His language and manner of speaking had become more vehement, breaking through the cool demeanour with which he had first addressed me. Evidently the sight of the Earth forsaken by Time – and God? – affected him more deeply than he had wished to show.
"Then what are we to do?" I cried. "If Time no longer exists – are we to stay like this without end?" I could conceive of no more cheerless hell than being condemned to this wretched spot.
"Well, Mr. Hocker," said Dr. Ambrose, again smiling. "Of all the questions that a man can ask, I do love that one. What are we to do? The best question that can ever be asked, indeed. Because you must know what to do before you can do it. Eh? Don't you think so, my good Hocker?"
"For God's sake, you torment me with these riddles." Anger and indignation filled my breast, as I felt he was making mock of me. "If you know of some way of escaping this dreadful place, show it to me. I've, near gone out of my head as it is from all you've done to me. To me, and to – Tafe!" A pang of guilt struck me as I realised I had forgotten the companion who had saved my life. "Where is she?" I demanded. "What's happened to her?"
"Calm down, Hocker. The woman's perfectly safe. I've tended her injuries and deposited her in a warm bed, elsewhere. You'll have to inform me of all the adventures you two had together."
"Elsewhere!" I grabbed him by both shoulders and spun him roughly about to face me. "Elsewhere! There's no end to your damned lies. This isn't the final doom of the Earth, then, is it?"
"But it is, Hocker." He casually brushed my hands away from himself. "This is the Earth when Time no longer exists for it. But you asked for a way out? Perhaps, Hocker, perhaps. Not an escape exactly but… a prevention. A thwarting."
"What do you mean?"
"If this," said Ambrose, striking the ground with his walking stick, "is what remains when the Sea of Time – let's call it that, it's a nice metaphor – when the Sea of Time, as I say, has been drained away. Then obviously the thing to do is to go back and dam the hole through which it escaped. Eh? Doesn't it strike you that way?"
"I don't know." I felt suddenly weary. "I'm not sure I understand you. So much has happened. I'm very tired…"
"That's understandable," soothed Dr. Ambrose's voice. "Why don't you go to sleep?"
"I'd like to," I murmured. The vista around us seemed to darken.
"Then just close your eyes. That's it," came his voice, a little fainter. "Don't worry about falling. You're not really standing upright anyway, are you?"
Dimly, I was aware I was lying on a bed. The soft yellow glow of a gas lamp seeped under my eyelids for a second, then was gone. "Where's Tafe?" I mumbled.
"She's upstairs." Ambrose's voice was far away now. "Don't worry about her. Just sleep, Hocker. You're going to need all the strength you can summon very soon!"
The last I heard was the sound of a door being pulled shut.
I awoke with a calm, rested heart although my sleep had been full of nightmares. Visions of dark shapes moving in a dark world blurred and faded behind my eyes.
On a small table beside the bed in which I lay – and where in Creation was that? my refreshed mind was already wondering – I found a box of safety matches and a candle. I soon discovered my clothes draped across the ornately carved foot of the bed. They had through some miracle been restored to their original condition, clean and untorn.
I dressed quickly and hurried from the bedchamber. A murmur of distant voices led me down a short hallway to a wide staircase. The warm glow of gaslight diffused upward from the room at the base of the stairs. I snuffed the candle and descended.
Seated at a heavy oak table were Dr. Ambrose and a young man. Only when I was standing at the side of the table did I recognise the young man to be no man at all, but Tafe outfitted in a man's suit and collar. The elegant cut and the confidence with which she wore it all served to disguise her femininity from anyone who was not aware of her true status. She pulled a thick black cigar from her mouth and winked at me through a cloud of tobacco smoke. The only sign of her recent wounds was a white line, as of a long healed cut, beneath her jaw.
"Hocker," said Ambrose genially, "glad to see you up and about. Great things are afoot, me lad, and I want you to be in for your full share of them. Have a chair."
From between the table's legs, carved into griffins, I drew a seat and joined them. Ambrose pushed a platter of roast beef, steaming from the blood-red centre of its slices, coarse bread and a glass of dark lager toward me. "Much explaining to be done," he said, "and it would sit poorly on an empty stomach."
In truth, I was famished and needed little persuasion. Ambrose refilled my glass when it was only half drained. "From a little ale-house in the Berkshire moors," he noted, stoppering the jug. Tafe leaned back in her chair and drew luxuriously on her cigar with all the aspect of one sunk fast into the grip of some new-found pleasure.
"Mmm. Yes. Quite good, really," I managed to say between mouthfuls. "Surely you're having some?"
"We've dined already," said Ambrose, waving a hand at a pair of dirty dishes at the other end of the table. "Miss Tafe – or Mister Tafe, as I should say for the sake of her little masquerade – and I have been waiting some time for you to appear."
"I'm sorry to have kept you, but I was as tired as I've ever been in-" I broke off, scowling at my plate as I sensed the absurdity of the situation. Only a little while ago I had been scrabbling about for my life in a battle-torn cityscape into which I had been thrust by this mysterious personage's doing, then shown a soul-chilling glimpse of the Earth's end, and now I was enjoying the warm amenities of his home as calmly as if it had all been some weekend visit. If nothing else, it demonstrated the human mind's facility for landing poised as a cat in unfamiliar situations and making the best of them. And who indeed could turn down good ale and meat, though it were served by the Devil himself? I resolved to hear out my odd host's explanations and judge him for good or evil on the basis thereof.
Ambrose, all genial hospitality, extended across the ruins of my meal a box of cigars such as the one Tafe was smoking. I took one and slipped off a paper band with some Arabic- looking gibberish inscribed on it. Soon the three of us were hazing the air with steel-grey smoke.
"Where to begin," mused Ambrose, gazing up into the swirling nimbus. " Doing is always so much easier than explaining. See here, Hocker," he said, pointing the glowing ember of his cigar at me. "Doesn't the name 'Dr. Ambrose' seem a little… suspicious to you? Eh?"
"My dear sir," I said coolly, laying a flake of ash in my plate, "everything about you seems suspicious. If I had no knowledge of your abilities I would maintain you to be either a charlatan or a lunatic. As it is, you might still be a rogue or a master criminal, but one of sufficient accomplishments to be respected."
He nodded, modestly restraining his pleasure at my flattery. "But come," he said, gesturing with his cigar. "How about the name 'Ambrosius', then? In connection with early British history?"
I frowned in deep thought. "I'm a reasonably well-educated man," I said at last, "but at the moment the only reference to an 'Ambrosius' I can recall is that of Geoffrey of Monmouth giving it as an alternate name for the legendary Merlin-"
"That's the one," he interrupted.
"Well, Dr. Ambrose, if you've chosen to derive your pseudonym from that of a mythical magician, I must admit that in your case it's appropriate."
"Mythical!" He glared irritably at me. "Legendary! Sir Geoffrey may have gotten some of his dates wrong but at least everything I told him was true. No, don't say anything stupid." He waved my protests off with his cigar. "I won't prolong your ignorance. I call myself 'Ambrose' because I dislike the effete Latinism of 'Ambrosius', but in fact I am the actual Merlin himself! What do you think of that?" His voice reached an exultant peak as he dramatically flourished his cigar.