Highway of Eternity (6 page)

“You understand,” said Emma, “we never saw the Infinites. Some people did, I guess.”

“What Emma means,” said Horace, “is that none of us, here in this room, saw them. Other humans did and became convinced that the entire human race should allow itself to be turned into pure mind entities. This belief of theirs became an insane article of faith. Those who rebelled against it became outlaws.”

“What you must realize,” said Timothy, speaking softly, “is that our race was ripe for such a development. Even before the Infinites put in their appearance, the human race had changed. By that period from which we fled, viewpoints and philosophical concepts had been vastly altered. The race had gotten tired, was bored. It had made too much progress, had accomplished too much. Progress no longer meant a great deal. Dilettantism was, by and large, the norm.”

“But you?” asked Boone.

“Not we,” said Timothy. “Not we and certain others. We did not fall into the trap. We were the outlanders, the backwoods rednecks, residing far beyond the fringe of the shining society which humanity had become. We wanted to stay human. We distrusted the new ways. That is why we were outlawed.”

“But the time travelers?”

“We stole the time concept from the Infinites,” said Horace. “We still were human enough to do anything necessary to protect ourselves. The Infinites do not lie or steal. They are great and noble.”

“And stupid,” said David.

“Yes, that is right,” said Horace. “And stupid. But now they have found us out and we must get away again.”

“I can't leave,” said Timothy. “I have decided that I will not go. I will not leave my books or my notes, the work that I have done.”

“What Timothy is trying to do,” Enid explained to Boone, “is get an inkling of where, and how, the human race went wrong, how it could have gotten itself into the situation that convinced the people of a million years from now to go along with the scheme of the Infinites. Timothy thinks that back here, close to the roots of our civilization, he may find a clue through a close study of history and philosophy.”

“I am close to it,” said Timothy. “I am convinced I am. But I can't carry on my work without my books and notes.”

“There won't be room,” said Horace, “to take along all your notes, let alone your books. Our traveler capacity is limited. We have Martin's resident traveler and I am glad we have it. We have our own small traveler and Gahan's traveler, if it still operates …”

“I doubt there is much wrong with it, if anything,” said David. “Gahan lost control of it, that's all. It made a fairly soft landing in the flower bed.”

“We'll have a look at it,” said Horace.

“Now we are beginning to make some progress,” said Boone. “But there are decisions that have to be made. If you are convinced that we have to go, has anyone any idea where we should go?”

“We could join the group in the Pleistocene,” said Emma.

Horace shook his head. “Not that. Athens is destroyed and Henry says something is sniffing all around us. The possibility is good the Pleistocene people have been located as well. If they have not been, our going there could lead whoever is looking for us to them. My suggestion would be to go back deeper into time, beyond the Pleistocene.”

“It seems to me we should go into the future,” said David, “and try to find out what is going on.”

“Back into the hornet's nest,” said Emma.

“If that is what it takes,” said David. “There probably are some people like us still up there, those who did not leave, who are skulking around, toughing it out, making out as best they can.”

“Martin might know something about what is going on,” said Horace, “but where the hell is Martin?”

“We need some time to think it out a bit,” said David. “We can't make decisions on the run.”

“Two days, then,” said Horace. “Two days and we're gone.”

“I hope you understand,” said Timothy, speaking slowly and decisively, “that I intend to go nowhere. I am staying here.”

5

The Monster

Boone sat on a low stone fence that ran between a pasture and a field. In the field, two setters ran in happy frolic, chasing one another, giving chase to the birds their gamboling flushed from the stubble. The late afternoon sun was warm, and the cloudless sky arched like a great blue dome.

For a couple of hours, Boone had prowled the Acre, accompanied by the happy dogs. He first had set out with a solid determination to find the time bubble, to locate the wall of differentiating time that somewhere must come down to earth. He had tried to walk a straight line, stopping every now and then to realign the landmarks he had set up to insure his going straight. But after an hour or more of walking his straight line, he had found, with some astonishment, that he had come back approximately to that point where he had started out.

The walk, however, had not been entirely pointless nor a complete failure. During the hour or more, the countryside through which he walked had seeped into him. It had been a long time since he had gone for a walk in any countryside, and the walk had brought back memories of other walks in other years and in other lands. He had come upon a flock of complacent sheep that stood and watched him with mild question in their eyes, then trotted off a ways, but stopped and stood to watch him as he ambled past them. He had stepped across small, swiftly flowing brooks with water that had a crystal look; he had walked through small, neat groves of trees; he had noted with deep satisfaction the autumn wild flowers that grew along the brooks, nodding above the mirror of the water and along the hedges.

And now he sat upon the low stone wall, not far from where he had clambered over it to begin the walk. Behind him was the road that ran up, between the rows of dying poplars, to reach the house; the sweep of stubbled field before him. And sitting, he thought with muted wonder of what he and Corcoran had been told by the people of the house. It was so fantastic and so beyond all imagination that he had found much difficulty in bringing it to grips. He could find no starting point to begin a logical consideration of it. Far down the field, at the edge of a grove of trees, he caught the flicker of something moving. Watching it, he finally made out that it was a man, and a short time later recognized Corcoran. As he watched, Corcoran came striding up the slope toward him.

He waited on the wall until Corcoran finally came up to him.

Boone patted the wall beside him. “Sit down, Jay,” he said. “Tell me what you found.”

For Corcoran, he knew, had not gone walking without purpose; he had been seeking something.

“I found the edge of the bubble,” Corcoran told him. “I am sure I did, although it was very hazy, and I would not take an oath on it.”

“I hunted for it myself,” said Boone. “I walked a straight line and ended up where I had started out. I did not find the wall, but you have different eyes.”

“That's it, I suppose. I do have different eyes. But also I have a witness. Henry, go ahead and tell him.”

