people who can be laughing at present are yesterday’s nutcases, the para-psychologists, the junkies, the E.S.P.-buffs, the reincarnationists, the science-fiction writers, and anyone who never quite believed in the homogeneous flow of time.
Sorry. Let me stick to facts.
The ranch got into a timeslip (there’s more than one: ours does not merit a capital T). Suddenly we were back – wherever it was.
Sec. of State Dean Reede was with me at the time. I believe I told you last letter that he was coming to see me. Of course, he is firmly in the President’s pocket – a Glendale man every inch of him, and as tough as Glendale, as we always knew. He says they will never cease the fight; that all history gives inescapable precedents of how an inferior culture must go down to a superior one. Gives as examples the destruction of Polynesia, the obliteration of the Amazon Indians.
I told him that there was no objective way of judging which side was inferior, which superior: that the Polynesians seemed to have maximized happiness, and that the Indians of the Amazon seemed to be in complete and complex harmony with their environment. That both goals were ones our culture had failed to achieve.
Reede then called me a soft-head, a traitorous liberal (of course I had our conversation played in tape-memory, knowing he would be doing as much). He said that many of the West Powers’ present troubles could be blamed on me, because I pursued such a namby-pamby role while acting as presidential advisor. That I should have known that my minor reforms in police rule, housing, work permits, etc., would lead to black revolt. Historically, reform always led to revolt. Etc.
A thoroughly useless and unpleasant argument, but of course I had to defend myself. And I remain sure that history, if there is to be any, will vindicate me. It will certainly have little good to say for Glendale and his hatchetmen. He even had the gall to instance our private picture gallery as an example of my wrong-headness!
We had got to shouting at each other when the light changed. More than that – the texture of the atmosphere changed. The sky went from its usual washed blue to a dirty grey. There was no shock or jar – nothing like an earth-tremor. But the sensation was so abrupt that both Reede and I ran to the windows.
It was amazing. Cloud was rolling in overhead. Over the plain, coming in fast, was thick mist. In a few moments, it surged over the wall like a sea and burst all over the garden and patio.
And not only that. Ahead, I could see the land stretching as usual, and the low roofs of the old stables. But beyond the roofs, the hills had gone! And to the left, driveway and pampas grass had disappeared. They were replaced by a lumpy piece of country, very green and broken and dotted with green trees – like nowhere in Texas.
‘Holy saints! We’ve been timeslipped!’ Reede said. Dazed though I was, I thought how characteristic of him to speak as if this was some personal thing that had been done to him. No doubt that was exactly how he saw it.
‘I must go to my grandchildren,’ I said.
With shrill shouts, Poll and Tony were already running outside. I caught up with them and held their hands, hoping I might be able to protect them from danger. But there was no danger except that most insidious one, the threat to human sanity. We stood there, staring into the mist. Nurse Gregory came out to join us, taking everything with her usual unflustered calm.
When a few minutes had passed, and we were recovering from our first shock, I stepped forward, towards where the drive had been.
‘I’d stay where I was, if I was you, Joe,’ Reede advised. ‘You don’t know what might be out there.’
I ignored him. The children were straining to go ahead.
There was a clean line where our sand ended. Beyond it was rank grass, growing as high as the children’s knees, and beaded silver with rain. Great shaggy oaks stood everywhere. A path was worn among them.
‘I can see a hut over there, Grampy,’ Tony said, pointing.
It was a poor affair, built of wood. It had wooden slates on the roof. Behind it was an outhouse, also wooden, and a picket fence, with bushes by it. With an increase in unease, I saw that two people, I thought a man and a woman, stood behind the fence, staring in our direction. I pointed them out to the children.
‘Better get back in the house,’ Reede advised. ‘I’m going to phone the police and see what the hell’s happening.’ He disappeared.
‘They won’t hurt us, will they?’ said Tony, staring across at the two strangers.
‘Not unless we threaten them,’ Nurse Gregory said – which I thought was a little optimistic.
‘I should imagine they’re as startled by us as we are by them,’ I said.
Suddenly, the man by the fence turned away and went behind the house. When we next saw him, he was running into the distance, heading uphill. The woman slid out of sight and went into the house.
‘Let’s have a walk round, Grampy, can we?’ Tony said. ‘I’d love to go to the top of that hill and see where the man went. Perhaps there’s a castle over there.’
It seemed a likely suggestion, but I was too uneasy to leave the relative shelter of our house. I recalled that I had an old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic pistol in my desk; yet the idea of carrying it was repugnant to me. The children kept plaguing me to take them forward. Eventually I gave in. The three of us walked together under the trees, leaving Nurse Gregory to stand on the house side of the danger line.
‘Don’t go too far,’ she called. So she had some sensations of fear!
‘No harm will come to us,’ I replied. I figured that would reassure all of us.
Well, no harm came to us, but I was in a constant state of worry. Supposing the house snapped back to 2020, leaving us stuck in whatever benighted neck of the woods we had come across? Or supposing – I’m ashamed to put it on paper now – something dreadful came and attacked us, something we didn’t know about?
And there was a third worry, shadowy but no pleasanter for that. Supposing that what was happening was just a subjective phenomenon, something going on purely inside my own skull? It was hard to believe that we weren’t in a kind of dream.
The kids wanted to go and see if they could see the woman in the wooden house. I made them walk the other way. There was a dog lying inside the picket fence. I had a dread about trying to talk to anyone from – this world, or whatever you should call it.
Poll was the first to see the horseman.
He was riding over the brow of one of the nearby hillocks, accompanied by a man on foot, who held the stirrup with one hand and led a large hound on a leash with the other. They approached slowly, warily, and were still some distance away. All the same, they looked determined; the man on the horse was dressed in tunic and tight trousers, and held a short sword in his hand and wore a curving helmet.
‘Pretend you haven’t seen them, and we’ll walk back to the house,’ I said.
Hypocrite! But for the dear children, I would have gone forward to meet him.
The children came along meekly, Poll putting her small hand in mine. Neither of them looked back. We got to the front door, stood on the step and then looked back.
The horseman and his
