“What happened?” asked Audrey. She, also, knelt to check breath and pulse. “Did it get her, too? Is she fighting it?”
“No.” I looked up, and took in fully what peripheral awareness had already hinted. The desk had been cleared, the walls stripped of diagrams. The strange machine was gone as well. “I think she went home.”
“She—that cowardly bitch!” Audrey shoved the sleeping body, and I grabbed her arms.
“That’s not her,” I said.
Neko put her hands on Audrey’s shoulders. “Breathe. We’re all monsters here.”
After a moment Audrey relaxed in my grip, though I could still feel the tension underneath. “Yes. Sorry.” She leaned back, and I released her wrists to grip her hands instead. She gripped back, tightly as any ordinary woman of the air could manage.
Under our joined hands, whoever now occupied Trumbull’s body moaned. I let go and motioned the others back. She continued to stir; Neko mouthed “water” at me and slipped out.
Her eyes flickered, and a familiar voice muttered, “Where did I put those notes?”
Then her eyes flew wide, and she screamed. She scrabbled away from me, and I put up my hands. Needing something to appease her long enough for more complete explanations, I said, “Professor, it’s okay. You fainted, and I found you.” Seeing that the others were now well within her field of vision, I added, a little feebly, “We found you.”
She took us in and frowned—as I suppose anyone might at finding themselves surrounded by strangers of diverse and dubious aspect. She masked her alarm swiftly, recovering an aplomb worthy of her body’s previous tenant. But when her glance fell on the window she drew a sharp breath, and her whole frame went tense. She stood slowly, walked to the glass with equally careful measure.
“Why is it snowing?” she asked, as if demanding of a child why broken seashells were strewn about the parlor.
I looked at the others, but their expressions told me this was my task. “Professor, do you remember where you’ve been for the past six months?”
“I’ve been here, obviously.” But her hands gripped the sill hard enough to pale the joints.
“I need to tell you something that’ll be difficult to believe.” I caught my breath as another shiver hit me, thankfully a lesser one. “And I hope you’ll believe me anyway, because we’re in considerable difficulty and you—if you don’t believe me, it’ll make everything harder.”
“Speak,” she said. Neko returned, handed her a glass of water. She frowned again, but drank and seemed steadier for it.
I decided to start with the basics, or at least the immediately verifiable. “It’s January 27th, 1949. For the past half a year, another being has inhabited your body—a researcher from another time, another species. You’ll have spent about five years in her body, many aeons in the past. Some memories will eventually come back to you, but it’s unlikely that you’ll ever recover most of it. I’m sorry about that.”
She put the glass down on the desk, stared at its clean surface a long moment. “You’re clearly mad. But it’s also obviously winter. Have I been in some sort of fugue state?” A look of horror passed over her face. “Who’s been teaching my classes?”
“She has. I mean, it has. The Yith. I don’t gather anyone here knew you enough to tell the difference. Although I’m afraid she may have skipped today’s sessions.”
She laughed: a looser laugh than Trumbull’s—the other Trumbull’s—supercilious amusement. But there was an edge to it. “Dean Skinner certainly wouldn’t notice a replacement, unless he actually liked the creature. How does this marvelous story explain what you’re all doing in my office?”
I looked down, and steeled myself for introductions and explanations. But Spector stepped forward and offered his hand. She took it automatically. “Ron Spector. I’m with the FBI—I brought Miss Marsh, Mr. Marsh, Mr. Day, and Miss Koto to Miskatonic for a research project. Knowing the school’s prejudices, I neglected to mention that half of my team were of the female persuasion, and I’m afraid Dean Skinner demanded that your, ah, predecessor play hostess. I can get them into a hotel if you object, though I’d prefer to do so after the storm. Miss Dawson is an employee of Skinner’s who’s been helping us, and Miss Winslow here is a student of Miss Marsh’s who goes to the Hall school.”
Trumbull eyed his badge. “That’s quite the menagerie. And you believe this nonsense story?”
“I’ve seen some pretty strong evidence in the past few days, yes.”
“Professor,” I said. “I’m not an expert in these things myself, but I understand there are theories of multidimensional geometry—you are a specialist in multidimensional geometry, yes?”
“I most certainly am.” She drew herself up and glared.
I hastened to add, “I meant, as opposed to being an expert in some other mathematical area. Tr—the woman—the entity, I mean, who was in your body this morning, she also studied multidimensional geometry.”
“Ah. Yes, there are geometrical proofs that, combined with some extremely dubious branches of psychology and folklore—and a degree of intoxication—suggest the possibility of mental travel through time and space. The men in the department are prone to speculating about such things, but I’ve always considered them fantasies for people who don’t find the math itself sufficiently enthralling.”
I remembered the painted dreamscape in the living room and wondered how much of her dismissal was cold skepticism—and how much that such ideas, admired as flights of creative theory in the men of the faculty, risked accusations of mysticism in a woman.
Cold seeped through the window, and I wrapped my arms tightly. I had no fallback from my plan to beg Trumbull’s help, but it felt important to make this Trumbull understand. If nothing else, a multidimensional geometry expert might still be useful. And there was a chance that, buried in her memories, we might find some clue what we ought to do next. “Perhaps—I could show you some of our magic. Not direct proof, but enough to show we’re not making this up out of whole cloth.”
“I know how stage magic works. I’m not impressed, and I think I want you out of my house.”
Audrey had been pacing the study’s limited free space like a caged lion. Now she bent to retrieve a sheet of paper from beside the desk. “Here,” she said to Trumbull. “I think she left your schedule.”
Trumbull plucked it from her grasp. “This is not my handwriting.”
“I promise you,” said Audrey. “I don’t know the details of your classes.”
“She left class notes?” asked Caleb. “That’s remarkably thoughtful, by her standards.”