Highway of Eternity

  “There was no sign of Boone?” asked Corcoran.

  None. I looked, but in all honesty, I must confess, for no great length of time. I was much too concerned for Enid. The trail was long and hard, but I found the second destination where her traveler had landed.

  “And Enid wasn’t there,” said David.

  Neither she nor the traveler was there. The traveler had not taken off; it had been taken off. I found skid marks on the ground; I found wheel tracks. It had been dragged off and placed on a vehicle. I tried to work out the trail, but I was never able to track it to the end.

  “You looked for Enid, too?”

  I checked, making many wide circles. I pried into every corner. I peeked in every cranny. Not once did I get an impression of her. If she had been in the area, I would have known it.

  “So she’s really lost. And someone has a traveler who shouldn’t have it.”

  “There’s a good chance,” said Corcoran, “that they don’t know what they have. Someone found it, was intrigued by it, and hauled it off fast, before the owner could come back—figuring, I suppose, that later on they’d have a chance to try to work out what it is.”

  David shook his head.

  “Look,” said Corcoran, “how many time travelers are there in the world? How many people before your time knew time travel was possible?”

  Corcoran could be right, said Henry. You should listen to him, David. He has a good head on his shoulders. He looks facts in the eye.

  “At the moment,” said David, “there is no good reason to debate the matter. For the moment, Enid is out of our reach. Her traveler’s gone and so is she. We’d have no idea where to look.”

  My suggestion is to go back to the prehistoric site, said Henry. There we can look for Boone. He may have some clue that will help us find Enid. She may have said something to him that could be significant.

  “Can you get us there? Have you the coordinates?”

  Very closely there. I have the location coordinates. I worked them out carefully before I left. And the time coordinates are off by very little.

  “I think you’re right,” said David. “We may find something there to work on. Otherwise we’ll be thrashing around with no idea what to do.”

  Corcoran nodded. “It’s the one thing we can do,” he said.

  David stepped through the door of the traveler, reaching out a hand to grasp Corcoran by the arm and haul him through.

  “Get that door closed,” he said, “and get set. Once Henry gives me the coordinates, we’re off.”

  Corcoran closed the door and went forward, watching while David wrote down the coordinates in his log book as Henry gave them to him. David reached his fingers out to the instrument panel. “Hold on,” he warned, then came the shock and darkness, the deep, unforgiving darkness. And almost instantly, it seemed, David was singing out again: “We’re there.”

  Corcoran found the door and fumbled with it, finally got it open and tumbled out. The sun battered down out of a molten sky. The buttes stood up against the melting blue. The sagebrush shimmered in the sundance of the sand. Out on the plain lay the whitened skeleton of some great beast.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” David asked of Henry.

  It is the place. Walk straight ahead and you will find the ashes of the campfire.

  “There’s not any cairn,” said Corcoran. “You said there was a cairn close by the fire and a note weighed down.”

  You’re right. The cairn’s not there. But the stones of which the cairn was built lie scattered on the ground. Something knocked them over.

  Corcoran walked forward. The stones were scattered on the ground and there was a hole dug in the center of the scattered stones. The ashes of the campfire showed white against the sand.

  “Wolves or foxes,” said Corcoran. “They scattered the stones to get at the ground beneath them. There must have been something buried underneath the cairn.”

  “Meat,” said David. “Boone must have cached some meat there and built the cairn to keep off the wolves.”

  Corcoran nodded. It sounded reasonable.

  “The note should be here somewhere,” said David. “It all checks out. The ashes of the fire. The skeleton of the large animal. That pile of junk over there must be what is left of the killer monster.”

  They looked for the note and did not find it.

  “It’s hopeless,” David said. “The wind blew it away. There’s no chance of finding it.”

  Corcoran stood and looked out across the plain. Far off, a dust devil swayed like a dancing snake. Just within the limit of vision dark dots danced in the shimmer of heat. Bison, Corcoran told himself, although it was no more than a guess; there was no way the unaided human eye could have made out what they were. The skeleton, he knew, was a prehistoric bison. The skull lay canted, resting on one horn, the other angled in the air. No other creature than a bison, he thought, could have horns like those.

  Had Boone killed the bison? If that was the case, he must have had a large caliber rifle, for no other kind could have dropped that large a beast. And if he had a rifle, had it been he, as well, who had downed the killer monster? Corcoran shook his head; there was no way he could know.

  “What do we do now?” asked David.

  “We have a look around,” Corcoran told him. “We may meet Boone returning from wherever he may have been. We may find him dead. Although it’s hard to think anything could kill him. After all the risks he has taken, all the scrapes that he’s been in, the damn fool should have died years ago. But his life is charmed.”

  “I’ll climb the butte,” said David. “From the top I might be able to see something that will give a clue.”

  “It would help if you had binoculars.”

  “I doubt we have. I’ll go and see.”

  David walked back toward the traveler; Corcoran headed for the heap of scrap that had been the killer monster. He stayed well clear, walking a wide circle around it, though there was no threat or menace left in the scattered metal. Yet an awareness that seemed no proper part of him warned him to keep his distance.

