‘We’ve no alternative but to try,’ said the leader. ‘This is our one chance. The next shell flash is many lifetimes away.’ Yet he paused before climbing into the glider, as if to hear what his friends had to say at this solemn moment.
The bearded man perhaps regretted his hesitations in the face of the other’s courage.
‘Yes, of course you must go,’ he said. ‘Somehow we have to get word of what is happening here back to the far past. Stoker has to be informed.’
The scientist standing next to him said, in sorrowful disagreement, ‘Yet all the old legends say that Dracula destroyed Stoker.’
The leader answered firmly, addressing them all, with the sense of parting heavy upon them. ‘We have argued the situation through sufficiently. Those old legends may be wrong, for we well understand how history can be changed. Our given three-dimensional space is only one dimension within the universe’s four-dimensional space. Time is a flexible element within it. No particle has a definite path, as the uncertainty principle states. We have been enslaved here at the end of the world in order to help generate the colossal voltages the Fleet Ones require to regiment those paths. I shall seek out the other end of their trail – and there I believe the legendary Stoker is to be found. It is Stoker after all who is one of Earth’s heroes, the stoker – as his name implies – who brought fire with which to burn out a great chance for all mankind.’
‘So he did,’ agreed the others, almost in chorus. And one of them, the youngest, added, ‘After all, this horrendous present, according to the laws of chaos, is a probability only, not an actuality. History can be changed.’
The leader made to step into the glider. Again the bearded man detained him.
‘Just wait till these winds have died. The glider will have a better chance then.’
‘And then the Fleet Ones will be back on the attack. It’s necessary that I go now.’
He looked searchingly into their faces. ‘I know you will suffer for this. My regret is that we were unable to fashion a plane large enough to carry all four of us. Always remember – I shall succeed or die in the attempt.’
‘There are states far worse than death where the Fleet Ones are concerned,’ said the bearded man, mustering a smile. He made to shake the leader’s hand, changed his mind, and embraced him warmly instead.
‘Farewell, Alwyn. God’s grace guide you.’
The leader stepped into the machine.
The others, as prearranged, pushed it to the edge of the drop – and over. The glider fell until its wings bit into the air. It steadied. It began to fly. It circled, it even gained height. It began heading towards the east.
The scientists left behind stood watching until the glider was faint in the murk.
Their voices too went with the wind.
‘Farewell, Alwyn!’
State Route 18 runs north from St George, through the Iron Mountains, to the Escalante Desert. One day in 1999, it also ran into a past so distant nobody had ever dared visualize it.
Bernard Clift had worked in this part of Utah before, often assisted by students from Dixie College with a leaning towards palaeontology. This summer, Clift’s instincts had led him to dig on the faulty stretch of rock the students called Old John, after the lumber-built jakes near the site, set up by a forgotten nineteenth-century prospector.
Clift was a thin, spare man, deeply tanned, medium height, his sharp features and penetrating grey eyes famous well beyond the limits of his own profession. There was a tenseness about him today, as if he knew that under his hand lay a discovery that was to bring him even greater fame, and to release on the world new perspectives and new terror.
Over the dig, a spread of blue canvas, of a deeper blue than the Utah sky, had been erected, to shade Clift and his fellow-workers from the sun. Clustered below the brow of rock where they worked were a dozen miscellaneous vehicles – Clift’s trailer, a trailer from Enterprise which served food and drink all day, and the automobiles and campers belonging to students and helpers.
A dirt road led from this encampment into the desert. All was solitude and stillness, apart from the activity centred on Old John. There Clift knelt in his dusty jeans, brushing soil and crumbs of rock from the fossilized wooden lid they had uncovered.
Scattered bones of a dinosaur of the aurischian order had been extracted from the rock, labelled, temporarily identified as belonging to a large theropod, and packed into crates. Now, in a stratum below the dinosaur grave, the new find was revealed.
Several people crowded round the freshly excavated hole in which Clift worked with one assistant. Cautious digging had revealed fossil wood, which slowly emerged in the shape of a coffin. On the lid of the coffin, a sign had been carved:
Overhead, a vulture wheeled, settling on a pinnacle of rock near the dig. It waited.
Clift levered at the ancient lid. Suddenly, it split along the middle and broke. The palaeontologist lifted the shard away. A smell, too ancient to be called the scent of death, drifted out into the hot dry air.
A girl student with the Dixie College insignia on her T-shirt yelped and ran from the group as she saw what lay in the coffin.
Using his brush, Clift swept away a layer of red ochre. His assistant collected fragile remains of dead blossom, placing them reverently in a plastic bag. A skeleton in human form was revealed, lying on its side. Tenderly, Clift uncovered the upper plates of the skull. It was twisted round so that it appeared to stare upwards at the world of light with round ochred eyes.
The head offices and laboratories of the thriving Bodenland Corporation were encompassed in bronzed-glass curtain walls, shaped in neo-cubist form and disposed so that they dominated one road approach into Dallas, Texas.
At this hour of the morning the facade reflected the sun into the eyes of anyone approaching the corporation from the airport – as was the case with the imposing lady now disembarking from a government craft in which she had flown from Washington. She was sheathed in a fabric which reflected back something of the lustre from the corporation.
Her name was Elsa Schatzman, three times divorced daughter of Eliah Schatzman. She was First Secretary at the Washington Department of the Environment. She looked as if she wielded power, and did.
Joe Bodenland knew that Elsa Schatzman was in the offing. At present, however, he had little thought for her, being involved in an argument with his life’s companion, Mina Legrand. While they talked, Bodenland’s secretary continued discreetly to work at her desk.
‘First things first, Birdie,’ said Bodenland, with a patience that was calculated to vex Mina.
Mina Legrand was another powerful lady, although the genial lines of her face did not proclaim that fact. She was tall and still graceful, and currently having weight problems, despite an active life. Friends said of her, affectionately, that she put up with a lot of hassle from Joe; still closer friends observed that of late he was putting up with plenty from Mina.
‘Joe, your priorities are all screwed up. You must make time for your family,’ she said.
‘I’ll make time, but first things first,’ he repeated.
‘The first thing is it’s your son’s wedding day,’ Mina said. ‘I warn you, Joe, I’m going to fly down to Gondwana without you. One of these days, I’ll leave you for good, I swear I will.’
Joe played a tune on his desk top with the fingers of his left hand. They were long blunt fingers