sea....
Thudding along the beach beneath a lemon sky, blue clouds scudding... . The salt, the wrack, the shells, the smooth anatomy of driftwood... . White spray off the lime-colored sea... .
Racing, to where the place of waters ends at a terrace... . Mounting, each step crumbling and roaring down behind, losing its identity, joined with the boom of the surf... . Up, up to the flattopped, tree-grown plain, a golden city shimmering, miragelike, at its end... .
The city grows, darkens beneath a shadowy umbrella, its gray towers stretch upward, glass and metal flashing light through the murk... . The towers begin to sway... .
The city falls in upon itself, soundlessly, as we pass... . Towers topple, dust boils, rises, is pinked by some lower glow... . A gentle noise, as of a snuffed candle, drifting by... .
A dust storm, quickly falling, giving place to fog... . Through it, the sounds of automobile horns... . A drift, a brief lift, a break in the gray-white, pearlwhite, shifting... . Our hoofprints on a shoulder of highway... . To the right, endless rows of unmoving vehicles... . Pearl-white, gray-white, drifting again... .
Directionless shrieks and wailings... . Random flashes of light... .
Rising once more... . The fogs lower and ebb... . Grass, grass, grass... . Clear now the sky, and delicate blue... . A sun racing to set... . Birds... . A cow in the field, chewing, staring and chewing... .
Leaping a wooden fence to ride a country road... . A sudden chill beyond the hill... . The grasses are dry and snow's on the ground... . Tin-roofed farmhouse atop a rise, curl of smoke above it... .
On... . The hills grow up, the sun rolls down, darkness dragged behind... . A sprinkle of stars... . Here a house, set far back... . There another, long driveway wound among old trees... . Headlights... .
Off to the side of the road... . Draw rein and let it pass... .
I wiped my brow, dusted my shirt front and sleeves. I patted Drum's neck. The oncoming vehicle slowed as it neared me, and I could see the driver staring. I gave the reins a gentle movement and Drum began walking. The car braked to a halt and the driver called something after me, but I kept going. Moments later, I heard him drive off.
It was country road for a time after that. I traveled at an easy pace, passing familiar landmarks, recalling other times. A few miles later and I came to another road, wider and better. I turned there, staying off on the shoulder to the right. The temperature continued to drop, but the cold air had a good clean taste to it. A sliced moon shone above the hills to my left. There were a few small clouds passing overhead, touched to the moon's quarter with a soft, dusty light. There was very little wind; an occasional stirring of branches, no more. After a time, I came to a series of dips in the road, telling me I was almost there.
A curve and a couple more dips... . I saw the boulder beside the driveway, I read my address upon it.
I drew rein then and looked up the hill. There was a station wagon in the driveway and a light on inside the house. I guided Drum off the road and across a field into a stand of trees. I tethered him behind a pair of evergreens, rubbed his neck, and told him I would not be long.
I returned to the road. No cars in sight. I crossed over and walked up the far side of the driveway, passing behind the station wagon. The only light in the house was in the living room, off to the right. I made my way around the left side of the house to the rear.
I halted when I reached the patio, looking around. Something was wrong.
The back yard was changed. A pair of decaying lawn chairs which had been leaning against a dilapidated chicken coop I had never bothered to remove were gone. So, for that matter, was the chicken coop. They had been present the last time I had passed this way. All of the dead tree limbs which had previously been strewn about, as well as a rotting mass of them I had long ago heaped to cut for firewood, were also gone.
The compost heap was missing.
I moved to the space where it had been. All that was there was an irregular patch of bare earth of the approximate shape of the heap itself.
But I had discovered in attuning myself to the Jewel that I could make myself feel its presence. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to do so. Nothing.
I looked again, searching carefully, but there was no tell-tale glitter anywhere in sight. Not that I had really expected to see anything, not if I could not feel it nearby.
There had been no curtains in the lighted room. Studying the house now, I saw that none of the windows had curtains, shades, shutters, or blinds. Therefore...
I passed around the other end of the house. Approaching the first lighted window, I glanced in quickly. Dropcloths covered much of the floor. A man in cap and coveralls was painting the far wall. Of course.
I had asked Bill to sell the place. I had signed the necessary papers while a patient in the local clinic, when I had been projected back to my old home-probably by some action of the Jewel-on the occasion of my stabbing. That would have been several weeks ago, local time, using the Amber to shadow Earth conversion factor of approximately two and a half to one and allowing for the eight days the Courts of Chaos had cost me in Amber. Bill, of course, had gone ahead on my request. But the place had been in bad shape, abandoned as it had been for a number of years, vandalized... . It needed some new windowpanes, some roofing work, new guttering, painting, sanding, buffing. And there had been a lot of trash to haul away. outside as well as inside... .
I turned away and walked down the front slope to the road, recalling my last passage this way, half delirious. on my hands and knees, blood leaking from my side. It had been much colder that night and there had been snow on the ground and in the air. I passed near the rock where I'd sat, trying to flag down a car with a pillow case. The memory was slightly blurred, but I still recalled the ones that had passed me by.
I crossed the road. made my way through the field to the trees. Unhitching Drum, I mounted.
'We've some more riding ahead,' I told him. 'Not too far this time.'
We headed back to the road and started along it, continuing on past my house. If I had not told Bill to go ahead and sell the place, the compost heap would still have been there, the Jewel would still have been there. I could be on my way back to Amber with the ruddy stone hung about my neck, ready to have a try at what had to be done. Now, now I had to go looking for it, when I'd a feeling time was beginning to press once again. At least, I had a favorable ratio here with respect to its passage in Amber. I clucked at Drum and shook the reins. No sense wasting it, even so.
A half hour, and I was into town, riding down a quiet street in a residential area, houses all about me. The lights were on at Bill's place. I turned up his driveway. I left Drum in his back yard.
Alice answered my knock, stared a moment, then said. 'My God! Carl!'
Minutes later, I was seated in the living room with Bill, a drink on the table to my right. Alice was out in the kitchen, having made the mistake of asking me whether I wanted something to eat.
Bill studied me as he lit his pipe.
'Your ways of coming and going still tend to be colorful.' he said. I smiled.
'Expediency is all,' I said.
'That nurse at the clinic... scarcely anyone believed her story.'
'Scarcely anyone?'
'The minority I refer to is, of course, myself.'
'What was her story?'
'She claimed that you walked to the center of the room, became two-dimensional, and just faded away, like the old soldier that you are, with a rainbowlike accompaniment.'
'Glaucoma can cause the rainbow symptom. She ought to have her eyes checked.'
'She did,' he said. 'Nothing wrong.'
'Oh. Too bad. The next thing that comes to mind is neurological.'
'Come on, Carl. She's all right. You know that.'
I smiled and took a sip of my drink.
'And you,' he said, 'you look like a certain playing card I once commented on. Complete with sword. What's going on, Carl?'
'It's still complicated,' I said. 'Even more than the last time we talked.'
'Which means you can't give me that explanation yet?'
I shook my head.
'You have won an all-expense tour of my homeland, when this is over,' I said, 'if I still have a homeland then. Right now, time is doing terrible things.'
