A Question Of Time by Fred Saberhagen (best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

      “Just an animal,” Camilla assured him, in her recently acquired apologetic voice. Looking alert but not particularly excited, she shifted her grip on the shotgun slightly, and stood scanning the wilderness of rocks and scanty brush behind him.

      There was no help to be had from her. A moment later Jake had started trying to make his way upstream along the roaring Colorado’s bank, despite the absence in this version of the world of anything like a path along the shore. Before he’d gone ten yards he had to stop, blocked by sheer slick walls of rock. There just wasn’t any trail here. No way to get through, unless maybe if you were a mountain climber. Although, of course, there had to be a way. Because he’d come down river this way, somehow, no more than an hour or two ago…

      Again he had to ask himself: Could he now be standing on the bank of a whole different goddammed river? Hell no, no way that could happen. There were a great many miles between big rivers, in this southwestern country.

      This whole situation, this series of incomprehensible changes, just couldn’t be happening. But it was happening. Therefore—

      Therefore what?

      Presently Jake found himself retreating up into the mouth of the side canyon again. He moved in this direction without any conscious plan, only because this had become the most familiar part of an almost completely unfamiliar world.

      The creek, one seemingly constant factor amid a multitude of changes, still gurgled down among the broken rocks to pour itself into the altered river. In Jake’s mind the voices of the creek were making only nonsense words.

      Fair-skinned, redhaired Camilla looked more comfortable now that the sun was down, and she had taken off her dark glasses. She carried her shotgun with nonchalance and continued to watch Jake patiently, as if she felt sorry for him—and perhaps, he thought, responsible.

      Finally he gave up, for the time being anyway, trying to figure out for himself what the hell was going on. He asked her humbly: “What’s happening? Why am I lost?”

      “I’m sorry, Jake.” Her voice was still quiet, but a little louder than before. “I can’t explain it very well. I wish I could…”

      There was a rustling noise behind Jake, a scrambling that moved low among dry brush and over loose rock. He turned to see a striped bear the size of a dairy cow, a monster that looked capable of swallowing a large dog. Black stripes ran fore-and-aft over a brown background, with one dark line passing right between the eyes. The teeth, a brilliant white, looked somehow not quite the right shape to belong to any animal or monster that Jake had ever seen, even in a picture. The red mouth distended itself, the shaggy form came lumbering toward them, not too fast but utterly unafraid.

      Camilla muttered something. She raised her shotgun, at the same time sidestepping to get Jake out of her line of fire. A moment later the twelve-gauge blasted, twice in quick succession.

      Jake saw, or thought he saw, small fragments of dark fur, white bone, and bloody brains go flying. The hulking shape had crumpled and was crashing about in the sparse brush, twisting and straightening. Camilla worked the pump-grip once more, loading the chamber for a third shot, but held her fire. Jake, who had scrambled to one side, giving her more shooting room, turned back and cautiously approached the creature she’d hit.

      He stood and stared in disbelief. The bear—he didn’t know what else to call it—was obviously dead now, its most peculiar head a bloody mess, white bits of skull protruding, almost detached from the body by the double impact. Either buckshot, though Jake, or else a load of rifled slugs. The heavy limbs still twitched.

      Jake took a couple of uncertain strides closer to the body, and stood there marveling.

      He turned his head to Camilla. “What—?”

      She shook her head. “I call ’em canyon bears. I know you don’t have ’em round your CCC camp, but here there’s quite a few. No fear of human beings, they’ll walk right up and eat you if you let ’em. Except they’ve learned to keep clear of our house; Edgar scares them off somehow. Most aren’t this big, but I’ve seen a few bigger. Edgar says we might as well kill ’em when we have a chance. That’s why he said to take the shotgun.”

      “But—I never saw anything like it. Where’d it come from?” Jake once again walked closer to the dead creature, giving his eyes a chance to confirm what they thought they had seen the first time. Camilla stood by in silence, patiently letting him look his fill.

      For a time that Jake could not have judged as either long or short, he stood there looking. Then, slowly, in some kind of wordless agreement, he and Camilla resumed their walk back up the side canyon. This time he let her lead the way.

      Swiftly night was becoming established, darkness oozing up and out of the deeply shaded crevices and small ravines that marked the canyon’s walls. Jake searched the strip of sky above. Now stars were appearing, faster that you could count them, but when Jake sought the familiar in the sky he could recognize none of the constellations that he knew. The North Star, that he’d always been able to locate winter or summer, ever since he was a boy, wasn’t to be found at all.

      He stopped and turned to his companion. “Camilla, where are we? What’s happening?”

      “Poor Jake.” Shifting her grip on the shotgun, she reached up with her free hand to stroke his hair. “But I don’t know what to tell you. Except what I said before, that the rocks down here are full of time. In here, what we call the Deep Canyon, days and years get all mixed up. Edgar can find his way in and out through them, but most people can’t. You found your way in—with a little help. But now