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.