In the time machine, he returned to the now-empty silo, some couple of hours past the time when he had fled from Parsons and the constable. It occurred to him, unhappily, that there had been no Langdon St. Ives existing in the world during the last two hours, and that the world didn’t give a rotten damn. The world had teetered along without him, utterly indifferent to his absence. It was a chilling thought, and was somehow related to what Mrs. Langley had been telling him. For the moment, though, he put it out of his mind.
There were more immediate things to occupy him. It mightn’t be safe to leave the machine in the silo yet, but he couldn’t just plunk down on the meadow every time he reappeared. Parsons had petitioned him, as one scientist to another, to give it up. It belongs to the Crown, he had said. Parsons hadn’t known until that very afternoon in Harrogate, though, that the time machine was workable, that St. Ives had got the bugs out of it at long last. Well, he knew now. There wouldn’t be any more petitions. And next time Parsons wouldn’t just bring the local constable along to help.
St. Ives climbed out wearily, looking around him at the sad mess of tools and debris. He had half a mind to set in on it now — neaten it up, stow it away as if it was himself he was putting right. He couldn’t afford the time, though.
Then he saw the chalk markings — changed again. Lord help us, he thought, feeling again a surge of distaste for his future-self. This was no lark, though. It was a warning: “Parsons looming,” the message read. “Obliterate this and take the machine out to Binger’s.”
Smoking very slowly on his pipe, Mr. Binger stood staring at St. Ives, who smiled cheerfully at him from halfway out of the bathyscaphe hatch. St. Ives had just arrived from out of the aether, surprising Mr. Binger in the pasture. “Good afternoon, Mr. Binger,” St. Ives said.
Furry hopped around, happy to see St. Ives and not caring a rap that he had appeared out of nowhere. Binger looked up and down the road, as if expecting to see a dust cloud. There was nothing, though, which seemed to perplex him. Finally, he removed his pipe and said, nodding at the bathyscaphe, “No wheels, then?”
“Spacecraft,” St. Ives said, and he pointed at the sky. “You remember that problem with the space alien some few years back?”
“Ah!” Binger said, nodding shrewdly. That would explain it. Perhaps it would suffice to explain everything — St. Ives’s sudden arrival, his strange clothes, his being clean-shaven and his hair trimmed. Just a little over two hours ago St. Ives had been in town, disheveled, hunted, looking like the Wild Man of Borneo. He had been babbling about cows and seemed to be in a terrible hurry. Now the mysteries were solved. It was space-men again.
St. Ives climbed down onto the ground and petted Furry on the back of the head. “Can you help me, Mr. Binger?” he asked.
“Aye,” the man said. “They say it was you that saved old Furry up to town today.”
“Do they?”
“They do. They say you come near to killing yourself over the dog, nearly struck by a wagon. Chased off that bloody mastiff, too. That’s what they say.”
“Well.” St. Ives was at a momentary loss. “They exaggerate. Old Furry’s a good pup. Anyone would have done the same.”
“Anyone didn’t do it, lad. You did, and I thank you for it.”
Anyone didn’t know to do it, St. Ives thought, feeling like a fraud. He hadn’t so much chosen to save the dog as he had been destined to save the dog. Well, that wasn’t quite true, either. The past few hours had made a hash of the destiny notion — unless there were infinite destinies waiting in the wings, all of them in different costumes. One destiny at a time, he told himself, and with the help of Binger and his sons, St. Ives hauled the time machine to the barn, in among the cows, and then Mr. Binger drove him most of the way back to the manor. He walked the last half mile, thinking that if Parsons was lurking about, it would be better not to reveal that Binger was an accomplice.
It was dark when he bent through the French window again and lay down on the divan, telling himself that he ought not to risk waiting, that he ought to be off at once and finish what he had meant to finish. But he was dog-tired, and what he meant to do wouldn’t allow for that. Surely an hour’s sleep…
The street in the Seven Dials came unbidden into his mind — the rain, the mud, the darkness, the shadowy rooftops and entryways and alleys — but this time he let himself go, and he wandered into his dream with a growing sense of purpose rather than horror.
Hasbro shook him awake in the morning. The sun was high and the wind blowing, animating the ponderous branches of the oaks out on the meadow. “Kippers, sir?” Hasbro asked.
“Yes,” said St. Ives, sitting up and rubbing his face blearily.
“Secretary Parsons called again, sir, early this morning. And Dr. Frost, too, some little time later.”
“Yes,” said St. Ives. “Did you tell them to return?”
“At noon, sir. An hour from now.”
“Right. I’ll…” He stood up slowly, wondering what it was he would do. Eat first. Mrs. Langley came in just then, carrying the plate of kippers and toast and a pot of tea. She handed him a newspaper along with it, just come up from London. The front page was full of Dr. Frost, lately risen from his long and icy sleep. He had got the ear of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it said, who had taken a fancy to Frost’s ideas regarding the rumored time-travel device sought after by the Royal Academy.
The journalist went on to describe the fanciful device in sarcastic terms, implying that the whole thing was quite likely a hoax perpetrated for the sake of publicity by Mr. H. G. Wells, the fabulist. Frost already had a large following, though, and considered himself a sort of lay clergyman. He had taken to wearing white robes, and his followers had no difficulty believing that his rising from an icy sleep held some great mystical import. Accordingly, there was widespread popular support for Frost’s own claim to the alleged time-travel device. What Frost had proposed that had won the heart of the Archbishop yesterday afternoon was that a journey be undertaken to the very dawn of human time, to the Garden itself, where Frost would pluck that treacherous apple out of Eve’s hand by main force and beat the serpent with a stick…
The article carried on in suchlike terms, the journalist sneering openly at the whole notion and lecturing his readers on the perils of gullibility. St. Ives didn’t sneer, though. Frost’s, or Narbondo’s, capacity for generating mayhem and human misery didn’t allow for sneering. The journalist was right, but really he knew nothing at all. Frost would take the machine if he could; but he jolly well wouldn’t travel back to eat lunch with Adam and Eve.
St. Ives scraped up the last of the kippers and watched the meadow grasses blow in the wind. Parsons, too. He intended to make careful scientific journeys, he and his cronies. They knew St. Ives had the machine. The evidence was all circumstantial, but it was sufficient. Two days ago they had finished their search of the sea bottom off Dover. There was no trace of the machine, no wreckage beyond that of the sunken ships. And Parsons had made it very clear to St. Ives that Lord Kelvin, just yesterday afternoon, had recorded strange electromagnetic activity in the immediate area of Harrogate.