The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [174]
Three official-looking strangers who had been at the inn came up and introduced themselves to Uncle Laban as observers from Alberta Central. They went on into the tent which had been erected over the closure, carrying with them several pieces of equipment which the townsfolk eyed suspiciously.
The mechanics teacher finished organizing a squad of students to protect the slab's curtain, and Mira and Serli and Laban went on into the tent. It was much hotter inside. Benches were set in rings around a railed enclosure about twenty feet in diameter. Inside the railing the earth was bare and scuffed. Several bunches of flowers and blooming poinciana branches leaned against the rail. The only thing inside the rail was a rough sandstone rock with markings etched on it.
Just as they came in, a small girl raced across the open center and was yelled at by everybody. The officials from Alberta were busy at one side of the rail, where the light-print box was mounted.
"Oh, no," muttered Mira's uncle, as one of the officials leaned over to set up a tripod stand inside the rails. He adjusted it, and a huge horsetail of fine feathery filaments blossomed out and eddied through the center of the space.
"Oh, no," Laban said again. "Why can't they let it be?"
"They're trying to pick up dust from his suit, is that right?" Serli asked.
"Yes, insane. Did you get time to read?"
"Oh, yes," said Serli.
"Sort of," added Mira.
"Then you know. He's falling. Trying to check his - well, call it velocity. Trying to slow down. He must have slipped or stum bled. We're getting pretty close to when he lost his footing and started to fall. What did it? Did somebody trip him?" Laban looked from Mira to Serli, dead serious now. "How would you like to be the one who made John Delgano fall?"
"Ooh," said Mira in quick sympathy. Then she said, "Oh."
"You mean," asked Serli, "whoever made him fall caused all the, caused —"
"Possible," said Laban.
"Wait a minute," Serli frowned. "He did fall. So somebody had to do it - I mean, he has to trip or whatever. If he doesn't fall the past would all be changed, wouldn't it? No war, no —"
"Possible," Laban repeated. "God knows. All I know is that John Delgano and the space around him is the most unstable, improbable, highly charged area ever known on Earth, and I'm damned if I think anybody should go poking sticks in it."
"Oh, come now, Laban!" One of the Alberta men joined them, smiling. "Our dust mop couldn't trip a gnat. It's just vitreous monofilaments."
"Dust from the future," grumbled Laban. "What's it going to tell you? That the future has dust in it?"
"If we could only get a trace from that thing in his hand."
"In his hand?" asked Mira. Serli started leafing hurriedly through the pamphlet.
"We've had a recording analyzer aimed at it," the Albertan lowered his voice, glancing around. "A spectroscope. We know there's something there, or was. Can't get a decent reading. It's severely deteriorated."
"People poking at him, grabbing at him," Laban muttered. "You —"
"TEN MINUTES!" shouted a man with a megaphone. "Take your places, friends and strangers."
The Repentance people were filing in at one side, intoning an ancient incantation, "Mi-seri-cordia, Ora pro nobisl"
The atmosphere suddenly became tense. It was now very close and hot in the big tent. A boy from the mayor's office wiggled through the crowd, beckoning Laban's party to come and sit in the guest chairs on the second level on the "face" side. In front of them at the rail one of the Repentance ministers was arguing with an Albertan official over his right to occupy the space taken by a recorder, it being his special duty to look into The Man John's eyes.
"Can he really see us?" Mira asked her uncle.
"Blink your eyes," Laban told her. "A new scene every blink, that's what he sees. Phantasmagoria. Blink-blink-blink - for god knows how long."
"Mi-sere-re, pec-cavi," chanted the