  David came back from the traveler. “No binoculars,” he said. “Horace dumped the stuff in hurriedly; no thought went into it.”

  “I’ll climb the butte, if you’d rather,” said Corcoran.

  “No, I’ll do it. I’m very good at climbing.”

  “I’ll walk along the base of the butte,” said Corcoran. “I don’t expect to find anything. This whole business has a peculiar ring to it. I’m beginning to wonder if Boone might not have left with Enid.”

  “Henry doesn’t think he did.”

  Corcoran choked back an observation not entirely complimentary to the glittery Henry. Instead, he asked, “Where is Henry? He hasn’t said a word for a long time now, and I have caught no glimpse of him.”

  “Come to think of it, neither have I. But that means nothing. He’ll be back. He’s probably doing some poking around.”

  David was carrying a shotgun. He must have picked it up when he went looking for the binoculars. He extended it to Corcoran, holding it upright by the stock. “Here, you might have more use of it than I have.”

  Corcoran shook his head. “I don’t expect to run into any kind of trouble. I’ll be careful that I don’t. And you be damned sure that you don’t pick the wrong target. There probably are critters here a shotgun would mean nothing to.”

  David tucked the gun comfortably under his arm, seemingly glad that Corcoran had not taken it. “I have never fired this gun or any other gun,” he said, “but on my walks at Hopkins Acre, I got accustomed to carrying one. This particular gun has become a part of me. I feel better, more myself, with it underneath my arm. The gun has never been loaded when I carried it.”

  “Take my advice,” said Corcoran, in some disgust, “and load it. I suppose you carry shells?”

  David slapped a pocket of his jacket. “Right in here. A double handful of them. Even back at Hopkins Acre, I always carried two shells. I
took them out of the gun, Timothy insisting that it always should be loaded when it was in the rack.”

  “It is senseless to carry a gun if you don’t intend to use it,” said Corcoran. “What’s the use of packing a gun unless it’s loaded? My old man told me long ago, when he gave me my first gun—don’t ever point your gun at anything, he said, unless you mean to kill it. I took that as good advice and never in my life have I pointed a gun at anything unless I was prepared to kill it.”

  “I often pointed this gun,” said David, “but I never killed. I pointed it at hundreds of birds that the dogs put up, but I never pressed the trigger.”

  “What are you trying to prove—that you are finally civilized?”

  “I’ve often wondered myself,” said David.

  Wandering along the base of the butte, Corcoran found a seepage flow that had been scooped out, forming a basin into which the water flowed. He came unexpectedly upon a badger that hissed at him before it waddled rapidly away. He became aware that a wolf was following him and paid it no attention. It kept on following, never getting closer than it had been, never falling back.

  Nothing else happened. He found nothing of any interest. After a time, he turned about and followed the curve of the butte back to where the traveler lay. Before he turned back, the wolf had disappeared.

  The sun was not far above the western horizon. Using some of the wood from the pile that remained beside the old campfire, he started a blaze. He went to the seepage basin and brought back a pail of water. When David came down off the butte, he was frying sizzling bacon in one pan and cooking flapjacks in a second.

  David flopped down on the ground, the gun across his lap. “There is nothing,” he said. “A few grazing herds far out on the plain, and that is all. This is the loneliest place I have ever seen.”

  “Pour yourself some coffee,” Corcoran told him. “I have enough flapjacks for you to start. Help yourself to the bacon. The plates and cups are over there on the blanket.”

  Halfway through his first helping of cakes, David asked, “Any sign of Henry?”

  “Not a peep from him.”

  “It’s strange for him to go away without saying anything about it. Or to stay so long.”

  “He got an idea, maybe, and went to try it out.”

  “I hope so,” said David. “There are times I’m not sure I understand Henry. He’s my brother and all that, but try as I may to see him as blood and bone, he’s no longer blood and bone—my brother still, but a highly unusual human being. He allowed himself to get snared by the Infinites, by their sleek, fine talk. But the process didn’t take. Maybe Henry was too knotty, too warped a personality for it to take hold of him.”

  Corcoran tried to be comforting. “Don’t worry about him. Nothing can happen to him. Nothing can lay a mitt on him.”

  David made no response. A few moments later he asked, “What do you think we should do now? Is there any point in staying here?”

  “It’s too early to say,” Corcoran said. “We’ve been here only a few hours. Let’s wait at least through tomorrow. We may have new thoughts by then.”

  A soundless voice spoke to them.

  You seek a man called Boone? it asked.

  After a startled moment, Corcoran said to David, “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes, I did. It wasn’t Henry. It was someone else.”

  I am the mind, the voice said, of what you term a killer monster. I can help you with this Boone.

  “You can tell us where he is?” asked Corcoran.

  I can tell you where he went. But first we strike a bargain.

  “What kind of bargain, monster?”

  Cease calling me a monster. It is bad enough to think of me as such, but to say it to my face is rank discourtesy.

  “If you are not a monster, then what are you?”