“Henry? Jay, you're stark raving. There is no one with you. You came up the slope alone.”

“I met a friend along the way. I forgot that you can't see him in the sun. Henry, move over into the shadow of that tree so my friend can see you.”

He made a thumb toward a small tree growing beside the wall. “You can see him in the shade.”

Boone looked at the tree. There was nothing there—and then he saw a hazy flickering, dancing in the air like dust motes dancing in a narrow sunbeam coming through the slats of a window blind.

A soundless voice addressed him out of the shadow of the tree, the unspoken words impinging on his brain.

I am glad to meet you, sir. I am Henry, although at times Horace calls me Ghost, much to the uneasiness and wrath of other members of the family. Ghost I do not mind at all. Ghost might even be the proper name for such as I. For, after all, who is there to say what is and what is not a ghost. Although, if I am a ghost, I am not a ghost out of the past, as I suspect most other ghosts would be, but a ghost from the future.

“Well, I'll be damned,” said Boone, “And yet, in light of other things, you're almost commonplace. Earlier in the day there was mention of you by the family. By the way, I'm Boone. Tom Boone. Jay and I are friends from long ago.”

What your friend told you of his seeing of the time wall is true, Henry said in Boone's mind. I know he saw it, although imperfectly. Your friend is most unusual. So far as I know, no other human actually can see it, although there are ways of detecting time. I tried to show him a sniffler. There are a number of snifflers, trying to sniff out the bubble. They know there's something strange, but don't know what it is.

“Did you see the sniffler?” Boone asked Corcoran.

“I saw something. A rather small thing. No larger than an ordinary dog. But I did not see it well. All I knew was that there was something there.”

I know not what the snifflers are, said Henry. But in our situation we must be at least marginally concerned with anything that transpires beyond the ordinary.

“How are things going at the house?” Corcoran asked Boone.

“When I left they were talking. Not shouting at one another. Horace and Enid were off to one side, arguing about where they would bury Gahan. But the rest were talking, discussing things.”

“I think it was wise for both of us to leave,” said Corcoran. “Give them a chance to talk among themselves without outsiders being present.”

Boone agreed. “This is their show. It should be up to them to make their own decisions.”

“Back there, when you jumped up on the table, you damn well made it your show.”

“It wasn't that,” said Boone. “I wasn't trying to horn in. But they weren't getting anywhere. They were yelling at one another, that was all. They could have kept it up all day. They needed someone to knock some common sense into them.”

You think ill of them because of their bad behavior, said Henry. I readily admit that it is bad, but you must understand the stake they have in all of this. They fled the future a century and a half or so of your years ago. They fled for their lives, of course, but they also fled so that men and women might not live as bodiless abstractions, so that the race might be more than theoretical or hypothetical thought processes. Look upon me. I was halfway to being the nothing that all humans would be if the Infinites had their way. With me it did not take. The procedure stuttered and I was spat out and was free; in my present form, I can not be snared again. I am beyond everything except, perhaps, some extraordinary harm of which I am not yet aware. And having escaped, I came back to the family, and with them I fled. By reason of my unorthodox form, I was able to be of some assistance to them. And out of their recognition of me as still a member of the family, the family flies to my defense when Horace, whose only family association is that he cowed and persuaded my sister Emma to marry him, pays me less respect than is due a member.

“Your tale is fascinating,” said Corcoran, “and adds to our comprehension of the situation that we find here. You must be aware how difficult it is for us to grasp all the nuances of what has happened a million years beyond our time.”

Indeed I do, said Henry, and I must admit I am amazed at how well and solidly you have accepted what you have learned of us in the last few hours. You have not been bowled over by our revelations.

“It is because we are too numb to be bowled over,” said Boone.

I think it is not that at all. You have betrayed no numbness. Your reactions have led me to believe that basically our race is far more rational than we might have expected to find so deep in our ancestral roots.

“I'm curious,” said Corcoran, “how you could have performed significant services for your family in their flight.”

I acted as a scout, said Henry. I am admirably fitted to act as such. Who would suspect a flittering moonbeam or a slight glitter in the sunlight? Even seeing this, any reasonable man would lay it to a momentary aberration of his visual faculty. So I went into the past, all by myself. Unlike the others, I need no traveler; space and time are open roads to me. I went as an advance agent, a feeler-outer. The others made arrangements and waited on my word. But before I could get back, they were forced to flee precipitously, with no direction and no plan. I finally found them in the depths of the so-called Dark Ages, when large areas of Europe were deserted, dank and desolate. A perfect place to hide, perhaps, but most disagreeable.

“It was you, then, who found this place, Hopkins Acre.”

That is right. There were other locations that might have done as well or better, places that I liked much better. But this one was made to order for our taking over. The owner and all his family were absent on a tour of the Continent. Even before I went hunting for the others, I tracked down technicians in my own time who could secure this tract for us. So there it was, as you see it now, waiting for my family once I had found them in that noisome fen that was Dark Age Europe.

“I can't help but wonder about the Hopkins family,” said Corcoran. “They came back from vacation and their home was gone as if it had never been here. And the rest of the neighborhood—a house, a farm, an estate with all the people who lived on it, wiped out overnight—what was the neighborhood reaction?”

I do not know, said Henry. None of us ever knew or thought of it. It was no concern of ours. All we took was property that we needed. Property is not sacred.

David's voice came from behind them. “I saw you sitting here,” he said, “and I came down to tell you the funeral is at sundown.”

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Boone. “Help with the grave, perhaps?”

David shook his head. “No need of help. Horace is a husky man and can move a lot of dirt. A little labor will do no harm to Timothy, much as he may loathe it. A few blisters on his soft and uncalloused hands would be a great education for our brother Timothy. Emma's helping, too.”