The Probability Pad by T.A. Waters

Author:T.A. Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

We were without form, and void. It was certainly depressing.

11

We had form again, but I for one wasn’t so sure it was that much of an improvement.

I was lying on a hillside, in the middle of a huge patch of ivy vines, and every bone in my body ached as though I had been exercising since before a chunk of while. Painfully I got up and took a good look around.

It was a hillside, all right, at the foothills of a mountain range I was positive didn’t exist in the United States. A winding dirt road led down along the valley before us, and a few miles distant a village was dimly visible.

Mike and Chester were on their feet now, and we all surveyed the view. “Boss vista,” I offered.

“Scenic, if a bit too quaint to be completely credible,” said Chester. “Any idea where we are?”

Mike frowned at the scenery for a while like an unhappy director. “Eastern Europe,” he finally stated. “Bulgaria, or thereabouts.”

This seemed as likely as anything. “How do you suppose we got here?” asked Chester.

“Well,” I theorized, “that vidiphone in Jake’s pad is some sort of transporter for the Aliens. We probably shorted the damn thing and got warped here through some sort of hyperspace.”

“If that’s true,” said Chester, “we’re damn lucky it happened to warp us here instead of someplace where they breathe methane and drink ammonia.”

Mike started hopping down through the tangle of vines toward the road. “One sure thing,” he said, “we’re not going to get back that way. We’d better head for that town.”

We started bounding down the hill toward the rutted highway, like psychedelic jack rabbits. It was a respectable distance, and by the time we’d reached the bottom we were pretty much out of bounds, not to mention out of breath. We stopped for a fresh supply of air.

Suddenly there was an outlandish creaking clatter in the distance and something rounded the bend at the end of the valley and headed along the road in our general direction. As it came closer we gradually recognized it; a stagecoach-carriage, drawn by four horses. With a terrible din and a crack of the coachman’s whip it carreened past us, but before it was lost in a cloud of dust we had seen the legend painted in gilt on the black door:

TRANSYLVANIAN OVERLAND LINES

“Ah, hmm,” said Chester, “that certainly solves the problem of where we are, but it raises a rather more important question—i.e., when are we?”

“If that coach is indicative of the transportation in general, not much later than Nineteen-Ten, and probably near a decade earlier.”

Mike was still looking down the road at the now-invisible coach. “Transylvania,” he crooned. “Castles. Vampires. Things that go bump in the night.”

I wasn’t too impressed; the last of those I’d had in every Village pad I’d ever known. Besides, I was bothered, and it wasn’t just from being slipped sidewise in time and space; that had happened to me during the Time Bubble thing and I’d ended up in Ogallala, Nebraska—after Ogallala nothing along this line could really bother me.

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