Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (40 page)

 
          
 
"Would it be men from the stars
again?" Binger asked, smoking his pipe with the air of a farmer inquiring
about sheep.

 
          
 
"No, Mr. Binger. This time it's
scientists, I'm afraid."

 
          
 
Binger nodded, scowling. "I don't much
hold with science," he said, taking his pipe out of his mouth.
"Begging your honor's pardon.
You're not like these
others, though.
The way I see it.
Professor, there's
this kind of scientist, and then there's that other kind." He shook his
head darkly.

 
          
 
"This is that other kind, Mr.
Binger." And right then St. Ives was interrupted by a clattering out on
the road—both the coaches drawing up and turning in at the gate. St. Ives
strode straight into the barn, followed by Binger, who still smoked his pipe
placidly. One of his sons was mucking out a pen, and old Binger called him
over. "Bring the hayfork," he said. The dog Furry wandered out of the
pen along with him, happy to see St. Ives again.

 
          
 
At the mention of the hayfork, St. Ives
paused. "We mustn't cause these men any trouble, Mr. Binger," he
said. "They're very powerful ..." But now there was a commotion
outside—Parsons and Frost arguing between
themselves
.
St. Ives would have liked to stop and listen, but there wasn't time. He climbed
aboard the bathyscaphe, pulling the hatch shut behind him. Settling himself in
the seat, he began to fiddle with the dials, his heart pounding, distracted by
what he saw through the porthole.

 
          
 
Seeing the hatch close down, Frost and Parsons
gave off their bickering and hurried along, followed by the driver in livery
and two other men who had accompanied Parsons. Binger pointed and must have
said something to Furry, because as Parsons and one of the other men made a
rush forward, the dog bounded in among them, catching hold of Parsons's
trousers and ripping off a long swatch of material. Parsons stumbled, and the
other man leaped aside, swiping at the dog with his hand.

 
          
 
Binger's son shoved the end of the hayfork
into the dirt directly in front of the man's shoe, and he ran into the handle
chin-first, recoiling in surprise and then pushing past it toward the machine
as Furry raced in, nipping at his shoe, finally getting hold of his cuff and
worrying it back and forth.

 
          
 
Parsons was up and moving again and Frost
along with him. Together they rushed at the machine, pushing and shoving at
each other, both of them understanding that they had come too late. Furry let
loose of his man's cuff and followed the two of them, growling and snapping so
that they were forced to do a sort of jug dance there in front of the porthole
while they implored St. Ives with wild gestures to leave off and see reason.

 
          
 
But what St. Ives saw just then was darkness,
and he heard the by-then-familiar buzzing and felt himself falling down and
down and down, leaving that far-flung island of history behind him, maybe never
to return. And good riddance—Narbondo, somehow, wasn't born to be a man of the
cloth. He looked cramped and uncomfortable in his new clothing. And Parsons
—well, Parsons was Parsons. You could take a brickbat to history six-dozen
times, and somehow Parsons would stride into every altered picture wearing the
same overgrown beard.

 
          
 
Just then there was darkness of a different
caliber again, nighttime darkness and rain falling. St. Ives came to himself.
He patted his coat pocket, feeling the cold bulk of the revolver. He had come
too far now to be squeamish about anything, but it occurred to him that there
was something ironic about setting out to kill the man whose life you had
recently worked so hard to save. But kill him he would, if it took that.

 
          
 
He climbed out into the wind-whipped rain,
looking around him, and realized with a surge of horror that he was on the
wrong street. He could see it straight off. He had dreamed that line of
storefronts and lodging houses too many times to make any mistake now. What he
saw before him was utterly unfamiliar. He had been rushed by the imbroglio in
Binger's barn and had miscalibrated the instruments.
But how?
Panicked, he ran straight up the street, slogging through the flood, listening
hard to the sounds of the night.

 
          
 
Lancing suddenly through his head
came
the confused thought that it might be worse than a mere
miscalculation. It was conceivable that anything and everything might have
changed by now. He had wanted the same street, but what did the notion of
sameness mean to him anymore? He slowed to a stop, rain falling on him in
torrents.

 
          
 
Then he heard it—the clatter of a coach.
Gunfire!

 
          
 
He ran toward the sound, wiping the water out
of his eyes, breathing hard. Another gunshot rang out and then a shriek and,
through the sound of the rain, the tearing and banging of the cabriolet going
over in the street. He could picture it in his mind—his past-time self running
forward, hesitating to shoot until it was too late, and . . .

 
          
 
He rounded the corner now, his pistol drawn,
and nearly ran Narbondo down as he crouched over Alice, whose leg was pinned
under the overturned cabriolet. Narbondo pointed his pistol at her head,
staring at the rainy street where Langdon St. Ives ought to have been, but
wasn't. Hasbro and Kraken stared at the street, too, but there was nothing at
all there save the empty coach, and although St. Ives alone knew why that was,
he didn't give it a moment's thought, but lashed out with the gun butt and
hammered Narbondo across the back of the head.

 
          
 
St. Ives's hand was in the way, though, and he
managed only to hit Narbondo heavily with his fist. Narbondo's head jerked
down, and his hands flew outward as he tumbled away from Alice. He rolled
forward, still holding his pistol, struggling to one knee and looking back
wild-eyed at St. Ives, then immediately aiming the pistol and shooting it
wildly, without an instant's hesitation.

