerable without them once I had taken her rifle and gone on. It was also the matter that I was still too civilized. I could not get over thinking of them as pets, instead of as the four-legged killers she had turned them into. I twisted about to face the woman.

“Look,” I said. “I’m going to have to kill your dogs to make sure they won’t hurt us, unless you can think of some way to fix things so I can trust them not to attack us.”

She sighed and shivered at the same time. It was as if all the strength in her had suddenly run out.

“I can do it,” she said, in a dead voice. She looked away from me, to the dogs. “Quiet! Down—all of you. Down! Be quiet!”

They obeyed, to my astonishment. Their barking and snarling fell gradually into silence. They stared at the woman, licking their muzzles, and lay down one by one until they were all on the ground and silent, watching.

“That’s pretty good,” I said to the woman.

“I used to run an obedience school,” she answered in the same dead voice. “You don’t have to worry. You can go now.”

“Sorry,” I said. “But I don’t know what else you have in the way of guns or dogs inside that house of yours. Let’s go inside. You first.”

She stiffened.

“No!”

“Calm down, damn it!” I said. “I just want to look around.”

She was still stiff.

“Just a minute,” she said. She turned her head and called back through the open doorway into the dark interior behind her. “Wendy, come out here.”

“My daughter,” she said, harshly.

We waited, and after a second, a blonde-haired little girl of early grade school age came out and pressed herself up against the woman, who put her arm around the child.

“It’s all right,” the woman said, “we’re just going to show this man our house.”

She turned then, and with one arm still around her daughter, led the way inside. I followed, carrying both rifles. There was not a great deal to see inside. A time change line had cut the house very nearly in half. A portion of the living room, all of the kitchen and bathroom, plus one bedroom and a half, remained. The bright sun coming in the uncurtained windows of the rooms that were still whole made the spartan existence that the two of them had been living here all very clear and plain. I went over the rooms carefully, but there were no other guns and only some kitchen knives that might have possibilities as weapons.

The woman said nothing all the time I was looking around. She stood by the living room window and glanced out from time to time. I thought she was checking on the dogs, because they stayed quiet. But I was wrong.

“Is that your wife out there?” she asked at last.

“Wife?” I said.

For a second, the question made no sense at all. I looked out the window where she was looking and saw only Sunday and the girl. Then, of course, I understood.

“No!” I said. “She’s just a kid. I picked her up after she’d just been through a time change; and it mixed her up pretty badly. She’s not right yet, for that matter. I—”

I broke off. I had been about to go on and tell her about my previous conviction that Swannee had escaped the time changes, and a lot more that was purely personal. But it was none of her business. For that matter, the girl was none of her business, either. The fact of the matter was, I had long since drifted into ignoring any sexual quality in the girl; if I had ever paid any attention to that, in the first place. My mind had been full of my own personal problems. But I could hardly try to explain that to this woman without confusing the matter more than I would clear it up. I was a little surprised at the strength of the sudden urge in me to talk about it; then I realized that she was the first rational, adult human I had met since the beginning of the time storms. But it was still none of her business.

I looked once more around the living room of the house, ready to leave now. The woman spoke quickly, as if she could read my mind.

“Why don’t you ask her to come in?”

“Ask her in?” I said. “If she comes in, the leopard has to come in, too.”

She grew a little pale at that and held the young child closer to her side. But then she tossed her head back.

“Is he dangerous?” she asked. “The leopard?”

“Not if the two of you stay well back from him,” I said. “But if he comes in here, he’s got to pass by those dogs of yours, and I can’t imagine that happening.”

“I can,” she said, flatly. “They’ll obey orders.”

She walked with her daughter to the door, which was standing open, and through it. I followed her.

“Come on in!” she called to the girl and Sunday. Of course the girl neither moved nor answered, any more than Sunday did.

“It’s all right,” I told the girl. “You and Sunday come in.” I turned to the woman. “And you’d better control those dogs.”

The girl had already started toward the house; but Sunday held back. Seeing he would not come, she turned back to him. I had to go out to both of them.

“Come on,” I said. I took a fistful of the loose skin at the scruff of Sunday’s neck and led him with me toward the house. He came; a little reluctantly, but he came. The dogs tied nearest to his path shrank back from him as we approached, but those farther off whined and crawled forward to the limit of their tethers, white-toothed and panting.

“Down!” said the woman from the doorstep, and, hearing her, if I’d been a dog I would not have delayed doing what she said. The soft soprano now had a knife-edge to it. It lifted and cut. It carried clearly without her seeming to have to raise the volume. “All of you-down! Quiet!” The dogs followed the girl and Sunday with eyes and wet breath; but they neither got to their feet nor raised a clamor.

We all went back inside the house and the woman shut the door behind us. One lone bark sounded from the yard as the door closed. The woman opened it again and looked out. There was silence. She closed the door once more and this time the silence continued.

“Hello,” she said to the girl. “I’m Marie Walcott, and this is my daughter, Wendy.”

The girl—my girl—said nothing. Her face had a look that made it appear merely as if she did not understand, but which I knew well enough to recognize as an expression of stubbornness.

“She doesn’t talk,” I told the woman. “I mean, she can talk, but she doesn’t like to—part of the shock she went through, I suppose. But she hears and understands you, all right.”

The girl stepped to my side, at that, then went around me and knelt down on the other side of Sunday, putting an arm around the leopard’s neck.

