Corcoran knew the prey. Out there, under the claws and fangs of the sabertooth, lay David!
Grasping the stick he had picked up from the pile of wood, Corcoran rose. He shifted the stick in his hand, getting a better grip. It was a puny weapon, but was the only thing he had. The cat also rose to its feet. It was much larger than he had thought. It was fearsome in its size. It stepped over the dark blob that was David and took a few steps forward. It stopped and snarled, the down-curving fangs gleaming in the growing light. The cat’s forelegs were longer than its hind legs; its back sloped and the beast seemed to slouch. There was light enough now for Corcoran to make out the speckled coat, brown splotches on light tan.
He did not stir. After its few steps, neither did the cat. Then slowly, deliberately, as if not yet decided, it pivoted about. It slew-footed its way back to its prey, lowered its head, nuzzling the dark blob and arranging the catch so it could get a firm grip. Then the cat’s teeth sank into the blob and lifted; and the cat began to move away, taking its time, turning its back on the man beside the fire.
Corcoran watched, unable to move a muscle. The cat broke into an effortless trot. It held its head high so that its dangling prey would clear the ground. But even so, one leg fell down and dragged, and the cat stumbled once or twice when one of its front paws tripped over the dragging leg. It went along the base of the bluff, around an extending spur that ran off the butte into the plain, and disappeared.
Not until it was gone did Corcoran move. He crouched down before the fire and fed wood into it. The wood caught quickly and flames leaped high. Still crouching, he swung around to see that the traveler still lay where it had landed. Thirty feet or more beyond the fire lay the shotgun. He had not noticed the gun before. It had been too dark, and, in any case, he had been so occupied with watching the cat he had seen nothing else. He did not move to pick it up. The paralysis of fear still held him.
Slowly the enormity of what had happened struck him full force. Killed by a sabertooth! Killed and eaten by a sabertooth. Killed, not in anger or defense, nor yet in thoughtless killing fury, but killed for the sake of the meat upon the bone.
David was dead. David who? Shocked, Corcoran realized he’d never known the family name. The folk at Hopkins Acre had never mentioned it, and he had never asked. He called the roll: David, Enid, Timothy, Emma, and Horace. Although that wasn’t right; Horace’s family name would have been different.
David had not called him, had let him sleep. If he had called me, Corcoran thought, it might have been me instead of him.
He tried, in his imagination, to lay out how the death might have happened. David might have heard something out beyond the fire in the predawn darkness and have stepped out to investigate. He might have been taken by surprise or he might have seen the cat. Whatever the situation, he had not fired the gun.
If it had been me, Corcoran thought, I would have fired. If I had walked out from the fire and run into a sabertooth, I would have used the gun. A shotgun would not be the weapon of choice to use against a sabertooth, but at close range, while it might fail to kill, a shotgun certainly would dampen the killing urge of even so large an animal. David had not used the gun, perhaps because he had never fired it, perhaps because he was too civilized to use it, even if he’d had the chance. To him the gun was not a weapon—it had been a walking stick.
The poor damn fool, Corcoran told himself.
He left the fire and walked out to the gun. It had two shells in the breech; it had not been fired. He cradled it in the crook of his arm and walked out farther. A boot lay on the ground and inside the boot, a foot. The bones were shattered, broken by the crunching teeth of a feeding animal. A little further on he picked up a torn jacket. Around it were scattered other shotgun shells, lying where they had fallen. Corcoran gathered them up, put them in his pocket. There seemed nothing else left of David. He walked back to the boot with the foot enclosed and stood there, staring at it. He did not stoop to touch it. It would be, he told himself, messy to pick up and he shied away from it.
He turned back to the fire and hunkered down. He should eat something, he knew, but he had no urge for food. His mouth tasted sour and foul.
Now what should he do?
He was certain that he could operate the traveler. He knew where David kept the logbook; he had watched David program the control panel for the jump to this place.
But where to go? Back to his own twentieth century, washing his hands of this whole affair? He thought about that. The idea had some attraction, but he felt an uneasiness about it. Thinking of it, he felt like a deserter. Boone was somewhere in this crazy quilt of time, and he should not leave until he was certain he could be of no help to his friend.
He thought about the sabertooth and being alone in this forsaken place, and it was a thought that did not please him. But he weighed it all against the need to be here if Boone should return from wherever he had gone. And Henry, too, perhaps, although Henry had no need of a traveler to move through all of time and space. Henry, he decided, had no need at all of him.
He considered the sabertooth and saw that the cat was an incidental problem, not to be taken account of in any decision he might make. The cat might not return. Even if it did, there now was a weapon in the hands of someone who knew the use of it. With the gun in hand, he told himself, he would not be as vulnerable as David. At night he could sleep in the traveler, with the door closed tight against maraudering carnivores. There was food to last for a time and water in the seep-hole. He could stay, he knew, as long as he might wish.
Full dawn had come and he bestirred himself. He went to the seep-hole for a pail of water; he went to the traveler for food. He squatted by the fire to bake a pan of cornbread, boil coffee, and fry bacon. Hell, he told himself, it’s just a camping trip.
