Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 (18 page)

 
          
“Do
you have any more of these?” he asked. “One more would do me.”

 
          
“Why,
yes, sir, I think we can supply you. Let me look there in the back.”

 
          
The
man went through an inner door and came out with another ball of the plastic
cord. “Three in all, you say, sir? Three hundred feet, that will run. Ah, let's
see, the price—”

 
          
Thunstone
paid it and left the store with his three balls of cord in a paper sack.

 
          
It
was
six o’clock
,
or nearly. Thunstone went to the Moonraven, where Hawes greeted him at the door
and Mrs. Hawes from behind the bar. Thunstone asked her for a pint of lager and
sat at a table, where the plump, smiling waitress Rosie came to say that the
ordinary on Saturday was roast chicken. Thunstone asked her to bring him some,
the dark meat if convenient, with whatever vegetables they had that didn't come
out of a can. She whipped away with his order.

 
          
The
place was fairly well filled with customers. At a table across the room sat
Porrask. He caught Thunstone's eye and nodded, rather embarrassedly.

 
          
The
dinner was brought and Thunstone paid for it and ate it, almost without
deciding whether it was good or bad. As he was finishing, Constance Bailey came
to his table and sat down.

 
          
“I
thought you'd be here, Mr. Thunstone,” she said in her hushed voice.

 
          
“Will
you have something?” he invited. “Shall 1 bring you a gin and bitters?”

 
          
“No,
no thank you. I only want to talk.”

 
          
“Constable
Dymock was looking for you a while ago. He seemed concerned about you.”

 
          
“Really?”
She bowed her head shyly. “He’s a good man at his
post in life; I hope he keeps his eyes and wits about him tonight and tomorrow.
But what I was wondering, you went into town, and I hope you’ll let me ask you
if you found out anything about—about—”

           
“Yes,” said Thunstone. “I had my
attention directed to an interesting case of going back to a former time, and
something like an attempt to rationalize it. Apparently some people, maybe only
a few people, have the ability to make that trip. People like us, like you and
me.”

           
“But why us?” she wondered.

 
          
“I
don't suppose that’s easy to answer. The point is
,
we've accomplished it. I’m going to try it again when it’s dark.”

 
          
“Not
me,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ll stay in my room, and 1 won’t turn off
my light all night.”

 
          
“That’s
just as well. I’ll do better alone. Don’t worry; I’ll keep my weather eye out.”

 
          
“I
wonder,” she said, “what would happen if all the lights in Claines were to go
out—if a whacking great storm or something put out the electricity and made all
dark, everywhere.”

 
          
“That’s
interesting to think about,” said Thunstone, “and let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
But I’ll just darken my own room for the sake of the experience. Now I’ll be
going.”

 
          
Back
at his room upstairs in Mrs. Fothergill’s house, he made various preparations.
First he brought the spear out of his bed and laid it across his knees. He took
one ball of the plastic cord he had bought, loosened the end of it, and lashed
the end tight to the middle of the spear’s haft. The other two balls of cord he
tucked into the side pockets of his jacket. He found his pencil flashlight and
clipped it into his breast pocket. He drew his silver blade from the shank of
his cane and hooked the handle on his arm. Finally he sat on the edge of his
bed, where he had put himself on the two previous nights. There he waited, with
his thoughts for company.

 
          
It
took a long time for the light to fade, but Thunstone knew how to wait. As dusk
followed twilight, he turned on the electric lamp above his bed. He sat
silently.

 
          
Darkness
came to the window and deepened there. The late summer night had come.
Thunstone put his hand to his light and turned it off, and the darkness rushed
around him, too.

 
          
At
once he sat on the rocky, lichen-tufted hummock. Again his room was gone from
around him. He was in the open, with stars in the sky overhead, with a brisk
chilliness in the dark air, with, over yonder, flickering, ruddy points of fire
and a distant mutter of sound.

 
          
Again
Thunstone examined the spear in his hand, tested the spring of the haft,
examined
the hard knot with which he had made it fast to the
cord. Then he groped to find a crevice in the rock on which he sat, pushed the
stone point well into the crevice, and bore down with all his strength. When he
was sure that the head of the spear had driven well in and was firmly lodged in
the rock, he stood up, holding the ball of cord in his left hand, his sword in
his right.

 
          
He
took a careful step, two steps more, feeling his way with his feet on the dark,
tangled turf. As he moved away from the lump of rock which was his sole point
of reference, he unrolled the line, loop by loop of it. The sky above his head
was strewn with stars in patterns he knew. The air had a chilly bite to it.

 
          
Up
ahead there, the noise grew greater, seemed to be of voices raised in chorus.
There was a definite melody to them. Lights shone at that place, but faint
ones, as of several very small fires. The darkness everywhere else was deep, it
was oppressive. He peered to see what was yonder, at a distance perhaps like
that of Chimney Pots in the Claines he knew.

