They all spent the night in Gammon's house. Evidently he was the only one living there. Jim and Gammon left the next morning just at daylight. As they were climbing out of the valley, the wind began picking up. It became quite strong above the valley; a gusty, warmish, humid wind from the South.
The trees blocked the view of most of the land below, but Gammon explained that they would reach the timberline long before reaching the top of the mountain. From the timberline to the top they would be able to see every direction but East. At the top they would be able to see everything the map had shown, and then some.
They did not expect to reach the timberline before dark, but they planned to camp there. The following night, Jim's last night before returning home, would be spent in the gap between a minor peak and the summit of the mountain. Gammon could not understand how Jim intended to go back home from the mountain top, but didn't press the point since Jim evidently wasn't going to talk about it.
Reaching the timberline took longer than expected. It was well after midnight before they stopped and set up camp. The next day was rougher climbing, with a cold wind besides. Water was scarce above the timberline. The few small trickles they found took several minutes to fill a cup. Despite the minor inconveniences, they reached their gap long before dark.
Gammon led the way to a large cluster of boulders up against a steep, solid rock wall on the other side of the gap. When they got there, he walked around the rocks several times.
"You lose something?" Jim asked.
"Evidently the entrance has caved in. There is an open place in the middle of the rocks. My father and I camped in there last time I was here. The ground is flat and out of the wind, and I think it was gravel floored inside.
"Do you remember where the entrance should be?"
"Right here in front of us."
Jim studied the rocks piled there. "We can always just climb over the rocks. It doesn't look too bad here. Let's take a look, anyway."
With the exception of a small pine tree that had now taken up residence, the area inside the rocks was as Gammon had remembered it. The floor was not gravel however, but course sand. They wasted no time setting up camp.
After Jim's tent was up and their gear stowed, Jim brought out his backpacker's gasoline stove and began boiling some water. Gammon was interested in the stove. "Can that burn any flammable liquid?" he asked.
"No, just that stuff," Jim said, pointing to the gasoline bottle which was sitting 5 meters or so away from the stove. Gammon opened the bottle and sniffed it. "Hmmm. It smells almost like ..." he stopped.
"Like fuel for machines?" Jim asked, "That's what it is."
Gammon looked at Jim curiously for a minute, but Jim was busy with the supper and evidently wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. Gammon changed the subject. "How do you go about traveling to different Universes?" He had intended to let Jim tell him in his own time, but now it was out and he couldn't un-ask it.
"I really don't know all the mechanics of it, but I have a working model that seems to explain most of what I've observed. Basically, I create a condition where a given chunk of matter can't `fit' ,or maybe I should say, can't be held in my Universe. It is therefore forced out of that Universe."
Jim stopped, realizing he was speaking in English again instead of Unawinald. Then realizing that Gammon had just spoken in his own language, and that he had understood it, he felt foolish and continued the explanation.
"Evidently this Universe is the next one over from mine, or for some reason is just the easiest to reach from there.
"We've always assumed that the sum of all the matter and energy in the Universe remained constant. If you lost matter, you gained energy, and vice versa. If that was true, the first large chunk of matter I sent here would have killed me. Matter and energy must be able to interchange between Universes, leaving one with a surplus and one with a deficit. So this Universe has matter it would like to get rid of, and my Universe wants it back. Obviously the matter doesn't go back spontaneously, or I wouldn't be here. By using nearly the same process as was used to get here, some aspect of that Universe, maybe space-time itself - I don't know, is weakened enough to accept the matter this Universe is constantly trying to reject. Is that clear as mud?" he asked.
"No, I follow you. I am not sure I agree with you, but you are obviously here somehow."
"As I said, that's just a model I made to try to explain the facts. It may be total garbage, but it's useful in explaining what I know so far."
"You gave me a lot of information, but not what I wanted. How do you actually get to this Universe? What procedure or whatever?"
"That's kind of a long - wait, do you mean like do I use an electronic device or something?"
"Exactly. You do use some sort of machine then?"
"Certainly. I'm no magician."
"That could be debated, but I do not feel like doing so now."
"There are problems," Jim said. "We have to set a timer to bring us back, which means once we're here, we can't determine how long we stay. I'm playing around with an idea to solve that, but it would take more money than I can get any time soon. I'm not real sure it would work, either."
"What do you use for money there?"
"Well, it used to be based on a yellow, heavy metal called gold. Nowadays, I don't think it's based on anything but imagination."
"Can you take matter from here back with you?"
"Not that I know of, except maybe if I eat it."
"That eliminates the easiest idea I had. There is gold here, but you cannot use it. What you need to do is find some process or something which can only be done here for some reason, and make money that way."
Jim looked up. "We can take plants back. Some sort of flower or something we don't have back home! That might do it."