He tried to feel sorry for David, but could dredge up little sorrow. The horror of the death—or, rather, the horror of the circumstances of the death—sent a shiver through him, but he forced himself not to dwell on it. The quicker he could wipe it from his mind, the better it would be.
There was a titter in his mind. It came from somewhere outside of him. Heh-heh-heh, it laughed.
Anger flared within him.
“Bug off,” he told the monster.
Heh-heh-heh, the monster tittered. Your friend is dead and I am still alive.
“You’ll wish a million times that you were dead before this is all over.”
You’ll be dead yourself, the monster chortled, long before I am. You’ll be bone and dust.
Corcoran did not answer. A whisper of suspicion came to him. Was it possible the monster could have lured the killer cat to David?
It was silly on the face of it. He was paranoid, he thought, for even thinking of it. He ate breakfast, then washed and dried the pots and plates, using his jerked-out shirttail to do the drying. On second thought, he went to the traveler and found a shovel. Digging a hole, he buried the boot with the foot inside it. For sanitary reasons, he explained to himself; the action was not intended to be ceremonial.
Wrapping a chunk of cornbread in a handkerchief, he put it in his pocket. In the traveler he rooted through the flung-in supplies, looking for a canteen and finding none. In lieu of a canteen, he filled the pail half full of water. It was an awkward thing to carry, but the best that he could do.
Packing the shotgun and the water pail, he walked out onto the plain. A few miles out he turned to his left and began to walk a circle route, with the butte as the center of the circle. He kept a sharp lookout for any sign that Boone had passed that way.
Twice Corcoran found what he thought might be a human trail. He followed each and could not be sure. Both trails finally petered out. It was useless, he told himself. He had known all along that it would be useless—but even convinced of the uselessness, still he had to try. He and Boone had gone through a lot together. They had, at times, stuck out their necks for one another. Boone was the closest thing to a friend he’d ever had. He’d not h
ad many friends.
At times he came on wolves that grudgingly moved out of his way, sitting down to watch him once he’d passed. A deerlike animal sprang out of a clump of bushes and dashed away. He passed within a mile of a small herd of bison. In the distance he glimpsed what looked like mastodons, although they were too distant for him to be certain. There could be mastodons here, he told himself; it was the proper time for them.
When the sun stood directly overhead, he halted and squatted in the shade of a tree. He munched cornbread and drank lukewarm water from the pail.
Probably he should go back to the butte. He had set out with the intention of describing a circle around it. He already had completed the western sweep of the circle. To the east lay nothing, just the plain stretching vast, flat, and empty, finally to merge with the sky. If Boone had gone anywhere, he would have gone west, where other buttes loomed up; he would not have gone into the nothingness of the east. Corcoran pondered the matter. Perhaps what he should do was backtrack himself, covering virtually the same ground, keeping a sharper lookout for a clue he might have missed before.
He finished the cornbread and had another lukewarm drink. He was readying himself to rise to his feet when he felt the presence. He froze and listened. There was nothing to be heard, but the presence was still there.
He spoke hesitantly, unsure.
“Henry?”
Yes, it is I, said Henry.
“You know of David?”
Yes, I know of him. As soon as I returned, I knew. And you were missing. I set out to find you.
“I’m sorry about David.”
I sorrow also. He was a brother who cannot be replaced. He was a noble man.
“Yes. A very noble man.”
A cat got him, said Henry. I tracked it and I found it, worrying his remains. There was little left. Tell me how it came about.
“He was standing guard. When I awoke I found what had happened. I had heard nothing. The cat carried him away.”
There was a grave. A very small grave.
“A boot,” said Corcoran. “With a foot inside of it. I buried it.”
I thank you for your act. You did what the family would have done.
“You know where the body is. I could take a shovel and scare off the cat …”
It would be meaningless. An empty gesture. I see you have the gun. He did not use it?
“He must have been taken by surprise.”
In any case, Henry said, he would not have used it. He was too gentle for this world. This venture has gone badly. For all of us. First Enid lost, then Boone.
“You know of Boone? You have news of him?”
I found where he had gone, but he was not there. A rifle was there and a pack he had carried, but he was gone. A wolf, I think, had been with him. I am sorry, Corcoran.
“I think I know what happened to him,” said Corcoran. “He stepped around another corner. I only hope he stays where he went and does not come popping back.”
What do you intend to do now? There is no point in staying here.
Corcoran shook his head. Yesterday he’d thought briefly of what he could or should do. He had thought of going back to New York. He had rejected this idea out of hand; Boone had been lost and must be found. Now Boone was still lost, he realized, with very little chance of finding.
He thought of the twentieth century and again rejected it. Never in his life had he turned his back on any adventure until it was all played out. This adventure, he reminded himself, was far from being all played out.
He could return to Hopkins Acre. The coordinates, he was sure, could be found in David’s logbook. Living in the Acre would be comfortable. The servants and the tenants still would be there. It would be a place where he could be secure and rethink the situation and, perhaps, arrive at a logical plan for further action. It was possible, as well, that some of the others would be returning there.
