Lord Kelvin's Machine

EPILOGUE


He landed on the meadow, half expecting heaven knew what. There was no telling what was what anymore. Maybe Parsons would leap out of the bushes and claim the machine. Maybe Narbondo, or Frost, or whatever he called himself now, would menace him with a revolver. Maybe anything at all—he didn’t care. They could have the machine. He didn’t want it anymore. His work was done, and he was ready to confront the results, whatever they were, and then to give up his chasing around through time. At least for the moment.

What he couldn’t do, though, was face himself. There were two present-time copies of him now, and he was determined to let the other one depart gracefully and, he hoped, privately. What sort of man had he become? A happy man, perhaps, who wouldn’t relish the idea of this copycat St. Ives popping in at the window to replace him? Or, just as easily, a miserable man, who might gladly hand over the reins and disappear forever.

Fragments of his memory were even now starting to wink out like candle flames in a breeze. His nightmares about the Seven Dials, the very fact of his returning there, his whole tiresome rigamarole life during the past three years—all of it would become vapor.

And good riddance, too. He would welcome new memories, whatever they were. He realized that this was bluff, though. He thought one last time of the child Narbondo, huddled in dirty rags in Limehouse, and of his mother and the sailor in the doorway. There were memories worse than his own. That’s partly why he was still sitting there in the machine, wasn’t it? He had no idea what he would find inside the manor—who he would discover himself to be.

He climbed through the hatch into the wind. It was sunny and fine with just the hint of a smoky autumn chill in the air. He pulled his coat straight and fiddled with his tie, realizing that he was a wet and dirty mess. But he felt fit, somehow, as if a great weight had fallen away from him, and then, in a confused shudder of memory, it occurred to him that he couldn’t bear eating eggplant again. Not once more.

His head reeled, and he nearly fell over. Eggplant? It was starting. His memories would depart like rats from a ship. Disconcerted, he hurried through the window, into the study, and there stood Hasbro, staring at him strangely.

“We’ll have to move the time machine into the silo,” St. Ives said to him. “I wasn’t sure whether it was empty or not.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“The machine on the meadow,” St. Ives said. “We’ll want to get it into the silo, out of the weather.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t aware that Dr. Frost had returned it. This comes as a surprise. I was under the impression that he had stolen it from Secretary Parsons. He’s brought it here, has he?”

“Stolen it?” St. Ives was gripped by vertigo just then. His memory shifted. He fought to hold on to it, afraid to let pieces of it go completely. “Of course,” he said. “It’s a mystery to me, too, but there it sits.” He gestured out the window, where the machine glinted in the sunlight.

Narbondo had taken it! That was funny, hilarious. Now St. Ives had reappeared with it, and that meant that Narbondo’s copy was in the process of disappearing, out from under his nose, and stranding him, St. Ives hoped, in some distant land. Either that or the villain was gone somewhere in time, and would someday perhaps return, and then St. Ives’s machine would disappear. Time and chance, he reminded himself.

And then new memories, like wraiths, drifted into his mind, shifting old memories aside. “Alice!” he cried. “Is she here then?”

“She’s still in the parlor, sir,” Hasbro said, looking skeptical again. “Where you left her moments ago. I really must advise you against that suit, by the way. The tailor is certifiable. Perhaps if I laid something else out...”

“Yes,” St. Ives said, hurrying through the door. “Lay something out.”

He was dizzy, foggy with memories, drunk on them. And as if he were literally drunk, he felt free of the depressing guilt and worry that had plagued him... for how long? And why? He couldn’t entirely remember. It seemed so long ago. His mind was a confusion of images now, stolen from the man whose ghost was where? Blowing away on the wind, across the meadow? Would he remain to haunt the manor, exercising a ghostly grudge against his other-time self for having returned to supplant him?

Mrs. Langley loomed out of the kitchen, her hands white with baking flour.

“I’ve taken your advice, Mrs. Langley,” he said.

“Beg pardon, sir? What advice?”

“I...” What advice, indeed? He didn’t know. He pulled at the collar of his shirt, which was too tight for him. “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind. I was thinking out loud.” She nodded, baffled, and he forced himself along, walking toward the parlor. Steady on, he told himself. Keep your mouth closed. There’s too much you don’t know yet, and too much of what you do know is nonsense.

And then there sat Alice, reading a book. He was astonished by the sight of her. She hasn’t aged a day, he thought joyfully, and then he wondered why on earth he thought any such thing, and a garden of memories, like someone else’s anecdotes, sprung fully bloomed in his mind. His head swam, and he sat down hard on a chair. Maybe he ought to have waited, to have grappled with the business of memory before wading in like this. But he hadn’t, and now that he got a good look at Alice, with her dark hair done up in a ribbon, he was happy that he hadn’t wasted another moment.

“I’m sorry about the eggplant,” she said to him, just then glancing up from her book. She squinted at the sight of him, looking unhappily surprised, and he grinned back at her like a drunken man. “That awful suit of clothes,” she said. “You look rather like a dirty sausage in them, don’t you? I’ve seen those before...”

“I’m just getting set to burn them,” St. Ives said hurriedly. “They’re a relic, from the future. A sort of... costume.”

“Well,” she said. “The trousers might look better if you hadn’t waded across the river in them. But I am sorry about the eggplant. I don’t mean to make you eat it every night, but Janet’s cook, Pierre, is apparently fixing it for us this evening. Will you be ready to leave in a half hour? You looked wonderful just moments ago.”

“Eggplant? Janet?” His mind fumbled with the words. Then through the parlor window he saw Alice’s garden, laid out in neat rows. Purple-green eggplants hung like lunar eggs from a halfdozen plants.

“Oh, Janet,” he said, nodding broadly. “From the Harrogate Women’s Literary League!”

“What on earth is wrong with you? Of course that Janet, unless you’ve got another one hidden somewhere. And don’t go on about the eggplant this time, will you?”

Suddenly he could taste the horrible sour stuff. He had eaten it last night mixed up with ground lamb. And the night before, too, stewed up with Middle Eastern spices. He had been on a sort of eggplant diet, a slave to the vegetable garden.

“You could use a bath, too, couldn’t you? At least a wash up. And your hair looks as if you’ve been out in the wind for three days. What have you been up to?”

“I... old Ben,” he began. “Mud. Up to his blinkers.”

But then he was interrupted by a sort of banshee wail from somewhere off in the house. It rose to a crescendo and then turned into a series of squalling hoots.

He stood up, looking down at Alice in alarm. “What...”

“It’s not all that bad,” she said, nearly laughing. “Look at you! Anyone would think you hadn’t ever changed his nappies before. They can’t be a tremendous lot dirtier than your trouser cuffs, can they?”

The baby’s crying had very nearly inundated him with fresh memories. Little Eddie, his son. He smiled broadly. It was his turn to change the nappies. They had agreed against a nanny, were bringing up the child themselves, spoon-feeding it with stuff mashed up out of the garden. Eddie wouldn’t eat eggplant either, wouldn’t touch it on a bet. “Good old Eddie!” he said out loud.

“That’s the right attitude,” Alice said.

And now in the shuffle of the old being washed out by the new, he saw it all clearly for one last long moment. His fears for the future had come to nothing. Alice was safe. They had a son. The garden was growing again. They were happy now. He was happy, nearly delirious. He found that he couldn’t think in terms of future-time selves and past-time selves any longer. None of his other selves mattered to him at all.

There was only he and Alice and Eddie and... rows and rows of eggplant. He nearly started to whistle, but then the baby squalled again and Alice widened her eyes, inviting him to do something about it.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said, heading for the stairs. “I love eggplant.” And he very nearly meant it, too.