Still retching, I staggered toward the door, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the drunken table, with the two pans and the skillet standing on it, and I lurched at them. I got a grip on all three and, bumping against the table, knocked it over. Then I went reeling out the door, with two pans clutched in one hand, the skillet in the other.
I made it across the yard and suddenly my knees gave way and I sat down hard upon the ground. I put up a hand and wiped my face and it still felt dirty. All of me felt dirty.
'Where'd you get the pans?' Cynthia asked. What a crazy thing to ask. Where did she think I'd gotten them?
'Is there a place to wash them?' I asked. 'A pump or anything;'
'There's a little stream down by the garden. Maybe there's a spring.'
I stayed sitting. I used a hand to wipe my chin and there was vomit on it when it came away. I wiped it on the grass. 'Fletch?'
'Yes.'
'Is there a dead man in there?'
'Days dead. A long time dead,' I said. 'What are we going to do?'
'What do you mean-what are we going to do?'
'Shouldn't we bury him or something?' I shook my head. 'Not here. Not now. What difference does it make? He'd not expect us to.'
'What happened to him? Could you tell what happened?'
'Not a chance,' I said.
She stood looking at me as I got unsteadily to my feet. 'Let's go and wash the pans,' I said. 'And I'd like to wash my face. Then let's pick some vegetables out of that garden…'
'There's something wrong,' she said. 'More wrong than just a dead man.'
'You said back there,' I told her, 'that we should find out when we were. I think I have just found out.'
'You mean the man?'
'He was a monster,' I said. 'A mutation. A man who had two heads, a two-headed man.'
'But I don't see…'
'It means we are thousands of years back. We should have suspected it. Fewer trees. The yellow color of the grass. The Earth is only now groping back from war. A mutant such as a two-headed man would have no survival value. There may have been many such people in the years following the war. Physical mutants. A thousand years or so and they'd all be gone. And yet there's one lying in that house.'
'You must be mistaken, Fletch.'
'I hope I am,' I said. 'I'm fairly sure I'm not.'
I don't know if I just happened to look up at the looming hillside or if some flicker of motion had alerted me, but when I looked, high up I caught a glimpse of something running, not running, really, for you could not see its feet, but something floating rapidly along, a cone-shaped thing that was moving very fast. I saw it for an instant only, then it was gone from sight. But I couldn't be mistaken. I knew I simply couldn't be.
'Did you see it, Cynthia?'
'No,' she said, 'I didn't. There was nothing there.'
'It was the census-taker.'
'It couldn't be,' she said. 'Not if we're as far back as you say we are. Unless…'
'That is it,' I said. 'Unless.'
'You're thinking what I'm thinking?'
'I wouldn't be surprised. The census-taker could be your immortal man.'
'But the manuscript said the Ohio.'
'I know it did. But look at it this way: Your ancestor was an old, old man when he wrote the letter. He relied on memory and memory is a tricky thing. Somewhere he had heard about the Ohio. Maybe the old man who told him the story might have mentioned it, not as the river where the incident had happened, but as a river in the area. Through the years it would have been simple for him to come to think the story had happened on the Ohio.'
She sucked in her breath, excited. 'It fits,' she said. 'All of it. There is the river and there are hills. This could be the place.'
'If it weren't the Ohio,' I said, 'if he was mistaken about the Ohio, it could be any one of a thousand places. A river and some hills. That's not much to go on, is it?'
'But he said the man was a man.'
'He said that he looked like a man, but he knew he was no man. Something strange about him, something unhuman. That was when he first saw him. The thing he first thought was not a man could later have appeared to him very much a man.'
'You think this could be it?'
'I suppose I do,' I said.
'If it was the census-taker, why should he run from us? He would know us-no, that's wrong. Of course he wouldn't know us. He hasn't met us yet. It will be centuries yet. Do you think that we can find him?'
'We can try,' I said.
We went plunging up the hillside. We forgot about the pans. We forgot about the garden and the vegetables. I forgot about the vomit on my chin. The way was steep and rough. There were trees and clumps of tangled bushes. There were great ledges of rock we could not climb, but had to skirt. In places we clawed our way, hanging onto trees or brush to pull ourselves ahead. There were times when we went on hands and knees.
As I climbed I asked myself, far in the back of my mind, why there should be so much urgency in the situation as to send us clawing madly up the hill. For if the house of the immortal man was somewhere on the hilltop, we could take our time and it still would be there when we reached the crest. And if it were not, then there was no sense in it at all. If it were only the census-taker that we sought, he could even now be well-hidden or very far away.
But we kept on climbing up that tortuous slope of ground and finally the trees and brush thinned out and ahead of us we saw the bald top of the hill and the house that sat on top of it-a weather-beaten house with the weight and sense of years upon it, but in no way the sort of house in which I'd found the dead man. A neat picket fence, newly painted white, ran across its front and all around it, and there was a flowering tree, a blaze of pink, beside the door and roses that ran along the fence.
We flopped down on the ground and lay there, panting. The race was won and the house was there.
Finally we sat up and looked at one an9ther. Cynthia said, 'You're a sight. Let me clean you up.' She took a handkerchief out of her jacket pocket and scrubbed my face.
'Thanks,' I said when she was through. We got to our feet and walking side by side, sedately, as if we might have been invited guests, we went up to the house.
As we went through the gate we saw that a man was waiting for us at the door.
'I had feared,' he said, 'that you might have changed your mind, that you weren't coming.'
Cynthia said, 'We are truly sorry. We were somewhat delayed.'
'It's perfectly all right,' said the man. 'Lunch just reached the table.'
He was a tall man, slender, dressed in dark slacks and a lighter jacket. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat. His face was deeply tanned, his hair was wavy white, and he wore a grizzled moustache, neat and closely clipped.
We went into the house, the three of us. The place was small, but furnished with a graciousness that would not have been expected. A sideboard stood against one wall and upon it sat a jug. A table stood in the center of the room, covered with a white cloth and set with silver and sparkling crystal. There were three places. There were paintings on the wall and a deep-pile carpet on the floor.
'Miss Lansing, please,' said our host, 'if you will sit here. And Mr. Carson opposite you. Now we can begin. The soup's still hot, I'm sure.'
There was no one else. There were just the three of us. And surely, I thought, someone other than our host must have prepared the luncheon, although there was no evidence of anyone who had, nor of a kitchen, either. But the thought was a fleeting one that passed away almost as soon as it had occurred, for it was the kind of thought that did not fit in with this room or with the tables.
