The little boy sleeping on the floor began to breathe loudly — the labored, hoarse wet breathing of someone with congested lungs. St. Ives bent over the convulsed form, gently pulling back the dirty blanket that covered it. He lay stiffly on his side, neck straight, as if he were endeavoring to keep his throat open. His arms were sticklike, and his pallid cheeks sagging. St. Ives ran his hand lightly down the child’s spine, looking for the bow that would develop one day into a pronounced hump.
Strangely, there was no bow; the back was ramrod stiff, the flesh feverish. Through the thin blanket he could feel the air gurgling in and out of the child’s lungs. St. Ives stood up, looking around the room again, and then immediately stepped across and fetched a glass tumbler from the sideboard. He stooped again and pressed the open end to the child’s back, then listened hard to the closed end. The lungs sounded like a troubled cesspool.
The boy was taken with another coughing fit, hacking up bloodstained froth as St. Ives jerked away and stood up again. Clearly, he was far gone in pneumonia. There could be no doubt about it. He had been nauseated, too. In his weakened condition the child would die. The sudden knowledge of that washed over St. Ives like a dam breaking. Murder wasn’t in the cards at all. Even if such a thing had appealed to St. Ives, it would be a redundant task. Nature and circumstance and the poverty of a filthy and overcrowded city would kill Narbondo just as surely as a bullet to the brain. St. Ives had only to crouch back out through the window and lose himself in the future.
And yet the idea of it ran counter to what he knew to be the truth. How could Narbondo die without St. Ives’s helping him to do it? A man might alter the future, but how could the future alter itself? He examined the child’s face, thinking things through. He needed light. Hurrying to the sideboard again, he carefully opened cupboard doors until he found candles and sulphur matches. The woman on the bed wouldn’t awaken. She was lost in gin, snoring loudly now, her head covered with blankets. He struck a match and lit the candle, bending over the child and studying his face, looking for a telltale rash. There was nothing, only the sweating pale skin of an undernourished sick child.
Surely it hadn’t a chance of survival. The boy would be dead tomorrow. Two days, maybe. Pneumococcal meningitis — that was his guess. It was a hasty candlelight-and-glass-tumbler diagnosis, but the pneumonia was certain, and alone was enough to kill him. He stood for a moment thinking. Meningitis could explain the hump. If Narbondo lived, the spinal damage might easily pull him into a stoop that would become permanent over the years.
It really didn’t matter how accurately he understood the child’s condition. The boy was doomed; of that St. Ives was certain. He pulled the blanket back up, taking off his coat and laying that too over the sleeping child, who exhaled now like a panting dog, desperately short of breath. St. Ives couldn’t bring himself to equate the suffering little human with the monster he had shot in the Seven Dials. They simply were not the same creature. “Time and chance…,“ he thought, then remembered that he’d said the same thing not six months back — about himself and what he had become, and the feelings of melancholy and futility washed over him again.
He had a vision of all of humanity struggling like small and frightened animals in a vast black morass. It was easy to forget that there had ever been a time when he was happy. Surely this dying child couldn’t remember any such happiness. St. Ives sighed, rubbing his forehead to drive out the fatigue and doom. That sort of thinking accomplished nothing. It was better to leave it to the philosophers, who generally had the advantage of having a bottle of brandy nearby. Right now all abstractions were meaningless alongside the fact of the dying child. Abruptly, he made up his mind.
He left his three silver coins on the table and stepped out through the window, pulling it shut, leaving his coat behind. If he failed to return, they could have the coat and the silver both; if he did return, they could have it anyway. He shivered on the rooftop, hurrying across toward the bathyscaphe, no longer interested in the early morning bustle below.
* * *
As he stepped into the study through the open French window — all still very much as he remembered it — he half expected to see himself as an old man, disappearing into the atmosphere. But by now he would already have vanished. It had taken that long to get out through the window of the silo and sneak across to the manor. He might be long ago dead, of course. It was 1927, a date he had struck upon randomly. The manor might have a new owner, perhaps a man with a rifle loaded with bird shot. The interior of the silo, however, argued otherwise. It was full of faintly mystifying apparatus now, but it was the sort of apparatus that only a scientist like St. Ives would possess, and it wasn’t rusty and scattered, either; instead it was orderly, not the ghastly mess that he had let it decline to back…when? For a moment he was disoriented, unable to recall the date.