 
          
No,
not so much firelight there as he had seemed to see the night before. What
light there was picked out human figures, a stirring group of them, as many,
perhaps, as
twenty.
They chanted, or at least a sound
like a measured chant came from them. Thunstone kept paying out his cord as he
stole along, doing his best to keep it from slackening or tangling. Now the
ball had rolled away to its end. He had walked a hundred feet from his rocky
hummock. He stood with his blade hung by its crooked handle to one forearm. He
took a fresh ball of cord from one of his side pockets, picked an end free and knotted
it securely to the end of the cord he had already paid out. Then he moved
forward again.

           
Maybe he was being a fool. Leslie
Spayte would call him one, if Spayte should ever come to believe this adventure
of his. Yet, Thunstone argued to himself, fools were needed to take the
unnecessary chances—the first explorers risking their lives in voyages on
unknown seas, the first men to dare to fly into unknown space. And time here
became
space, that
was what Vickery had said, bringing
Einstein and Dunne into it.

 
          
Standing
still for a moment, he gazed to his right at the dimly defined expanse of
Sweepside. Upon its surface lay Old Thunder, the tracery of the figure showing
palely as though with a light of its own. Constance Bailey had said something
about that night before last, about Old Thunder “shining like.” Thunstone
wondered if the exposed chalk could have a quality of phosphorescence, or if
the light of the stars was reflected. He looked at Old Thunder and felt that
Old Thunder looked at him.

 
          
He
advanced again, step by careful step, over grassy ground that was strange,
forbidding, under his feet.

 
          
The
length of that first paid-out stretch of cord must have taken him well away
from what, in the time he knew, would be an upper room in Mrs. Fothergiirs
house. By now he was walking over grass- tufted ground, where the neighboring
cottages would stand someday —where they already stood, in that other extension
of time. How could he remember those cottages when, here in this now, they had
not yet been built? The matter took thinking about, and did he have time to
think? Time here, in this here, this now? He doubted it. He walked on, sliding
his feet to be sure of where they held to the ground.

 
          
It
took him almost no time at all to reach the end of his second hundred feet of
cord. He spliced on the third ball, and looked back the way he had come.
Nothing showed there in the heavy night. No sign of where his journey had
begun, or of the place to which he must return to be safe again.

 
          
More
slowly he resumed his approach toward the fires and the people, the creatures
that moved and chanted there. His three hundred feet of line would never bring
him close, but he could see much more clearly now. The people danced, he
thought, danced naked. From the point he had reached, he could tell which
dancers were male, which female, except for one figure. That one stood
motionless in the midst of the dancers, stood head and shoulders above them. It
looked blotched or dappled. Thunstone thought it had horns, perhaps a headdress
of horns.

 
          
As
he stood and strained his eyes to see, feet trampled nearer at hand. Shapes
came toward him, three of them. They moved fast, almost at a run.

 
          
It
had been that way the night before. Perhaps these primitive celebrants kept
outlying sentinels, to guard whatever ritual was performed there in the glow of
the fires. Thunstone watched them as they approached him purposefully. He
tucked the cord into his waistband and shifted the blade to his right hand. He
held it saber fashion, fingers clasped around the hilt, thumb lying snug at the
top. As the three closed in upon him, he advanced his silver point.

 
          
"Good
evening/' he said.

 
          
One
of the
trio
sprang ahead of its companions. It was a
stocky figure in some sort of fur tunic, with a great shock of hair to crown
its head. One hand flung up an ax or perhaps a stone-headed club, ready to deal
a sweeping downward blow. Thunstone chose the exact second to slide his right
foot forward and extend his arm in a lunge, and the oncoming body spitted
itself on his blade. He heard a strangled cry and saw the thing go stumbling
down in the darkness. As it sank, he cleared his weapon and fell on guard to
face the others.

 
          
They
had pressed so close together in their charge that their companion's falling
body jostled them, drove them staggering apart. They paused, for only a
breath's space. Then the one to Thunstone's left emitted a wordless roar and
thrust with a spear held in both hands.

 
          
Thunstone
slapped the weapon aside with his left forearm. As the spear drove past him, he
extended his own point toward the center of an oncoming body clad in some sort
of shaggy hide. He felt it go home, felt it grate on a rib as it sank deep into
the chest. Then another of his assailants was down, and the third fell away,
retreated half a dozen paces.

 
          
“You’re
biting off more than you can chew,” Thunstone addressed him and took time to
try to see this survivor.

