Children of the Gates (3 page)

“Wait here!” he ordered Linda and started for the place where the animal had stood. There he went down on one knee to examine the thick leaf mold. Then he wished he had not, for it was cut and patterned by tracks. Something had been there, unicorn or not.

Nick hurried back to Linda and the bike. They must get out of this woods as quickly as they could. For that sensation which had come upon him earlier was back full force. They were under observation—by the unicorn? It did not matter. Nick was aware they were invaders in this place. And sometimes intruders meet with active retaliation.

“I did see a unicorn,” Linda was repeating, apparently to herself. “It was right there, under that tree. I have to believe that I saw it—believe that or—I just have to believe it!” She had picked up Lung, holding him high on her breast so his silken head was right under her chin. The Peke had stopped barking and was licking her face, or as much of it as his tongue could reach.

“Let’s get going.” Nick’s tone was rough. They must get away—out into the open, if they could find any open.

The compass did bring them out a few minutes later into a space where the giant trees ceased and brush took their places. They pushed through the thinnest section of this and came to an expanse of tall grass, which in turn gave way to reeds bordering the lake—or a lake.

Along the shoreline, they could see no cabins, though by now Nick had ceased to hope to find those, or any sign that their own species had ever been there. Wading through the shallows were several herons that paid no attention to the newcomers. And in a rough pasture farther to the south animals were grazing. They were so light of hide Nick wondered if they had chanced upon a small herd of unicorns. Then one raised its head and showed branched antlers. But who had ever heard of silver-gray deer?

“There’re no cabins—” Linda loosed her hold on the bike, let her duffel bag thump to the ground. “Nick, what are we going to do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” He was no superman, no use in her turning to him as if he could get them out of this by flexing his muscles or something like that. “If you want to know the truth, I’m hungry. We might as well eat.”

By the angle of the sun it must be close to noon. And he was hungry. It appeared that even a jump across time (if that was what had really happened to them) was not enough to subdue one’s appetite.

“Hungry!” Linda repeated. Then she laughed, even if it was a small and difficult sound. “Why, I guess I am, too.”

The grazing deer paid no attention to them. And, here in the open, nothing could sneak up on them without attracting attention. Linda moved on to a place where the grass did not appear as tall.

“Here’s a good place.” She beckoned as if this were an ordinary picnic. But Nick thought now about food. Not of how hungry he was, but of the meagerness of the rations they carried.

He had been depending on the store of canned goods at the cabin, and all else he had was what he had picked up at the store. That would not last long. Then they would have to live off the country. But what if they could not?

Even in the countryside of his own world he did not know much about what could be eaten in the way of berries (if any could be found) or other growing things, except those from gardens. There were survival books supposed to explain just how you could live off the wild, but such knowledge had never appealed to him and he had never read one. No, they would have to go light on their provisions. Back in the jeep—if they could find their way back—were the two melons and all those cases of drinks. But that was not much.

He squatted down on his heels, facing Linda who had settled cross-legged in the grass.

“Listen—about food—I don’t have much. You have anything in that?” He pointed to her bag.

“You mean—” He could see from the expression on her face that she understood. Then she went on, steadily enough. “You mean we might not be able to find anything to eat here?”

“Well, there might be fish in the lake. And there are blackberries—at least there were blackberries near our cabin. But this isn’t our lake. We had better go easy with what we have until we know the score.”

Linda pulled at the knotted drawstring of the duffel bag. “I don’t have much, but I was taking two boxes of peanut brittle up to Jane, and a tin of English toffee—Jane loves peanut brittle and Ron has this thing about toffee—the rum-flavored kind. There’re the melons and all that Coke and stuff back in the jeep. But it’s heavy to carry. I don’t think we can pack it along with us. Nick, where will we go? There’re no houses here, and beyond there”—she pointed to the far side of the lake—“it looks like more woods.”

She was right. There was a dark rise of trees over there, matching that from which they had just emerged. In fact, as far as Nick could see, though the lake curved farther south and that end of it was now hidden, the water was ringed by forest. Suppose they did work through that, and they had no idea how many miles of it there were, what lay beyond? He had a hazy idea, from a novel he had read concerning the early American wilderness, that such growth could extend across a state with very few breaks.

