The Anubis Gates

was beginning to shout about thieves, and she made a beeline for the Barking Ahab.

Though the door was open and a breeze fluttered the smoke-yellowed curtains in the windows, the place smelled strongly of cheap gin and malty beer. The owner looked up irritably from behind the counter when Jacky came clattering and panting in, but changed his expression to a doubtful smile when the pop-eyed, out-of-breath newcomer slapped a half-crown onto the polished wood.

“There’s a lad named Kenny drinking here?” Jacky gasped. “Lives over in Kenyon Court.” Be here, Joe, she thought. Don’t have left yet.

A voice sounded from a table behind her. “You a Charlie, Jack?”

She turned and looked at the four poorly dressed young men around the table. “Do I look like a Charlie, mate? This isn’t a law matter—his father’s in some trouble, and sent me after him.”

“Oh. Well, maybe Kenny heard of it; he got up and dashed out of here five minutes ago like he’d remembered something left on the fire.”

“Aye,” said another, “I was just coming in, and he shoved by me without a glance, much less a ‘hullo’ for a chap he’s been pals with nigh a decade.”

Jacky sagged. “Five minutes ago?” He could be half a mile away by now, she thought, in any direction, and I could never get a good enough description of Kenny to be sure of him even if I found him. And even if I was sure I’d found him, I couldn’t shoot him just because I’m almost certain that Kenny was shot in his own bed, and that his body is now occupied by old Dog-Face Joe. I’d have to question him, trick him, somehow get him to betray himself. Maybe once I could have killed him on the almost certainty, but not anymore—not after having almost punched a hole through the skull of poor old Doyle.

She got a fair description of Kenny anyway—short, fat, red hair—and then left the place. Well, that’s what he’ll look like for the next week or two, she thought. Judging by the areas where the “apes” have tended to show up, he likes the East End—probably because disappearances are not uncommon here, and it’s easier to evade pursuit among the mazy alleys and courts and rooftop bridges of the rookeries, and any crazy stories coming out of the area would be more likely to be discounted as products of drink, opium or lunacy—so for the next couple of weeks I’ll search the low lodging houses of Whitechapel and Shoreditch and Goodman’s Fields for a short, fat, red-haired young man who’ll have no close friends, be a bit simple-minded and talk about immortality to anybody who’ll listen, and maybe need a shave on his forehead and hands—for evidently the thick fur begins to grow all over a body as soon as he gets into it. I wonder what sort of creature he is, she thought, and where he came from.

She shuddered, and slouched away east toward a public house she knew of in Crutchedfriars Road where she could sit quietly over a double brandy for a while—for this had been the closest she’d ever come to her prey, and the ravings of poor Kenny’s father had vividly brought to mind her own encounter with one of Dog-Face Joe’s cast- off bodies. This one was bleeding from the mouth too, she noted. I wonder if they all do, and if so, why. She stopped, suddenly pale.

Well of course, she told herself. Old Joe wouldn’t want the person he shoves into his discarded body to be able to say anything before the poison finishes him. Before he… exits a body he must, in addition to drinking a fatal dose of poison, chew up his tongue to the extent that the new tenant won’t be able to speak with it…

Jacky, who had read and admired Mary Wollstonecraft, and despised the fashion of fluttery helplessness in women, felt, to her own annoyance, close to fainting.

* * *

The Jamaica Coffee House closed at five o’clock, and Doyle found himself ordered out onto the pavement, and not very politely. He shuffled aimlessly out of the alley and stood for a while on the Threadneedle Street sidewalk, staring absently at the impressive facade of the Bank of England across the still-crowded street, the manuscript pages flapping forgotten in his hand.

Ashbless had not appeared.

A hundred times during the long day Doyle had mentally reviewed the historical sources of his certainty that Ashbless would arrive: the Bailey biography clearly stated that it was the Jamaica Coffee House, at ten-thirty in the morning, Tuesday the eleventh of September 1810—but of course the Bailey biography was based on Ashbless’ years-old recollections; but Ashbless submitted the poem to the Courier in early October, and Doyle had not only read but actually handled the cover letter. “I wrote ‘The Twelve Hours of the Night’ on Tuesday the Eleventh of last month,” Ashbless had written, “at the Jamaica off Exchange Alley, and the Motif was occasioned by my recent long voyage…” Damn it, Doyle thought, he might have remembered the date incorrectly ten or twenty years later, but he could hardly have been mistaken after less than a month! Especially when he was so precise about the day and the date!

A portly little red-haired fellow was staring at him from the corner by the Royal Exchange, so Doyle, having developed a wariness of the scrutiny of strangers, walked purposefully away east, toward Gracechurch Street, which would lead him down to London Bridge and across the river to Kusiak’s.

Could Ashbless have been intentionally lying? But why on earth should he want to? Doyle looked furtively behind, but the red-haired lad wasn’t following him. You’d better relax, he told himself—every time somebody looks at you directly you assume it’s one of Horrabin’s beggar agents. Well, he thought, resuming the puzzle, the next event I think I’m sure of in the Ashbless chronology is that he’s seen to shoot one of the Dancing Apes in one of the Exchange Alley coffee houses on Saturday the twenty-second of this month. But I can’t wait a week and a half. I’d be too far gone with pneumonia to benefit from even twentieth century medicine, probably. I’ll have to—God help me!— approach Doctor Romany. The thought made him feel sick. Maybe if I, I don’t know, strap a pistol around my neck, and keep my finger near the trigger, and tell him, “We bargain or I’ll blow my own head off, and you won’t learn one thing… ” Would he dare to call my bluff? Would I dare let it be a bluff?

He was passing a narrow street off Aldgate, and somebody crossing one of the rooftop bridges was whistling. Doyle slowed to listen. It was a familiar tune, and so melancholy and nostalgic that it almost seemed chosen as a fitting accompaniment for his lonely evening walk. What the hell is the name of that, he wondered absently as he walked on. Not Greensleeves, not Londonderry Air …

He froze and his eyes widened in shock. It was Yesterday, the Beatles song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

For a moment he just stood there, stunned, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand.

Then he was running back. “Hey!” he yelled when he was below the little bridge, though there was nobody on it now. “Hey, come back! I’m from the twentieth century too!” A couple of passersby were giving him the warily entertained look people save for street lunatics, but nobody peered down from the rooftop level. “Damn it,” Doyle yelled despairingly, “Coca Cola, Clint Eastwood, Cadillac!”

He ran into the building and blundered his way upstairs and even managed to find and open the roof door, but there was no one in sight up there. He crossed the little bridge and then descended through the other building, panting, but singing Yesterday as loudly as he could, and shouting the lyrics down all cross corridors. He drew many complaints but didn’t get anyone who seemed to know what the song was.

“I’ll give you a place to hide away, mate,” shouted one furious old man who seemed to think Doyle’s behavior had been specifically calculated to upset him, “if you don’t get out of here this instant!” He shook both fists at Doyle.

Doyle hurried down the last flight of stairs and opened the door out to the street. By this time he was beginning to doubt that he’d even really heard it. I probably heard something that sounded like it, he thought as he drew the door shut behind him, and wanted so much to believe somebody else had found a way back to 1810 that I convinced myself it was the Beatles tune.

The sky was still a gray luminescence behind the rooftops, but it was darkening. He hurried on southward, toward London Bridge. I don’t want to be late for the six-thirty shift at Kusiak’s stable, he reflected wearily—I need that job.

* * *