“It had been planted out here, opposite the road,” said Lansing. “Where any visitor might see it. But it must have blown over or been knocked down and the sand drifted over it. It would never have been found if I’d not stumbled over it.”
“I wish I were better at reading it,” she said. “My Russian is fairly limited. Sufficient to spell my way through a technical report, but that is all. Many engineers, like myself, can read some Russian; it’s almost obligatory that we can. The Russians are a very technical people. It’s worth some effort to try to follow what they’re doing. Of course, there is a free exchange of ideas, but—”
“A free exchange with Russia?”
“Yes, of course. Why not? The same as is true of all the other technical nations.”
“I suppose,” he said, “that there is no reason.” He upended the sign, and using his belt knife, pounded the stake into the ground.
“It’ll stay there until it blows over or falls again,” he said. “For all the good it’ll do.”
They returned to the camp, proceeding slowly so Jurgens could keep pace with them. The sun was halfway down the western sky; they’d spent a longer time at the cube than they had thought.
The fire had burned down to a bed of gray ash, but a few coals still remained when Lansing brushed the ash away. He fed in small dry twigs until he had a blaze, then patiently built the fire up. Mary stood and watched him, saying nothing, while he worked. She knew as well as he, he thought, that there was no use staying here, that they had done as much as could be done and they might as well head for the city—if, as Mary had said, there really was a city.
By now surely he would be missed back at the college, he told himself; perhaps by now his abandoned car would have been found. How much of a stir would his disappearance cause, he wondered—perhaps no more than a ten-day wonder, a few headlines in the press, and then he’d be forgotten, the case filed away along with all the other unsolved disappearances that popped up every year. He held his hands over the fire for its warmth. The day was warm, not chilly, but still it seemed that he felt a brush of cold.
He and the others, he and the many others who had disappeared—had some of the others who had disappeared come this way? he wondered.
“Back at the cube,” said Mary, “you seemed surprised that there should be research cooperation with the Russians. Why did you question it?”
“In my time,” he told her, “the United States and some of the other nations are at odds with Russia. There was a revolution during the First World War and Russia became a communist state.”
“The First War?”
“Yes, the First World War. The Second World War. The nuclear bomb.”
“Edward, in my world there were no world wars, no—what did you call it?—nuclear bomb?”
He squatted back from the fire on his heels. “So that was the crisis point between your world and mine. You had no First World War and we did. Tell me, how about the British Empire?”
“It still is sound and solid. The sun never sets on it. And you said something else. The United States, I believe. The United States of what?”
“The United States of America.”
“But North America is part of the British Empire and South America a part of Spain—except for Brazil, that is.”
He gaped at her.
“It’s the truth,” she said. “That is the way it is.”
“But the American colonies revolted.”
“Yes, back in the eighteenth century. The revolt was short-lived.”
“So the crisis point goes back farther than the First World War.”
“I’m a bit confused,” she said, “but apparently it does. You told us about your friend’s speculation about crisis points and alternate worlds. You didn’t believe him when he talked of it. You thought he was fantasizing and maybe he thought so, too. He was just trying to make a point. When you told us back at the inn, I thought what a pretty conceit it was, how imaginative. From what you’ve told me, it must be more than a conceit.”
“You must have lived in a good world. Better than the one I had.”
“It’s solid and serene,” she said. “Almost no wars, only a few little ones. The big power blocs have carved out their territories and finally, by and large, seem content with what they have. There are, of course, cries against imperialism, but no one pays attention.”
“India, of course, is starving.”
She shrugged. “India always starves. There are too many people.”
“And Africa exploited?”
“Edward, are you for me or against me? How do you stand with the British Empire?”
“Why, not too badly. I’ve felt at times that we lost something big and comfortable when it fell apart after World War Two.”
“It fell apart?”
“Utterly apart. Just like that.”
For a moment he caught the stricken look on her face, then the face smoothed over.
“I am sorry,” he said.
She said, “I’ll put together supper. You get in wood for the fire. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“Ravenous,” he said. “We had an early breakfast and no lunch.”
“I’ll help with the wood,” said Jurgens. “Even stove up as I am, I still can be of help.”
“Sure,” said Lansing. “Come along.”
After supper they built up the fire and sat around it.
“So we are learning slowly where we came from,” Mary said, “but we still have no idea where we’re going. I came from a continuation of the great empires, the logical working out of the empire concept, and you from a world in which the empires have disappeared. Or was it only the British Empire that disappeared?”
“Not only the British. All nations lost at least the major part of their colonial holdings. In a sense there still are empires, although not quite the same. Russia and the United States. They aren’t called empires—they’re called super-powers.”
“Sandra’s world is harder to figure out,” she said. “It sounds much like a fairyland. Like a combination of the ancient Grecian ethos, or what sentimentalists would call the Grecian ethos, and recurring Renaissances. What was it she said—the Third Renaissance? Anyhow, it sounds like an unreal world. A beautifully fuzzy world.”