“I don’t know,” he said frankly again. “But I’d rather be here in the open than under the trees. We can move down to the end of the lake—there’s an outlet—the Deep Run—there, if this is like our lake. Maybe we could work out of the woods using that for a guide.” He was rather proud of himself for remembering that.

“
If
this lake is like the one you know,” she commented. “Does it look like it, really, Nick?”

He stood up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun, which was hot now, but not as hot, he thought, as it might have been in their world. Slowly he studied the part of the lake visible from here. It was hard to equate this untouched, wild land with that where cabins and small docks were visible. But he was almost certain the contours of the shoreline were not too dissimilar from those he had known since he was small. And he said so.

“Do you suppose,” Linda asked, “that we have gone back in time—that we’re in the country that existed long before our people came into it? That—that we may meet Indians?” She shot another wary glance at the woods.

“That would not explain the unicorn. Nor gray deer—” Nick indicated the peacefully grazing herd. “We could be in an alternate world.” He was unrolling the package of food from the store, but now his hands were still as he thought of what he was saying. Alternate worlds, time travel—such things did not exist! They could not—not for Nick Shaw, a very ordinary person who only wanted a quiet weekend for himself. He was Nick Shaw, he was alive, yet this was happening! Unless, of course, he had really knocked himself out back there with the bike and maybe now was in a hospital with a vivid dream—

“Alternate world? But unicorns—they never existed at all. They are only fairy tales.” Linda shook her head. “Nick!” For the second time her voice soared up and she caught at him. “Nick, look there! Isn’t that smoke?”

She pointed south beyond the deer and he followed her finger with his gaze. She was right! From somewhere in the brush beyond the meadowland a beacon of smoke was rising. And smoke could mean only one thing—people! Ted and Ben—trapped here all those years! Nick’s thought flew first to them. But company—company to help them, to let them know they were not alone in a nightmare!

Hastily he repacked the food, put the bag back on the bike. He wished they dared ride, but it would be folly to try. And they had better be careful about getting around those deer. The animals looked harmless enough but that was not saying they would remain so if alarmed.

They wanted to run, but the grass tangled and pulled at their feet and the bike wheels, so that they floundered along at little better than a walking pace. Also, at Nick’s insistence, they made a detour around the edge of the open space where the deer were, putting a screen of brush between them and the animals. And they froze once as the stag that was the leader flung up its head and stared straight at the bush behind which they happened to be.

Nick felt very naked and exposed then. He had heard that if you were absolutely still animals would lose interest in you and he scowled a warning at Linda. She nodded, holding her hand about Lung’s muzzle. But the Peke appeared to understand and did not fight for his freedom and a chance to bark.

The stag watched them, or at least Nick thought they were its quarry. But after a time when the two dared hardly draw a full breath, the stag grunted and trotted toward the lake. When it was what seemed to Nick a safe distance away they hurried on.

But this closer sight of the deer presented another puzzle. Surely these gray animals were larger than those of Nick’s own world, differing in size as they did in color. He wished he knew more, could get enough hints to answer some of his questions, if those might be answered at all.

They moved on, around the curve in the lake. Yes, there was the opening to Deep Run. So this place did follow the general pattern of their own world. And the smoke rose near the mouth of the Run. Nick felt some return of satisfaction at being proved right on one point of geography. But his triumph was speedily dashed.

“Stand where you are, chums!”

3

Lung broke into a wild barking, facing the bush screen from behind which that order had come. Nick halted, though Linda took a step or two as if the plunging of the now aroused Peke pulled her ahead.

Nick touched her arm with one hand, with the other he steadied the bike.

“Who are you?” he demanded of the bush and was inwardly glad his voice was so even and controlled. Ted—Ben? Some other who had preceded them into this alien world?

There was a moment of silence, so prolonged that Nick wondered if the challenger had faded into deeper cover, tricking them into a halt while he withdrew. But why would anyone be so elusive? The stranger in hiding could certainly see they were harmless.

