STEALING TIME

STEALING TIME

Christopher Stasheff

CHAPTER 8

Abby fell to the ground, retching, and Elspeth was quick to fall beside her. Eli still struggled, but weakly, as his insides twisted with the cave.

Only it was twisting back now, and its walls were white—white, with bright light all around them, and a little gnome of a man with one shoulder higher than the other, scowling at them from behind a table. Looking around, Eli saw they were inside a little white-walled room, but one wall was missing and showed a bigger room outside.

The preacher dropped his hand. "You're safe now, and a thousand miles from that cave where I found you." He knelt down to help Abby up. "Give the lady a hand, won’t you? I'm Yorick. Welcome to the future."

"Future?" Eli asked as though the word didn't mean anything.

"Can't be," Elspeth gasped.

Yorick offered his arm and guided her out of the little room; looking back, she saw it was only a large booth. The big man guided her over to a table, saying, "This is Dr. Angus McAran. He invented a machine that lets people travel forward and backward in time the way you go to town and back."

The little man reached up to help Abby down from the booth and over to the table. "Have a sip of the lemonade in that pitcher, Ms. Talley. It's fizzy, and it will help settle your stomach."

"Thank 'ee." Abby sat down, then looked up anxiously for Eli, but he was pulling out a chair and sitting—still holding his rifle by the barrel.

"Not really right of us to take you without letting you know what was happening," Angus said cheerfully, "but there wasn’t really time. Ten minutes more, and you would have been hit by the grand-daddy of all earthquakes."

All three stared at him in shock.

Yorick set a book on the table. "We read about you first."

"Never had no need to learn readin'." Eli frowned down at the picture. "What's them skeletons?"

Abby pulled the book over and frowned with effort as she worked out the words. "Says somebody found 'em in a cave alongside the Mississippi, one they hadn't knowed was there till they cleared away the rocks that hid the doorway." Then she froze, staring.

"You mean the cave got buried when the earthquake made the rocks fall?" Elspeth asked in a small voice.

"It was a very big earthquake," Yorick said.

"Then those skeletons—is us?" Eli exploded.

"They will be if you decide to go back there," Angus said.

"Go back to death?" Elspeth asked, wide-eyed.

"There's nothing for us there." Tears gathered in Abby's eyes. "Our house is burned, likely our barn too—and none of our kin left.

"Only Conners waitin' to murder us!" Eli's grip tightened on his rifle. "I'd kill 'em if I could!"

"Well, you can't," Angus said. "You're in 1953 now, and if you went back to your county, the only Conners you'd find would be the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of the ones you knew."

The three stared at each other in shock.

Then Eli gave himself a shake and growled, "Can't rightly blame them for what their grandpappies did."

"Their ancestors." Abby looked up at Angus. "Can't call 'em much else, with so many 'greats' in there, can we?"

"Not really," Angus agreed.

"So we're ancestors, too?" Elspeth asked.

"No, you're you," Yorick said, "young folk just starting your lives. None of you had children when you ran from the Conners, did you?”

Abby shook her head, tears in her eyes, and Eli said, “Who’d want to bear children into the middle of a feud?” But Elspeth’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Abby put an arm around her shoulder. “I know you were sweet on Randall, honey, and he took a fancy to you—but your daddies would have skinned you alive if they’d found you together.”

“I know,” Elspeth said, “but we hoped the feud would end, and we could get on with our lives.”

Yorick exchanged a look with Angus that said, “Just in time.”

Elspeth looked up at the preacher-man. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” Yorick said, “but we can take you back home as it is in the present day, and you can look back at the newspapers in the library.”

“Have to wait awhile to do that,” Angus said. “You have a lot to learn about 1953 first.”

“Nineteen fifty-three,” Abby said in awe. “Don’t seem like a body could believe it.”

“When we send you out of here, you'll find the whole world changed, the little man said, “carriages going by themselves without horses, flying coaches that take people hundreds of miles in a day, and sheriff's deputies who can race out to a lonely farmstead in half a hour."

"Half an..." Eli stared up at him.

“Hard to start a funeral that way,’ Abby said, and Elspeth teared up again

"So where are we now?" Eli asked. "I mean, where would we be if we went out of here?"

