'Miss Tafe – or Mister Tafe, as I should say for the sake of her little masquerade – and I have been waiting some time for you to appear.'
'I'm sorry to have kept you, but I was as tired as I've ever been in-' I broke off, scowling at my plate as I sensed the absurdity of the situation. Only a little while ago I had been scrabbling about for my life in a battle-torn cityscape into which I had been thrust by this mysterious personage's doing, then shown a soul-chilling glimpse of the Earth's end, and now I was enjoying the warm amenities of his home as calmly as if it had all been some weekend visit. If nothing else, it demonstrated the human mind's facility for landing poised as a cat in unfamiliar situations and making the best of them. And who indeed could turn down good ale and meat, though it were served by the Devil himself? I resolved to hear out my odd host's explanations and judge him for good or evil on the basis thereof.
Ambrose, all genial hospitality, extended across the ruins of my meal a box of cigars such as the one Tafe was smoking. I took one and slipped off a paper band with some Arabic- looking gibberish inscribed on it. Soon the three of us were hazing the air with steel-grey smoke.
'Where to begin,' mused Ambrose, gazing up into the swirling nimbus. ' Doing is always so much easier than explaining. See here, Hocker,' he said, pointing the glowing ember of his cigar at me. 'Doesn't the name 'Dr. Ambrose' seem a little… suspicious to you? Eh?'
'My dear sir,' I said coolly, laying a flake of ash in my plate, 'everything about you seems suspicious. If I had no knowledge of your abilities I would maintain you to be either a charlatan or a lunatic. As it is, you might still be a rogue or a master criminal, but one of sufficient accomplishments to be respected.'
He nodded, modestly restraining his pleasure at my flattery. 'But come,' he said, gesturing with his cigar. 'How about the name 'Ambrosius', then? In connection with early British history?'
I frowned in deep thought. 'I'm a reasonably well-educated man,' I said at last, 'but at the moment the only reference to an 'Ambrosius' I can recall is that of Geoffrey of Monmouth giving it as an alternate name for the legendary Merlin-'
'That's the one,' he interrupted.
'Well, Dr. Ambrose, if you've chosen to derive your pseudonym from that of a mythical magician, I must admit that in your case it's appropriate.'
'Mythical!' He glared irritably at me. 'Legendary! Sir Geoffrey may have gotten some of his dates wrong but at least everything I told him was true. No, don't say anything stupid.' He waved my protests off with his cigar. 'I won't prolong your ignorance. I call myself 'Ambrose' because I dislike the effete Latinism of 'Ambrosius', but in fact I am the actual Merlin himself! What do you think of that?' His voice reached an exultant peak as he dramatically flourished his cigar.
I puffed away on my own, unable to say anything for sheer bafflement. Merlin, indeed. The man was mad. But, still…
'I believe it,' announced Tafe complacently.
'That, my dear,' said Ambrose, 'is because you grew up in a rough and violent world where just managing to live from day to day is easily considered a miracle. You are able to accept the truth, no matter how astonishing its guise. Whereas our friend Hocker here is steeped in the overweening rationalism of his time, and could mentally dismiss a mastodon in front of him if it happened to be wearing the wrong school tie.'
'Actually,' said Tafe, 'I just kind of figured – why not? Makes as much sense as anything else so far.'
'But see here!' I exploded. 'How could it possibly be? Even if such a person as Merlin existed centuries ago, how could you be that person? I mean your… whole appearance, for one thing.'
'Why should someone with powers such as mine ever age? I was old when England was nothing but bare rocks washed by the sea.' Ambrose's eyes seemed to look through me and into some vast repository of memory. 'Believe what I tell you! I am that one called Merlin, though even that is not the oldest or truest of my names. Damn your sceptical eyes, man – what more do you need to see before you accept the truth?'
