Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02

by Lord Kelvin's Machine

  With an unpleasant shock, he noticed just then that someone had cleaned up his desk. The debris on the floor was separated into tidy piles against the wall. The papers were shuffled, and the books stacked. The glass and ceramic figurines were dusted and lined up together. The neatened desk baffled him for a moment. Then, slowly, a dark rage began to rise in him, and the whole business of an orderly desk became an affront.

  He bent down and tossed together the stuff on the floor, mixing it into a sort of salad. Then he kicked through it, sending it flying, winding himself up. He turned to the desk itself, methodically picking up books and shaking out the loose leaves so that they fluttered down higgledy-piggledy. He picked up a heavy iron elephant paperweight and one by one smashed his quill pens, accidentally catching the squared-off edge of the crystal ink bottle and smashing it too, so that ink spewed out across his shirtfront. The shock of smashing the glass made him bite down hard on the stem of his pipe. He heard and felt the stem crack, and quickly let up on it. The pipe fell neatly into two pieces, though, so that the stem stayed in his mouth and the bowl fell down onto the desktop, wobbling around in the ink and broken glass like a drunkard. Furious, he picked up the elephant again and smashed the pipe, over and over and over, until he noticed with a deep rush of demoralizing embarrassment that Mrs. Langley stood in the open door of the room, her eyes wide open with horror and disbelief.

  Coldly, he put the elephant down and turned to her, realizing without knowing why that she had become an obstruction to him. Somehow, his rage had been transferred en masse to the housekeeper, to Mrs. Langley. He had no need for a housekeeper. He saw that clearly. What he had a need for was to be left alone. His desk, his books, his things, wanted to be left alone. Soon he would be gone altogether, perhaps never to return. A page in his life was folding back, a chapter coming to a close. The world was rife with change.

  And this wasn't the first time that she had cut this sort of caper. He had spoken to her about it before. Well, the woman had been warned, hadn't she? There wouldn't be any need to speak to her about it again. ''As of this moment, Mrs. Langley," he said to her flatly, "you are relieved of your duties. You'll have three months' severance pay."

  She put her hand to her mouth, and he realized that his eye was twitching badly and that every muscle in his body was stiff with tension, his hands opening and closing spasmodically. He gestured toward the window, the open road. ''Must you stare so?" he demanded of her.

  "He's gone stark," she muttered through her fingers.

  He clenched his teeth. "I have not gone stark," he said. "Understand that! I have not gone stark!" Even as he said it, there flickered across his mind a vague understanding of what it meant—that he had gone mad, utterly. He wasn't quite sane enough to admit it, though, to hold on to the notion. He was too far around the bend to see it anymore, but could merely glimpse its shadow. He knew only that he couldn't have Mrs. Langley meddling with his things, chasing after him with a dust mop as if he wanted a keeper. He watched her leave, very proudly, with her head up. She wasn't the sort to forgive easily. She would be gone, up to her sisters. Well . . . For a moment he nearly called her back, but was having difficulty breathing again. He put his head into the sack.

  After a moment he sat back down in his chair and contrived to rearrange the four objects amid the clutter on the desktop. His hand shook violently, though, and he accidentally uncorked the glass shoe, spilling out half the sugar crystals. Then he knocked the Humpty Dumpty over twice. He concentrated, making himself breathe evenly, placing the objects just so. Surely, if he could get them right, he would regain that moment of indefinable satisfaction that he had felt a few hours past. It would settle him down, restore a sense of proportion. It wouldn't work, though. He couldn't manage it.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the desktop again. There was something in the arrangement that was subtlely wrong. The figurines stood there as ever, the dog with his head on the shoe, the Humpty Dumpty gazing longingly at the ballerina. But there was no pattern any longer, no art to it. It was as if the earth had turned farther along its axis and the shadows were different.

  He found his shoes, putting them on this time before going out. Work was the only mainstay. He would let Mrs. Langley stew for a while and then would commute her sentence. She must learn not to treat him like a child. Meanwhile he would concentrate on something that would yield a concrete result. With effort, with self-control, he would have what he wanted within twenty-four hours. Where the machine would take him was an utter mystery. Probably he would be blown to fragments. Or worse yet, the machine would turn out to be so much junk, sitting there in the silo with him at the controls, making noises out of his throat like a child driving a locomotive built out of packing crates. He stood by the window, focusing his mind. There wasn't time to regret this business with Mrs. Langley. There wasn't time to regret anything at all. There was only time for action, for movement.

  His hands had stopped shaking. As an exercise, he coldly and evenly forced himself to recite the metals in the order of their specific gravities. The cottage-pie recipe was well and good when a man needed a simple mental bracer. But what he wanted now was honing. He needed his edges sharpened. With that in mind, he worked through the metals again, listing them in the order of their fusibility this time, then again backward through both lists, practicing a kind of dutiful self-mesmerization.

  Halfway through, he realized that something was wrong with him. He was light-headed, woozy. He held on to the edge of the desk, thinking to wait it out. He watched his hand curiously. It seemed to be growing transparent, as if he had the flesh of a jellyfish. It was happening to him again—the business on the North Road, the ghostly visitation. His vision was clouded, as if he were under water. He slid to the floor and began to crawl toward the window. Maybe fresh air would revive him. Each foot, though, was a journey, and all at once his arms and legs gave way beneath him and he slumped to the floor, giving up and lying there unhappily in front of the open window, thinking black thoughts until suddenly and without warning he thought no more at all.

  And then he awakened. His head reeled, but he was solid again. He stood up and studied his hand. Rock steady. Opaque. How long had he been away? He couldn't say. He was confused for a moment, trying to make sense of something that didn't want sense to be made of it. Either that or it already made sense, and he was looking for something that was now plain to him.

  Suddenly full of purpose, he straightened his collar and went out into the deepening twilight, having already forgotten about Mrs. Langley but this time wearing his shoes.

  HIS COD HAD got cold, and the restaurant, the Crow's Nest in Harrogate, had emptied out. Lunch was over, and only a couple of people lingered at their tables. St. Ives sat in the rear corner, his back to the window, doodling on a pad of paper, making calculations.

  He felt suddenly woozy, light-headed. Lack of sleep, he told himself, and bad eating habits. He decided to ignore it, but it was suddenly worse, and he had to shove his feet out in order to brace himself. Damn, he thought. Here it was again— another seizure. This time he would fight it.

  He heard muffled laughter from across the room and looked up to see someone staring back at him, someone he didn't recognize. The man looked away, but his companion sneaked a glance in St. Ives's direction, his eyes full of furtive curiosity. Nettled, St. Ives nodded at the man and was suddenly aware of his own slept-in clothes, of his frightful unshaven face. His fork, along with a piece of cod, fell from his hand, dropping onto his trousers, and he stared at it helplessly, knowing without trying that his hand would refuse to pick it back up.

  In a moment he would pass out. Better to simply climb down onto the floor and be done with it. He didn't want to, though, not in public, not in the condition he was in. He pressed his eyes shut. Slowly and methodically he began to recite the cottage-pie recipe, forcing himself to consider each ingredient, to picture it, to smell it in his mind. He felt himself recover momentarily, as if he were grounding
himself somehow, holding on to things anchored in the world.

  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.