“Poor thing,” said the woman, watching her. The expression on the girl’s face did not change. The woman looked back at me. “What are you going to do now?”

“We’ll move on,” I said. “I told you that. And I’m taking this rifle of yours. I’ll leave you my .22 rifle—I’ll drop it about five hundred yards out, so we’ll be well gone by the time you get to it. It’s a lighter gun and it’ll suit you better in any use you’ve got for a rifle. The dogs are your real protection, and I’m leaving you those, alive. But try to track us down with them, and I’ll shoot every one of them that Sunday doesn’t tear up.”

“I wouldn’t come after you that way,” said the woman. “Where are you going anyway?”

“Into the futuremost segment of time-changed country I can find,” I said. “Somewhere there must be somebody who’ll understand what’s happened to the world.”

“What makes you so sure there’s anyone like that?”

“All right,” I said, “if there isn’t we’re still going to be looking-for the best piece of time to stay with, or some way of living with the time changes, themselves. I’ve been running away from the mistwalls; but now I’m going through any one I meet, so I can find out what’s on the other side.”

She looked out her window toward the two mistwalls overshadowing her dogs and her home.

“What is on the other side out there?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t like it,” I said. “What’s farther in?” I pointed through the back of the house toward the forest that crowded close upon her place.

“I don’t know,” she said. “There used to be a town of fifty thousand people—Gregory, Illinois—about ten miles down the road, there. But there’s not even any road, now. I don’t know.”

I looked closely at her.

“You haven’t moved from this place since the time storms first started?”

“That’s right.” She looked somber. “Wendy and I sat here and prayed, after the first time change came close. At first we prayed for Tim—for my husband to come back. But now for some time we’ve just prayed that the mistwalls will leave us alone.”

“Two of them are right on top of you,” I said. “Didn’t you think of getting away from them?”

“To what?” she said, shrugging. “I’ve got half a year’s supply of food in the basement here—had to, since we live out of town. If they move over us, then it’s over, all at once. Meanwhile, we’re safer here than someplace else. I ran a boarding kennel, so I had the dogs, here, to guard me. And there was—or we thought there was—always the chance my husband....”

She shrugged again and stopped talking.

“All right,” I hefted both rifles and turned toward the door. “Come on, Sunday, Girl. As for you, Mrs. Walcott, wait fifteen minutes and then follow us out. You’ll find the .22 leaning against a tree, a little way into the woods, there.”

I opened the door. The woman’s voice spoke from behind me to the dogs, commandingly.

“Quiet! Down!” Then her tone changed. “We could go with you.”

I turned around. My first, unthinking reaction was that she was joking. I saw she was not. Then, suddenly, I saw and understood a great many other things.

I had been assuming, without really looking at her, that she was housewifely middle-aged. She was wearing slacks and a man’s shirt, and of course she had on no makeup. Her hair was cut short —rather clumsily cut short; and there were dark circles of weariness under her eyes. By contrast with the girl, the only human member of the opposite sex I had seen since the first time storm, at first glance, Marie Walcott had looked maturely-fleshed and unremarkable. Now, suddenly I realized that she was probably no older than I. In fact, given the conditions of civilization once more she would have been damned attractive. She was full grown, someone my own age, with the body of a woman rather than that of a half-grown girl, with a sane adult mind and capability of speech. Suddenly I remembered that it had been a long time since I and any woman....

I noticed all this in a moment; and in the same moment, I realized that she had wanted me to notice—had set out to make me notice. It changed the whole picture.

“Go with us?” I said, more to myself than to her.

“We’d all be safer, in one large group,” she said. “You could use another grown-up. And of course, there’s the dogs.”

She was right about the dogs. A pack like that, properly trained, could really be valuable.

“There’s your daughter,” I said. “She’s too young to be making long marches every day.”

“I’ve got a cart the dogs can pull her in—also, we’d be running into roads, and some kind of transportation sooner or later, don’t you think? Meanwhile, I... we’d both feel better with a man around.”

She was giving me all the practical reasons why our teaming up would work, and I was countering with all the practical arguments against it; and we both knew that we were talking around the one real reason I should or should not add her to my party, which was that I was male and she was female.

“Why don’t you think it over?” she said. “Stay here overnight and think about it. Maybe we can talk about it some more, later on.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll stay until tomorrow.” I glanced out the window.

“I’d better camp off by the edge of the trees, there,” I said. “Sunday isn’t going to take to your dogs just like that—or they to him.”

“Sunday?” said the woman. “Is that what you call him? I think you heard me say my name. I’m Marie Walcott and this is Wendy.”

“I’m Marc Despard,” I said.

“Marc, I’m pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand and I took it. It was a strange feeling to shake hands after the last few weeks. Her hand was small but firm, and there were calluses at the base of her fingers. “Are you French?”

I laughed. “The name’s French-Canadian.”

She let go of my hand and looked at the girl.

“I didn’t hear...”

“She’s never told me her name,” I said. I looked at the girl. “How about it? Do you want to tell us now?”

The girl was absolutely silent. I shrugged.

“I’ve just been calling her ‘Girl,’ ” I said. “I guess you’ll have to do the same.”

“Maybe,” Marie smiled at her, “she’ll tell us her name—later on, when she feels like it.”

The girl stood without a word.

“Don’t count on it,” I said to Marie.