"Any place you wanted," Angus said, "because you'd have to leave the way you came, through the time machine, and it will take you anywhere in the world."

"What you mean?" Eli asked, his voice sharp. "Where's the door to the outside? Where are we, anyway?"

"In a cave," Yorick said, "a very big cavern under a mountain—but it doesn't have a doorway, no connection to the world outside."

"Every cave's got a doorway!"

"Only the ones we know about," Yorick said. "Stop and think—if there's a hollow inside a mountain but no doorway, how would you know that cave's there?"

The three guests all looked at one another again. Then Eli said, "Mind if I take a look?"

"Be my guest." Angus laid a silver stick on the table in front of them. "Here's the 1953 version of a lantern. Press this button and you'll have light."

He demonstrated; the three gasped as the end of the stick glowed.

"How's it work?" Eli asked. "What's it burn?"

"Something called 'electricity,'" Angus answered. "If you decide to stay, we'll teach you what it is and how it works—but for now, go explore."

"Careful when you get to the railing," Yorick said. "This whole cave is like a gigantic bubble inside the mountain, perfectly round, and the floor we're standing on is a platform over the bottom. It's twenty feet down—there's a ladder, but be careful—and the cave reaches up nearly a hundred feet. Happy hunting."

They looked. They explored. Eli climbed down the ladder and proved he couldn't scramble up the curved sloping sides. He searched all around and didn't find an opening. He came back up the ladder and they stood, shining the flashlight around the nearer walls, then seeing the beam swallowed up in the darkness. They pointed it straight up

“Where's the cave hole? How we gonna get out?” Eli asked.

Eli looked up with Abby and Elspeth and watched the walls fade into the gloom above.

"No bats," Abby said.

"Would be, if there wuz a cave hole," Eli said. "'Spose they're tellin' the truth?"

"Why not?" Elspeth shrugged. "They can pull us outen a cave before the Conners catch us, they can put us inside a bubble that's inside a mountain."

Eli turned to Yorick. "How'd you make this here bubble?

"We didn't," Yorick said.

"We found it," Angus explained. "Okay, it took some hunting to find one, but we did."

"An’ what mountain is this here bubble in?" Elspeth asked.

“We just call it ‘headquarters.”

She stared. “You mean it don’t got a name?”

“If there is, nobody told us,” Yorick said.

“Of course, we didn’t ask,” Angus said. “Doesn’t really matter to us.”

"And there really ain’t no way out?" Eli glanced over his shoulder at the darkness. Abby hugged herself and stared out into shadow, trembling. “Feels like the darkness is closing in.”

"Only way out is by time machine," Angus said. "If you want to join us and spend the rest of your life visiting places in the past and the future, we'll send you ten years ahead, to when this headquarters is up and humming. There will be teachers here then, teachers who can tell you everything you need to know to travel in time and come back safely."

"If you don't," said Yorick, "we can send you back to your own time."

"Nothing for us there." Elspeth's face darkened.

"Well, we wouldn't send you back to the cave, of course," Yorick said, "nor even to your own county."

"Folks don't take too kindly to strangers," Eli said.

"They do in the cities," Angus said. "We could send you to Louisville or Cairo, maybe even Chicago."

"Take a while to settle in." Abby looked at Eli.

"Take a while no matter where we go," Eli turned to Angus. "What-all's this job about?"

An hour later, the three Talleys stepped back into the time machine and waved as they disappeared. From behind the control console, Angus waved back, then made a mental note to make sure he was waving when he met them in ten years.

"Nice folks," Yorick said. "A little on the suspicious side, but I would be too if I were snatched away from my world into a doorless cavern."

"I don't remember that you had any doubts," Angus said.

"Well, yeah, but I was a kid," Yorick said. "Besides, we were saving my life." He took the pitcher of lemonade, poured a glassful, then set it down as he sat at the table—and froze.

"What's the matter?" Angus stepped over, concerned.

"The table sounded different from when I put the pitcher down before." Yorick stood, taking the pitcher and glasses to the counter. Then he turned the table over.

Angus stared. "If you can hear a tiny difference like that, you have fantastic hearing!"

"Comes in handy, when you grow up making your living by hunting."

There, about a foot in from the edge, was a small gray pillbox.

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