Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (36 page)

 
          
 
"Pint a day, taken in two doses until
it's used up. Keep it cold, mind you."

 
          
 
"Cold," said St. Ives, suddenly
worried. He would have to have a word with the mother. They could keep the
stuff outside, on the roof. The
London
autumn would keep it cold. He hoped that
the woman wasn't too far gone in gin to comprehend. But how could she
comprehend? Here he was, a gentleman with ajar of beef broth, stepping in out
of the future. He could claim to be the Angel of Mercy, perhaps show her the
bathyscaphe in order to prove it. Better yet, he would show her a purse full of
money, promising to come back with more if she carried out his instructions.
Damn it, though; he didn't have any money. He would have to go back after some.
Suddenly he was fiercely hungry, and he realized that he hadn't eaten in— how
long? About eighty-odd years as the crow flies.

 
          
 
He took the jar from Fleming. He had what he
came for, but this was too good an opportunity. Here he was in 1927, in the
pathology- lab of a man who was apparently one of the great minds in the field.
Now that he looked about him, St. Ives could see that the laboratory' was
filled with unidentifiable odds and ends. He must at least know more about this
beef broth elixir. "I'm still confused on a couple of issues," he
said to Fleming. "Tell me how it was that you came across this . . .
penicillium."

 
          
 
Fleming clasped his hands together, stretching
his fingers back as if he were loosening up, warming to the idea of telling the
tale thoroughly. "Well," he began, "it was almost entirely by accident
. . ." At which point Hasbro pulled out a pocket watch, contorting his
face with a look of dismay.

 
          
 
"Our train," Hasbro said,
interrupting.

 
          
 
"Oh, damn our train, man." St. Ives
cast him a look of thinly veiled disgust.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid I must insist, sir.'' He put
a hand into his coat, as if he had something in there to enforce his
insistence.

 
          
 
St. Ives was filled with black thoughts. Here
was an opportunity gone straight to hell. They had him on a leash, and they
weren't going to reel out any slack line. Hasbro was deadly serious; that was
the only thing that kept St. Ives in check. He knew too well that one didn't
argue with Hasbro when the man was serious. Hasbro would prevail. You could
chisel that legend in stone without any risk. And when Hasbro was in a
prevailing mood, he generally had reason to be. It wouldn't do to argue.

 
          
 
The two of them left, proceeding directly to
the station, and then, after no more than five minutes' wait, back to Harrogate
where they drove once again out to the manor, St. Ives holding on to the jar of
beef broth all the way home.

 
          
 
At last they stood awkwardly on the meadow,
near the silo door. Hasbro held the keys in his hand. It was clear that they
weren't going back into the manor. St. Ives would have liked another small
glass of port before toddling off to the past again, but there he wasn't about
to ask for it. Like as not, Hasbro would have complied, but there was still
such a thing as dignity.
Best to do what the note had
instructed, leave straightaway.
He had what he came for. "I'll be
setting out now," he said.

 
          
 
"Best of luck,
sir."

 
          
 
"I'll see you, then, when this is
through."

 
          
 
"That you will, sir. I'd like to buy you
a drink when the time comes."

 
          
 
"You can buy me two," St. Ives said,
striding away through the weeds toward the silo. "And then I'll buy you
two," he shouted, turning to wave one last time. Hasbro stood on the
lonely meadow, watching him depart, the picture of an old and trusted friend
saddened at this dangerous but necessary leave-taking. Either that or he was
hanging about to make damn well certain that St. Ives wouldn't cut any
last-moment capers.

 
          
 
Seated in the bathyscaphe at last, he wrapped
the jar in his new coat and secured it beneath the seat, then turned his
attention to the instruments. He had the wide world to travel through, but ultimately
he left the spatial coordinates alone, returning simply to his own time, some
two hours after his first departure so that he wouldn't run into an astonished
Parsons still snooping around the silo.

 
          
 
He was filled with relief at being back in his
own time at last, and he sat back with a sigh, regarding his surroundings.
Grinning, he thought all of a sudden of the bet he'd made with Fleming. All the
hindsight in the world hadn't been worth a farthing to his future-self, had it?
He still couldn't believe that he had taken to betting on cricket matches. He
simply wouldn't. He was warned now. Who the hell had that been?
The
Harrogate
Haberdashers?
He laughed out loud. What a lark! His
future-self would be hearing the news from Hasbro about now: 'T what . .
.!"

 
          
 
He climbed out of the machine, weary as a coal
miner but still smiling. There was no sign of Parsons, nothing but silence
round about him. The silo was dim, but even in the gray twilight he could see
clearly enough to know that something had changed—something subtle. Terror
coursed through him. This wasn't good. This was what he had feared. It was
exactly what his future-time self had been desperate to avoid.

 
          
 
He couldn't at first determine what it was,
though. His tools lay scattered as ever . . . Then he saw it suddenly—the chalk
marks on the wall. The message was different now. In clean block letters a new
message was written out: "Harriers 6, Wolverines 2."

