A Question Of Time, Fred Saberhagen [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

      The screaming coming from the deep sanctuary went on and on. On and on, unceasingly.

Chapter Seventeen

      Cathy Brainard was once more trudging her way down Bright Angel Trail, headed for the Deep Canyon. This time she had left all of her camping equipment behind, except for a canteen.

      And this time Maria Torres was walking stride for stride down the trail with Cathy. Maria had not even bothered bringing a canteen.

      The two young women had met, without conscious prearrangement, up on the broad pedestrian rim walk, near the Bright Angel trailhead. They had scarcely seen each other before this meeting, yet on encountering each other on the walk they had agreed within moments, with a minimum of discussion, on what they were going to do.

      “It’ll be a big help if you can show me the way down,” Maria had said, almost by way of greeting, staring into the gloom below. Mountain-sized buttes made purple shadow-shapes down there, beyond a miles-deep band of sunken clouds and snow-showers. “Down to where I have to go. That will save me valuable time.”

      “So,” Cathy had said. “They’ve given you the job of keeping an eye on me.”

      Maria had frowned, as if she were troubled by some distant memory. “No,” she said slowly. “Maybe I’m supposed to be doing that, maybe Joe thinks I am, but I’m not. No, my reason for going down is personal. This is extremely important to me.”

      “All right,” Cathy had said, disbelieving. “Whatever you say, however you want to come along, for the private detectives or just for fun. How you get there is supposed to be this damned big secret, you know. A secret I wasn’t supposed to remember, but I did anyway. To hell with them and their secrets. My parents, I mean. Whatever they did to me when I was a kid. I don’t quite know yet what it was, but I’m going to find out.”

      Maria said nothing. She was still staring into the depths, apparently at something far, far beyond the afternoon’s returning convoy of mule-mounted tourists, who were just coming into view in the middle distance, ghostly centaurs climbing out of snow and time.

      Cathy had started down the trail.

      “This time,” Cathy said now, “I left a note for Aunt Sarah. She’s a good lady. No use worrying her unnecessarily.”

      “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that,” Maria said.

      “Left a note? Why not?”

      Maria didn’t know why not; she couldn’t say, and only gestured vaguely. But somehow the thought of Cathy’s note made her uneasy.

      “You see,” said Cathy, “Going down the first time, I mean at Thanksgiving, that was a lot different. I didn’t really know where I was headed, then. I only had a kind of memory.” She paused. “Do you ever have—dreams—about your early childhood?”

      “Not any more,” Maria said.

      “Memories, I should say. More like memories than dreams. Going down that time was like a dream. I saw things, real things, that I had convinced myself were only figments of my imagination. Like a certain little house. Seeing that house scared me, so I just—went camping for a while. Now I’ve got to go back and make sure about things, like that house, and my parents. I…” Cathy did not seem to be able to find words to complete the thought. “You work with Mr. Strangeways?” she asked finally.

      “No,” said Maria, in her new vague, indifferent voice. “Not really. I’ve barely met him. Why?”

      “There’s something spooky about him.”

      “I think you’re probably right about that.”

      The two young women trudged on down the trail.

* * *

      They had gone no more than perhaps fifty yards when Cathy noticed that Maria was carrying nothing—not even a canteen—in the way of camping supplies or equipment.

      “Aren’t you going to need anything?”

      “No. I’m not really—going that far.” Maria was staring straight ahead of her, as if she were thinking very intently indeed. Cathy almost hesitated to interrupt such concentration.

      “You’re following me, right? Checking up on me? So how do you know how far I’m going?”

      Maria shrugged

      “Well, you’re all right.” Cathy shook her head, tossing her hair. “You’re not going to need a canteen, because it isn’t very far.”

      “How do we get there?”

      “You have to know a secret. But that’s all right, I remember the secret. Or else I’m crazy, and I’ve only been imagining things all along.”

      “What kind of secret?”

      “It’s a trick my father—the man who must have been my real father—taught me when I was very small. For a long time I forgot it; but once you learn something important like that, it’s never quite forgotten. You know what I mean? Like riding a bicycle.”

      Maria didn’t answer. She was still gazing straight ahead of her as she walked, as if her thoughts were really elsewhere.

      Snow blew in the faces of the two young women, and flurries obscured the trail, above them and below. The mule train, mounting methodically, led by a mounted ranger, came into view once more, this time immediately ahead. Cathy and Maria moved as far as possible to the inside edge of the trail, letting the big, sure-footed animals walk past, each carrying a half-frozen tourist. The mounted men and women, at this stage of their adventure intent on getting back to warmth and civilization, scarcely glanced at the waiting hikers.

      The trick that Cathy had mentioned of course, was a technique required of any traveler bound in or out of the place her parents had called the Deep Canyon. The proper technique was essential, not only to pass the barrier of time, but to arrive on the other side of that barrier somewhere near your chosen destination. It was of course necessary that the destination had been rightly chosen—and for Cathy, as she herself now thought, this journey of exploration, of rediscovery, was not only right, but inevitable.

      She tried, without much success, to discuss all these things with Maria, as the two young women continued walking down Bright Angel Trail together.

      Maria at last paid enough attention to say: “It’s all new to me