Then the bushes parted and a man came into the open. He was very ordinary looking, a little shorter than Nick, but broader of shoulder, his bulk of body enhanced by the garment he wore, a coverall. Perched on his head was a helmet rather like a inverted basin, and he had on thick boots.

His face was round and there was a thick brush of moustache, grayish red, half hiding his mouth. In one hand he carried—

A slingshot!

Viewing that, Nick could have laughed, except there was something in the stranger’s attitude that did not permit such a reaction to his childish weapon. And there was a very faint stir of memory deep in Nick’s mind. Somewhere, sometime, he had seen a man wearing just such clothing. But where and when?

As yet the newcomer had given no answer to Nick’s question. Instead he eyed them narrowly. Lung, straining to the very end of his leash, was sniffing, his barking having subsided, sniffing as if to set this stranger’s scent deep in his catalog of such odors.

If the stranger intended to overawe them with such a beginning, Nick refused to yield.

“I asked,” he said, “who are you?”

“And I heard you, chum. I ain’t lost the use of m’ ears, not yet. I’m Sam Stroud, Warden of Harkaway Place, if it’s anything to you. Which I’m laying odds, it ain’t. There’s just the two of you?”

He watched them closely, almost as if he expected them to be the van of a larger party. Linda broke in:

“Warden! Nick, he’s dressed like an air raid warden—one of those in the picture about the Battle of Britain they showed in our history course.”

English! That explained his accent. But what was an Englishman in the uniform of a service over forty years in the past doing here? Nick did not want to accept the suggestion the discovery brought.

“Is she right?” He added a second question to the first. “You are that kind of warden?”

“That’s so. Supposin’, m’lad, you speak up now. Who are you? An’ this young lady here?”

“She’s Linda Durant and I’m Nick Shaw. We’re—we’re Americans.”

Stroud raised a thick hand and rubbed his jaw. “Well, now—Americans, hey? Caught right in your own country?”

“Yes. We were just heading for a lake—like this lake—then suddenly we were here. Where is here?”

Stroud made a sound that might have been intended for a bark of laughter, except there was very little humor in it.

“Now that’s a question, Shaw, which nobody seems able to answer. The Vicar, he’s got one or two ideas—pretty wide they are—but we’ve never been able to prove them one way or another. When did you come through?”

“Not too long ago,” Linda answered. “Is that your fire making the smoke? We’re awfully hungry and we were just going to eat when we saw it and came along . . .”

“You have some supplies?” Stroud rammed the slingshot back under the belt of his boiler suit. “All right, come ahead.” He turned a little toward the bush from which he had emerged, put two fingers to his lips and gave a low but carrying whistle. “You ain’t bait as far as I can see.”

“Bait?” Nick did not like the sound of that.

Again Stroud gave his crow of laughter. “Bait, yes. You’ll learn, m’ lad, you’ll learn. This way now, an’ mind the bushes . . .”

He pushed ahead and they followed in a way which to Nick’s eyes used all available cover. But if there was such a need to hide, why then did they allow smoke to rise like a banner in the air? Only a moment later, he realized that they were not heading toward the site of that fire, but well to the left of it.

Linda must have made the same discovery, for now she asked:

“Aren’t we going to your camp?”

“Right ahead—” Stroud’s deep voice reached them. “Mind this vine, enough to trip a man up it is.”

Nick had to mind the vine, a tough cover on the ground, with attention. It caught at the bike, as well as at his feet, with such persistence one could almost believe it a set trap. Twice he had to stop and untangle it, so that Stroud and Linda had disappeared and he had only the marks of their passing to guide him on a trail that took them farther and farther from the site of the fire and then curved again toward the Run.

He came out at last in a clearing walled by what seemed a solid siding of thick brush. And there he found Stroud, Linda, and three others. Two were men, the third a woman. They had been facing Linda, but, as Nick pushed his way through with a crackling of brush, they turned almost as one to stare at him.

The men were in contrast to each other as well as to Stroud. One was elderly, very tall and gaunt, his white hair in a fluff about his head as if it were too fine to be controlled. He had a great forward hook of a nose that was matched by the firmness of the jaw beneath. But his eyes, under the shadow of bushy brows, did not have the fierce hawk glare Nick expected. They were intelligent and full of interest, but they also held an acceptance of others, not the need for dominance that the rest of his face suggested.

