“I’ll be seeing you in a few days. That senator I was telling you about — he wants to talk with you. Not with me, with you. I’ll bring him out.”
I didn’t ask him if he had any idea what the senator wanted. I didn’t give a damn.
“If Hiram doesn’t make it,” I said, “there’s no use bringing anyone. If that happens, we’re dead. You know that, don’t you?”
“I understand,” he said.
He sounded sad about it.
Herb brought me some sandwiches and coffee.
There had been no word from Rila or Ben. We talked for a while and then I went out the back door. Bowser was waiting for me and we walked across the lawn to the house. We sat on the back steps, Bowser close beside me. He knew there was something wrong and was trying to comfort me.
The barn still stood, the lopsided door hanging crookedly on its hinges. The chicken house was the same as ever and the hens were still there, clucking and scratching about the yard. The rosebush stood at the corner of the chicken house — the rosebush where I had seen Catface looking out at me when I had gone out to get the fox and, instead, had walked into the Pleistocene.
That much was familiar, but little else was. The strangeness of the rest of it seemed to make the barn, the chicken house, the rosebush unfamiliar, too. The fence stood high and spidery and inside the fence humped the strangeness of the floodlights. Guards walked along the fence and outside of it were clustered knots of people. They were still coming to stand and gawk at us. I wondered why they continued to come.
Certainly, there was nothing to be seen.
I stroked Bowser’s head, talking to him. “You remember what it was like, Bowser, don’t you? How you’d go to dig out a woodchuck and I had to bring you home. How we’d go in the evening to shut the chicken house. How Hiram would come to visit you almost every day. That front lawn robin.”
I wondered if the robin was still there, but didn’t go to look. I was afraid I wouldn’t find him.
I got up from the steps and went into the house, holding the door so Bowser could go in with me. I sat down in a chair at the kitchen table. I had intended to walk through the rest of the house, but I didn’t. The house was too quiet and empty. The kitchen was too, but I stayed. It had a bit of home still left in it. It had been my favorite room, a sort of living room, and I’d spent a lot of time there.
The sun went down and dusk crept in. Outside, the floodlights went on. Bowser and I went out and sat on the steps again. In daylight, the place had looked strange and foreign. With the coming of night and the flaring of floodlights, it was a bad dream.
Rila found us sitting on the steps. “Hiram will be all right,” she said, “but he’ll have to stay in the hospital for quite a while.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The next morning, I went looking for Catface.
I didn’t find him. I walked through the crab-apple patch below the mobile home, crisscrossing it in several directions, calling him softly, looking everywhere for him. He did not appear. After several hours of this, I wandered to other groves of trees and looked.
Back at the house, Rila said to me, “I should have gone to help you, but I was afraid I might scare him off. He’s known you for a long time. I’m a newcomer.”
We sat at the lawn table, despondent. “What if we don’t find him?” Rila asked. “Maybe he knows what has happened to Hiram and is hiding, unwilling to show himself until Hiram’s here.”
“If we don’t find him, we don’t find him,” I said.
“But Safari…”
“Safari will have to wait,” I said. “Even if we find him, I don’t know if he will work with me.”
“Is it possible he went back to Willow Bend?” she asked. “To the orchard on the farm. That was his favorite hangout, wasn’t it? Maybe if he knows about Hiram, he’d feel closer to him there.”
In the Willow Bend orchard, I found him almost immediately. He was in one of the trees close to the house. He looked out of it at me with those great cat eyes. He even grinned at me.
“Catface,” I said, “Hiram has been hurt, but he’ll be all right. He’ll be back in a few more days. Catface, can you blink? Can you shut your eyes?”
He shut his eyes and opened them again, then closed them and opened them again.
“All right,” I said, “I want to talk with you. You can hear me, but I can’t hear you. Maybe we can work out a way. I’ll ask you questions. If your answer is yes, close your eyes once. If your answer is no, close them twice. Do you understand?”
He closed his eyes once, then opened them.
“That is fine,” I said, “You understand what I told you about Hiram?”
He closed his eyes once.
“You understand that he’ll be back in a few days?”
Catface signaled yes.
“And you’re willing to talk with me this way? Work with me this way, by closing your eyes?”
Yes, indicated Catface.
“It’s not a very satisfactory way to talk, is it?”
Catface blinked twice.
“All right, then, in Mastodonia — you know where Mastodonia is, don’t you?”
Yes, indicated Catface.
“Back in Mastodonia, we need four time roads laid out. I have set out four lines of stakes, painted red. with a red flag at the end of each line, the red flag marking the point where we want to go into time. Do you understand?”
Catface signaled that he did.
“You have seen the stakes and flags?”
Catface said he had.
“Then, Catface, listen closely now. The first time road should go back seventy million years. And the next one ten thousand years less than that — ten thousand years less than seventy million years.”
Catface didn’t wait for me to ask him if he understood; he signaled yes.
“The third one,” I said, “ten thousand years less than the second and the fourth one, ten thousand years less than the third.”
Yes, said Catface.
We went through it all again to be sure he understood.
“Will you do it now?” I asked.
He said he would and then he disappeared. I stood there, staring stupidly at where he’d been. I suspected that he had taken me at my word, that he was now back in Mastodonia setting up the roads. At least, I hoped he was.
I found Ben in his office with his feet cocked up on the desk.
“You know, Asa,” he said, “this is the best job I ever had. I like it.”
“But you also have a bank to run.”
“I’ll tell you something I shouldn’t tell anyone; the bank runs itself. Of course, I’m still in charge, but now I do barely any work. Only some of the tough decisions and a few papers that I have to sign.”
“In that case, how about getting off your big fat butt and going into the Cretaceous with me?”
“The Cretaceous? You mean you did it, Asa?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. We ought to check it out.
I’d like company. I’m too chicken to do it alone.”
“You still have the elephant guns at your place?”
I nodded. “No hunting, though. Not this time. We just check out the roads.”
Rila went along with us. We debated taking a car, but decided to go on foot. I was quite prepared, as we
