Gordon Dickson Time Storm

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the girl and Waite. Richie was the unhurt one, but his eyes still did not look
right
"How badly are you hurt?" I asked Alan.
"Hurt?" he said. "I didn't get hurt."
"You could fool me," I said dryly. He didn't seem to get it. "Your head I How
bad's the damage to your head?"
"My headr
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He put up a hand and brought it down covered with blood. His face whitened.
"What is it?" he said. "How bad...." His bloody hand was fluttering up toward
the head wound, wanting to touch it, but afraid of what it might feel
"That's what I want to know," I said.
I climbed into the cab and bent over bun, gingerly parting the hair over the
bloody scalp. It was such a mess I couldn't see anything.
"Feel anything?'* I asked, probing with my fingertips.
"No... no.. yes!" he yelped.
I pulled my hands away.
"How bad did that feel?" I asked him. He looked embarrassed.
"Not too bad-I guess," he said. "But I felt it, where you touched it"
"All right" I told him. "Hang on, because I'm going to have to touch it some
more."
I probed around with my fingers, wishing I'd had die sense to bring bandages
and water with us. He said nothing to indicate that I was giving him any
important amount of pain; and all my fingers could find was a swelling and a
relatively small cut
"It's really not bad at all," he said sheepishly, when Td finished. "I think I
just got hit by a rock, come to think of it"
"All right," I said. My own hands were a mess now. I wiped them as best I
could on the levis I was wearing. "Looks Uke a bump and a scratch, only. It
just put out a lot of blood. If you're up to it, I want you to stay."
"I can stay," he said.
"All right, then. Richie!"
Richie looked at me slowly as if I was someone caning him from a distance.
"Richie! I want you to drive the pickup back through the mistwall. You're to
take the girl and Waite back, then pick up some bandages, some antibiotics and
a jerry can of drinking water and bring it back to us. Understand me?"
"Yeah...." said Richie, thickly.
"Come on, then," I said.
I climbed out of the box of the pickup and he came after me. I saw him into
the cab and behind the wheel.
"He'll take you back to the camp," I told the girl and closed the door on the
driver's side before she could answer-assuming, that is, that she had intended
to answer. The pickup's motor, which had been idling all this time, growled
into gear. Richie swung it about and drove out of sight into the mistwall,
headed back.
I looked around. Bill was standing about twenty yards ahead of me. Beside him
was Fornlarsk, who must have followed us through the mistwall at some time
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when I wasn't looking. They seemed to be talking together, looking down into
the village, the machine pistol hanging by its strap, carelessly, from Bill's
right arm. It was incautious of him to be so relaxed, I thought We had driven
off one attack, but there was no way of knowing we might not have another at
any minute.
I went toward them. As I did, I had to detour around the body of one of the
attackers, who had apparently been trying to rush the pickup. It lay
face-down, the ape-like features hidden, and it reminded me of Waite, somehow.
For a moment I wondered if there were others among its fellows that were
feeling the impact of this one's death, as I had felt that of Waite. My
mind-it was not quite under control right then, my mind-skittered off to think
of the girl again. Of Ellen-I must remember to think of her as Ellen from now
on.
It was so strange. She was small and skinny and cantankerous. How could I love
her like this? Where did it come from, what I was feeling? Somehow, when I
wasn't paying any attention, she had grown inside me, and now, she took up all
the available space there. Another thought came by, blown on the wandering
breeze of my not-quite-in-control mind. What about Marie? I couldn't just kick
her out But maybe there was no need for worry. AH Marie had ever seemed to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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