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

      The usual Sunday sounds of the camp surrounded Jake. Laughter and swearwords and arguments, and the one ever-playing radio. The Army chaplain hadn’t made it down today for Sunday services; most weeks he failed to make it, because it was a seven-mile mule ride on switchback trails from the South Rim, and a lot more miles than that from the nearest place that even pretended to be a town.

      Just below Camp NP-3-A, down on the cleared, relatively flat space of the creek’s delta, some of the guys were getting a pickup softball game going despite the growing heat. For most of the young enrollees this would be a day to play games, play cards, write letters, and just sack out. Here and there one of the guys would dig out a bottle he had secretly stashed away. Usually the officers and leaders looked the other way when that happened, unless someone showed up drunk for work, or too hung over to carve trails and haul rock.

      With the filled canteen hooked securely on his GI belt, Jake approached his own tent, halfway down the company street, and stuck his head inside. Three of the four military bunks, including his own, were empty. Joe Spicci, short and wiry, looked up from the fourth sack, where he lay reading last Sunday’s sports section.

      Jake told him: “I’m going for a hike.” He made the announcement reluctantly; but it made sense to let someone know he might not be back until late. He wouldn’t want them starting a search if he missed evening chow.

      “Where?” Spicci sounded interested.

      “Just a hike.” The answer was short; this was one hike on which Jake didn’t want company. “See you at chow time. Or maybe even later.”

      “Too damn hot out there for me today.” Joe raised the sports pages in front of his face again.

* * *

      A hundred steps away from the tent he lived in and Jake had put the entire camp behind him. Hell, with a few more strides he was already practically out of sight of all the tents. The land down here at the bottom of the inner gorge was mostly nothing but barren rock, a real desert, but he was already around the nearest big outcropping shoulder. This formation, whose shape always put Jake in mind of a sheeted ghost, dwarfed the camp, even as it was dwarfed itself by the thousand-foot cliffs of the lower gorge. These cliffs mostly blocked out the view of the vastly greater and more colorful fantasies above. After living four months in a work camp at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, Jake had learned his way around the place a little bit, but he still hadn’t got used to it in his mind. Maybe you never could, at least not if you had any imagination.

      But today, so far, he was hardly noticing the landscape. Because his mind was busy with something else. If any of the other men in camp had any idea … but none of them did. They couldn’t, because Jake hadn’t said a word to anyone.

      His secret destination lay downstream, along the south bank of the broad Colorado. To reach the south bank he had to cross the Kaibab suspension bridge, just outside of camp. This bridge was somewhat longer than a football field, and just about wide enough to accommodate one loaded mule. It was the only span of any kind to cross the river for more than a hundred miles upstream or down.

      The bridge sounded hollowly beneath Jake’s boots. The river, here deep and smooth, rushed silently below. After Jake had crossed the bridge his way lay west along the newly constructed River Trail. He’d labored on this stretch of trail himself, worked hard, helping the experts set explosives here and there, digging and hauling broken rock.

      Though water was a life-and-death necessity in this heat, he thought he might possibly have managed today without borrowing a canteen, because there was the river to drink from. But along these miles of uninhabited shoreline, more often than not the edge of the Colorado was too abrupt, too steep and sharp-rocked, to let a thirsty man get close enough to drink or scoop up water. A man who fell in would be lucky to find a place where he could climb out again before the current knocked him against too many rocks. The mean and rugged riverbank was of a piece with the rest of the local landscape.

      When Jake had made a few hundred yards going west along the south bank he stopped at a bend in the trail. Pausing there, he looked back, to make sure that no one else was crossing the suspension bridge. He had no reason to think that anyone would be interested in where he went, or try to follow him, but just in case…

      He could be sure now. No one was following him.

      Jake moved on, briskly.

      For once he was oblivious to all the giants’ handiwork around him. All he could think of were the same questions that had been tormenting him all week: Two Sundays in a row she’s been there. If only she’s there again. And if only she’s still interested…

* * *

      When the time came to turn off the River Trail it was a matter of scrambling and climbing, finding his own way across rough landscape. There was not even a deer trail to follow here. But Jake had been this way enough times now to have worked out a passable route for himself through the harsh terrain.

      An hour and a half after leaving camp he was several miles downstream, moving quickly despite the day’s growing heat. Here he was still inside the lower gorge, a thousand feet deep and comparatively narrow. Still its high edges almost totally cut off his view of most of the vaster, deeper rocky wilderness of the upper Canyon, and of both distant rims. At irregular intervals side canyons came slicing into the