The low-pitched intensity of his voice quite unnerved me. And what other explanation had I for the mystifying tangle I had fallen into? None other than the possibility of my own insanity. 'I'll accept your assertion of identity – provisionally,' I said. 'At least for the balance of your story,'
Another fierce glare from his dark eyes before he leaned back in his chair and continued. 'There is a certain spiritual power,' he said quietly, 'inherent in the English blood and soil. An embodiment of the highest Western values. This power, of course, gets perverted or eclipsed from time to time. A lot of this jingo nonsense going on in the name of Empire isn't much of a credit to the English race. But still, it's only a temporary lapse of memory. The power remains, however tarnished or neglected it becomes. And I have, shall we say, an interest in preserving that. For if it should die, the world would darken and lapse into brutishness. And I would be alone upon the face of the Earth. Now, as many times in the past, that spiritual power is threatened with destruction.'
'You mean, the Morlocks,' I interjected. 'Ah, so you accept that much?'
'I've seen them.'
'True, true,' said Ambrose, nodding. 'And such was largely the point of your recent harsh experiences. I could conceive of no other way to convince you that things are as I asked you to speculate when I first talked to you that evening in the fog. The Time Machine does exist, and has fallen in the hands of the Morlocks.'
'And our host of that evening?' I said. 'The inventor of the Machine?'
'Dead, I'm afraid. He thought that a rifle and a case of matches would be enough to establish his will in that far future. Unfortunately, as I told you, the Morlocks he encountered the first time were the least to be feared of their kind.'
'And now they are secretly invading our own present-day London and all England beyond that.' My calm statement of the fact belied the fear and revulsion it produced in my heart.
'Indeed,' said Ambrose. 'The Time Machine's inventor actually understood less about his device than he thought he did. By going between this time and that of the Morlocks he created a channel from which no deviation is possible. This time, and no other, is the only one to which the Morlocks could travel with their new device. They can only launch their invasion through this one point in their past, our own year 1892.'
'Wait a moment,' I said, frowning and turning his words about in my mind. 'There's something wrong here… I've got it. If the Morlocks come back in Time to their own past and wreak such havoc, aren't they endangering the chain of events that lead to their own existence? Why, they might be conquering and then eating their own ancestors! And thus obliterating their own nasty lives scores of generations before their own births!' The topsy- turvy logic of it all boggled me for a moment, and I puffed furiously on my cigar.
Ambrose graciously inclined his head. 'I admire your astuteness, Hocker. Not many of your contemporaries could follow that, let alone come up with it themselves. Indeed, it is a violation of the Universe's natural order. This whole business of Time Travel is shot through with cosmic blasphemy, I'm afraid. Better to take the years as they come one by one on the string, instead of mucking about and yanking on the thread to see what's coming. Be that as it may. The paradox of the Morlocks eating their own distant forefathers is relatively minor compared to the catastrophe that threatens the Earth through their mere use of the Time Machine. And that catastrophe is the implosion of Time itself, just as you saw, Hocker, before I brought you here. The year 1892 has become the hole through which the Sea of Time is leaking away. Even as we sit here the events of the years before and after this date are blurring into our own time. If the process is not halted and reversed, soon all Time from the Earth's beginning to its end will run together into one year, then contract into a single day, a minute, second, then – like that! Blink out of existence. Leaving that dark, timeless desert you found yourself in.'
'Good God!' I cried. 'If this is true-'
'It is.'
'-then what can we do to stop it from happening? If, as you say, the Morlocks have already torn open this hole in the cosmos, how can we mend it?' A chilling thought struck me. 'Or is it too late even now, and you only mean to horrify us with your prevision of the Earth's end?'
'Calm down, Hocker.' Ambrose flicked another ash into his plate. 'What would be the point of a needless torment such as that? If evil weren't preventable – and this one in particular – I wouldn't waste time talking to people like you.'
I felt a flush of anger suffuse my face. 'What is to be done, then?' I demanded. 'I'll accept everything you've said so far if you'd round it off with a plan of action.'
'Spoken like a true Englishman, Hocker! Hot for blood and violence – an admirable quality indeed.'
'It's not that,' I said tentatively, feeling my way through my own thoughts. 'It's just that that the evil of it is
