The Infinite Moment (22 page)

"Oh," she said. "I thought you were the milk. What's the?" She cut off abruptly. Her eyes widened as she saw the view behind me.

"Whwhat's hapoeneci?" she stuttered.

"That's what I want to see Doug about," I told her.

"He's still asleep," she said vaguely, still staring where the other side of the road ought to be.

"Well" I began. Then Sylvia came hurrying across. "George," she said, with a note of accusation. "The gas doesn't work, either."

"Is that surprising? Look where the gasworks was," I said, and pointed away across the dunes.

"But how can I possibly cook breakfast?"

"You can't," I admitted.

"But that's ridiculous. You'll have to do something about it, George."

"Now what in heck do you suppose I can do?"

Sylvia regarded me, and then turned to Rose with an expression of sisterly suffering.

"Aren't men helpless?" she asked, in a voice needing no answer.

Rose was still looking round in resentful bewilderment.

"If you'll rout Doug out, we can at least hold a conference about this," I said.

Sylvia and I waited in the lounge. It wasn't a comfortable wait. Sylvia was doing her hedgehog actshe kind of rolls into a bail of silence, with all the spines sticking out. I used to be the fool terrier in that game, but not now. I don't know which irritates her most.

Doug made his appearance in a dressing gown, with his chin bristling and his hair on endwhat there was of it. Rose followed. For some reason she had chosen to put on a hostess gown.

"What the hell's supposed to be going on?" Doug demanded.

"Listen," I said. "Before we go any further, will everybody quit barking at me as though I'd done it. You can see what's happened, and you know about as much as I do."

"There's no power and no gas," muttered Sylvia, aggrievedly.

"And the milkman's late," added Rose.

"Late"!" I repeated helplessly, and sat down.

"Well, if you men won't do anything" said Sylvia, and laid hold of the telephone.

I watched, fascinated. Have you ever seen a woman grossly insulted by a perfectly silent instrument? It's good. Her mouth clamped, and she marched out of the room with a kind of Amazonian determination to fight something. There was a pause while I looked at Doug and he looked at me. At last: "What is going on?" he said bemusedly. He waved a hand at the window. "What is this, George? Where's" 145 Then he was interrupted by Sylvia's return. Her eyes were watering slightly, and she was holding a handkerchief to her nose. Her anger had given place to bewilderment. She was even a little scared.

"There's a wall thereonly you can't see it," she said.

"Wall? Rubbish," said Doug.

"How dare you?" snapped Sylvia, recovering quickly.

Doug went outside to look for himself.

"Now," I said when he came back, "you know just as much as I do. What do we do next?"

There was a pause.

"I'm out of bread, and I suppose the baker won't be coming either," Rose said miserably.

"I think we've got an extra loaf, dear," Sylvia told her consolingly.

"That's sweet of you, Sylviabut are you sure you'll be able to spare?"

"For heaven's sake!" I said, loudly. "Here we are with the'most amazing, the most monstrous thing happening all around us, and all you two can do is to natter on about gas and bread."

Sylvia's eyes narrowed a bit. Then she remembered that we weren't alone.

"There's no need to shout. What do you suggest we do?" she said, chillily.

"That's not the pointnot yet," I said. "The first thing is to find out what has happened. Then maybe we can begin to do something about it. Now has anybody any ideas?"

Apparently nobody had. Doug wandered over to the window and stood there mutely uninspired by the empty miles of dunes. Sylvia and Rose sat registering womanly forbearance with the male.

"I have a theory," I suggested.

"It'll have to be good," said Doug gloomily. "Still let's have it."

"It seems to me that we may be the unwitting subjects of some test or experiment," I offered.

Doug shook his head.

"If "unwitting" means what I think it does, it's the wrong word. I'm extremely aware of all this."

"What I mean is that someone tried his experiment, and we just happened to be here when he tried it."