"How are you going to get them there? They are not made of matter from your Universe ..." he stopped, suddenly realizing how it could be done. "You could send over soil, food, water from your Universe, and bring back the grown plants. I could take care of them for you. Of course, they should be a fast growing plant."
"Not particularly. I haven't mentioned one aspect of this trans-universal travel. The relative rate of time passage is quite different. Time passes about 220 times faster here than there. If it took months to grow the plants, it would only be hours to us. We could also grow animals the same way. Especially fish and small mammals. What's the matter?"
"If time is 220 times faster here, then you could come back here decades from now and not be any older than you are now."
"A few weeks older," Jim said.
"Then you can time travel!"
"Only one way."
"That is all I ..." he stopped, mid-sentence.
"That's all you can time travel?"
Gammon said nothing. He turned away, pretending interest in the rocks.
"I told you my secret. You might as well tell me yours."
Gammon was still silent.
"You've been slipping up too much not to notice. That entrance must have collapsed much longer ago than you could've lived. You recognized the smell of gasoline, yet your people don't have the physical means to refine it any more. For that matter, you seemed to have some pretty strong feelings about the war - as if it had affected you personally, not just your ancestors."
Gammon still said nothing, and Jim knew, without having to see, that his last comment had upset Gammon. "Jim, you're a real jerk," he told himself under his breath.
The chili-mac was ready. Jim filled Gammon's and his plates, and was about to go eat behind the tent to let Gammon eat in privacy. "It is alright," Gammon said, walking back over. He sat down and stared thoughtfully at his food for a minute. Jim didn't want to upset him further now, so he ate in silence.
Finally, Gammon broke the silence. "Yes, I am a time traveler. And everyone I knew died in that war."
"I'm sorry I brought ..."
"It is alright," Gammon interrupted, "You did not know."
"I knew some. Like I said, you were letting too many things slip out."
"I am just not used to being around someone I cannot hide things from. You just seemed so open and trusting, at least as long as someone was not trying to pry into your mind unwelcome. I felt I should be open too. I said some things without thinking them out first."
After a few more minutes of silence, he continued: "Telepaths are not that common among my people, but when you have hundreds or thousands of people together, you will have some telepaths among them. A few of the telepaths before the war saw the trend the World was taking, and tried to stop it. They sought out other telepaths, mostly children, and trained them to use their abilities to the maximum. The idea was to have each of the major world leaders under the influence of a trained telepath. The telepaths themselves followed the directions of the ones who had trained them.
"It was a good idea in theory, but I could not go along with meddling with someone's mind. Looking into a mind is one thing, but subtly changing some one's emotions to get them to react in a certain way is just - well, I could not do it. I realized that I knew too much for them to let me go. They could have trusted me personally, but they could not take the chance of me running into another telepath who might not be sympathetic to their purposes. I was afraid of what they would do to me if I tried to leave, and I could not do what they expected of me. So I told them I needed more time to develop my ability on my own before they gave me an actual assignment.
"At first I felt guilty about it. I had the ability to do my part to keep the World out of war, and I did not want to use it. Then it occurred to me that the World had gotten into trouble without me, and for that reason I was not obligated to help it. If I could have helped without violating my own sense of right and wrong, I would have. I also started thinking that if we had to use forced telepathy to keep that sick society together, maybe it would be better to let it fall apart. With their society in pieces like that, the people would have to build a new one. Maybe they would do it right the next time. I never realized any war could be that destructive. There were not enough people left to build a new society. We are still not exempt from extinction. One good epidemic could destroy us."
"How did you manage to survive the war?" Jim asked.
"I cheated. I did develop my ability further, but not telepathically." He pulled a silver chain out from under his shirt. At the end of the chain was a blue transparent crystal. It almost seemed to glow in the dimming light.
"This crystal was given to me by one of my teachers. He wore it on this same chain, and one day I accidentally bumped into him. My hand touched the crystal, and it flashed brightly, then appeared normal again. He told me I had the ability to use the crystal, and gave it to me. He said there was a legend stating that this crystal could heal any form of sickness if used by someone who could trigger it.
"I turned all my attention to the crystal, and learned I could suspend my bodily functions, and that the crystal would keep me alive indefinitely.
"My family lived in a particularly important city. When I heard that they had been killed, I left the school. I thought I would find a safe place somewhere and just wait out the war. I went to a cave I knew about and sealed off a small chamber to keep animals out.
"I thought everything would have settled down by twenty years later, so I tried to put myself into a twenty year sleep. I had never suspended myself for more than a few hours before, and did not expect what happened.
"I did not escape the war at all. I experienced it over and over through other people's minds. In my suspended state, I could not keep my mind from drifting in and out of contact with others. I could not shut out everything without going crazy.