He wore a dark gray suit, much the worse for hard usage, and a sweater underneath its coat that did not come high enough to hide a clergyman’s roundabout collar. On his feet were rough hide moccasins, which were in strange contrast to the rest of his clothing, shabby as that was.

The younger man was an inch or two taller than Nick and, like Stroud, he was in uniform, but not that of a warden. His blue tunic was much worn, but there were wings on its breast, and he had pushed to the back of his blond head a pilot’s cap.

Their feminine companion was almost as tall as the pilot and she, too, was in uniform, with badges Nick did not recognize on the shoulder. A helmet like the Warden’s crowned a mass of unruly dark hair. Her figure was almost as lean as that of the clergyman, and her face, weathered and brown, made no pretense to good looks. Yet there was an air of competence and authority about her that was impressive.

“Americans,” she commented. “Then,” she spoke to the clergyman, “you were entirely right in your surmise, Adrian. We did travel farther than we thought in that cage.”

The blond pilot also fingered a slingshot. “We’d better shove off.” His eyes had gone from Nick to the brush. He had the attitude of one listening. “No use watching the trap any longer—”

“Barry is correct,” the clergyman nodded. “We may not have had the kind of success we hoped to obtain. But by attracting our young friends here we have excellent results.”

“Better introduce ourselves,” the woman said briskly. “Adrian Hadlett, Vicar of Minton Parva.” The clergyman gave an old-fashioned and rather majestic inclination of his head. “Pilot Officer Barry Crocker, and I’m Diana Ramsay—”

“Lady Diana Ramsay,” Stroud growled as if that was important.

She made an impatient gesture with one hand. The other, Nick noted, held a third slingshot.

“There’re a couple more of us,” she continued. “You’ll meet them at the camp.”

Once more, this time with Nick and Linda in the midst of this energetic group, they pushed on, to come out on the bank of the Run. And not too much farther on was their camp.

Logs had been rolled into place and reinforced with rocks, forming what was half-hut, half-cave. Lung set to barking as a huge, gray-furred shape, which had been sunning by the entrance, reared back and showed a brush of tail. With ears flattened to its skull, the cat faced the excited Peke with a warning hiss that deepened into a growl. Linda dropped her bag to catch up the willing warrior, holding him despite his struggles.

“Now then, Jeremiah, m’dear, that be no proper way to say good day, not at all it ben’t.”

From the door issued a small woman to catch up the cat, a hefty armload, and soothe him gently with hands crook-jointed by arthritis, patched with the brown spots of age. Her hair, as white as the Vicar’s, was twisted into a tight little bun above a round face with a mere knob of a nose that gave very precarious perch room to a pair of metal-framed glasses.

She lisped a little as she spoke, perhaps because her teeth seemed uncertainly anchored in her mouth, but there was a bright and interested welcome in the way she regarded the newcomers. Her dress was covered in part by an apron of sacking and an old mackintosh which swung cloak wise from her shoulders. On her feet were the same kind of crude moccasins as the Vicar wore.

“Jean,” she called back over her shoulder. “We’ve got company.”

The girl who came at the summons was perhaps only a little older than Linda herself. She also wore a dark blue uniform, though over it she had pinned apronlike a piece of dingy cloth, as if she hoped so to protect the only clothing she had. Her hair was brown and sprang in waves about her tanned face, a face that was pretty enough to make a man look a second time, Nick thought.

“Americans.” Lady Diana again carried through the ritual of introductions. “Linda Durant, Nicholas Shaw. And this is Mrs. Maude Clapp and Jean Richards, who is a WREN.”

“WREN?” repeated Nick, a little bewildered.

The girl smiled. “Women’s Royal Naval Service—I believe you call yours WAVES.”