The study was neatened up, too — no books scattered around, no jumbled papers. He thought guiltily of Mrs. Langley, and then quickly pushed the thought from his mind. Muddling himself up wouldn’t serve. Mrs. Langley would wait. There were interesting and suggestive changes in the room around him. From the study ceiling hung the wired-together skeleton of a winged saurian, and leaning against one wall, braced by a couple of wooden pegs, was the femur of a monstrous reptile, something the size of a brontosaurus. So he had followed his whims, had he? He had taken up paleontology. How so? Had he utilized the time machine? Traveled back to the Age of Reptiles? A thrill of anticipation surged through him along with the knowledge, once again, that things, ultimately, must have fallen out for the best. Here was evidence of it — the well-apportioned room of a man in possession of his faculties.
Then it struck him like a blow. He wasn’t any such man yet. There was no use being smug. He had to go back, to return to the past, to drop like a chunk of iron into the machinery of time, maybe fouling it utterly. This was one manifestation of time, no more solid than a soap bubble. He caught sight of himself in the mirror just then, recoiling in surprise. A haunted, gaunt, unshaven face stared out at him, and involuntarily he touched his cheek, forgetting his newfound optimism.
A note lay on the cleaned-off desk. He picked it up, noticing only then that a bottle of port and a glass stood at the back corner. He smiled despite himself, remembering suddenly all his blathering foolishness about fetching back bottles of port from the future. To hell with fetching anything back; he would have a taste of it now. “Cheers,” he said out loud.
He settled himself into a chair in order to read the note. “I cleared out the silo,” it read. “You would have materialized in the center of a motorcar if I hadn’t, and caused who-knows-what kind of explosion. Quit being so proud of yourself. You look like hell. Talk to Professor Fleming at Oxford. He can be a bumbling idiot, but he possesses what you need. We’re friends, after a fashion, Fleming and I. Go straightaway, and then get the hell out and don’t come back. You’re avoiding what you know you have to do. You’re purposefully searching out obstacles. Look at you, for God’s sake. You should make yourself sick.’’
Frowning, St. Ives laid the note onto the desk, drinking off the last of his glass of port. He was in a foul mood now. The note had done that. How dare he take that tone? Didn’t he know whom he was talking to? He had half a mind to…what? He looked around, sensing that the atoms of his incorporeal self were hovering roundabout somewhere, grinning at him. Maybe they inhabited the bones of the pterodactyl hanging overhead. The thing regarded him from out of ridiculously small, empty eye sockets, reminding him suddenly of a beak-nosed schoolteacher from his childhood.
He searched in the drawer for a pen, thinking to write himself a note in return. What should he say? Something insulting? Something incredibly knowledgeable? Something weary and timeworn? But what did his present-time self know that his future-time self didn’t know? In fact, wouldn’t his future-time self know even the contents of the insulting note? He would simply rematerialize, see the note, and laugh at it without having to read it. St. Ives put
down the pen dejectedly, nearly despising himself for his helplessness.
The door opened and Hasbro stepped in. “Good morning, sir,” he said, in no way surprised to see St. Ives and laying out a suit of clothes on the divan.
“Hasbro!” St. Ives shouted, leaping up to embrace the man. He was considerably older. Of course he would be. He still wasn’t in any way feeble, though. Seeing him so trim and fit despite his white hair caused St. Ives to lament his own fallen state. “I’m not who you think I am,” he said.
“Of course you’re not, sir. None of us are. This should fit, though.”
“It’s good to see you,” St. Ives said. “You can’t imagine…”
“Very good, sir. I’ve been instructed to trim your hair.” He looked St. Ives up and down, squinting just a little, as if what he saw amounted to something less than he’d anticipated. He went out again, saying nothing more, but leaving St. Ives open-mouthed. In a moment he returned, carrying a pitcher of water and a bowl. “The ablutions will have to be hasty and primitive,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re not to visit any other room in the house for any reason whatever. I’ve been given very precise instructions. We’re to go straightaway to Oxford, returning as soon as possible and keeping conversation to a minimum. I have a pair of train tickets. We board at the station in fifty-four minutes precisely.”
