Alex took her leave of Martha and Nick, and was soon walking the road out of town with James Bond. He walked quickly, as though he were on parade, with a stick held in his left hand, the other end tucked under his left arm. Alex struggled to keep up. As soon as they passed out of town, which only took a few minutes, he relaxed visibly, and walked more slowly.
"They can't see us now," he said very quietly to himself. "Well, young lady, what is your impression so far?"
"I'm still too surprised by everything to think clearly," she said. "Everything seems so strange, but so ... right."
"I know it's a lot to grasp on your first visit," he said. "When I first went to your world, I was totally confused. Your people always seem so rushed, chasing after goals I could never quite understand. For the most part, they were consumed with the need for physical things, and they ignored everything spiritual around them."
"Sometimes I get that feeling about the people I know," she said. "They have a lot of stuff, but don't seem happy."
"Humph," he humphed.
After a few minutes of walking Alex asked, "can you tell me where we're going now?"
Quietly he said, "it's very hush-hush, you know. But in Government we have a Department of Temporal Stability. They're really historians in the way that you know the word, but they are also 'alternative historians.' That means they study history as it was, and also as it could have been."
"How can they do that?" she asked.
"They've found that certain events occurred at crossroads in time. 'History' is the study of paths that time actually took. 'Althistory' is a study of those other paths. They feel that if they study the important events at a crossroad, or 'crosstime' as they call it, then they can predict how the world would have been changed."
"Are you able to go back and change your history?" she asked.
"You're missing one important point, probably because I forgot to mention it. The crosstimes are in your history, not ours."
"So are you able to go back and change our history?"
"Yes and no," he answered. By now, Alex was getting used to this kind of answer. "There are certain forces at work that tend to cancel out the changes and restore the original flow. It's like a river whose course has been changed by a dam. It eventually breaks down the dam and finds its old path again. Sometimes they can make the changes permanent, sometimes they only last for a short time."
He refused to say any more on the subject. They were well out of town by now. The forest here was thick with unusual trees, some of which looked like candelabra, others like ferns, still others like oaks and maples and other familiar trees. They rounded a bend in the road and came upon a pony tied to a small cart. The pony was happily and lazily munching the roadside grass. Bond unhitched the cart, and they both climbed aboard.
Finally he said, "the people we'll be seeing are the Time Wardens. They are the althistorians. It's their job to find the crosstimes, and determine if any changes should be made."
"And I'm going to see them because ...?"
"Because they've found a crosstime that only someone like you can change," he finished for her.
"Oh!" was her only response.
The road they followed was a smooth dirt road that meandered through a forest that became thicker and thicker. Far overhead, she could see the great tree canopy that she had seen before. She watched apprehensively for any sign of the giant crow, but could see none. Bond seemed unconcerned about anything, just enjoying this ride through the woods.
She was fascinated by the mushrooms and toadstools that sprouted in patches along the road. Some were as high as her knees, others over her head. Thick patches of moss and lichens grew in various places. She saw the dark green lichen with bright red top-patches that were nicknamed "British soldiers", but here they were as tall as actual soldiers. As in everything else, the woods they rode through were a mixture of the familiar and the strange.
They crossed over a small stream which, at first, Alex thought was the stream in her uncle's garden; then she remembered that, in this world, that stream would be a river. But the sight caused a sharp pang of home-sickness just the same.
The pony stopped for a few minutes to sip the cool water, then Bond "tched" and shook the reins, and they continued.
Alex found herself nodding off in the warm afternoon, with the steady pace of the cart rocking her to sleep. Several times her head fell forward, then snapped back up, until finally it stayed down, her chin on her chest.
When finally she awoke again, the light was noticeably dimmer and the shadows longer. Bond saw that she was awake. "We're almost there," he said.
Suddenly she sat bolt upright. "My gosh," she said, "my aunt and uncle will be worried that I've been gone so long."
"Didn't they explain anything to you?" he asked, annoyed. "Time flows at a different rate in our two worlds. Sometimes we're faster, sometimes slower. Right now, we're at our greatest difference. In the time you've been here so far, about two seconds have passed in your home world."
A few more minutes, and the road started uphill. Now, through the trees, Alex could see the dim outline of a big, old building. It looked something like a drawing of a haunted castle. The road led to a moat. On the other side, the massive drawbridge was raised.
"How do we get in?" she asked.
In answer, he said "Not to worry, miss. I'll take care of it." He turned off the road, went several yards along the moat, and they came to a small bridge, wide enough for the cart. They clattered across the bridge and entered through an untended door. "That drawbridge has been stuck for years," he explained. "This is Government House."