I puffed away on my own, unable to say anything for sheer bafflement. Merlin, indeed. The man was mad. But, still…
"I believe it," announced Tafe complacently.
"That, my dear," said Ambrose, "is because you grew up in a rough and violent world where just managing to live from day to day is easily considered a miracle. You are able to accept the truth, no matter how astonishing its guise. Whereas our friend Hocker here is steeped in the overweening rationalism of his time, and could mentally dismiss a mastodon in front of him if it happened to be wearing the wrong school tie."
"Actually," said Tafe, "I just kind of figured – why not? Makes as much sense as anything else so far."
"But see here!" I exploded. "How could it possibly be? Even if such a person as Merlin existed centuries ago, how could you be that person? I mean your… whole appearance, for one thing."
"Why should someone with powers such as mine ever age? I was old when England was nothing but bare rocks washed by the sea." Ambrose's eyes seemed to look through me and into some vast repository of memory. "Believe what I tell you! I am that one called Merlin, though even that is not the oldest or truest of my names. Damn your sceptical eyes, man – what more do you need to see before you accept the truth?"
The low-pitched intensity of his voice quite unnerved me. And what other explanation had I for the mystifying tangle I had fallen into? None other than the possibility of my own insanity. "I'll accept your assertion of identity – provisionally," I said. "At least for the balance of your story,"
Another fierce glare from his dark eyes before he leaned back in his chair and continued. "There is a certain spiritual power," he said quietly, "inherent in the English blood and soil. An embodiment of the highest Western values. This power, of course, gets perverted or eclipsed from time to time. A lot of this jingo nonsense going on in the name of Empire isn't much of a credit to the English race. But still, it's only a temporary lapse of memory. The power remains, however tarnished or neglected it becomes. And I have, shall we say, an interest in preserving that. For if it should die, the world would darken and lapse into brutishness. And I would be alone upon the face of the Earth. Now, as many times in the past, that spiritual power is threatened with destruction."
"You mean, the Morlocks," I interjected. "Ah, so you accept that much?"
"I've seen them."
"True, true," said Ambrose, nodding. "And such was largely the point of your recent harsh experiences. I could conceive of no other way to convince you that things are as I asked you to speculate when I first talked to you that evening in the fog. The Time Machine does exist, and has fallen in the hands of the Morlocks."
"And our host of that evening?" I said. "The inventor of the Machine?"
"Dead, I'm afraid. He thought that a rifle and a case of matches would be enough to establish his will in that far future. Unfortunately, as I told you, the Morlocks he encountered the first time were the least to be feared of their kind."
"And now they are secretly invading our own present-day London and all England beyond that." My calm statement of the fact belied the fear and revulsion it produced in my heart.
"Indeed," said Ambrose. "The Time Machine's inventor actually understood less about his device than he thought he did. By going between this time and that of the Morlocks he created a channel from which no deviation is possible. This time, and no other, is the only one to which the Morlocks could travel with their new device. They can only launch their invasion through this one point in their past, our own year 1892."
"Wait a moment," I said, frowning and turning his words about in my mind. "There's something wrong here… I've got it. If the Morlocks come back in Time to their own past and wreak such havoc, aren't they endangering the chain of events that lead to their own existence? Why, they might be conquering and then eating their own ancestors! And thus obliterating their own nasty lives scores of generations before their own births!" The topsy-turvy logic of it all boggled me for a moment, and I puffed furiously on my cigar.
Ambrose graciously inclined his head. "I admire your astuteness, Hocker. Not many of your contemporaries could follow that, let alone come up with it themselves. Indeed, it is a violation of the Universe's natural order. This whole business of Time Travel is shot through with cosmic blasphemy, I'm afraid. Better to take the years as they come one by one on the string, instead of mucking about and yanking on the thread to see what's coming. Be that as it may. The paradox of the Morlocks eating their own distant forefathers is relatively minor compared to the catastrophe that threatens the Earth through their mere use of the Time Machine. And that catastrophe is the implosion of Time itself, just as you saw, Hocker, before I brought you here. The year 1892 has become the hole through which the Sea of Time is leaking away. Even as we sit here the events of the years before and after this date are blurring into our own time. If the process is not halted and reversed, soon all Time from the Earth's beginning to its end will run together into one year, then contract into a single day, a minute, second, then – like that! Blink out of existence. Leaving that dark, timeless desert you found yourself in."
"Good God!" I cried. "If this is true-"
"It is."
"-then what can we do to stop it from happening? If, as you say, the Morlocks have already torn open this hole in the cosmos, how can we mend it?" A chilling thought struck me. "Or is it too late even now, and you only mean to horrify us with your prevision of the Earth's end?"
"Calm down, Hocker." Ambrose flicked another ash into his plate. "What would be the point of a needless torment such as that? If evil weren't preventable – and this one in particular – I wouldn't waste time talking to people like you."
I felt a flush of anger suffuse my face. "What is to be done, then?" I demanded. "I'll accept everything you've said so far if you'd round it off with a plan of action."
"Spoken like a true Englishman, Hocker! Hot for blood and violence – an admirable quality indeed."
"It's not that," I said tentatively, feeling my way through my own thoughts. "It's just that that the evil of it is all so strong."
Ambrose nodded, sober-faced. "Yes," he said quietly. "Something so large as this… When I first talked with you, so long ago it seems even to me, what was it said? Do you recall your words?"
"Truthfully, no."
" It took an Arthur to drive out the Saxons in the Fifth Century. It would take another hero such as that to fight fiends like the Morlocks… and where is such an Arthur Redivivus to be found?" Those were very perceptive words, Hocker. An intuitive grasp of the situation. Arthur Redivivus, indeed. Well put, that."
"Come, come," I said. "I'm well aware of the stories concerning King Arthur and his return from his death-like sleep whenever England is threatened, but that's all myths, and legends, and… hmm…"
"Myths and legends," said Ambrose, smiling wickedly. "The same as Merlin, I suppose? I'm flattered to sense that you've come to accept my true identity, but why should you pull short of the whole truth?"
My eyes flicked from his face to Tafe's impassively listening countenance, and back again. "King Arthur is alive?"
"Most assuredly."
"And you know where he is?"
"Of course," said Ambrose. "His and my destinies are much intertwined. I always know where he is."