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

and a few trees. At the far end of the amphitheater the creek fell into it in a high waterfall. Jake saw to his surprise that someone had neatly built a tall, narrow waterwheel into this cataract. And at the foot of the drop, getting splashed a little by the spray, stood a little stone building that looked like it ought to house a generator. Sure enough, wires ran on poles from the generator housing to another small building. This one was constructed of neatly trimmed logs, and actually appeared to be a house.

      For the time being Jake took less notice of a kind of grotto, or cave, opening into the base of the western cliff, at the level of another layer of rock that Jake could recognize. The camp geologist had called this one Tapeats Sandstone, and had said it lay just over what he called the Great Unconformity, a term whose meaning Jake had never grasped.

      At first sight the cave was only a shallow concavity, with a low, rather inconspicuous entrance; at second glance it looked deeper.

      But right now Jake was paying attention mainly to the neatly constructed little house, which was sited high enough above the creek to avoid floods. No prospector’s cabin, certainly. Not a shack or a hut, but a real house, boasting stone walls, glass windows, and a real shingled roof.

      Camilla was standing right beside Jake, looking at him as if judging his reaction.

      He asked her: “You live here?”

      Camilla said: “I do.”

      “With Edgar.”

      “Yes.” She cast a nervous look around, and lowered her voice. “But I don’t want to live with him any longer.”

      “Leave.”

      She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. You’ll see.”

      “He hasn’t got you locked up.”

      Camilla said nothing.

      Jake squinted at the layout before him. All was quiet, not even a dog barking. “Where is he now?”

      “Resting. He usually works at night. Digging out the kind of rocks he likes, carving them…”

      “Can’t blame him for resting, in this heat.”

      The path leading to the cottage brought them closer to the grotto. Jake, getting a better look as he passed, saw that it was really a cave, considerably deeper than it had first appeared. The hole was too dark inside for him to see much more.

      Camilla observed his interest. “Want to go in and take a look? We can, Edgar won’t mind.”

      “I don’t care,” said Jake. But he followed Camilla when she went in.

      The relative coolness was welcome. Once Jake’s eyes were out of the glare of sunlight he could see the interior fairly well. A ghost of the glow of sunset was reflecting in from the light limestone wall on the other side of the amphitheater.

      “It’s sunset now,” said Camilla. “Now’s the time when—”

      Then she fell abruptly silent.

      It took Jake another minute to realize that the two of them were no longer alone. The figure of a man was now standing at the dark mouth of the lightless inner regions of the cave. Just standing there and looking out at Jake.

       Peering as best he could into the zone of greater dimness, Jake beheld a spare figure that might have been almost as tall as Jake if it hadn’t been hunched over. The man was dressed in overalls, some kind of boots, and a work shirt, and his hair and skin and clothing were all gray with what looked like rock-dust. He was holding an inhumanly motionless pose, so that he might almost have been a statue.

      In the gnarled fingers of one evidently powerful hand, the man was clutching a sizable chunk of rock. After a moment he opened his hand and let the chunk fall, to strike the rock floor with a dull sound.

      In the next moment the same hand reached out to a large switch bolted to the rocky wall, and a battery of electric lights sprang into life. The half-dozen fixtures, mounted on tall metal stands around the cave, were streamlined, looking very modern. In fact they looked somehow more than modern, they looked like no lights that Jake had ever seen before.

      Under their radiance the whole inner cave, which had been deeply shadowed, burst into full visibility. The lights were positioned on every side, some high, some low, and they almost abolished shadow. The glowing, peculiar bulbs revealed that the floor and walls of the cave were pockmarked with holes, like places where sizable blocks might have been dug out. A long workbench, crudely built but sturdy, littered with tools and chunks of pale stone, ran along one wall. The walls and floor and overhead of the cave were mostly dark, formed of a material Jake had heard the rock-and-blasting experts call Vishnu schist. It was commonly found in the lowest layer of the Canyon’s walls just below the mysterious Great Unconformity. The whitish intrusions here and there in the cave’s walls were new to Jake.

      But none of this, interesting as it was, could hold Jake’s attention for more than a moment or two. Not in the presence of the man who now stood before him.

      The dust-covered figure suddenly turned his gaze on Camilla, and rasped a comment. “So, you’ve caught another one.”

      She answered timidly. “Don’t say that, Edgar. He’s a friend of mine.”

      “Oh, I don’t doubt that. Most men would be delighted to be your friend. But have you told him yet?”

      Camilla, looking from one man to the other, seemed to be afraid to say anything more.

      “Told me what?” Jake demanded.

      Suddenly Edgar caught sight of the lunchbox, which Camilla had just put down on a ledge of rock. With some muttering that sounded vaguely like a curse, he snatched up the little container, at the same time raising his other hand as if he were about to strike the girl.

      Jake, shouting something angry, took a step forward. But Camilla, cowering back from the blow that never fell, yelled at Jake to stop. It was a scream of such sudden heartfelt terror that he unthinkingly obeyed.

      Then he looked back at Edgar. “Told me what?” he repeated, harshly.

      “Nothing of real importance.” Wicked