James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

“Mrs. Langley,” he said.

She turned to look at him, affecting a huff, her mouth set in a thin line. She wasn’t about to give in. By damn, she was bound for her sister’s house, and soon, too. This had gone on entirely long enough, and she wouldn’t tolerate that sort of tone, not any longer. Never in all her born years, her face seemed to say.

Still, St. Ives thought happily, ultimately she wouldn’t go, would she? She would be there to take on Parsons with a rolling pin. St. Ives would succeed, at least in this one little thing. She was regarding him strangely, though, as if he were wearing an inconceivable hat. “I’ve come to my senses,” he said.

She nodded. Her eyes contradicted him, though. She looked at him as if he had lost his senses entirely this time, down a well. Inadvertently he brushed at his face, fearing that something…Wait. Of course. He wasn’t the man that he had been a half hour ago. He was clean-shaven now, his hair cut. He wore a suit of clothes with idiotic lapels, woven out of the wool of sheep that didn’t yet exist. He was a man altered by the future, although there would be nothing but trouble in telling her that.

“What I mean to say is that I’m sorry for that stupid display of temper. You were absolutely right, Mrs. Langley. I was stark raving mad when I confronted you on the issue of cleaning my desk. I know it wasn’t the first time, either. I…I regret all of it. I’ve been…It’s been hard for me, what with Alice and all. I’m trying to put that right, but I’ve made a botch of it so far, and…”

He found himself stammering and was unable to continue. Dignity abandoned him altogether, and he began to cry shamelessly, covering his face with his forearm. He felt her hand on his shoulder, giving him a sympathetic squeeze. Finally he managed to stop, and he stood there sniffling and hiccuping, feeling like a fool.

She brought him a glass of water, which he drank happily. “It’s not every man,” she said to him, “who can eat crow without the feathers sticking to his chin.” She nodded heavily and slowly. “Nothing wrong with a good cry now and then. It’s like rain — washes things clean.”

“God bless you, Mrs. Langley,” he said. “You’re a saint.”

“Not by a considerable sight, I’m not. You come closer, to my mind. But I’m going to be bold enough to tell you that you’re not cut out for saint work. You’ve got the instinct, but you haven’t got the constitution for it. And if I was you I’d find a new situation just as quick as I might. Go back to science, Professor, where you belong.”

“Thank you,” he said, in control of his emotions once more. “That’s just where I intend to go, just as you advise. There’s one little bit of business to attend to first, though, and by heaven, if there were one person on earth I could bring along to help me see it through, you would be that person, Mrs. Langley.”

“I’m good with a ball of dough, sir, but not much else.”

“You’re a philosopher, my good woman, whether you know it or not. And from now on your salary is doubled.”

She started to protest, but he cut her off with a gesture. “I’ve got to hurry,” he said. “Carry on here.”

With that he left her, returning to the study and going out through the window, stepping carefully over that bit of floor where his ghost lay invisible. He clambered straight into the bathyscaphe and left. His past-time self would materialize again and set to work on the machine, never knowing that the Mrs. Langley problem had been solved. It occurred to him too late that he might have written himself a note, explaining that he had come back around to patch things up with her. But to hell with that. His past-time self was a fool — more of a fool, maybe, than his future-time self was — and would probably contrive to muck things up in some new lunatic way, threatening everything. Better to let him go about his business in ignorance.

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.