But there was that other place where the ruins of a city topped a peak and a massive, sky-piercing tree lanced up to tower above the ruins, with a spiral stairway running around the tree. There must be some mystery there, perhaps not as he had seen it or remembered that he’d seen it, but surely something that needed looking into.
Henry was waiting for an answer. Corcoran could faintly detect the shimmer of him, a cloud of sparkles gleaming in the sun.
Instead of answering Henry’s question, he asked a question of his own. “As I understand it, you stopped short of incorporeality. Can you tell me how it happened?”
It was a piece of bad judgment on my part, said Henry. I let the Infinites talk me into it. I took to hanging around with them. Curious, I would guess, wondering what kind of things they really were. Very strange, you must understand. They are marginally humanlike, or the glimpses that I caught of them seemed humanlike. You don’t see them. You scan them now and then. They float in and out, like ghosts. But see them or not, you hear them all the time. They preach at you, they reason, they implore, and they plead. They show you the path to immortality and recite the endless comforts and triumphs of immortality—an intellectual immortality, they say, is the only way to go. All else is gross, all else is sloppy and shameful. No one wants to be shameful.
“They sell you a bill of goods?”
They sold me, said Henry. But they sold me in a moment of weakness. When the weakness went away, I fought them. They were shocked to their very core that I should have the temerity to resist them, and that was when they really got to work on me. But the harder they pounded on me, the stubborner I got. I broke away from them. Or maybe they gave up in disgust. Maybe I was taking more of their time than I was worth, and they heaved me out. But when I got away, the process had gone too far; I already was halfway to incorporeality; I was stuck somewhere between. I was the way you see me now.
“It doesn’t seem to bother you.”
There are disadvantages and advantages, and I take the view that I am somewhat ahead, that the advantages may outweigh the disadvantages. At least, that’s what I tell myself. There are many common, human things that I cannot do, but there are abilities no other human can command, and I make the most of those abilities, ignoring what I’ve lost.
“And what do you intend to be doing now?”
There still is one part of the family that I must track down. Horace and Emma—and Timothy, who was hustled aboard the traveler by that big bully of a Horace.
“Have you any idea where to look?”
None at all. I’ll have to track them down.
“Can you use the traveler in your tracking? I could operate it for you.”
No, I must do it on my own. I must go back to Hopkins Acre and pick up the trail from there. It will be faint and thin, but it will still be there. You say you can operate the traveler?
“Yes. I know where the logbook is and I watched David punch in the coordinates when he set the course for here.”
It might be best for you to go back to Hopkins Acre. I think the place is safe. Some of us could come back for you. We could do that, knowing where you were. The coordinates would be written in the logbook. You are sure you can run the traveler?
“I am certain,” Corcoran said. “I don’t think I’ll go to Hopkins Acre. Later on, perhaps, but not immediately. I want to go to the place where you found David and me. There is something there that needs looking into.”
Henry did not ask the question that Corcoran was sure he would. Rather, there was the impression of a shrug.
Well, all right, said Henry. You know where you’re going and I know where I’m going. We’d best be on our way.
Suddenly, Henry was gone.
Corcoran rose to his feet. Boone no longer was in this time and place, and there was no reason to stay on. He knew where he was going and, as Henry had said, he should be on his way as soon as possible.
When he reached the camp, the place was deserted. There was no sign of the cat and not even any wolves. Corcoran picked up the pots and pans beside the ashes of the campfire and flung
them on the blanket; then, lifting the blanket, he flung it all over his shoulder.
A voice talked at him. Heh-heh-heh, it said.
At the sound, Corcoran spun on his heel to face the pile of junk.
The tittering kept on.
Corcoran headed for the junk heap.
“Cut out that goddamned tittering,” he shouted.
The tittering cut off and a pleading began.
Dear sir, you are about to leave. You gather up your things to leave. Please take me with you. You will not regret it. Many things I can do for you. I can pay back your kindness. I will be your eternal friend. The taking of me will in no way impede your going. I am of little weight and will not take up much space. You need not search for me. I lie in back of the wreckage of my body. I am a brain case, a highly polished sphere. I would look well displayed upon a mantle. I would be a conversation piece. For me you would find many uses. In times when you are alone and desirous of companionship, the two of us could hold instructive and entertaining conversations. I have a good mind and am well versed in logic. There would be times I could serve as your advisor. And always I would be your friend, filled with loyalty and gratitude …
“No, thank you,” Corcoran said, turning on his heel and walking toward the traveler.
Behind him the killer monster went on wailing, pleading, begging, and promising. Then the wailing fell off and a storm of hatred came.
You scaly son of a bitch, I’ll not forget you for this. I’ll get you in the end. I’ll dance upon your bones.
Corcoran, unscathed, continued to the traveler.
9
Boone
A cold nose woke Boone, and he tried to jerk himself erect. His leg screamed at him, and he choked back the answering scream deep inside his throat. The wolf, whining, sidled away. All around the southern horizon, the stars glittered coldly at him. His clothes were damp with the chill of frosty dew.
From where he lay he looked over the moon-silvered plain that he had crossed, more desert than plain, although there was some grass and other pasturage for small game herds. Somewhere, perhaps to the east, there would be grassy plains where enormous herds would range. But here the herds were small and the predators few.