“We don’t know about the Parson and the Brigadier,” said Lansing, “except for what the Brigadier said about playing war games.”
“I think he was given the impression,” Mary said, “that we disapproved of his world. He tried to make it sound like knightly medieval tournaments, but I think it might be more than that.”
“The Parson is the close-mouthed one,” said Lansing. “That business about the Glory in the turnip patch, but that is all he told us. He kept silent after that.”
“His world sounds like a dismal one,” she said. “Dismal and holy. The two so often go together. But we’re forgetting Jurgens.”
“You’ll excuse me, please,” said Jurgens.
“Oh, it’s all right with me,” said Mary. “We were just gossiping.”
“What beats the hell out of me,” said Lansing, “is trying to figure out what we have in common. The one reason I can think of that we should have been pitchforked here is that all six of us are the same kind of people. But it’s apparent, when you think of it, that there are few similarities among us.”
“A college professor,” she said, “a military man, a parson, a poetess and—how would you describe yourself, Jurgens?”
“I’m a robot. That is all. I’m not even human.”
“Cut that out,” said Lansing sharply. “Whatever sent us here made no distinction between a robot and the human. Which makes you one of us.“
”Later it may come clear,“ said Mary, ”this common denominator that you mention. Right now I can’t seem to find it.”
“We’re not the only ones,” said Lansing. “There have been others here before us and there may be others after us. It all spells out to a program or a project. I wish someone
would tell us what kind of program or project. I’d feel more comfortable about it.”
“So would I,” said Mary.
Jurgens struggled to his feet and, balancing on his crutch, threw more wood upon the fire.
“Did you hear that?” asked Mary.
“I heard nothing,” Lansing said.
“There’s something out there in the dark. I heard it snuffling.”
All of them listened. There was nothing. The dark was silent.
Then Lansing heard it—a sniffling. He held up his hand in a warning for the others to stay silent.
The sniffling stopped, then started again, a short distance from where it had been before. As if some animal had its nose against the ground, sniffing at a spoor. It stopped, then took up again, in a different place, as if whatever was doing the sniffling was circling the camp-fire.
Jurgens pivoted about, flailing his crutch. Lansing shook his head at him. Jurgens froze.
They listened. For long minutes there was no sniffling and they relaxed.
“You heard it?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” said Jurgens. “It started right behind me.”
“There was something out there, then?”
“It’s gone now,” said Lansing. “Jurgens scared it off.”
“Sandra heard it last night,” said Mary. “It’s been here all the time.”
“It’s not unusual,” said Lansing. “It’s something we should expect. Wild animals are always attracted to a fire.”
FIVE DAYS WERE REQUIRED to reach the city. The trip could have been made in two if they had not been forced to match their pace to Jurgens’s.
“I should have gone back to the inn,” the robot said. “I could have made it there alone. I could have stayed there and waited for you. That way I wouldn’t hold you up.”
“Then what would we have done,” said Lansing, “when the time came that we needed you and you weren’t with us?”
“That day may never come. You may never have any need of me.”
Lansing, cursing him roundly as a fool, kept the robot going.
As they progressed, the character of the country changed. The land still was rolling land, but it became more arid. The groves of trees were farther apart and smaller, both in extent and in the size of the trees, which began to tend to scrubbiness. The wind blew hot instead of cool. The little streams on which they depended for water were farther apart and smaller, often no more than trickles.
Each night the Sniffler prowled the campfire. On one occasion, the second night out, Lansing and Jurgens, armed with flashlights, went out into the darkness to seek some sign of it. There was nothing, not even tracks. The land about the fire was sandy and should have shown tracks, but there were none.
“It’s following us,” said Mary. “It travels along with us. Even when it isn’t sniffling, I know that it’s out there. It’s out there watching us.”
“It hasn’t threatened us,” said Lansing, trying to soothe her. “It means no harm. If it had meant any harm, it would have acted before now. It has had all sorts of chances.”
After the first couple of days, they often sat silent around the campfire, all talked out, no longer needing to talk to keep alive the close association the trip had formed among them.
At times, in those long silences, Lansing found himself thinking back to his former life and was surprised to discover that the college where he had taught seemed a distant place and the friends he had there were friends of long ago. It has been no more than a week, he reminded himself, forcing himself to remind himself, and already there was the feel of years between this place and the college town. Nostalgia swept over him and he felt the powerful urge to turn about and retrace his steps, to get up from the campfire and go back down the trail. Although, he knew, it would not be that simple. Even should he go back, he’d be going back no farther than the inn or, perhaps, the woodland glen in which he had first found himself. There was no trail back to the college, to Andy, to Alice, to the world that he had known. Between him and his former life lay an imponderable and he had no idea what it was.
