Eight Keys to Eden Part 28

"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on back to the rest."

"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.

A rearrangement of relations.h.i.+ps, and Cal walked out from behind a bush to approach Jed and Tom.

"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.

Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."

"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that everything happened a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him curiously.

Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with puzzlement on his face.

"There's something important about it being around this time of day, Cal?" he asked.

"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could restore the village, the fields, the escape s.h.i.+p, everything just as it was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had pa.s.sed, nothing had happened."

Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.

"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"

"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things back as they were?"

In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the approach of the drill.

It was a bigger equation, a more complex one, but not different in kind.

The village of Appletree sprang suddenly into being, the hangar with the metallic gleam of the s.h.i.+p inside, the fields, the pasture fences with the calves separated from the cows. A few people, clothed, were walking on the dirt street between the houses. They looked at one another. They looked up at the sky, at the fields around them, the forests beyond.

They looked back at one another. They shook their heads, and blinked their eyes, as if suddenly wakened from a sleep, a dream, the craziest dream.

Later they would compare the dream, and with Jed's help piece together, and feel the shock, and wonder.

Upon the hill, away from the village, where Jed lay, clothed, in the hammock swung between two trees, Martha came out of the house, clothed.

"I must have sat down in a chair for a minute and fallen asleep or something, Jed," she said as she came to stand beside him. "And I had the funniest dream. You can't imagine. You know how sometimes we'll dream about being out in front of folks, all naked ..."

"That wasn't any dream, Martha," he answered with a grin. "All the people in the village are going to start realizing it pretty soon.

They'll need some help. We'd better walk down there. Them people across the ridge, too. Bet they'll be hightailing it back over here first thing you know. And something else, there's an E s.h.i.+p here, come to find out why we didn't communicate."

"Well whatever on Earth are you talkin' about, Jed?" she asked curiously. "It won't be time to communicate for a couple of days yet.

You ought to know that. Have you been dreaming, too? Or you and the boys fermenting something? Here, let me smell your breath!"

"Aw, now Martha," he said with a huge grin. He clambered out of the hammock and stood up, took her in his arms, hugged her tightly.

"Jed!" she scolded. "Right out here in the front yard in front of everybody." But she didn't struggle away from him.

"Won't matter a bit," he said. "Not after what's been goin' on in front of everybody right along."

"Whatever has been goin' on can't be half as bad as what I've been dreamin'," she said.

"Better start gettin' used to the idea that it wasn't a dream, Martha,"

he cautioned.

"Jed!" she scolded again, her face aflame with embarra.s.sment.

27

The communications operator looked up as the supervisor came down the aisle toward him.

"Communication from the E.H.Q. s.h.i.+p at Eden coming in just fine," he said enthusiastically. He'd thought it over and decided he'd better repair some fences. Good job here, no use letting his irritation with the supervisor's old-maid fussiness make him cut off his nose to spite his face.

"See that it does," the supervisor answered sharply. He recognized the overture for what it was, felt relieved that he wouldn't have any more insubordination, was willing to let bygones be bygones--after a suitable period of punishment. "What's been happening?" he asked with a curiosity that got the better of his desire to discipline.

"E Gray has come back out of that quartz outcropping where we lost him.

He's standing there talking to the astronavigator who followed him up the mountain."

"More of the same, I guess," the supervisor said. "Nothing's happened for ten days. Nothing likely to happen," he said. He turned and started back down the aisle toward his own office.

"Wait a minute," the operator called. "Here's something."

Other operator heads raised up all down the aisle.

"Now, now; now, now!" the supervisor quarreled at them. "Get on with your work, nothing to concern you here, none of your business."

But of course it was everybody's business. Anything different was everybody's business. All over the world everybody was wondering about the enigma of Eden, everybody speculating, everybody with a different answer. Some were gleeful that science had finally got its comeuppance, and felt no more than a pleasure that the bigdomes had proved they weren't any smarter than anybody else. Others took an equal pleasure in crying woe, woe, at this proof there were mysteries beyond man's knowing, woe, woe, now that man would be punished for trying to know what he was not meant to know.

The operator took time out, in spite of the supervisor's admonishments, to listen frankly.

"They've lost sight of the E," the operator exclaimed. "No, wait a minute. There he is, down in the valley, coming out from behind a bush to talk to the pilot and the head man of the colony."

"Can't have happened like that," the supervisor grumbled. "Ten or twelve miles from that mountain top to the valley. The s.h.i.+p has garbled their reporting. Probably got behind in reporting and then just decided to skip the journey back, and pick up to make it current. There's going to be complaints about this."

"Well, you were right here," the operator said. "You were listening. I didn't skip anything. It wasn't my fault."

"All right, all right."

"Wait a minute," the operator said. "Here, listen in."

The supervisor's eyes grew round.

"Can't be," he exclaimed.

"All the buildings, everything's just like it was before," the operator said loudly to the room at large. "All of a sudden, the way they report it."