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

child, you were well protected. Your baby sister—was not so fortunate. And for that your mother blamed me.” His voice had dropped to a kind of whisper. “Come with me. If your companion is important to you—perhaps we can still help her as well.”

      “Help her? What’s the matter?”

      “Come with me. Now.”

* * *

      On reaching the entrance to the work-cave, Cathy paused just inside. “I remember this place,” she whispered. “It’s where you worked. My mother would tell me: ‘Daddy’s working.’ And I would come to the doorway and look in here—at the darkness.”

      “I still work here, daughter.” Tyrrell stood with his head turned slightly, listening carefully. “Your companion is not here now.” He turned on the lights.

      “What do you work on, Father?”

      “On the lifeblood of our planet, my dear. On life and death. On the ways that the two can come together. You see, neither can exist without the other.”

      “Father? What’s happened to you?” Here in the cave’s harsh electric lights, she could see how the old man’s face showed scars. What must once have been hideous burn marks had healed and softened with time, leaving little more than a suggestion of what must once have been disaster.

      “What are those scars?” Cathy repeated. “I don’t remember them.”

      “Someone attempted to kill me.” Her father turned from his workbench to answer tersely. “Actually they wanted to burn me to death.”

      His look softened when he saw his daughter’s reaction.

      “It doesn’t matter now,” he assured her. “They failed. And that was a long time ago. Here, here are the rocks I work on. Not the silly things I carve from ordinary stone, for Brainard to sell. I gave up most of that sort of work a long time ago.”

      Tyrrell broke off, listening. He looked at Cathy, and his face grew worried. Moments passed before she could hear what he heard, approaching voices, sounding like those of two women and a man.

Chapter Eighteen

      In the bright sunlight of midafternoon Jake stood helpless, momentarily immobilized by the screams that poured out ceaselessly from behind the chipped and blasted but still solid barrier of rock. The man Jake was trying to kill obviously still survived.

      Camilla, standing beside her breathing lover, had covered her ears with her hands, but now she added scream after scream of her own to Edgar’s.

      Anger brought Jake out of his momentary paralysis. He slapped Camilla viciously, trying to knock her out of her hysteria.

      A moment later she was clinging to him, sobbing, and he was trying to comfort her. Then he grabbed her by the arms and shook her. Almost shouting to make himself heard above Edgar’s cries of agony, he commanded: “We’ve got to try the dynamite again. We’ve got to finish him off.”

      Camilla shuddered. “I know, I know—I’m all right now.”

      Already Jake had picked up his hammer and drill again; the only practical hope was another attempt at blasting. He still had dynamite, and wire, and blasting caps.

      Camilla had an inspiration. “We forgot about the kerosene in the lamps in the house. I can get that.”

      “Good idea. Throw the lamps back there. Keep that fire burning.”

      She ran off.

      Hastily Jake ran his hands over the barrier rock, selecting the spots where he wanted to drill the next set of holes. In a few moments he had begun hammering again. The failure of his first attempt had made him more keenly aware than ever that he didn’t really know what he was doing when it came to blasting rock.

      In a couple of minutes Camilla was back, walking now, carefully carrying three kerosene lamps. She hurled these accurately, one at a time, the glass bowls shattering inside the cave. The fresh shower of flammable liquid made the black smoke pour forth with increased volume.

      Then she came to help Jake. “It’ll go faster if I hold the drill.”

      “Yeah.”

      She gripped the steel tool, rotating it after each blow as she had seen Jake do. Jake was able switch to a bigger hammer, as he had before. A slowly growing frenzy of fear and horror fueled him with energy. The work went faster.

* * *

      When Jake and Camilla prepared to start the second new hole, he happened to look back into the little cave. What had been a deeply shadowed recess was now well lit by flames. To Jake’s horror, he was able to see a portion of Tyrrell’s head, scorched gray hair and blackened skin, at about knee level. The old man in his torment must somehow have managed to pull himself up on hands and knees.

      Black smoke obscured at least half of what the orange flames were trying to reveal, but still Jake could see that Tyrrell’s clothing was largely burned away, at least around his neck and shoulders, and the vampire was looking out at his assailants. His eyes, set in the scorched ruin of his face, were glassy and staring. His blackened lips writhed, uttering strange sounds.

      On Jake’s next swing his hammer missed the drill completely, fortunately missing Camilla’s hands as well. She yelled at him in fright and dropped the tool.

      Jake bellowed back at her, until she picked up the drill again.

      Then suddenly it was all too much for her. Screaming, she dropped the tool clanging on rock and started to run, heading down the side canyon in the direction of the river.

      Jake’s shout of desperation— “Cam, get back here! I can’t do this alone!” —stopped her in her tracks.

      Quivering, she came back. But then she slumped weakly to the ground, unable or unwilling to do any more to help.

      Again he gripped the drill in his own left hand, though both his arms were trembling with fatigue. Again he swung the smaller hammer with his right.

      The drilling progressed, slowly. Time passed. Tyrrell’s screams slowly subsided into hideous moans, as the fire in the recess burned itself out, the black smoke diminishing to a greasy trickle in the air. Jake could not believe that the moans were ever going to stop.

      Slowly, slowly, the last hole that Jake