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

      From where they were standing in the parking lot, there was a subtle oddity about the view, having really nothing to do with fog. Just a few yards past the massive old hotel, the world came to an end. Or at least Bill and Maria were given that impression, because at that distance to the north the landscape abruptly terminated, the boundary being delineated by a stone parapet not three feet high. Beyond that modest fence there existed no horizon, and thus apparently no earth, only a lowering continuation of the leaden sky.

      Walking past the hotel, Bill and Maria steadily approached the parapet, which was already defended on the near side by a handful of Japanese tourists, garbed for cold and armed with cameras. Standing among these foreign visitors the two Americans looked out with them. Vision plunged out and down, losing itself in an infinite depth of colorlessness—with one exception. In one place, more downward than outward, at a slant range of a hundred yards or so, a dim rocky promontory rose from unguessable depths to become intermittently visible through slowly marching mist. Around that one fragment of solidity, decorated with a couple of small evergreens, nothing but drifting grayness was perceptible. Right now even the finest cameras were not going to be of much use.

      Maria Torres was ahead of Bill in observing that someone else had joined them.

      While Bill, momentarily lost in contemplation, was still assessing the view, a moderately tall man, dark-haired and bearded, had come up just behind him, moving in total silence. The newcomer, as Maria observed, stood waiting at Bill’s elbow for many seconds, an embarrassingly long time for an investigator, before Bill became aware of any presence there.

      Alerted at last by a certain tenseness in Maria’s attitude, Bill turned his head sharply. The bearded man, standing close enough to touch, was only gazing at him mildly.

* * *

      There followed an interval in which the three of them stood regarding one another. They were ignored by the Japanese, and by other tourists who, despite the poor viewing conditions obtaining at the moment, kept drifting to and fro along the rim, singly and in small groups.

      “Can I help you?” Bill finally asked the man.

      The newcomer spoke up smoothly, as if he had only been waiting to be prompted. “Let me introduce myself,” he said in a deep quiet voice. “My name is Strangeways, and it seems that we are likely to be working together for the next day or two.”

      “I think you must have the wrong—”

      “No, I think not.”

      Bill looked blank. He did an excellent job of it, thought Maria, who felt sure that she herself was having no trouble appearing puzzled.

      “Sorry,” Bill told the man, firmly, at last. “You must be mixing us up with two other people.”

      Strangeways permitted himself a faint smile, as of mild approval. “In that case I trust you will pardon my impertinence,” he murmured smoothly. Turning half away, he gazed out into the murk that filled the Canyon, as if he might indeed be capable of seeing something through it. Maria noticed vaguely, without giving the matter any particular thought, that his breath, unlike her own and Bill’s, was not steaming in the chill air.

      After they had all three stood where they were for another half-minute, Bill nudged Maria, and the two of them turned away from the brink and moved toward the hotel. Glancing back when they had gone a few yards, Maria saw Mr. Strangeways still intent on his viewing, apparently taking no interest in where they went.

      “What the hell do you suppose that was all about?” she whispered to Bill when she judged that they were safely out of earshot.

      “Either he’s a stray loony or we’re being checked out. Whether by friend or foe…”

      The sprawling, three-story hotel, all shingles and age-darkened logs and stone, was looming over them. In another moment Bill and Maria were striding up onto a deep wooden porch which led to the front entrance. Seen at close range, the building had even more of a settled, established look. Carved in wood over the entrance Maria read an unpunctuated fragment of a sentence, or perhaps of verse:

DREAMS OF MOUNTAINS AS IN THEIR SLEEP

THEY BROOD ON THINGS ETERNAL

      The images evoked in Maria’s mind by those words were incomplete but somehow disturbing. She wondered vaguely where the phrase had come from. Her brief sojourn in college had been as an English major; sometimes she was bothered by hearing or reading a quotation and being unable to trace its source.

      With Bill leading the way, they entered the lobby through a double door, a spacious airlock whose purpose was no doubt to minimize the effect of wintry blasts.

      The lobby of El Tovar was a large room—actually two large rooms, Maria saw—each two stories high. The peaked ceiling of the first room was supported by log beams and posts, rough-hewn but smoothed by some mellowing effect of age. Despite the modern gift shops on both sides of the lobby, and the modern lighting, the place was old. Walls and ceiling had a dark settled solidity that confirmed their tenure here for very nearly a century. Holiday poinsettias on shelves and tables everywhere in the lobby outnumbered the thronging, ski-jacketed, pack- and camera-carrying people. Wreaths and chains of real evergreen twigs and branches, some dotted with minature lights, festooned the rugged beams and posts. Stuffed animal heads, some antlered, some snarling to expose dead fangs, looked down from the high walls with an air of disapproval.

      A two-story Christmas tree occupied the center of the inner lobby, its upper branches surrounded by a log-railed mezzanine where people sat at tables. The hotel desk was on the tree’s left as the travelers approached.

* * *

      While Bill paused at the desk to ask a question, Maria turned swiftly to scan the crowd, on the chance that Mr. Strangeways had followed them inside. But she could discover no sign of him.

      Playing tourist, Maria grabbed up a