He put his hand up to his throat, feeling for the key chain that hung around his neck.
And there was no chain!
Mind dulled by sudden terror, he stood frozen for a moment.
Pockets, he thought, but his hands fumbled with a dread certainty that there was no hope. For he never put the keys in his pockets…always on their chain around his neck where they would be safe.
He searched, feverishly at first, then with a grim, cold thoroughness.
His pockets held no key.
The chain broke, he thought in frantic desperation. The chain broke and it fell inside my clothes. He patted himself, carefully, from head to foot, and it was not there. He took off his shirt, gently, cautiously, feeling for the missing key. He tossed the shirt aside and, sitting down, pulled off his trousers, searching in their folds, turning them inside out.
And there was no key.
On hands and knees, he searched the sands of the river bed, fumbling in the dim light that filtered through the rushing water.
An hour later he gave up.
The shifting, water-driven sand already had closed the trench he had dug to the lock and there was now no point of getting to the lock, for he could not open it when he got there.
His shirt and trousers had vanished with the current.
Wearily, beaten, he turned toward the shore, forcing his way through the stubborn water. His head broke into open air and the first stars of evening were shining in the east.
On shore he sat down with his back against a tree. He took one breath and then another, willed the first heartbeat, then the second and a third…nursed the human metabolism back into action once again.
The river gurgled at him, deep laughter on its tongue. In the wooded valley a whippoorwill began his measured chugging. Fireflies danced through the blackness of the bushes.
A mosquito stung him and he slapped at it futilely.
A place to sleep, he thought. A hay-loft in a barn, perhaps. And pilfered food from a farmer's garden to fill his empty belly. Then clothes.
XXXIX
Sundays were lonely.
During the rest of the week there was work — physical labor — for a man to do, the endless, trudging round of work that is necessary to extract a living from the soil. Land to plow, crops to be put in and tended and finally harvested, wood to cut, fences to be built and mended, machines to be repaired — things that must be done with bone and muscle, with calloused hand and aching back and the hot sun on one's neck or the whiplash of windy cold biting at one's bones.
For six days a farmer labored and the labor was a thing that dulled one to the aching emptiness of memory and at night, when work was done, sleep was swift and merciful. There were times when the work, not only for its sedative effect but of its very self, became a thing of interest and of satisfaction. The straight line of new-set fence posts became a minor triumph when one glanced back along their length. The harvest field, with its dust upon one's hoes and its smell of sun on golden straw and the clacking of the binder as it went its rounds, became a full-breasted symbolism of plenty and contentment. And there were moments when the pink blush of apple blossoms shining through the silver rain of spring became a wild and pagan paean of the resurrection of the Earth from the frosts of winter.
For six days a man would labor and would not have time to think; on the seventh day he rested and braced himself for the loneliness and the thoughts of desperation that idleness would bring.
Not a loneliness for a people or a world or a way of life, for this world was kindlier and closer to Earth and life and safer — much safer — than the world one had left behind. But a nagging loneliness, an accusing loneliness that talked of a job that waited, a piece of work that now might wait forever, a task that must be done, but now might never be done.
At first there had been hope.
Surely, Sutton thought, they will look for me. Surely they will find a way to reach me.
The thought was a comfort that he hugged close against himself, a peace of mind that he could not bring himself to analyze too closely. For he realized, even as he coddled it, that it was a generalization, that it might not survive too close a scrutiny, that it was fashioned of faith and of wishful thinking and that for all its wealth of comfort it might be a fragile bauble.
The past cannot be changed, he argued with himself, in its entirety. It can be altered — subtly. It can be twisted and it can be dented and it can be whittled down, but by and large it stands. And that is why I'm here, that must be why I'm here, and I'll have to stay until old John H. writes the letter to himself. For the past is in the letter — the letter brought me here and it will keep me here until it's finally written. Up to that point the pattern must necessarily hold, for up to that point in time the past, so far as I and my relation with it are concerned, is a known and revealed past. But the moment the letter is written it becomes an unknown past, it tends to the speculative and there is no known pattern. After the letter's written, so far as I'm concerned anything can happen.
Although he admitted, even as he thought it, that his premise was fallacious. For known or not, revealed or unrevealed, the past would form a pattern. For the past had happened. He was living in a time that already had been set and molded.
Although even in that thought there was a hope, even in the unknownness of the past and the knowledge that by and large what had happened was a thing that stood unchanged, there must be hope. For somewhere, somewhen he had written a book. The book existed and therefore had happened, although so far as he was concerned it had not happened yet. But he had seen two copies of the book and that meant that in some future age the book was a factor in the pattern of the past.
Sometime, said Sutton, they will find me. Sometime before it is too late.
They will hunt for me and find me. They will have to find me.
They? he asked himself, finally honest with himself.
Herkimer, an android.
Eva Armour, a woman.
They…two people.
But not those two alone. Surely not those two alone. Back of them, like a shadowy army, all the other androids and all the robots that Man had ever fashioned. And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.
They would look for him, of course, but where?
With all of time and all of space to search in, how would they know when and where to look?
The robot at the information center, he remembered, could tell them that he had inquired about an ancient town called Bridgeport. And that would tell them where. But no one could tell them when.
For no one knew about the letter…absolutely no one. He remembered how the dried and flaky mucilage had showered down across his hands in a white and aged powder when his thumbnail had cracked loose the flap of the envelope. No one, certainly, had seen the contents of that letter since the day it had been written until he, himself, had opened it.
He realized now that he should have gotten word to someone…word of where and when he was going and what he meant to do. But he had been so confident and it had seemed such a simple thing, such a splendid plan.
A splendid plan in the very directness of its action…to intercept the Revisionist, to knock him out and take his ship and go forward into time to take his place. It could have been arranged, of that he was certain. There would have been an android somewhere to help fashion his disguise, there would have been papers in the ship and androids from the future to brief him on the things that he would have to know.