“Well now, didn’t I tell you that the dream I had me last night was a true one?” Mrs. Clapp’s voice was cheery with open friendliness. “Company comin’, that it was. An’ we’ve fish all ready to fry out nice’n crisp. Couldn’t have been luckier, now, could it?” she asked of the company at large, but not as if she expected any real answer. “Jeremiah here, he won’t take at your little dog, Miss, if the dog don’t take at him. Jeremiah, he ain’t a quarrelsome beast.”

“I hope Lung isn’t.” In Linda’s hold the Peke had become quiet. Now she swung him up so she could view him eye to eye. “Lung, friend, friend!” She spoke with emphasis, then turned the dog around to face the big cat whom Mrs. Clapp had put on the ground once more. “Friend, Lung!”

The Peke flashed his tongue across his own nose. But when Linda set him down he settled by her feet, quiet, as if he had not been only moments earlier in a frenzy against a tribal enemy.

Nick offered his own supplies.

“Bread!” Mrs. Clapp opened the bag and sniffed ecstatically at its contents. “Fresh bread! Lands, I almost forgot what it smells like, let alone tastes.”

Nick had grounded the bike. Now he stood a little to one side glancing from the pilot Crocker to the girl Jean, then on to Stroud in his warden’s uniform. Crocker, unless Nick was a very poor judge of ages, was in his early twenties, Jean even younger. They could not be as old as Stroud’s uniform suggested. But—

“Something bothers you, my boy?” It was the Vicar. And without thinking Nick asked his question baldly:

“Do you mind telling me, sir—how long have you been here?”

The Vicar smiled wearily. “That—that may be impossible. We tried to keep a record in the beginning, but after they captured us and brought us here—” He shrugged. “By a matter of seasons, I should judge about four years. The raid hit Minton Parva the evening of July 24, 1942. I think we all have reason to remember that. We were in the crypt shelter of the church. Mrs. Clapp is, was, my housekeeper. Lady Diana had come to see me about the hospital fund. Jean and Barry were on their way down to the station to take the train back, they were both returning from leave. And Stroud had come to check up on our supplies—when the alert sounded and we all went into the crypt. There was a sound—frankly, Shaw, we all believed it was the end. And then—somehow we were out of the church, out of even the England that we knew . . .”

He hesitated. Those tired but very keen eyes had been watching Nick’s face. Now the Vicar’s expression changed.

“You know something, don’t you, my boy? Something that is disturbing you. What is it?”

“Time, sir. You say you think you have been here about four years. But today is—was—July 21, 1985.”

He expected the Vicar to challenge him on that. It was not believable, not if Hadlett had been speaking the truth. And Nick was sure he had.

“July 21, 1985,” repeated the Vicar slowly. “No, I do not doubt you, my boy, as I think you are expecting. It is too apt, it bears out all the old tales. But—1985—forty-three years—What happened there—forty years back?”

“Forty years what? . . .” Crocker lounged over to them. He had been more intent on the motorbike than he had on their conversation, but now he looked at Hadlett alertly. “What is this about forty years?”

“Tell him your date,” the Vicar said to Nick as if his saying it would make the deeper impression.

“The date today—it’s July 21, 1985,” Nick returned. Hadlett had accepted that without question, but would the others?

“Nineteen eighty-five,” repeated the pilot blankly. “But—it’s impossible—Padre, it’s about 1946, unless we counted wrong, and a man can’t tick off forty years that way without knowing it!”

It was Lady Diana who had listened this time. “Adrian, then you were right. It’s like the old tales, isn’t it? Over forty—” She looked beyond them to where the water curled around the stones in the even flowing Run. “Ninety-eight—but I’m not, Adrian, I’m no older—”

“That, too, was part of those same old tales, Diana,” he said.

“No!” Crocker protested. “This kid has it all wrong, he’s one of
Them
maybe. How do we know—” He was backing away from Nick, the sling again in his hand. “He’s working for
Them
, sent to break us down with a story like that!”

“Here—what’s goin’ on?” Stroud bore down on them. “What’s this talk about
Them
?”

Crocker burst out with his accusation. And there was open anger in his voice as he turned on the Warden. “We brought these two here—next
They
will be coming! Tell us that we’ve been here forty-plus years! That’s a lie no one’s going to believe.”