He could not go back. He must go on, for only in that way could he possibly find the way back home. There was something here that he must find, and until he found it, there was no road back home. Even when he found it, if he ever did, there still was no guarantee there would be a way back home.
It might be a foolish thing to do, but he had no choice. He must keep on. He could not drop out, as the four card players at the inn had dropped out.
He tried to conjure up a logical mechanism by which he—he and the others—had been translated to this place. The whole thing smacked of magic yet it could not be magic. Whatever had been done must have utilized the application of certain physical laws. Magic itself, if it did exist, he argued with himself, must be no more than the application of physical laws as yet unknown back in the world he’d come from.
Andy, talking over their drinks at the Faculty Club, had talked of an end to knowledge, an end to physical law. But Andy had not known or even had a glimmer of understanding about the concepts that he had talked about; he was doing no more than flapping his mouth around to produce philosophical mutterings.
Could the answer be here, he wondered, in this world where he sat beside the campfire? Might that be what he was supposed to hunt for—and if it were, and if he found it, would he recognize it? Even should he find the end of knowing, would he know it?
Disgusted with himself, he tried to wipe his mind clean of his thoughts, but they refused to go away.
They found a camping place where the other three had stopped, the cold ashes of their fire, the wrapper from a box of crackers, scattered cheese rinds, emptied coffee grounds.
The weather stayed good. At times clouds rolled up from the western horizon, but they soon cleared away.
There was no rain. The rays stayed bright and warm.
On the third night out, Lansing woke suddenly from a sound sleep. He fought his way to a sitting position, pressing against a force that tried to hold him down.
In the flicker of the firelight, he saw Jurgens standing over him. The robot’s hand was gripping his shoulder and he was making shushing sounds.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s Miss Mary, sir. There is something wrong with her. Like a fit.”
Lansing turned his head to look. Mary sat upright in her sleeping bag. Her head was tilted back so that she looked toward the sky.
He struggled out of his bed, stumbled to his feet.
“I spoke to her,” said Jurgens, “and she didn’t hear me. I spoke several times, asking what’s the matter, what could I do for her.”
Lansing strode over to her. She seemed carved in stone—stiff and straight, held in an invisible vise.
He stooped over her, cupping her face in his hands, pressing gently.
“Mary,” he said. “Mary, what is wrong?”
She paid him no attention.
He slapped her with one hand, then slapped her with the other. The muscles of her face relaxed and shivered. She collapsed, reaching out for him—not for him, he knew, but for anyone.
He seized her and cradled her close against him. She was shaking uncontrollably and began to sob, soft, subdued sobbing.
“I’ll make a pot of tea,” said Jurgens, “and build up the fire. She needs warmth, inside and outside of her as well.”
“Where am I?” she whispered. “You’re here with us. You’re safe.”
“Edward?”
“Yes, Edward. And Jurgens. He’s making you some tea.”
“I woke up and they were bending over me, looking down at me.”
“Quiet,” he said. “Be quiet. Rest. Relax. Take it easy. You can tell us later. Now everything’s all right.”
“Yes, all right,” she said.
For a time she said no more. Holding her, he felt a softening of the tension that had gripped her.
Finally she straightened up, pulling away from him. She sat upright
and looked at him.
“That was frightening,” she said, speaking calmly. “I’ve never been so scared.”
“It’s all over now. What was it… a bad dream?”
“More than a dream. They were really there, hanging in the sky, bending from the sky. Let me get out of this bag and go over to the fire. You said Jurgens was making tea?”
“It’s brewed,” said Jurgens, “and poured for you. If I remember rightly, you use two spoons of sugar.”
“That is right,” she said. “Two spoons.”
“Would you wish a cup as well?” Jurgens asked Lansing.
“If you please,” said Lansing.
They sat together beside the fire with Jurgens crouched to one side. The wood Jurgens had piled on the fire was catching and the flames leaped high. They sipped their tea in silence.
Then she said, “I am not one of your flighty females. You know that.”
Lansing nodded. “Yes, indeed, I know. You can be as tough as nails.”
“I woke up,” she said. “A nice, easy waking up. Not jerked out of sleep. I was lying on my back so that when I woke, I was looking straight up at the sky.”
She had another sip of tea and waited, as if trying to steel herself to go on with what she had to say.
She set the cup on the ground and turned to face Lansing. “They were three,” she said, “the three of them—or I think there were three of them. There could have been four. Three faces. No other parts of their body.
Just faces. Big faces. Bigger than human faces, although I am sure they were human. They looked human. Three big faces in the sky, filling half the sky, looking down at me. And I thought how silly to think that I am seeing faces. I blinked my eyes, thinking it was my imagination and they would go away. But they didn’t go away. After I had blinked I could see them even better.”
“Easy,” said Lansing. “Take your time.”
“I am easy, dammit, and I am taking my time. You’re thinking hallucination, aren’t you?”