A Question Of Time by Fred Saberhagen (8 ebook reader txt) 📕

shaking her head as if to clear it, she asked Jake: “Are you finished eating?”

      “Sure.” He was definitely getting curious.

      He closed up the lunch box, leaving the crumbs and remnants for the chipmunks and coyotes, and Camilla took the little box with the other stuff she was carrying, and started to lead the way along the little trail going upstream. Jake followed her, carrying a couple of her things.

      Before they had gone more than a hundred feet or so, she stopped and turned to Jake to say, in a voice that was growing strained: “See, there’s too much time down here, near the bottom of the Canyon.”

      “What?” He blinked and squinted at her in the bright sunlight. “Too much time? You mean you’ve got nothing to do?”

      “No. That’s not what I mean. Too much time is what Edgar says when I ask him about—about some funny things that happen down here. At first I didn’t know what he meant by too much time. But lately I can understand—I think. He says the river cuts open the earth, and the deep time comes spilling out of it like blood.” Then she smiled nervously at the expression that must have been growing on Jake’s face. “I’m not crazy, lover. You’ll see what I mean.”

      “Okay. I don’t think you’re crazy.” Actually the suspicion had very recently been born. But he wasn’t really worried about it yet.

      “Thank God,” said Camilla, and turned to once more lead the way up along the trail beside the creek.

      Jake, staying close behind her, was nagged by the feeling that the voices of the nearby stream were trying to tell him something. But he was distracted from pursuing that thought by the movement of Camilla’s hips. Even if her jeans were a loose fit.

      “So,” he said, raising his voice a little to be heard above the sound of rushing water, “you live with Edgar?”

      “I don’t sleep with him. Not any more.” Camilla paused, glancing back. “He’s a—strange man.”

      “Yeah? He must be pretty old now if he lived up on the Rim for thirty years.”

      “He’s pretty old.”

      They climbed on. Jake couldn’t see the sun from down here in the narrow canyon, but judging by the angle of the shadow on the east wall they still had a good many hours to go before sunset.

      Camilla led Jake on, up along what was no longer really a trail at all. Glancing to right and left, Jake noted that the steep and winding walls of this little side canyon displayed basically the same strata of rock as those in the tremendous walls of the big one; there was no other way it could be, he supposed. That pale layer was limestone and the somewhat darker one just below was shale. For the last couple of months he had been picking up some knowledge of geology from the rock experts back at camp.

      Presently he called again to Camilla: “You and old Edgar live in a pretty isolated place back here.”

      For some reason that made her pause and turn, to study him through her dark glasses. Then she emphatically agreed with what he’d said and went beyond it. “Not one in a thousand people hiking downriver the way you did could find this canyon.”

      “Well, it’s not that hard to find. I didn’t have much trouble.”

      “Only because you’re something special. It is that hard to find.” For some reason her voice quavered. “Not one in a thousand. Maybe not one in a million. How many other hikers and boaters do you suppose have gone right past the entrance to this canyon where you turned in, and never seen it there?”

      Jake blinked at her, wondering. “That’s easy. Not very damned many. There wouldn’t be a hundred people hike or boat past the mouth of your little canyon in ten years. This place is not exactly populated like a city park, you know.”

      Camilla smiled at him silently, as if she wanted to be reassuring—or perhaps be reassured—and then turned back to her climb.

      Jake went back to watching the hypnotic movement of her hips.

* * *

      Another minute or so of staring at that movement, and Jake caught up with her and tugged gently on her belt.

      Camilla stopped and turned and held out her arms. A moment later he was kissing her, and feeling up under her shirt again. How marvelous when there was no resistance!

* * *

      Afterward they sat naked in the chill shallow water of the creek, letting it rush over their bodies, splashing each other.

      Jake said: “In a way it’s funny, your talk about how hard this canyon is to find.”

      “Why is it funny?” Camilla, who had been laughing at something else he’d said, stopped suddenly. At the moment they were in shade, and she’d left her dark glasses off.

      “Because yesterday I looked at the big map back at camp. And I couldn’t see this canyon on it anywhere. This isn’t Pipe Creek we’re sitting in, and it isn’t Horn Creek, right? Because there are rapids in the Colorado where Horn Creek comes in. And there’s not supposed to be any side canyon with a permanent water flow between those two. But here we are.” Jake gestured at the steep enclosing walls.

      Camilla wasn’t surprised to hear about the map. Instead she just looked melancholy and thoughtful. All she said was: “I bet there are a lot of things your map doesn’t show.”

* * * * * *

      When they were dressed again, they climbed on, while the canyon that had swallowed them turned this way and that like a great snake. The bends were getting sharper. Jake could no longer see farther than about fifty yards ahead at any point.

      Once Camilla paused to tell him, as if in afterthought: “Edgar calls this place Deep Canyon.”

      Rounding the next turn, they came to a place where the canyon straightened out and expanded into a steep-sided amphitheater, the size of a small football stadium. The land inside was relatively level, half-overgrown with typical canyon bush