"I eventually tried to keep my thoughts directed to the crystal itself. I know this sounds crazy, but there is an intelligence associated with this crystal. It was such an enormous mind that I do not even think it noticed me. I was so taken up with it, I literally lost track of time.
"I came out of my suspended state, and decided to check out the war's after effects. It didn't take me long to see just how bad it had been. Everywhere was nothing but ruins. I realized that the ruins were probably radioactive, so I used the crystal to protect me and found another cave farther away from the former population centers. I put myself back in and out of suspension until I found people.
"I was stunned at the first man I met. He was one of the Unawi. When I saw his eyes, I thought he was a mutant. I guess he did not know what to think about my eyes. He never said anything about them, though.
"Altogether, it took over two years, of unsuspended time, to find that some of my race had survived. There may be others somewhere, but the people in the high valley are the only ones I have found so far."
"Are you still looking for others?"
"Only casually now. It is not that important to actually find them; it is enough to know that some did survive. You know, most people would have laughed at what I have been saying. Or they would have just thought I was insane."
"I'm not most people. Besides, I happen to be from a parallel Universe, remember? If you want people thinking you're crazy, go around telling them that.
"If I can use a bunch of copper and silicon to jump between Universes, I'm willing to believe that you could use some sort of crystal and your mind. A brain is a lot more complex than my machine."
"You told me more or less how your trans-universal travel is done, but how will you get back from here? Do you not have to get back to your machine?"
"No. When the timer goes off, everything from my World that's here now will go back at the same time. From your point of view I guess I'll just disappear. It should be rather interesting to watch. Assuming my watch hasn't stopped, I should disappear about four o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
"Your watch is designed for the length of your days, remember."
"Near as I can tell, they're the same. I set my watch to four o'clock when Dale and me got here, and it still seems to be showing about the right time for the amount of daylight. Next time I come, I'll have to make some accurate measurements."
"Do you know how long it will be before you come back?"
"Well, it'll be years of your time before we can come back for more than a day or two. Bringing along enough lightweight food is expensive."
"That is where the plant an animal growing project could be useful."
"Would you be willing to take care of them here until they're ready for me to take back?"
"Certainly. Anything to promote easier travel. You did not tell me what you plan to do to eliminate of the problem of having to bring food at all, though."
"What I had in mind was to build another machine in this Universe. If that works, we can come and go whenever we want, and we can have as much local food and water as we want."
"You could send matter from this Universe to yours?"
"If it works, yes, we'll let you visit our Universe."
"Was I that obvious?"
"Just a good guess. If I had just met someone from another Universe, I'd certainly want to see it. What I want to see is this mind link stuff."
"You want to mind link?" Gammon seemed surprised.
"Sure. It sounds cool."
"I have to warn you," Gammon started, "You are talking about a full link. While we are linked, we will not be able to hide anything from each other. What you know now, I will know. What I know you will know. When the link is over, we will remember everything we learned about each other, although not consciously. But we are bound to remember some things. We all have secrets we would rather not be known."
"I'd figured it would be that way. You're not telling me anything new. I'm willing if you are."
"I just wanted you to understand. Make sure you stress what you want me to remember. When you share the sum total of someone's thoughts and memories, anything you mean to communicate may get lost unless its importance is specifically pointed out."
"Once a link is made, is it easier to reestablish it?"
"Usually. The technique itself does not change, only the inherent resistance of the individuals involved."
Jim shrugged. "So how do we start?"
"Just relax and let your mind drift. I will do the rest."
Gammon made himself comfortable nearby, closed his eyes, and was soon immobile. Jim had not even relaxed yet before he saw Gammon as still as the stone he was sitting against. Jim could not even see him breathing. He closed his eyes too and waited.
It seemed the link had barely begun when something caused Jim to withdraw from it. Gammon, taken by surprise at Jim's abrupt action was slightly disoriented. "What is wrong?" he asked.
"Listen," Jim said in a hushed voice. They listened quietly.
It came again. It was a man's voice, shouting.
"He sounds upset. Can you understand him?" Jim asked.
"He is speaking Unawinald. Do you not understand him?"
Jim shook his head. "I guess I'm lousy with new languages."
"That is just as well; what he said was obscene."
"I didn't think Unawinald had swear words."
"That may be true. He probably would have used some if there were any. He was just being very descriptive."
They continued listening. After a few minutes they could hear footsteps on the loose rock outside their shelter. A group of maybe a half dozen people passed by, and headed on up the mountain. They heard the angry voice once more before the group was out of earshot.
"I wonder what that was all about?" Jim said.
"I do not know, but we might want to keep a watch tonight."
"I can go along with that. We'd better keep our eyes open tomorrow, too."
Jim opened his pack and removed his gun. "You can have the first watch. You know how to use one of these?"
Gammon had not seen a gun quite like that one, so Jim showed him how to operate it, then went to bed.