           
 
THERE WAS TOO much danger in staying. St. Ives
would have liked to sleep, to eat, to sit in his study and look at the wall.
The beef broth, though, wouldn't allow for it.
Time— that
commodity that he ought to have had plenty of—wouldn't allow for it.
It
would insist on going on without him, piling up complications, altering
everything. Never had he been so aware of the ticking of the clock.

 
          
 
He sneaked into the manor by way of the study
window, remaining long enough to fetch out a purse containing twenty pounds in
silver, and then, without so much as a parting glance, he loped back out to the
silo, climbed into the machine, and sailed away in the direction of midcentury
Limehouse.

 
          
 
He arrived a week earlier than he had on his
previous visit. The child wouldn't be so far gone this time around. It was just
after
midnight
,
and to St. Ives, looking down over Pennyfields, it seemed as if nothing had
changed. There was no fog, and the moon was high in the sky. But the old woman
sat as ever, smoking her pipe amid the scattered junk slopping out of the door
of the general shop. Sailors came and went from public houses. The seething
Limehouse night was oblivious to the tiny tragedy unfolding in the attic room
above.

 
          
 
He pulled the garret window open and stepped
in carefully, setting the jar beneath the sill. The child slept on the floor,
although not under the window now. He breathed heavily, obviously already
congested, lying on his back with the ragged blanket pulled to his chin. But
for the sleeping child, the room was empty.

 
          
 
"Damn it to hell," St. Ives
muttered. He must talk to the mother. He couldn't be popping back in twice a
day to feed the child the beef broth. He could think of nothing to do except
leave, climb back into the bathyscaphe and reset the coordinates, maybe arrive
three hours from
now,
or maybe yesterday. What a
tiresome thing. He would make the child drink the broth now, though, just to
get it started up. Trusting to the future was a dangerous thing. A bird in the
hand ... he told himself.

 
          
 
There was a noise outside the door just then,
a woman's high-pitched laughter followed by a man's voice muttering something
low, then the sound of laughter again. A key scraped in the lock, and St. Ives hurried
across toward the window, thinking to get out onto the roof before he was
discovered. The door swung open, though, and he stopped abruptly, turning
around with a look of official dissatisfaction on his face. He would have to
brass it out, pretend to be—what? Merely looking grave might do the trick.
Thank heaven he had shaved and cut his hair.

 
          
 
In the open doorway stood
the woman who must have been the child's mother.
She was young, and
would have been almost pretty but for the hardness of her face and her general
air of shabbiness. She was half drunk, too, and she stood there swaying like a
sapling in a breeze, looking confusedly at St. Ives. Sobering suddenly, she
peered around the room, as if to ascertain that she hadn't opened the wrong
door by mistake. Then, as her countenance changed from confusion to anger, she
said, "What are you doing here?"

 
          
 
The man behind her gaped
stupidly at St. Ives.
He was drunk, too—drunker than she was. A look of
skepticism came into his eyes, and he took a step backward.

 
          
 
"Who's this?" asked St. Ives,
nodding at the man. He pitched it just as hard and mean as he could, as if it
meant something, and the man turned around abruptly, caromed off the hallway
wall, and scuttled for the stairs. There was the sound of pounding feet and a
door slamming, then silence.

 
          
 
"There goes half a crown," she said
steadily. "I'm not any kind of bunter, so if you've been sent round by the
landlord, tell him I pay my rent on time, and that there wouldn't be half so
many hunters if they didn't gouge your eyes out for the price of a room."

 
          
 
"Not at all, my good woman," St.
Ives said, surprised at first that she was moderately well-spoken. Then he
realized that it wasn't particularly surprising at all. She had been the wife
of a famous, or at least notorious, scientist. The notion saddened him. She had
fallen a long way. She was still youthful, and there was something in her face
of the onetime country girl who had fallen in love with a man she admired. Now
she was a prostitute in a lodging house.

 
          
 
She stood yet in the doorway, waiting for him
to explain himself, and St. Ives realized almost shamefully that she held out
some little bit of hope—of what? That she wouldn't have lost her half crown
after all? St. Ives, her eyes seemed to say, was the sort of man she would
expect to find in the
West
End
, not your
common sailor rutting his way through Pennyfields before his ship set sail.

 
          
 
"I'm a doctor, ma'am."

 
          
 
"Really," she said, stepping into
the room now and closing the door. "You wouldn't have brought a drain of
gin, would you? A doctor, is it? Brandy more like it." She gave him what
was no doubt meant to be a coy look, but it disfigured her face awfully, as if
it weren't built for that sort of theatrics, and it struck him that a great
deal had been taken away from her. He could hear the emptiness in her voice and
see it in her face. The country girl who had fallen in love with the scientist
was very nearly gone from her eyes, and there would come a day when gin and
life on the Limehouse streets would sweep it clean away.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid I haven't any brandy. Or gin,
either. I've brought this jar of beef broth, though." He pointed at the
jar where it sat beneath the window.

 
          
 
"What is it?" She looked at him
doubtfully, as if she couldn't have heard what she thought she heard.

 
          
 
"Beef broth.
It's an elixir, actually, for the child." He nodded at the sleeping boy,
who had turned over now and had his face against the floor molding. "Your
son is very sick."