Gordon R. Dickson by Time Storm

good in that area of
diet. I could now eat anything that didn't look as if it would poison me—and
eat it raw at that. The girl was equally open-minded, I noticed; and as for
Sunday, he had never had a problem about the looks of his food to begin with.
    The third day we hit the jackpot—well,
a jackpot of sorts. It must have been somebody's lakeshore home, on a lake that
had now become part of the inland sea. There were no people in sight around it,
and no other lakeshore houses or cabins nearby. But this place must have cost
someone a good deal of money. It had a large house, with attached garage and a
separate pole barn—that is, a type of barn-size building, made of metal roof
and siding that were literally hung on wooden posts the thickness of telephone
poles, set in the earth. It also had a dock and a boat. A road that was dirt,
but well-graded and well-kept, led from the house and the lake away into the
country beyond the beach. The country here was treed thickly enough to be
honestly called forested.
    The home looked as if it had been abandoned
less than a week before. Some of the food in the refrigerator still looked
edible; and the food in the large, chest-type freezer in the double garage
would probably have been edible if the electric power had stayed on. We must
have crossed a former mistwall line, some way back; because this was the kind
of trick the time storm played. A few miles off, we had been several geologic
ages in the past, here we were only in yesterday. Tomorrow we might be in any
future time, I supposed. As it was, I trusted none of it. But there was a
wealth of canned goods on shelves—also bottled goods. It gave me a peculiar
feeling to mix myself a scotch and soda—even an iceless scotch and soda— and
sit sipping it in the overstuffed chair of a carpeted living room.
    The only drawback to the place was
that it had neither of the two things we needed most—Weapons and transport—a
car or truck in which we could travel.
    I searched the place from dock to
driveway. There was not even a canoe in the boathouse. There was, in the pole
barn, a 1931 all-black Model A Ford roadster somebody had been restoring; but
it was not in driveable condition, nor were there parts lying around that could
be put in to make it driveable. It held only the block of a motor, with the
head off and the cylinders, crankshaft and oil pan missing. There were a couple
of bicycles in the garage, a battered girl's single-speed, and a man-size
three-speed Raleigh, which had been kept in only slightly better condition.
    In one end of the pole barn,
however, was a gasoline-driven electric generator, in beautiful condition under
its protective coat of grease, and a good deal of wood and metal-working
tools-power and otherwise—also in fine condition. I got the generator cleaned
up and going; although after about fifteen minutes I shut it off again. The
three of us were used to doing without the luxury of electric lights and
appliances; and there was, I judged after measuring it with a stick, only ten
or fifteen gallons of gas left in a drum by the generator. I did not yet know
exactly what I would use the gas for, but it was too useful a material to be
wasted. Later, I found some empty pop bottles with screwtops and filled them
with the gas, then tied rags around their necks, so that they could be turned
into Molotov cocktails in a hurry. That gave us one kind of weapon.
    Meanwhile, the girl and Sunday were
settling in. There were two bedrooms with closets holding women's clothes, and
the girl, for the first time, began to show some interest in what she wore. She
still stuck to shirt and jeans, generally, but I caught her a couple of times
trying on things when I came into the house unexpectedly from outside.
    Sunday liked the carpets. He slept
and ate. We all ate—and gained back some of the weight we had lost on the raft.
    I was determined that we would not
stir from where we were without some means of protecting ourselves.