 
          
 
Already St. Ives was lunging toward him,
though, and the shot went wide. Three years of pent-up energy and fear and
loathing drove St. Ives forward, unthinking. Narbondo staggered backward,
sprawling through the water, starting to run even before he was fully on his
feet. St. Ives ran him down in three steps. Too wild to shoot him, St. Ives
grabbed the back of Narbondo's coat and clubbed him again with the pistol butt,
behind the ear this time, and Narbondo's head jerked sideways as he brought his
pistol up, firing it pointlessly in the air. St. Ives hammered him again, still
clutching his jacket as Narbondo slumped to his knees, his pistol falling into
the street. A hand seized St. Ives's wrist as he raised his gun yet again, and
St. Ives turned savagely, ready to strike. It was Hasbro, though, and the look
on his face made St. Ives drop his own pistol into the water.

 
          
 
"He shot her," St. Ives mumbled.
"I mean ..." But he didn't right then know what he meant. He was
vastly tired and confused, and he remembered the child drinking medicinal beef
broth in Limehouse. He looked back down the street. Alice wasn't shot—of course
she wasn't shot. Kraken bent over her, lifting off the top end of the cabriolet
and then stooping to untie her. St. Ives walked toward them, as old suppressed
memories freshened and grew young again in his mind. Mercifully, the rain let
off just then, and the moon shone through the clouds, lightening the street.

 
          
 
"That were a neat trick, sir,"
Kraken said to him enthusiastically, standing up and making way for him.
"I could have sworn you
was
in the coach. Why, I
even seen you stepping out through the open door. Then you
was
gone, and then here your honor was again, smashing your man in back of the
head." He looked at St. Ives with evident pride, and St. Ives kneeled in
the flooded street, feeling for a pulse, fearing suddenly that it was too late
after all. The crash alone might have . . . Then Alice opened her eyes, rubbed
the back of her head with her hand, winced, and smiled at St. Ives. She
struggled to sit up.

 
          
 
"I'm all right," she said.

 
          
 
Kraken let out a whoop, and Hasbro, who had
dragged Narbondo to the roadside, helped both St. Ives and Alice to their feet,
pulling them into a doorway out of the rain.

 
          
 
"Tie Narbondo up with something,"
St. Ives said to Kraken.

 
          
 
Kraken looked disappointed. "Begging your
honor's pardon," he said, taking St. Ives aside, "but
hadn't we ought
to kill him? I should think that would be
recommended, seeing as who he is. You know he would have shot her. A life don't
mean
nothing
to the likes of him. Give me the word,
sir, and I'll make it quick and quiet."

 
          
 
St. Ives hesitated,
then
shook his head tiredly. "No, he's got too much to do yet. All of us do.
Heaven alone knows what will come of the world if we don't all play our
parts—heroes, villains, spectators, and fools. Perhaps it's already too
late," he said, half to himself. "Perhaps this changes the script
utterly. So tie him up, if you will. He'll spend some time in Newgate before he
escapes."

 
          
 
Kraken nodded, although he looked confused,
like a man who understood nothing. St. Ives left him to it and faced Alice again.
He sighed deeply. She was safe. Thank God for that. "I'll have to
go," he said to her.

 
          
 
"What?" Alice looked at him in
disbelief. "Why? Aren't I going with you? We'll all
go,
the sooner the better."

 
          
 
St. Ives was swept with a wave of passion and
love. He kissed her on the mouth, and although she was surprised by the
suddenness of it, she kissed him back with equal passion.

 
          
 
Hasbro cleared his throat and went off
abruptly toward where Kraken was tying up Narbondo with the reins from the
wrecked cabriolet.

 
          
 
I will stay, St. Ives thought suddenly. Why
not?
His past-time self—now nothing but a ghost—wouldn't be
any the wiser.
He was already gone, flitted away, into the mists of
abandoned time. Why not start anew, right now? They would take a room in the
West
End,
make it a sort of holiday— nothing but
eating and the theater and lounging about all day long. He suddenly felt like
Atlas, having at last shrugged off the world, ending what had turned out to be
merely a lengthy nightmare.

 
          
 
Alice was regarding him strangely, though.
"You look . . . awful," she said, squinting at him as if she realized
something was wrong but had no notion how to explain it. He knew what she had
meant to say. She had meant to say that he looked old, worn-out, thin, but she
had caught herself and had said something more temporary so as to preserve his
feelings. "What's wrong?" she asked suddenly, and his heart sank.

 
          
 
He looked out into the street, where his
past-time self lay invisible in the water and muck of the road. You fool, he
said in his mind. I earned this, but I've got to give it to you, when all you
would have done is
botch
it utterly. But even as he
thought this, he knew the truth—that he wasn't the man now that he had been
then. The ghost in the road was in many ways the better of the two of them.
Alice didn't deserve the declined copy; what she wanted was the genuine
article.

 
          
 
And maybe he could become that article—but not
by staying here. He had to go home again, to the future, in order to catch up
with himself once more.

 
          
 
"I won't be gone but a moment," he
said, glancing back toward where he had left the machine. "And when I
appear again, I might be confused for a time. It'll pass, though. When you see
me next, tell me that I'm a mortal idiot, and I'll feel better about it
all."