"Experiment? You mean like letting off an atom bomb or something which just happened to finish everybody but us? Because"

"I do not," I said shortly. I went on to make my points. Though all trace of buildings had vanished, the configuration of the ground was roughly the same. We seemed to be in a kind of invisible glass box. Certainly there were walls all round, and probably, since the air was so still, there was a roof as wellwe could test for that later. Everything within the enclosed area was unchangedeverything outside, except the general lay of the land was altered. Or it might be vice versa. Now the contents of the invisible box were quite alien to the surroundings; it followed that they must have been moved from somewhere to somewhere else. But the evidence was that they were still in the same place though it had an unfamiliar aspect. Therefore, as they had not been moved in space, the only other thing they could have been moved in was time.

This piece of calm and, I felt, logical reasoning was received with a silence which lasted for some moments. Then Doug said: "If an atom bomb, o several atom bombs, were let off, and we happened to be protected by this glass case or whatever it is"

"Then there certainly wouldn't be grass growing out there," I finished for him. "No. What must have happened is that in some way this enclosed area was twisted through another dimension to another section of timeprobably what we would call forward, or to the future. I don't see that anything else could explain the situation."

"H'm," said Doug. "And you think that does explain it, eh?"

There was a pause. Sylvia said conversationally to Rose: "My husband reads the most captivating magazines, my dear. All about girls who go through deep space whatever that isjust in bras and panties. And about good galaxies fighting perfectly horrid galaxies, and the cutest little things called mutants of robots or something, and such lovely men who go out on spacepatrol for a few hundred lightyears at a time. So intriguing. Such interesting titles they have, too. There's Staggering Stories Stunning Science Stories, Dumfounding Tales, Flabbergasting Fiction, Bewild"

"Listen," I said coldly. "Maybe you'd like to explain what's going on around here on the hints you've picked up from Woman's Glamour, Clean Confessions, Gracious Loving, Wolf Tales or Heartbeat Magazine?"

"At least they have stories in them about things that could happen," said Sylvia, equally chilly.

"Euclid said all that was necessary about triangles in his first bookand he got someplace with them."

"Well, what place do the stories in your magazines about things that never could happen get to?" Sylvia snapped.

"I wouldn't know. What I do know is that one of the "never coulds" is all around us right now. Look at it! And when I try to understand it, you just sneer."

"Sneer!" said Sylvia. "I like that. I was just explaining to Rose. Why, if anybody was sneering"

"Yes," agreed Rose, as if answering a question.

We withdrew to our corners for the moment. Doug broke in: "You really think there must have been some fourthdimensional twist?"

I nodded, glad to get back to the matter in hand.

"Well, some otherdimensional twist," I agreed. "It must have been that."

"What is a fourth dimension?" asked Rose. I tried: "It'swell, it's a kind of extension in a direction we can't perceive. Suppose you lived in a twodimensional world, you'd only be aware of length and breadth. And suppose that in your flat country you found a square."

"What of?"

"Nothing. Just a square."

"Oh," said Rose, with some reservation.

"Well, that square might really be the bottom surface of a cubeonly you wouldn't be able to perceive the rest of the cube, of course. Now if somebody outside picked the cube up and put it down somewhere else it would, as far as you were concerned, vanish suddenly, and then reappear in a different place. You'd be quite at a loss to understand it."

"Well, I certainly am. So what?" agreed Rose.

I wondered irritably why anybody marries them.

"Don't you see?" I began patiently. But Sylvia cut in: "We don't. What's more, I don't see that it would make any practical difference if we did."

"Well, not practical, exactly," I admitted.

"All right then." She turned to Rose. "Haven't you a kerosene stove, dear?" she enquired. Rose nodded, and they went out together.

I looked at Doug, and shook my head.

"The trouble with women" I began.

"Yes, yes," said Doug hastily. "But this theory of yours are you serious?"

"Of course. What else can it possibly be? I reckon that this section with us in it has somehow been shiftedmay.. be to several thousand years in the future. It must be the future because it can never have looked like this hereabouts in the past."

"Hard to swallow," said Doug. "I mean it is a bit like one of those magazines Sylvia was talking about, isn't it?"

"It may be," I said irritably. "The thing is that some say, somewhere, someone is inevitably going to try to raise a bit of the past. I take it that one of the tryers has succeededand we happened to be just in the time and "place he hit on."

He muttered again about difficulty in swallowing, then be added: "Supposing you are right. What happens next?"

