Quester glanced around and saw them, bunched together – terrible, striving shadows in the. moonlight and across the space between them came an anxious whimpering, the excited sobbing of animals that closed in for the kill,
And then, suddenly, the baying burst out again, the cry of blood that rang across the sky and bounced against the hills. The house now was only a little distance off and suddenly, as the baying bellowed in the night, more lights came on and from a pole outside the house a floodlight burst into blinding brilliance. Someone inside, apparently, had been aroused by the bloodthirsty clamour of the hounds.
A low picket fence separated the house from the field and Quester cleared the fence, landing in the full glare of the floodlight. With a sudden dash, he reached the house and huddled close against it.
-Now, he yelled to Thinker. Now!
26
It was cold, a biting, deadening cold, like a physical blow that staggered the body and the mind.
The satellite of the planet hung above a ragged line of uplifted vegetation and the land was sterile and dry, while across the construction the humans called a fence leaped the raging creatures that were designated dogs.
But somewhere close was a bank of energy and Thinker grabbed at it – in need, in desperation, almost in a panic. Grabbed at it and took it, more than he had need of, far more than he had need of. The house went dark and on the pole the floodlight flickered and went out.
The cold was gone and his body fell into the pyramidal form and it glowed. The data was there once again, as it had been before, sharper, more concise than it had ever been before, ranged in ranks and files, waiting to be used. Inside his mind the logic process was clean and bright and sharp and it had been far too long since he had made use of it.
-Thinker, Quester yelled. Cut it out! The dogs! The dogs! The dogs!
And that was right, of course. He had known about the dogs and of Quester’s plan and the plan was working.
The dogs were swerving, digging in their claws to halt their headlong rush, whimpering and yelping in sudden abject fright at this apparition which had replaced the wolf they had been chasing.
There was too much energy, Thinker realized with a prick of fear. Far too much – more than he could handle.
He got rid of it. He flared.
Crackling lightning flashed and the valley for a moment was lit up by the flare. The paint on the house curled and blackened, peeled.
The dogs, leaping back across the fence, howled as the lightning speared out at them. They fled, their tails tucked tight, their blistered rumps still smoking.
27
Willow Grove, Blake told himself, was a town that he had known sometime in the past. Which was impossible, of course. Perhaps a place very like a place that he might have read of, or at some time had seen a picture of, but he never had been here.
And yet, as he stood on the street corner in the early morning light, old memories kept nagging at him and a pattern in his mind kept matching the things that he was seeing – the way the steps up to the bank ran kitty-cornered off the pavement, and the massive elm trees that grew around the little park at the far end of the street. There would be, he knew, a statue in the park, standing in the centre of a fountain that was dry more often than it ran, and an ancient cannon mounted on its massive wheels, its barrel bespecked by pigeon dirt.
Not always matching, but also noting differences. A hobby shop and jewellery store occupied the building where the garden store had been and a new front had been imposed upon the barber shop, which was still a barber shop, and over all of it, over the entire street and town, lay an oldness that had not been there when he last had seen it.
Last had seen it!
Could he, he wondered, have ever seen this town?
How could he have seen it and forgotten it till now? For, technically at least, he should be in possession of all he’d ever known. In that instant back in the hospital it all had come back to him – all that he had been, all that he had done. And if that had been so, why and how had the memory of Willow Grove been withheld from him?
An old town – almost an ancient town – no flying houses perched on their gridded foundation blocks, no airy masses of apartment complexes rising on its outskirts. Solid, honest buildings built of wood and brick and stone, built where they were meant to stay, with no roving tendencies tied into their functions. Some of them, he saw however, had solar power plants spread awkwardly across their roofs, and on the edge of town there had been a larger municipal solar plant, apparently used to pump energy into those houses which were not so equipped.
He shifted the knapsack to a more comfortable position on his shoulder and pulled the cowl of the robe more closely about his face. He crossed the street and wandered slowly up the pavement and on every hand were little things that jogged loose memories. There were names now as well as places. Jake Woods had been the banker and Jake Woods could, surely, no longer be alive. For if he had ever seen this town, it must have been more than two centuries ago. And Charley Breen and he had run away from school and gone fishing in the creek and had caught some chub.
It was incredible, he told himself; it was impossible. And yet the memories kept on piling in on him, not vague and shadowy, but incidents and faces and pictures from the past, all three-dimensional. He remembered that Jake Woods had been lame and had carried a cane and he knew what kind of cane it was – one that was heavy and of a shiny, hand-rubbed wood. Charley had had freckles and a wide, infectious grin, and Charley, he remembered, had always led him into trouble. There had been Minnie Short, an old, befuddled woman, dressed in rags and walking with a weird sort of shuffling trot, who had worked part-time as a book-keeper at the lumber yard. But the lumber yard was gone and in its place stood a glass-and-plastic agency for floaters.
He reached a bench that stood in front of a restaurant across the street from the bank and sat down on it heavily. There were a few people on the street and as they went past they stared at him.
He felt fine. Even after the hard night of Quester’s running, his body still was fresh and strong. Perhaps, he told himself, it was because of Thinker’s stolen energy – an energy transferred from Thinker to Quester and from Quester on to him.
He slid the knapsack off his shoulder and let it rest beside him on the bench. He slid the cowl back from his face.
People were beginning to open up the shops and stores. A lone car came thrumming gently up the street.
He read the signs and none of them were familiar. The names of the stores, and of the people who owned and operated them, all had changed.
On the floor above the bank the windows bore gilt lettering advertising the occupants – dentists, doctors, lawyers. Alvin Bank, MD: H. H. Oliver, Dentistry; Ryan Wilson, Attorney-at-Law; J. P. Leach, Optometrist; Wm Smith – Wait a minute, there! Back up! Ryan Wilson. that was it! Ryan Wilson was the name that had been mentioned in the message.
There, across the street, was the office of the man who had indicated in the note that he had something of interest to impart.
The clock above the door of the bank said it was almost nine o’clock. Wilson might be in his office, or would be coming soon. If the office still were closed, he could stay and wait for him.
Blake got up off the bench and crossed the street. The door that opened on the stairs leading to the floor above the bank was rickety, and it creaked and groaned as he pushed it open. The stairs were steep and dark and the brown paint that covered the treads was scuffed and peeling off.
Wilson’s office was just down the hail, and the door stood open.
Blake went into the outer office, which was empty. In an inner office a man sat in his shirt sleeves, working on some papers, with others stacked high in a basket on the desk.
The man looked up. ‘Come on in,’ he said.
‘You are Ryan Wilson?’
The man nodded. ‘My secretary isn’t here as yet. What can I do for you?’