The Infinite Moment by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page A

than meaning anything. She glanced down at a paper on which she had made a note from time to time.
    "Now, can you give us the time and date at which this experiment took place?"
    I could, and did, and after that the questions went on and on and on...
    The least satisfactory part of it from my point of view was that even though my answers caused them to grow more uncertain of themselves as we went on, they did at least get them; whereas when I put a question it was usually evaded, or answered perfunctorily, as an unimportant digression.
    They went on steadily, and only broke off when my next meal arrived. Then they went away, leaving me thankfully in peacebut little the wiser. I half expected them to return, but when they did not I fell into a doze from which I was awakened by the incursion of a cluster of the little women, once more. They brought a trolley with them, and in a short time were wheeling me out of the building on itbut not by the way I had arrived. This time we went down a ramp where another, or the same, pink ambulance waited at the bottom. When they had me safely loaded aboard, three of them climbed in, too, to keep me company. They were chattering as they did so, and they kept it up inconsequently, and mostly incomprehensibly, for the whole hour and a half of the journey that ensued.
    The countryside differed little from that I had already seen. Once we were outside the gates there were the same tidy fields and standardised farms. The occasional builtup areas were not extensive and consisted of the same types of blocks close by, and we ran on the same, not very good, road surfaces. There were groups of the Amazon types, and, more rarely, individuals, to be seen at work in the fields; the sparse traffic was lorries, large or small, and occasional buses, but with never a private car to be seen. My illusion, I reflected, was remarkably consistent in its details. Not a single group of Amazons, for instance, failed to raise its right hands in friendly, respectful greeting to the pink car.
    Once, w crossed a cutting. Looking down from the bridge I thought at first that we were over the dried bed of a canal, but then I noticed a post leaning at a crazy angle among the grass and weeds: most of its attachments had fallen off, but there were enough left to identify it as a railwaysignal.
    We passed through one concentration of identical blocks which was in size, though in no other way, quite a town, and then, two or three miles further on, ran through an ornamental gateway into a kind of park.
    In one way it was not unlike the estate we had left, for everything was meticulously tended; the lawns like velvet, the flowerbeds vivid with spring blossoms, but it differed essentially in that the buildings were not blocks. They were houses, quite small for the most part, and varied in style, often no larger than roomy cottages. The place had a subduing effect on my small companions; for the first time they left off chattering, and gazed about them with obvious awe.
    The driver stopped once to enquire the way of an overailed Amazon who was striding along with a hod on her shoulder. She directed us, and gave me a cheerful, respectful grin through the window, and presently we drew up again in front of a neat little twostory Regencystyle house.
    This time there was no trolley. The little women, assisted by the driver, fussed over helping me out, and then halfsupported me into the house, in a kind of buttressing formation.
    Inside, I was manceuvred with some difficulty through a door on the left, and found myself in a beautiful room, elegantly decorated and furnished in the periodstyle of the house. A whitehaired woman in a purple silk dress was sitting in a wingchair beside a wood fire. Both her face and her hands told of considerable age, but she looked at me from keen, lively eyes.
    "Welcome, my dear," she said, in a voice which had no trace of the quaver I halfexpected.
    Her glance went to a chair. Then she looked at me again,