Flannery and Patricia Shelby stood together at one side; Flannery held the money, payment for the delivery. “Well,” he said, under his breath, “now we can tell her to go leap in the river.”
“Are you sure?” Pat asked nervously.
“The last load’s here.” Flannery grinned starkly and ran a trembling hand through his thinning black hair. “Now we can get rolling. With this stuff, the ship’s crammed to the gills. We may even have to sit down and eat some of that now.” He indicated a bulging pasteboard carton of groceries. “Bacon, eggs, milk, real coffee. Maybe we won’t shove it in deep-freeze. Maybe we ought to have a last-meal-before-the-flight orgy.”
Wistfully, Pat said, “It would be nice. It’s been a long time since we’ve had food like that.”
Masterson strode over. “Let’s kill her and boil her in a big kettle. Skinny old witch-she might make good soup.”
“In the oven,” Flannery corrected. “Some gingerbread, to take along with us.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Pat said apprehensively. “She’s so-well, maybe she is a witch. I mean, maybe that’s what
witches were . . . old women with strange talents. Like her-being able to pass through time.”
“Damn lucky for us,” Masterson said briefly.
“But she doesn’t understand it. Does she? Does she know what she’s doing? That she could save us all this by sharing her ability. Does she know what’s happened to our world?”
Flannery considered. “Probably she doesn’t know-or care. A mind Re hers, business and profit-getting exorbitant rates from us, selling this stuff to us at an incredible premium. And the joke is that money’s worth nothing to us. If she could see, she’d know that. It’s just paper, in this world. But she’s caught in a narrow little routine. Business, profit.” He shook his head. “A mind like that, a warped, miserable flea-sized mind . . . and she has that unique talent.”
“But she can see,” Pat persisted. “She can see the ash, the ruin. How can she not know?”
Flannery shrugged. “She probably doesn’t connect it with her own life. After all, she’ll be dead in a couple of years . , . she won’t see the war in her real time. She’ll only see it this way, as a region into which she can travel. A sort of travelogue of strange lands. She can enter and leave-but we’re stuck. It must give you a damn fine sense of security to be able to walk out of one world into another. God, what I’d give to be able to go back with her.”
“It’s been tried,” Masterson pointed out. “That lizardhead Tellman tried it. And he came walking back, covered with ash. He said the truck faded out.”
“Of course it did,” Flannery said mildly. “She drove it back to Walnut Creek. Back to 1965. ”
The unloading had been completed. The members of the colony were toiling up the slope, lugging the cartons to the check area beneath the ship. Mrs. Berthelson strode over to Flannery, accompanied by Professor Crowley.
“Here’s the inventory,” she said briskly. “A few items couldn’t be found. You know, I don’t stock all that in my store. I have to send out for most of it.”
“We know,” Flannery said, coldly amused. It would be interesting to see a country store that stocked binocular microscopes, turret lathes, frozen packs of antibiotics, high-frequency radio transmitters, advanced textbooks in all fields.
“So that’s why I have to charge you a little dearer,” the old woman
continued, the inflexible routine of squeeze. “On items I bring in-” She examined her inventory, then returned the ten-page typewritten list that Crowley had given her on the previous visit. “Some of these weren’t available. I marked them back order. That bunch of metals from those laboratories back East-they said maybe later.” A cunning look slid over the ancient gray eyes. “And they’ll be very expensive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Flannery said, handing her the money. “You can cancel all the back orders.”
At first her face showed nothing. Only a vague inability to understand.
“No more shipments,” Crowley explained. A certain tension faded from them; for the first time, they weren’t afraid of her. The old relationship had ended. They weren’t dependent on the rusty red truck. They had their shipment; they were ready to leave.
“We’re taking off,” Flannery said, grinning starkly. “We’re full up. ”
Comprehension came. “But I placed orders for those things.” Her voice was thin, bleak. Without emotion, “They’ll be shipped to me. I’ll have to pay for them.”
“Well,” Flannery said softly, “isn’t that too damn bad.”
Crowley shot him a warning glance. “Sorry,” he said to the old woman. “We can’t stick around-this place is getting hot. We’ve got to take off.”
On the withered face, dismay turned to growing wrath. “You ordered those things! You have to take them!” Her shrill voice rose to a screech of fury. “What am I supposed to do with them?”
As Flannery framed his bitter answer, Pat Shelby intervened. “Mrs. Berthelson,” she said quietly, “you’ve done a lot for us, even if you wouldn’t help us through the hole in your time. And we’re very grateful. If it wasn’t for you, we couldn’t have got together enough supplies. But we really have to go.” She reached out her hand to touch the frail shoulder, but the old woman jerked furiously away. “I mean,” Pat finished awkwardly, “we can’t stay any longer, whether we want to or not. Do you see all that black ash? It’s radioactive, and more of it sifts down all the time. The toxic level is rising-if we stay any longer it’ll start destroying us.”
Mrs. Edna Berthelson stood clutching her inventory list. There was an expression on her face that none of the group had ever seen before. The violent spasm of wrath had vanished; now a cold, chill glaze lay over the aged features. Her eyes were like gray rocks, utterly without feeling.
Flannery wasn’t impressed. “Here’s your loot,” he said, thrusting out the handful of bills. “What the hell.” He turned to Crowley. “Let’s toss in the rest. Let’s stuff it down her goddamn throat.”
“Shut up,” Crowley snapped.
Flannery sank resentfully back. “Who are you talking to?”
“Enough’s enough.” Crowley, worried and tense, tried to speak to the old woman. “My God, you can’t expect us to stay around here forever, can you?”
There was no response. Abruptly, the old woman turned and strode silently back to her truck.
Masterson and Crowley looked uneasily at each other. “She sure is mad,” Masterson said apprehensively.
Tellman hurried up, glanced at the old woman getting into her truck, and then bent down to root around in one of the cartons of groceries. Childish greed flushed across his thin face. “Look,” he gasped. “Coffee-fifteen pounds of it. Can we open some? Can we get one tin open, to celebrate?”
“Sure,” Crowley said tonelessly, his eyes on the truck. With a muffled roar, the truck turned in a wide arc and rumbled off down the crude platform, toward the ash. It rolled off into the ash, slithered for a short distance, and then faded out. Only the bleak, sun-swept plain of darkness remained.
“Coffee!” Tellman shouted gleefully. He tossed the bright metal can high in the air and clumsily caught it again. “A celebration! Our last night-last meal on Earth!”
It was true.
As the red pickup truck jogged metallically along the road, Mrs Berthelson scanned “ahead” and saw that the men were telling the truth. Her thin lips writhed; in her mouth an acid taste of bile rose. She had taken it for granted that they would continue to buy-there was no competition, no other source of supply. But they were leaving. And when they left, there would be no more market.
She would never find a market that satisfactory. It was a perfect market; the group was a perfect customer. In the locked box at the back of the store, hidden down under the reserve sacks of grain, was almost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A fortune, taken in
over the months, received from the imprisoned colony as it toiled to construct its ship.
And she had made it possible. She was responsible for letting them get away after all. Because of her shortsightedness, they were able to escape. She hadn’t used her head.
As she drove back to town she meditated calmly, rationally. It was totally because of her: she was the only one who had possessed the power to bring them their supplies. Without her, they were helpless.
Hopefully, she cast about, looking this way and that, peering with her deep inner sense, into the various ” aheads. ” There was more than one, of course. The “aheads” lay like a pattern of squares, an intricate web of worlds into which she could step, if she cared. But all were empty of what she wanted.
All showed bleak plains of black ash, devoid of human habitation. What she wanted was lacking: they were each without customers.