"I imagine someone comes to see how the experiment went off. Quite likely we'll not be able to learn muchthey'll be much more advanced. They'll want to know all about us and our times, of course, but that may not be easy. I expect the language will have changed a lot."

"We'll have to draw diagrams of the solar system, and all that?"

"Why?" I said, in some surprise.

"Well, becauseoh no, of course, that's when you get to other planets, isn't it?"

In a short time Sylvia and Rose returned, bearing coffee. The warmth and flavour increased amiability all round. Doug sipping his, said: "George thinks we're likely to have visitors."

"Where from?" asked Rose, interestedly.

That girl does have the damndest gift for fool questions.

"How?" I began. Then I stopped. I happened to be sitting facing the window, and I caught sight of a movement way down in the shallow valley. I could not distinguish the cause, but it was clear that something was raising a moving cloud of dust.

"It could be they're on their way here now," I said.

We all crowded to the window to look. The thing, whatever it was, showed no great speed, but it was headed our way.

"In George's books they always have huge beads and no hair," said Sylvia, reflectively.

"How perfectly horrid," Rose exclaimed, and I thought Doug looked a trifle hurt.

"What sort of things will they want to know, I wonder?" he said. "It'll be a bit like an exam we've not prepared for."

"I'd better go and put on something more suitable," Sylvia said.

"My goodness, so must I," agreed Rose. "And Doug, you must brush your hair, and you've not shaved yet."

"You've not shaved, either, George," Sylvia told me pointedly.

"Look here," I said. "Here we are on the brink of one of the most amazing encounters in the whole of history, and what do you think of Oh, all right then...."

The moving object was still several miles away when I had finished in the bathroom. But I could see it a lot more clearly now, a long, boxlike contraption with a transparent cover over all catching the light from time to time. It was not moving much above twenty miles an hour, I judged, but it travelled very smoothly over the rough ground. There was too much dust round the lower part for me to see how it was supported.

I joined Sylvia. She had changed into a blue dress of soft wool which became her well. Her expression of satisfaction over that was modified, however, at the sight of me.

"Well, really, George! You can't go around like that."

"What the hell do you use that blade in your razor for, anyway?" I asked.

"You used my?"

"What else? No power. So cold water, ordinary soap. Your idea, anyway."

Sylvia drew breath, but at that moment Doug's voice floated up from outside: "Hey! They're just about here, George."

I went down and joined him. We walked the length of what remained of my garden, with Sylvia and Rose following us. Where it ended we stood close against the invisible wall, watching the vehicle approach. It seemed to be travelling on some kind of millipede arrangement which compensated automatically for inequalities in the ground. It came to a stop about fifteen yards short of us. The whole side opened towards us on hinges at the base and came down to form a sort of ramp. Four men inside got up from their seats, walked down the ramp, and stood looking at us. I was aware of indrawn breaths beside me.

"Gosh! What d'you know!" murmured Sylvia's voice.

"Oohooh!" said Rose, as if someone had given her a very large box of candy.

For myself, I didn't seewell, let's be fair. The four men were magnificent physically, I'll grant that. Tall, broadshouldered, deepchested, narrowhipped, and all thatbut then, so was Tarzan, and some others. There are other things required of a man beyond a handsome appearance. In fact, some of the bestlooking men I have known. Anyway, I didn't much care for the way they were dressed, either.

They wore deep yellow tunics, patterned around the edges in brown, belted, and coming down just to kneelength. Their legs were in narrow trousers or gaiters of a brown material, and their thongfastened shoes were yellow. They wore no hats, and their fair hair had a slightly bleached effect seen above their sunburned faces. Each stood something over six foot four. The whole effect struck me as slightly stagy.

It was at once clear from the way they looked at us that they were puzzled. They conferred, and then regarded us again. There was some laughter, which I considered illmannered in the circumstances. With the wall between us, we could not hear the slightest sound of their voices. Once more they debated. Then they came to some agreement. One went back into the vehicle and emerged with an instrument which looked something like a theodolite. He set it up on a tripod, sighted it, and then pressed a switch on it. Immediately the air around us began to stir as if the wind were blowing through a gap in the wall. Then, leaving the instrument where it was, all four began to walk toward us.