LITMIR.BIZ

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not only that. Ahead, I could see the land stretching as usual, and the low roofs of the old stables. But beyond the roofs, the hills had gone! And to the left, driveway and pampas grass had disappeared. They were replaced by a lumpy piece of country, very green and broken and dotted with green trees – like nowhere in Texas.

      ‘Holy saints! We’ve been timeslipped!’ Reede said. Dazed though I was, I thought how characteristic of him to speak as if this was some personal thing that had been done to him. No doubt that was exactly how he saw it.

      ‘I must go to my grandchildren,’ I said.

      With shrill shouts, Poll and Tony were already running outside. I caught up with them and held their hands, hoping I might be able to protect them from danger. But there was no danger except that most insidious one, the threat to human sanity. We stood there, staring into the mist. Nurse Gregory came out to join us, taking everything with her usual unflustered calm.

      When a few minutes had passed, and we were recovering from our first shock, I stepped forward, towards where the drive had been.

      ‘I’d stay where I was, if I was you, Joe,’ Reede advised. ‘You don’t know what might be out there.’

      I ignored him. The children were straining to go ahead.

      There was a clean line where our sand ended. Beyond it was rank grass, growing as high as the children’s knees, and beaded silver with rain. Great shaggy oaks stood everywhere. A path was worn among them.

      ‘I can see a hut over there, Grampy,’ Tony said, pointing.

      It was a poor affair, built of wood. It had wooden slates on the roof. Behind it was an outhouse, also wooden, and a picket fence, with bushes by it. With an increase in unease, I saw that two people, I thought a man and a woman, stood behind the fence, staring in our direction. I pointed them out to the children.

      ‘Better get back in the house,’ Reede advised. ‘I’m going to phone the police and see what the hell’s happening.’ He disappeared.

      ‘They won’t hurt us, will they?’ said Tony, staring across at the two strangers.

      ‘Not unless we threaten them,’ Nurse Gregory said – which I thought was a little optimistic.

      ‘I should imagine they’re as startled by us as we are by them,’ I said.

      Suddenly, the man by the fence turned away and went behind the house. When we next saw him, he was running into the distance, heading uphill. The woman slid out of sight and went into the house.

      ‘Let’s have a walk round, Grampy, can we?’ Tony said. ‘I’d love to go to the top of that hill and see where the man went. Perhaps there’s a castle over there.’

      It seemed a likely suggestion, but I was too uneasy to leave the relative shelter of our house. I recalled that I had an old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic pistol in my desk; yet the idea of carrying it was repugnant to me. The children kept plaguing me to take them forward. Eventually I gave in. The three of us walked together under the trees, leaving Nurse Gregory to stand on the house side of the danger line.

      ‘Don’t go too far,’ she called. So she had some sensations of fear!

      ‘No harm will come to us,’ I replied. I figured that would reassure all of us.

      Well, no harm came to us, but I was in a constant state of worry. Supposing the house snapped back to 2020, leaving us stuck in whatever benighted neck of the woods we had come across? Or supposing – I’m ashamed to put it on paper now – something dreadful came and attacked us, something we didn’t know about?

      And there was a third worry, shadowy but no pleasanter for that. Supposing that what was happening was just a subjective phenomenon, something going on purely inside my own skull? It was hard to believe that we weren’t in a kind of dream.

      The kids wanted to go and see if they could see the woman in the wooden house. I made them walk the other way. There was a dog lying inside the picket fence. I had a dread about trying to talk to anyone from – this world, or whatever you should call it.

      Poll was the first to see the horseman.

      He was riding over the brow of one of the nearby hillocks, accompanied by a man on foot, who held the stirrup with one hand and led a large hound on a leash with the other. They approached slowly, warily, and were still some distance away. All the same, they looked determined; the man on the horse was dressed in tunic and tight trousers, and held a short sword in his hand and wore a curving helmet.

      ‘Pretend you haven’t seen them, and we’ll walk back to the house,’ I said.

      Hypocrite! But for the dear children, I would have gone forward to meet him.

      The children came along meekly, Poll putting her small hand in mine. Neither of them looked back. We got to the front door, stood on the step and then looked back.

      The horseman and his companion came steadily on. The dog strained at its leash. All three of them kept their eyes fixedly on us. When they reached the line where the grass ended and the Texan ground began, they halted.

      The horse was a poor spavined creature. The man on the horse looked rather grand. He had a beard and steady dark eyes. His hair and complexion were dark. His attitude was easy in the saddle and expressed determination. The man by his side – I judged it to be the peasant from the wooden house – was a stocky creature whose bodily gestures suggested disquiet.

      ‘Who are you? Do you speak English?’ I called.

      They just stared back.

      ‘Are you from New Houston?’ Tony called bravely.

      They made no verbal answer. Instead, the man on horseback raised his sword aloft. In greeting or threat? Then he turned the nag around and, almost sadly, I thought, led back the way he had come.

      ‘I told you they wouldn’t hurt us,’ Nurse Gregory said, giving me a look of relief.

      Tony called once, but they did not turn back, and we watched them until both had disappeared over the brow of the little hill.

      You will think this thrilling tale ends in an awful anticlimax, my dear, and be glad that it is so. We never saw those men again. We remained in that timeslip for thirty-five hours or thereabouts, but saw no one else approach.

      My anxiety was that the horseman had gone to get reinforcements. Perhaps there was a castle nearby, as Tony had immediately assumed. I summoned the three serviles and reprogrammed them to keep watch – fortunately, I had a defence programme to hand. Reede and I reinforced their watch from time to time, especially during the night, when we also floodlit the house and grounds. I should add that our phones to the outside world were non-functioning but of course the nuclear core supplied us with all the power we needed.

      During the night, we heard dogs barking and yapping in the hills. Maybe there were jackals as well. That was all.

      This morning, we flipped back into The Present as easily and quietly as we had left it. Here we are, as before – except that the area which returned is not entirely the area which went! I rode round in the buggy this morning, after a brief nap, surveying the damage. Nurse Gregory brought the children along and made an outing of it.

      You remember what we call the green cottage – the apple store, beyond the garaging. It has gone. In its place, rough green pasture which will soon wilt in our Texan sun. And where the driveway was we have a line of massive oaks and beeches. The robots are working to clear way between them to the road. Luckily, the road gate is still there – it stayed in 2020 all the while, or so we must assume.

      I’m getting one of the oaks sawn down and will dispatch it with soil samples to the Historical Ecology Department at the University. Sitgers there might be able to discover something of its original locality from analysis, though he will never have faced a problem like this before. Where did we go? England? Europe? The Balkans? The guy on the horse was Caucasian. What time was it, what century? I presume it was Earth. Or was it some alternate Earth? Did I stand with the kids

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