Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (31 page)

 
          
 
Hearing a noise, he slumped around in his
chair, looking behind himself at the window. Weirdly, a man's face stared back
in at him, past the corner of the building. He was struck at first with the
thought
thai
he was looking at his own reflection—the
disheveled hair, the slept-in clothes. But it wasn't that. It was himself
again, just like on the North Road, his coat streaked with muck, as if he had
crawled through every muddy gutter between Harrogate and London. The ghost of
himself waved once and was gone, and simultaneously St. Ives fell to the floor
of the restaurant and knew no more until he awoke, lying in a tangle among the
table legs.

 
          
 
The two men who had been staring were
endeavoring to yank on him, to pull him free of the table. "Here
now," one of them said. "That's it. You'll be fine now."

 
          
 
St. Ives sat up, mumbling his thanks. It was
all right, he said. He wasn't sick. His head was clear again, and he wanted nothing
more than to be on his way. The two men nodded at him and moved off, back to
their table, one of them advising him to go home and both of them looking at
him strangely. "I tell you he bloody well disappeared," one man said
to the other, staring once more at St. Ives. His companion waved the comment
away.

 
          
 
"Disappeared behind the table, you
mean." They went back to their fish, talking between themselves in low
voices.

 
          
 
St. Ives was suddenly desperate to reach the
sidewalk. These spells were happening too often, and he believed that he
understood what they meant, finally. What could he have seen but his
future-time self, coming and going, hard at work? He had seen the dominoes
falling, catching glimpses of them far down the line. The machine would be a
success. That must be the truth. He was filled with optimism, and was itching
to be away, to topple that first domino, to set the future into motion.

 
          
 
He left three shillings on the table and
nodded his thanks at the two men as he strode toward the door. They looked at
him skeptically. He burst out into the sunlight, nearly knocking straight into
Parsons, who retreated two steps away, a wild and startled look on his face, as
if he had been caught out. Parsons yanked himself together, though, and reached
out a hand toward St. Ives. For a moment St. Ives was damned if he would shake
it. But then he saw that such a course was unwise. Better to keep up the
charade.

 
          
 
"Parsons!" he said, forcing
animation into his voice.

 
          
 
"Professor St. Ives. What an unbelievable
surprise."

 
          
 
"Not terribly surprising," St. Ives
said. "I live right up the road.
What about you, up on
holiday?"
He realized that his voice was pitched too high and that
he sounded fearful and edgy. Parsons by now was the picture of cheerful
serenity.

 
          
 
"Fishing hoHday,
actually.
Lot of trout in the Nidd this time of year.
Fly-fishing.
Come into town to buy supplies, have you?
Going somewhere yourself?" He squinted at St. Ives, taking in the
down-at-heels look of him. Parsons couldn't keep an element of discomfort out
of his face, as if he regretted encountering a man who was so obviously out
humiliating himself. "You look . . . tired," he said. "Keeping
late hours?"

 
          
 
"No," St. Ives said, answering all
of Parsons's questions at once. Actually, he had been keeping late hours. Where
he was going, though, he couldn't rightly say. He knew just where he wanted to
go. He had the coordinates fined down to a hair. His mind clouded over just
then, and he again felt momentarily dizzy, just as he had the other three
times.
Some sort of residual effect, perhaps.
He
couldn't attend to what Parsons was saying, but was compelled suddenly to
concentrate merely on staying on his feet. Basil, potatoes, cheese ... he said
to himself. It was happening again—the abysmal and confusing light-headedness,
as if he would at any moment float straight up into the sky.

 
          
 
Parsons stared at him, and St. Ives shook his
head, trying to clear it, realizing that the man was waiting for him to say
something more. Then, abruptly, as if a trapdoor had opened under him, St. Ives
sat down hard on the sidewalk.

 
          
 
He was deathly cold and faint. There could be
no doubt now. Here he was again—his future-time self—the damned nitwit. He had
better have a damned good excuse. His brain seemed to be a puddle of soft
gelatin. He pictured the pie in his head, straight out of the oven, the cheese
melting. Sometimes he made it with butter rather than cheese. Never mind that.
Better to concentrate on one thing at a time.

 
          
 
There was a terrible barking noise. Some great
beast . . . He looked around vaguely, still sitting on the sidewalk, holding on
to his mind with a flimsy grasp. A dog ran past him just then, a droopy-eyed
dog, white and brown and black, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. Even in
his fuddled state he recognized the dog, and for one strange moment he was
filled with joy at seeing it. It was Furry, old Binger's dog, the kind of
devoted animal that would come round to see you, anxious to be petted, to be
spoken to. A friend in all kinds of weather . . . Another dog burst past,
nearly knocking Parsons over backward. This one was some sort of mastiff,
growling and snarling and snapping and chasing Binger's dog. Weakly, St. Ives
tried to throw himself at the mastiff, nearly getting hold of its collar, but
the dog ran straight on, as if St. Ives's fingers were as insubstantial as
smoke.

 
          
 
Through half-focused eyes, St. Ives saw
Binger's poor dog running straight down the middle of the road, into the path
of a loaded dray. The air was full of noise, of clattering hooves and the
grinding of steel-shod wheels. And just then a man came running from the alley
behind the Crow's Nest. He waved curtly to Parsons as he leaped off the curb,
hurtling forward into the street, his arms outstretched. St. Ives screwed his
eyes half-shut, trying to focus them, the truth dawning on him in a rush. He
recognized the tattered muddy coat, the uncombed hair. It was the same man
whose reflection he had seen in the glass. It was himself, his future-time
self. Parsons saw it too. St. Ives raised a hand to his face, covering his
eyes, and yet he could see the street through his hand as if through a fog.