  I am a faithful servitor who does no more than carry out my master’s will. It is not mine to question the rightness or the wisdom of his will.

  “Don’t bother to apologize,” said David. “We know who you are. You lie in the tangle of wreckage that was once a killer monster.”

  There you go again, calling me a monster. And I made no attempt to apologize.

  “It sounded to me as if you did,” said Corcoran. “Let’s get on with your bargain.”

  It is a simple bargain. Straightforward and no frills. I tell you where to look for Boone, but before I do that you must lift me from this wreckage of my former self and engage in all sincerity to take me elsewhere, away from this dreadful nothingness.

  “Why,” said David, “that is an easy bargain to be struck.”

  “Easy on,” Corcoran cautioned. “Ask yourself how much faith you’re willing to accord this junkyard voice.”

  “It seems a fairly simple thing,” said David. “He knows where Boone is and is willing …”

  “That’s the point. He doesn’t claim he knows where Boone is. He tells us he’ll tell us where to look for him. Those are two different things.”

  “As a matter of fact, they are. How about it, sir? How precise would be your information?”

  I would help you in any way I could. The aid I offer will not be limited to the finding of Boone.

  “What other kinds of help? In what regards could you be of aid to us?”

  “Forget it,” Corcoran growled. “Pay him no attention. He is in a tight spot and he’ll promise anything to get out of it.”

  But in all human charity, wailed the monster, you must take pity on me. You must not condemn me to endless eons of no contact with external stimuli. I can not see; with the exception of this telepathic talk, I cannot hear. I feel no heat or cold. Even the passage of time is blurred. I cannot differentiate between a second and a year.

  “You’re in terrible shape,” said Corcoran.

  Indeed I am. Kind sir, please empathize with me.

  “I’ll not lift a hand to help you. I’ll not lift a finger.”

  “You’re being hard on him,” said David.

  “Not as hard as he was on Athens. No harder than he would have been on us if he’d had the chance—if he’d not bungled it.”

  Bungle it I did not. I am efficient mechanism. My luck ran out on me.

  “It certainly did,” said Corcoran. “It is still running out. Now shut up. We want no more of you.”

  It shut up. They heard no more of it.

  After a time, David said, “Henry has not come back. You and I are left alone. The monster-mind says it has information. I think it reasonable to believe it does. It was here when Boone was here. It may have talked with him.”

  Corcoran grunted. “You are trying to convince yourself that you should show a measure of magnanimity to a fallen enemy, that you should act nobly and be a gentleman about it. It’s your neck if you want to risk it. I wash my hands of it. Do whatever you damn please.”

  The sun had set and deep dusk was flowing in. Somewhere out in the emptiness, a wolf howled and another answered. Corcoran finished eating. “Give me your plate and the silverware,” he said to David. “I’ll go down to the seepage basin and rinse them off.”

  “Want me to come along as guard for you?”

  “No, I’ll be quite safe. It’s just a step or two away.”

  Squatting beside the dug-out basin, Corcoran rinsed off the dishes. In the east, the moon was riding low. Off in the distance, a half-dozen wolves had joined in lamenting their hard and sorry lives.

  When he got back to the fire, David had the blankets out. “It’s been a long day,” he said, “and we should get some sleep. I’ll stand first watch. I imagine we should keep a watch.”

  “I think we should,” said Corcoran.

  “I’m worried about Henry,” David told him. “He knows that in a situation such as this we should not divide our forces.”

  “He’s probably only delayed,” said Corcoran. “By morning, he’ll be back, and everything will be all right again.”

  He wadded up his jacket to use as a pillow and pulled the blank
et up. Moments later, he was asleep.

  When he awoke, he was lying on his back. Above him, the sky was growing lighter with the first touch of dawn, and David had not called him to take his turn at watch.

  Damn him, Corcoran thought. He knew better than that. He doesn’t have to prove that he can take it or that he’s a better man than I am.

  “David!” he shouted. “Damn it, what do you think you’re doing?”

  On the butte, the birds were singing, saluting the first brightening of the east. Except for the singing, there was no sound at all, and the flicker of the dying fire was the only motion anywhere. Out on the plain, the white bones of the bison gleamed in the soft dawn light; and a little way to the right of them, he could make out the junk heap that marked the death of the killer monster.

  Corcoran stood up, shaking off the blanket that had covered him. He moved toward the fire, reaching out for a stick of wood to use in rearranging and consolidating the scattered coals. He crouched down before the fire and it was then he heard the slobbering sound that sent a wave of terror through him. It was not a sound he had ever heard before and he had no idea what it was, but there was about it a freezing quality that held him rigid. It came again and this time he was able to turn his head to see where it might come from.

  For a moment all that he could see was a pale blob crouched over a dark blob on the ground. He strained his eyes to see the better but it was not until the pale blob lifted its head and stared straight at him that he recognized it for what it was—flat cat face, tasseled ears, the gleam of six-inch fangs—a sabertooth crouched above its prey, feeding with that horrible slobbering to indicate the tooth-someness of what it was ingesting.