The thing that hammered in my brain was why he, whoever he had been, had done it. Why play so elaborate a piece of magic? Why, when it might have served his pur- « pose better, had he not allowed us to come upon a deserted and time-ruined house in which it would have been apparent no one had lived for years? In such a case we’d simply have looked it over and then gone away.
I strode up to the door, with Cynthia following, and into the house. Basically it was the same as it had been, although no longer neat and gracious. There was no carpet on the floor, no paintings on the wall. The table stood in the center of the room and the chairs were there, as we had sat in them, pushed back the way we’d left them when we’d gotten up to leave. But the table was bare. The sideboard stood against the wall and the jug still stood upon it.
I went across the room and picked it up. I carried it to ”l(!he door where the light was better. It was the same piece, as far as I could see, as the one our host had shown us. “Do you know anything of Greek ceramics?” I asked Cynthia.
“All that I know is that there was black-figure pottery and red-figure pottery. The black came first.” I rubbed a thumb across the potter’s mark. “You don’t know, then, if this says what he said it did.” She shook her head. “I know potters used such marks. But I couldn’t read one. There’s something else about it, though. It looks too new, too recent, as if it had come out of the kiln only a little while ago. It shows no weathering or aging. Usually such pottery is found in excavations. It has been in the soil for years. This one looks as if it never had been buried.”
“I don’t think it ever has-been buried, I mean,” I said. “The Anachronian would have picked it up at the time that it was made, or very shortly after, as a prime example of the best work being done. It has been carefully taken care of as a part of his collection through all the centuries.” “You think that’s who he is?”
“Who else could he be? Who else, in this battered age, would have a piece like this?”
“But he is so many people. He is the census-taker andj the distinguished man who had us to lunch and the other,] different kind of man my old ancestor saw.” I “I have a hunch,” I said, “he can be anything at all. Or] at least make one think he’s anything at all. I rather suspect that, as the census-taker, he shows us his actual self.”
“Then in that case,” said Cynthia, “there is a treasure trove underneath our feet, deep down in the rock. All w« have to do is find the entrance to the tunnel.”
“Yes,” I said, “and once we found it, what would we dq with it? Just sit around and look at it? Pick up a piece anc fondle it?” “But now we know where it is.”
“Exactly. If we can get back to our own present, if the shades know what they’re doing, if there really is a time-trap, and if there is, it doesn’t take us ten thousand years in- to the future as measured by our natural present time …”
^You believe all these things you’re saying?”
^”Let’s say this: I recognize them as possibilities.”
“And, Fletch, if there is no time-trap? If we’re stuck back here?”
“We’ll do the best we can. We’ll find a way.”
We went out the door and started down the bluff. Below us lay the river and the cornfield, the house where the dead man lay, the weedy garden by the house.
“I don’t think,” said Cynthia, “that there will be a time-trap. The shades are no scientists; they are bunglers. A fraction of a second, they said, and then they sent us here ”
I grunted at her. This was no time for talk like that. But she persisted. She put out a hand to stop me and I turned to face her.
“Fletch,” she said, “there has to be an answer. If there is no time-trap.”
“There may be one,” I said.
“But if there’s not?”
“In such a case,” I said, “we’ll come back to that house down there. We’ll clean it out. It’s a place to live, there are tools to work with. We’ll save seed from the garden so we can plant other gardens. We’ll fish, we’ll hunt, we’ll live.”
“And you’ll love me, Fletch?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’ll love you. I guess I already do.”
Chapter 19
We went down across the cornfield and I wondered as we went if Cynthia might be right-not because O’Gillicuddy and his band were bunglers, but because they were Cemetery. O’Gillicuddy, when I’d asked him, had carefully pointed out that Cemetery had no hold on them because there was nothing Cemetery could do against them and nothing that they wanted. On the face of it, this would seem to be quite true, but how could one be certain it was true? And what better tool could Cemetery use to get rid of us than O’Gillicuddy and his time ability? Surely if we were placed in another time and no way to get back Cemetery would be certain of no further interference.
I thought of my own pink world of Alden-Cynthia’s world, as well. I thought of Thorney pacing up and dowfi his study, talking of the long-lost Anachronians and fuming at the indiscriminate treasure-hunters who looted primitive sites and robbed archaeologists of their chance to study ancient cultures. And I thought with a bit of bitterness of my own fine plans to make a composition of the Earth. But mostly, I guess, I thought of Cynthia and the rotten deal she’d gotten. She, of all of us, had had the least to gain from this wild adventure. She had started out by serving as an errand boy for good old Thorney and see what it had got her.
If there were no time-trap, what could we do other than what I’d told her we would do? I could think of nothing else to do, but it would be a bleak life at the best. It was not the kind of life for Cynthia-nor for me. Winter would be coming soon, most likely, and if there were no time-trap, we’d have little time to get ready for it. We’d have to tough it through somehow, and when spring had come around we ; might have, by that time, figured out a better way.
I tried to quit thinking about it, for it hadn’t happened yet and there might be no need to think of it, but try as I might I couldn’t seem to get my mind away from it. The very horror of the prospect seemed to.fascinate me.
We came down into the river valley and walked along the river until we came to the hollow that led to the cliff
where we’d holed up after fleeing from the ghouls. Neither of us were saying anything. Neither of us, I suspect, trusted ourselves to speak.
We started up the hollow and when we turned the bend just ahead of us, we could see the cliffs and we’d be almost
there. We’d not have long to wait. Fairly soon we’d know.
We rounded the bend and stopped dead in our tracks.
Standing just this side of the cliffs were two war machines.
There was no mistaking them. I think I would have known what they were in any case, but from having heard Elmer
talk of them so often, I recognized them immediately.
They were huge. They had to be huge, to carry all the armaments they packed. A hundred feet long at least, and
probably half as wide and looming twenty feet or more into the air. They stood side by side and they were most
unlovely things. There was strength and ugliness in them.
They were monstrous blobs. It made a man shiver just to look at them.
We stood there looking at them and they looked back at us. You could feel them look.
One of the machines spoke to us-or at least someone in their direction spoke to us. There was no way to tell which machine was speaking.
“Don’t run away,” it said. “Don’t be frightened of us. We want to talk with you.”
“We won’t run,” I said. There’d have been little use in running. If they wanted us, they’d have us in a minute. I was sure of that.
“No one will listen,” said the machine, rather piteously.
“Everyone flees from us. We would be friends to the human race, for we ourselves are human.”
“We’ll listen to you,” said Cynthia. “What have you to say?”