 
          
 
The running man threw himself on the sheepdog.
The driver of the dray hauled back on the reins, pulling at the wheel brake. A
woman screamed. The horses lunged. The dog and its savior leaped clear, and
then the street and everything in it disappeared from view, winking out of existence
like a departing hallucination.

 
          
 
SUDDENLY HE COULD see again. And the first
thing he noticed was Parsons, hurrying away up the sidewalk in the direction
taken by the St. Ives that had saved the dog. There's your mistake, St. Ives
said to himself as he struggled to his hands and knees. You're already too
late. He felt shaky, almost hung over. He staggered off toward the corner, in
the opposite direction as that taken by Parsons. The man would discover
nothing. The time machine had gone, and his future-time self with it. St. Ives
laughed out loud, abruptly cutting off the laughter when he heard the sound of
his own voice.

 
          
 
Mr. Binger's dog loped up behind him, wagging
its tail, and St. Ives scratched its head as the two of them trotted along. At
the corner, coming up
fast,
was old Binger himself.
"Furry!" he shouted at the dog, half mad and half happy to see it.
"Why, Professor," he said, and looked skeptically at St. Ives.

 
          
 
"Have you got your cart?" St. Ives
asked him hastily.

 
          
 
"Aye," said Binger. "I was just
coming along into town, when old Furry here jumped off the back. Saw some kind
of damned mastiff and thought he'd play with it, didn't he?" Binger shook
his head.
"Trusts anybody.
Last week ..."

 
          
 
"Drive me up to the manor," St. Ives
said, interrupting him. "Quick as you can. There's trouble."

 
          
 
Binger's face dropped. He didn't like the idea
of trouble. In that way he resembled his dog. "I don't take any stock in
trouble," he had told St. Ives once, and now the look on his face seemed
to echo that phrase.

 
          
 
"Cow in calf," St. Ives lied,
defining things more carefully. He patted his coat, as if somehow there was
something vital in his pocket, something a cow would want. "Terrible
rush," he said, "but we might save it yet."

 
          
 
Mr. Binger hurried toward his cart, and the
dog Furry jumped on behind. Here was trouble of a sort that Mr. Binger
understood, and in moments they were rollicking away up the road, St. Ives
calculating how long it would take for Parsons to discover that the man he was
chasing was long gone, off into the aether aboard the machine. He was filled
with a deep sense of success, transmitted backward to him from the saving of
old Furry. It was partly the sight of
himself
dashing
out there, sweeping up the dog. But more than that, it was the certainty that
he was moments away from becoming a time
traveler, that
he could hurry or not hurry, just as he chose. It didn't matter, did it?

 
          
 
The truth was that he was safe from Parsons.
The saving of the dog meant exactly
that,
and nothing
less. He was destined

 
          
 
to
succeed that far,
at least. He laughed out loud, but then noticed Mr. Binger giving him a look,
and so he pretended to be coughing rather than laughing, and he nodded
seriously at the man, patting his coat again.

 
          
 
The manor hove into view as Mr. Binger drove
steadily up the road, smoking his pipe like a chimney. There, on the meadow,
grazed a half-dozen jersey cows. A calf, easily two months old, stood alongside
its mother, who ruminated like a philosopher. "Well, I'll be damned,"
St. Ives said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the calf. "Looks like
everything's fme after all." He smiled broadly at Mr. Binger, in order to
demonstrate his deep delight and relief.

 
          
 
"That ain't . . .," Mr. Binger
started to say.

 
          
 
St. Ives interrupted him. "Pull up, will
you? I'll just get off here and walk the rest of the way. Thanks awfully."
Mr. Binger slowed and stopped the horses, and St. Ives gave him a pound note.
"Don't know what I'd do without you, Mr. Binger. I'm in your debt."

 
          
 
Mr. Binger blinked at the money and scratched
his head, staring out at the two-month-old calf on the field. He was only
mystified for a moment, though. The look on his face
,seemed
to suggest that he was used to this kind of thing, that there was no telling
what sorts of shenanigans the professor might not be up to when you saw him
next. He shrugged, tipped his hat, turned the wagon around, and drove off.

 
          
 
St. Ives started out toward the manor,
whistling merrily. It was too damned bad that Mrs. Langley had gone off to her
sister's yesterday without having waited for morning. St. Ives hadn't had time
to put things right with her. What had he been thinking of, talking to her in
that tone? The thought of his having run mad like that depressed him. He would
fetch her back. He had tackled the business of Binger's dog; he could see to
Mrs. Langley, too. With the machine he would make everything all right.

 
          
 
Then he began to wonder how on earth he had
known about Binger's dog. In some other historical manifestation he must have
witnessed the whole incident, and it must havefallen out badly—Binger's dog
dead, perhaps, smashed on the street. Via the machine, then, St. Ives must have
come back around, stepping in out of time and snatching the dog from the jaws
of certain death. Now he couldn't remember any of that other manifestation of
time. The first version of things had ceased to exist for him, perhaps now had
never existed at all. There was no other explanation for it, though. He,
himself, must have purposefully and effectively altered history, even after
history had already been established, and in so doing had obliterated another
incarnation of
himself
along with it. Nothing is set
in stone, he realized, and the thought of it was dizzying—troubling, too. What
else might he have changed? Who and what else might he have obliterated?