“Yes,” said St. Ives. “You would know, wouldn’t you?” He hastily removed his shirt, scrubbing his face in the bowl, dunking the top of his head into the water and soaping his hair. Within moments he sat again in the chair, Hasbro shaving his overgrown beard. “Tell me, then,” St. Ives said. “What happens? Alice, is she all right? Is she alive? Did I succeed? I must have. I can see it written all over this room. Tell me what fell out.”
“I’m instructed to tell you nothing, sir. Tilt your head back.”
Soapy water ran down into St. Ives’s shirtfront. “Surely a little hint…,“ he said.
“Not a word, I’m afraid. The professor has informed me that the entire fabric of time is a delicate material, like old silk, and that the very sound of my voice might rip it to shreds. Very poetic of him, I think.”
“He talks like a fool, if I’m any judge,” St. Ives said angrily. “And you can tell him that from me. Poetic…!”
“Of course, sir. Just as you say. We’ll need to powder your hair.’’
“Powder my hair? Why on earth…?”
“Professor Fleming, sir, up at Oxford. He knows you as a considerably older man. Due to your fatigued and malnourished state, of course, you appear to be an older man. But we mustn’t assume anything at all, mustn’t take any unnecessary risks. You can appreciate that.”
“Older?” said St. Ives, looking skeptically at himself in the mirror again. It was true. He seemed to have aged ten years in the last two or three. His face was a depressing sight.
“You’ll be young again, sir,” Hasbro said reassuringly, and suddenly St. Ives wanted to weep. It seemed to him that he was caught up in an interminable web of comings and goings in which every action necessitated some previous action and would promote some future action and so on infinitely. And what’s more, no outcome could be certain. Like old silk, even the past was a delicate thing…
“What does this Fleming have, exactly?” asked St. Ives, pulling himself together.
“I really must insist that we forego any discussion at all, sir. I’ve been instructed that you are to be left entirely to your own devices.”
St. Ives sat back in the chair, regarding himself in the mirror once more. The stubble beard was gone, and his hair was clipped and combed. He felt worlds better, although the clothes that Hasbro fitted him with were utterly idiotic. Who was he to complain, though? If Hasbro had been instructed that it was absolutely necessary to hose him down with pig swill, he would have to stand for it. His future-self held all the cards and could make him dance any sort of inconceivable jig.
Together they went back out through the window, Hasbro insisting that St. Ives not see anything of the rest of the house. A long sleek motorcar sat on the drive. St. Ives had seen motorized carriages, had even toyed with the idea of building one, but this was something beyond his dreams, something — something from the future. He climbed into it happily. “Fueled by what?” he asked as they roared away toward Harrogate. “Alcohol? Steam? Let me guess.” He listened closely. “Advanced Giffard injector and a simple Pelton wheel?”
‘‘I’m terribly sorry, sir.’’
“Of course it’s not. I was testing you. Tell me, though, how fast will she go on the open road?”
“I’m afraid I’m constrained from discussing it.”
“Is the queen dead?”
“Lamentably so, sir. In 1901. God bless her. Royalty hasn’t amounted to as much since, I’m afraid. A trifle too frivolous these days, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”
St. Ives discovered that he didn’t have any real interest in what royalty was up to these days. He admitted to himself that there was a good deal that he didn’t want to know. The last thing on earth that appealed to him was to return to the past with a head full of grim futuristic knowledge that he could do damn-all about. It was enough, perhaps, that Hasbro was hale and hearty and that he himself — if the interior of the silo was any indication — was still hard at it. Suddenly he wanted very badly just to be back in his own day, his business finished. And although it grated on him to have to admit it, his future-time self was absolutely correct. Silence was the safest route back to his destination. Still, that didn’t make up for the hard tone of the man’s note.
