She said nothing, and for a moment he had the sensation of being back in the forest, alone, trying to explain himself to all the living things that couldn’t or didn’t care to hear.
A police patrol car cruised by the house. He stood up straight, and tried to look grave and dignified like a minister paying a Sunday afternoon call on a member of the church. He had always fancied himself as a minister. How easy it would be, advising other people what to do and how to act, obeying a few simple rules of conduct for yourself and memorizing the odd text or two.
The police car worried him, though. He wondered whether the three young girls he had met at the bus stop had gone home and told their mother about him and the mother had phoned the police. Then the two men in the patrol car might be looking for him. Perhaps this time they had not noticed him, but if they came around again—No, that was nonsense. Why should they come around again? The girls’ mother had no reason to report him. It was not as if he had accosted them or tried to pick them up or offered them candy. The silly girls, their silly mother, they had no reason, no reason—
“The first patrol car’s spotted him,” Quinn said. “Stall him a few minutes more, Karma.”
“I can’t.” Even with Quinn beside her and Martha’s supporting arm around her shoulders, the girl was afraid because she knew they were afraid, too, and she could not understand their fear. It seemed much deeper and more terrible than the fear they would have of a mere man, however dangerous. She looked at the white line around Quinn’s mouth and the desperation in Martha’s eyes and she repeated, “I can’t. I don’t know what to say.”
“Encourage him to talk.”
“What about?”
“Himself.”
Karma raised her voice. “Where have you been hiding, Brother Tongue?”
The question annoyed him. It implied that he was a criminal, forced to hide out, instead of an intelligent man who had chosen the forest of his own free will as the best place to live.
“I can’t stand here all afternoon,” he said irritably. “Your mother’s waiting for us.”
“Where?” Karma said.
“At a friend’s house. She’s very ill, she may be dying. She asked me to bring you to her.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Nobody knows. She refuses to call a doctor. If you come with me, perhaps you can persuade her to seek medical attention. Will you?”
“How far are we going?”
“Practically just around the corner.” Not a street corner, though. A corner of time you pass only once. For you there will be no return. “Your mother’s illness is critical, child. You’d better hurry.”
“All right. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me to step inside to wait?”
“I can’t. You might wake my aunt, and she wouldn’t let me go with you because she hates the Tower people, she thinks they might try and take me away. She says they might—”
“Stop chattering, girl, and get ready.”
He waited, watching the street for the return of the police car, counting off the seconds as they passed through his mind’s eye like little toy soldiers, saluting, calling out their names to him: one, sir, two, sir, three, sir, four, sir, five, sir, six, sir, seven, sir.
Respectful creatures. Always called him sir, briskly but affectionately. Yes, they liked their genial general. They knew he had once been a common man, had risen from the ranks to become the commander of time and wear stars on his sleeves. But of course the stars were invisible, it was still light, still afternoon. It was only at night that the stars swooped down from the sky to perch on his sleeves.
A hundred and fourteen, sir. A hundred and fifteen, sir. A hundred and—
Suddenly an alarming change took place. The toy soldiers switched uniforms and became policemen in blue serge. They were no longer saluting him, no longer calling out their names, they were demanding his name, instead, in coarse disrespectful voices.
“What’s your name?”
“Commander,” he said.
“Commander what?”
“I am the commander of time.”
“You are, eh?”
“It’s a specialized job. I decide on the times that things are to happen to people, to animals and birds, to the trees of the forest—”
“O.K., Commander. Let’s go and review some troops.”
“This isn’t the proper time.”
“I think it is.”
“But that’s my decision.”
“Let’s go, Commander. We’ve got a real mixed-up clock down at the station. We want you to talk to it, straighten it out, see?”
It struck him suddenly then, the realization that these men were not policemen at all. They were agents of a foreign power sent to take over the country by disrupting the time schedule and kidnaping the commander.
The door of the house opened and a man he recognized as Quinn came out, and a woman who looked familiar to him although he couldn’t remember her name.
He called out to Quinn, “Don’t let them take me away! They’re enemy agents, I tell you. They’re going to overthrow the government!”
Quinn stepped back, as if the words had hit him in the stomach and knocked him off-balance, and the woman with him began to scream, “Patrick, Patrick! Oh, my God, Patrick!”
He stared at her, wondering why she looked so familiar to him and who Omigod Patrick was.