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

      Jake started to work accordingly, concentrating on the slab, breaking it up and mining it for nodules.

      Tyrrell reappeared promptly at dusk, just when Jake was getting ready to knock off work for the day. He examined Jake’s crop of white nodules carefully, and declared himself reasonably satisfied.

      A few minutes later, alone in the house with Camilla, Jake said: “Jeez, the way he handles tools, the strength he has, he could have done in half an hour what took me all day. Maybe he could have done it even faster. What’s he need me for? Why’s he need either of us?”

      “I told you once what I really thought.”

      “I remember. About him wanting our lives. But I just don’t understand.”

      “I don’t understand it either, lover. It’s just a feeling.”

* * *

      An hour or two before dawn, Jake snapped awake. Some alien force or presence had shaken the bed that he was lying in. He came fully awake to realize that Edgar was in the bedroom with him and Camilla.

      There was only the faint light of the night sky, coming in through the curtains on the shadeless windows, to illuminate the room. But this was light enough for Jake to see Edgar, dressed as usual, standing at bedside, one arm around Camilla’s naked body. She was already half out of bed, with Edgar’s help getting up to an unsteady balance on her feet.

      Jake, with his right arm still aching from yesterday’s combat, put one foot on the floor and started an unthinking, angry lunge at Edgar.

      Edgar effortlessly shoved him back, so that he went staggering across the little bedroom, striking his head against the far wall, sliding down to a sitting position on the floor.

      Slowly Jake rose and regained his balance. Camilla, her arms at her sides, was now standing beside the bed. He saw with a chill feeling of horror that she appeared to be still asleep, her body swaying lightly. And Jake saw, with a minor shock, that her eyes were still closed, her face serenely untroubled.

      Edgar stood nearby, the fingertips of his right hand barely touching Camilla’s upper arm. With gestures and a single whispered word, he conveyed to Camilla what he wanted her to do. After a moment’s hesitation she obeyed the command, whatever it had been. Walking to the door, naked as she was, she went on out. Edgar followed her.

      “Cam! Wake up!” Jake shouted as she disappeared. But neither she nor Edgar paid him the least attention.

      Jake pulled on his trousers and rushed after the receding figures. He detoured sufficiently to grab up a breadknife from the kitchen table, and still caught the deliberately moving Edgar and Camilla at the front door of the house. He aimed the knife at Edgar. Edgar effortlessly caught Jake’s arm and once more, with an almost absentminded motion, hurled him aside like a small child.

      Jake scrambled for the shotgun that stood leaning in a corner of the room. He swung the weapon around and aimed it, squarely at the old man in the doorway. Jake pulled the trigger, and the hammer fell with a dry snap.

      Jake screamed at Camilla to wake up.

      At last the old man seemed to notice of him. “She’ll awaken when I want her to,” said Edgar quietly. He smiled, as if finding mild enjoyment in Jake’s tantrum, went out calmly with the sleepwalking woman, and closed the door of the house behind them.

      Jake stood staring at the blank panels for a few moments. Then he broke the shotgun, saw that its load had been removed, and cast the useless weapon down. Opening the door, he followed Camilla and the vampire out of the house.

      With Camilla walking a step in advance of her escort, who seemed almost deferential, they were going in the direction of the workshop-cave.

      Jake continued to follow the pair, at a distance of ten yards or so. If either Edgar or Camilla was aware of Jake’s continued presence, they had chosen to ignore him.

      The figures disappeared inside the cave, which remained dark. Jake, following cautiously, standing first just outside the entrance, and then just inside, peered into the darkness. A faint white glow that somehow impressed him as unhealthy was coming from the inner chamber.

      Dimly he saw that the huge stone blocking the inner chamber had by some means been swung or tilted back; there was room, just room, for Camilla to squeeze her naked body through the aperture. Edgar went after her, his body somehow gliding easily through the gap.

      Fascinated, frightened but unable to help himself, Jake crept closer, step by step.

      Until he was close enough to see how the two bodies, Edgar’s and Camilla’s, came together. Camilla moaned as the old man pressed her back into the corner of the chamber. Jake could see only heads and shoulders, but from the angle between them, they couldn’t very well be in contact below the waist. But Jake saw now what Camilla had meant by the vampire’s love-making. The old man’s teeth, suddenly turned as sharp as a rat’s fangs, were on her throat…

      Jake, sickened, watched for no more than a few seconds; then he retreated to the cave entrance, where he sat on the threshold of stone, staring into the cave at nothing, trying not to hear the occasional moans—perhaps they were of pleasure—that came from the inner room.

      An hour passed—or it might have been several hours. The eastern sky was growing steadily brighter, when Camilla came stumbling out of the inner chamber. Jake raised his head to see her slow emergence, her form ghostly and somehow pitiful in the dim light. At the same time Jake could hear the huge rock grating, and knew that Edgar must be moving it back into place, so it would block the aperture as before.

      When Camilla reached Jake’s side, he stood up and put a supportive arm around her.

      “Cam? Cam, are you all right?”

      She moaned again, and mumbled something. At that moment Edgar appeared briefly, standing before them in the entrance to the cave,