 
          
The
starlight gave him some notion of a rangy shape, bare-armed, bare-legged, with
a rude garment covering the chest and loins. That garment was made of a pelt,
roughly fitted like the clothes of the others, possibly from some sort of
heavy-haired bull, possibly even from a bear. The feet seemed to wear rude
buskins, also shaggy and extending halfway up to the knee. Staring eyes
twinkled, eyes that in a better light might show pale and icy. The face below
them had a frill of beard, not greatly different from that of Albert Porrask.
One hand lifted a spear, but the spear wavered indecisively.

 
          
All
this Thunstone saw in an instant.

 
          
“Afraid,
are you?” Thunstone taunted. “Then you have a grain of sense, after all. Gram
Ensley and I were agreeing that your generation wasn’t altogether senseless.”

 
          
Again
he gathered his cord in his left hand, sword still raised and ready. He stole
forward, right foot sliding first, then the left coming up behind, then the
right foot again, the fencer’s half-shuffling advance. The other stayed no
longer. He whipped around and ran swiftly, at the same time shouting at the top
of his lungs. He was using words; he had language of a sort.

 
          
Another
loud shout answered from the group around the fire, and by the light there
Thunstone could see half a dozen naked figures pull away and start toward him.

 
          
He,
too, waited no longer, but turned back the way he had come. He followed his
cord, hand after hand, along its slim length. Behind him rose a chorus of
voices, with menace in them. He quickened his pace as much as he could. The
reinforcing group was after him, no doubt about that He thought for a moment of
turning to face whatever attack might come; he wanted to turn and face it, but
knew that that would be utter rashness and bravado. He continued his retreat as
fast as he could run the line through his hands.

 
          
The
noise behind him grew ever louder. Voices bellowed in hot fury, feet stamped.
They saw him, they were angry, and, as he guessed, they were gaining. But then,
thank God, he was at his rocky hummock, where the spear stood upright.

 
          
At
last he took time for a glance back. On the night grass several of the group
had stopped, bent down to look at
Something
,
undoubtedly at the bodies of the two Thunstone had stabbed and killed. The
others ran toward him. He yanked the spear from its lodgment in the split rock,
tucked it under his arm with his blade, and from his pocket snatched the pencil
flashlight. He gazed at his pursuers, close at hand, weapons at the ready.

 
          
Then
he touched the switch, and glow sprang up to show him the quiet interior of his
room at Mrs. Fothergill's, the desk and the chairs, with the bed close to where
he stood.

 
          
At
once he turned on the light above the bed and sat down in its comforting glow.
He examined his long, lean blade of silver. It ran blood almost to the hilt,
wet and gleaming darkly red, the blood of the Stone Age.

 
          
He
sighed deeply. From time to time in his adventures, Thunstone had killed fellow
creatures. It had always been for dire necessity, but not once had he ever
rejoiced in it. He fumbled out his handkerchief and carefully wiped the blade
shinily clean. He studied the red stains on the handkerchief. Then he folded it
carefully. Quite possibly some medical man—Jules de Grandin for one—would be
interested in making chemical tests of the blood of a man who had died in
England's far-off times.

 
          
He
wrapped the folded handkerchief in a sheet of paper and stowed it in an inner
pocket of his suitcase. He leaned the spear against the wall and restored his
silver sword blade to the shank of its cane. For a moment he had the impulse to
turn off the light above the bed, to plunge the room into darkness and plunge
himself
back into that ancient age where he had adventured
perilously, where he had struck down two men of that stone-chipping time. Would
the others be gathered at the hummock by now, at the spot where he must have
vanished before their eyes?

 
          
The
temptation was strong, but Thunstone brushed it away. It was his duty to be as
safe as possible, to make a record, to come to a solution of all the enigmas
which clung darkly around Claines.

 
          
Again
he had things to write. Sitting at the desk, he filled page after page with the
account of his night's experience and his reactions to it. He referred to the
spear he had captured and told where the bloody handkerchief could be found in
his suitcase. Finally he folded the written pages into an envelope, and upon it
he wrote:

 
          
In case of the disappearance or
disability of
 
JOHN THUNSTONE
 
deliver this into the hands of
 
LESLIE SPAYTE OR PHILO VICKERY
 
who will be in Claines on Monday
morning, July 5

 
          
He
tilted the envelope against the back of the desk, and felt better that it was
there.

 
          
Then
he took off his clothes, put on his robe, and sought the bathroom to take his
nightly shower. As he soaped his brawny left forearm, he was aware of a slight
scrape on the skin. He rinsed it off and studied it. That was where he had
fended off the thrust of a spear of the Rough Stone Age. There, late in this
twentieth century, was his souvenir of an encounter with an adversary of a
century too long ago to date surely, an adversary who could have been his own
ancestor. He had killed that adversary, had dealt him a mortal wound. Again he
felt unhappy because that had been necessary. And he wondered what the man's
companions could think about someone, a stranger, bobbing in and out of their
awareness to strike and kill.