* * *
Oxford, thank heaven, was still Oxford. St. Ives let Hasbro lead him along beneath the leafless trees, toward the pathology laboratory, feeling just a little like a tattooed savage hauled into civilization for the first time. His clothes still felt ridiculous to him, despite his harmonizing nicely with the rest of the populace. Their clothes looked ridiculous too. There wasn’t so much shame in looking like a fool if everyone looked like a fool. His face itched under the powder that Hasbro had touched him up with in a careful effort to make him appear to be an old man.
Professor Fleming blinked at him when they peeked in at the door of the laboratory. They found him hovering over a beaker set on a long littered tabletop. His hair hung in a thatch over his forehead, and he gazed at them through thick glasses, as if he didn’t quite recognize St. Ives at all for a moment. Then he smiled, stepping across to slap St. Ives on the back. “Well, well, well,” he said, his brogue making him sound a little like Lord Kelvin. “You’re looking…somehow…“ He gave that line up abruptly, as if he couldn’t say anything more without being insulting. He grinned suddenly and cocked his head. “No hard feelings, then?”
“None at all,” St. Ives said, wondering what on earth the man was talking about. Hard feelings? Of all the confounded things…
“My information was honest. No tip. Nothing. You’ve got to admit you lost fair and square.”
“I’m certain of it,” St. Ives said, looking at Hasbro.
“That’s two pounds six, then, that you owe me.” He stood silently, regarding St. Ives with a self-satisfied smile. Then he turned away to adjust the flame coming out of a burner.
“For God’s sake!” St. Ives whispered to Hasbro, appealing to him for an explanation.
Past the back of his hand, Hasbro whispered, “You’ve taken to betting on cricket matches. You most often lose. I’d keep that in mind for future reference.” He shook his head darkly, as if waging sums was a habit he couldn’t countenance.
St. Ives was dumbstruck. Fleming wanted his money right now. But two and six? He rummaged in his pocket, counting out what he had. He could cover it, but he would be utterly wiped out. He would go home penniless after paying off the stupid gambling debt run up by his apparently frivolous future-self.
“This is an outrage,” he whispered to Hasbro while he counted out the money in his hand.
“I beg your pardon,” Fleming said.
&
nbsp; “I say that I’m outraged that these men can’t play a better game of cricket.” He was suddenly certain that the cricket bet had been waged merely as a lark — to tweak the nose of his past-time self. The very idea of it infuriated him. What kind of monster had he become, playing about at a time like this? Perhaps there was some sort of revenge he could take before fleeing back into the past.
Fleming shrugged, taking the money happily and putting it away in his pocket without looking at it. “Care to wager anything further?”
St. Ives blinked at him, hesitating. “Give me just a moment. Let me consult.” He moved off toward the door, motioning at Hasbro to follow him. “Who is it that I lost money on?” he whispered.
“The Harrogate Harriers, sir. I really can’t recommend placing another wager on them.”
“Dead loss, are they?”
‘‘Pitiful, sir.’’
St. Ives smiled broadly at Fleming and wiped his hands together enthusiastically. “I’m a patriot, Professor,” he said, striding across to where Fleming filled a pipette with amber liquid. “I’ll wager the same sum on the Harriers. Next game.”
“Saturday night, then, against the Wolverines? You can’t be serious.”
“To show you how serious I am, I’ll give you five to one odds.”
“I couldn’t begin to…”
“Ten to one, then. I’m filled with optimism.”
Fleming narrowed his eyes, as if he thought that something was fishy, perhaps St. Ives had got a tip of some sort. Then he shrugged in theatrical resignation. Clearly he felt he was being subtle. “I normally wouldn’t make a wager of that magnitude,” he said. “But this smells very much like money in the savings bank. Ten to one it is, then.” They shook hands, and St. Ives nearly did a jig in the center of the floor.
“Well,” Fleming said, “down to work, eh?”
St. Ives nodded as Professor Fleming held out to him a big two-liter Mason jar full of clear brown liquid.
“A beef broth infusion of penicillium mold,” he was saying.
The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives (the adventures of langdon st. ives) Page 57
