A Question of Time
Fred Saberhagen
Chapter 1
1935
Jake Rezner had never owned a watch, but the lack had rarely worried him, and he didn't mean to let it bother him today. Squinting up at the first direct rays of the morning sun, just coming clear of an eastern cliff, he thought that today the sun would let him tell time well enough. He might get back to camp too late for evening chow, but that wouldn't really matter. All he really had to worry about today was getting back before it got too dark to walk the Canyon trails. If he should get caught out overnight, or was so late returning that the camp authorities started to organize a search for him, they might begin to be uncomfortably curious about where he'd been.
For Jake the seven days since last Sunday had dragged almost as if he were in prison, or as if there could be something wrong with all the clocks and watches in the camp, and with the calendar that had spent this week, like every other week, hanging on a pole in the orderly tent.
Anyway, Sunday had at last come round again, and right after morning chow Jake had got hold of a canteen and come down here to the creek to fill it. At the moment he was squatting on the rocky lip of Bright Angel Creek, his right hand holding the two-quart vessel under water, air bubbles coming up in a way that made it look like he might be drowning a small animal. The canteen was surplus military equipment, like Jake's khaki clothes, like his sturdy boots and his round-brimmed fatigue hat, all on loan from the army to help the Civilian Conservation Corps get going in these dark days of the Depression.
Early June sunlight, hot but not nearly as hot as it was going to be in a few hours, sparkled off the surface of the noisy creek, glinting in the small patches where the water wasn't too chopped up by turbulence to be anything but white froth. The dazzle of sunlight on rushing water suggested moving pictures, and was the kind of thing that on a dull Sunday might have tempted Jake to sit here for an hour and just watch—but today, whatever happened, was not going to be dull. Not for him.
Small rapids, both upstream and downstream, generated unending hollow noises that sounded to Jake like a murmuring of many voices. In camp you could hear the rapids of the creek all day and all night, and on workdays along one trail or another they were sometimes audible. Since coming west to work for the CCC Jake had discovered that he could never listen for long to the voices of this or any other creek before they started making words. Right now the rapids upstream were louder than those below; and that seemed only natural, because the water upstream had just come tumbling all the way down from its source up on the North Rim, a mile higher and maybe ten crow-flight miles from this spot. Downstream from Jake, not more than fifty yards away, Bright Angel Creek plunged in a final subdued roar to its union with the wide, swift, silent Colorado at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon.
All the rapids in the creek kept on shouting their imaginary words at Jake, but right now they sounded like people arguing in some foreign language. Only one of those words was at all clear. It was a certain name, a girl's name that he'd learned only two weeks ago.
The last remnant of air came bubbling up out of the submerged canteen, and Jacob Rezner got to his feet, screwing on the container's metal cap. Jake at twenty-two was six feet tall and solidly built. His dark hair, kept cut short ever since he'd joined the CCC, still retained a tendency to curl. His greenish eyes had something in them that most people found a little startling, though very few could have said exactly why they were startled. The mobility of his mouth seemed to be connected somehow, perhaps sharing a kind of energy, with the strangeness in his eyes.
Fastening the canteen to his webbed army belt, Jake returned to camp by recrossing the creek, on a narrow bridge that marked the foot of Kaibab Trail. Trudging a few feet uphill from the bridge, Jake entered what the army people called the company street of CCC Camp NP-3-A. The street was basically two rows of khaki tents, twenty-five of them in all, most of them housing four enrollees each. Now that the hot weather was coming on in earnest, at least a couple of each tent's canvas walls were hiked up to let air circulate. Headquarters and officers' tents were grouped at the northeastern, upstream end of the camp. Latrines, supply, and the mule corral were scattered downstream along the creek. Today the makeshift corral would more than likely remain empty; generally no pack trains came down on Sunday. As a rule the rest of the week saw fairly steady mule train traffic, because all supplies except water had to be packed down here from the South Rim.
The usual Sunday sounds of the camp surrounded Jake. Laughter and swear words and arguments, and the one ever-playing radio. The army chaplain hadn't made it down today for Sunday services; most weeks he failed to make it, because it was a seven-mile mule ride on switch-back trails from the South Rim, and a lot more miles than that from the nearest place that even pretended to be a town.
Just below Camp NP-3-A, down on the cleared, relatively flat space of the creek's delta, some of the guys were starting a pickup softball game despite the growing heat. For most of the young enrollees this would be a day to play games, play cards, write letters, and just sack out. Here and there one of the guys would dig out a bottle he had secretly stashed away. Usually the officers and leaders looked the other way when that happened, unless someone showed up drunk for work, or too hung over to carve trails and haul rock.
With the filled canteen hooked securely on his GI belt, Jake approached his own tent, halfway down the company street, and stuck his head inside. Three of the four military bunks, including his own, were empty. Joe Spicci, short and wiry, looked up from the fourth sack, where he lay reading last Sunday's sports section.
Jake told him: "I'm going for a hike." He made the announcement reluctantly; but it made sense to let someone know he might not be back until late. He wouldn't want them starting a search if he missed evening chow.
"Where?" Spicci sounded interested.
"Just a hike." The answer was short; this was one hike on which Jake didn't want company. "See you at chow time. Or maybe even later."
"Too damn hot out there for me today." Joe raised the sports pages in front of his face again.
A hundred steps away from the tent, Jake had put the entire camp behind him. Hell, with a few more strides he was already practically out of sight of all the tents. The land down here at the bottom of the inner gorge was mostly barren rock, a real desert, but he was already around the nearest big outcropping shoulder. This formation, whose shape always put Jake in mind of a sheeted ghost, dwarfed the camp, even as it was dwarfed itself by the thousand-foot cliffs of the lower gorge. These cliffs mostly blocked out the view of the vastly greater and more colorful fantasies above. After living four months in a work camp at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon, Jake had learned his way around the place a little bit, but he still hadn't got used to it in his mind. Maybe you never could, at least not if you had any imagination.
But today, so far, he was hardly noticing the landscape. Because his mind was busy with something else. If any of the other men in camp had any idea… but none of them did. They couldn't, because Jake hadn't said a word to anyone.
His secret destination lay downstream, along the south bank of the broad Colorado. To reach the south bank he had to cross the Kaibab suspension bridge, just outside of camp. This bridge was somewhat longer than a football field, and just about wide enough to accommodate one loaded mule. It was the only span of any kind to cross the river for more than a hundred miles upstream or down.
The bridge sounded hollowly beneath Jake's boots. The river, here deep and smooth, rushed silently below. After Jake had crossed the bridge his way lay west, downstream along the newly constructed River Trail. He'd labored on this stretch of trail himself, worked hard, helping the experts set explosives here and there, digging and hauling broken rock.