The Finality Problem

She took me by the hand and led me down this corridor and that, but we knew we’d run out of time, for we could hear the machine grinding to a halt and Mr. Ferguson’s cry of ‘Juice! Juice! Awwwww…’ She stopped by one of the windows and gave me a guilty look. ‘It is two stories to the ground,’ she said, ‘but I think you can make it.’ I climbed out on the ledge and started lowering myself down, yet I had no time. Colonel Stark came bursting in through the door, waving a cleaver about and demanding, ‘Magerzart! What have you done with the ingredients? Aren’t you thirsty?’ And she stomped her foot and said that what she was was hungry, and that she wanted a crumpet and didn’t think that was too much to ask. And he got really mad and started talking about how hard it is to raise a daughter on your own.”

“All this while you were dangling out the window?” I asked, picking up my bandages and beginning to wind them around his hand.

“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “I know I ought to have dropped down and escaped, but once I was out there, looking down, it seemed rather far to the ground. I was trying to make myself let go, but it was hard, you know? Then Ferguson burst in and pointed out that they could work this out later and Stark said he was right and came over and chopped my thumb off.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, I think he was aiming at my head, but I moved it. And there was this ‘thunk’ and I was falling—which was sort of a relief and sort of wasn’t. Luckily the flowerbed was pretty soft, so I hit it and rolled over a few times, then got up and started running. It was dark and I had no idea where I was, except ten or twelve miles from Eyford. I was confused and I didn’t even realize I’d been hurt. I just ran off into the woods. Well soon my hand was throbbing badly enough that I took a moment to look down and see what was the matter.”

“Probably a mistake,” I noted.

Hatherley nodded. “As soon as I saw what had happened… well… I think I was already a bit light-headed.”

“Blood loss. Adrenaline. Fear. Just fell off a house,” I explained.

“And when I saw it, I fainted.”

“Of course you did.”

“Which was extra inconvenient, for it turns out I’d been standing near a bit of a cliff at the time.”

“Ouch.”

“I had the sensation of falling—of bumping and bashing over and over down the hill—and then nothing. Nothing until morning. Oh, but what a morning! I woke some time after dawn to find one of the local dogs licking at my thumb stump.”

This was enough to make me pause my bandaging and reflect, “Yes. Er… maybe I’ll just disinfect this again, shall I?”

“And I struggled to my feet,” Hatherley continued, with an expression of utter wonder on his face. “And do you know where I was? In the rose bushes, just behind the train station! All I had to do was buy a ticket for London, and here I am. Bless me, but I don’t know how it happened! Did I run twelve miles before I fainted? Did I fall down a twelve-mile hill? Or Magerzart? Did she come and find me where I’d fallen, and carry me back to the station?”

I smiled. “Mr. Hatherley, from what you tell me I’m not sure Magerzart could lift that crumpet she wants so badly. I suspect there is a much more direct reason you woke up where you did.”

“But how can you explain it?”

“I think I’d start my reasoning by asking how a horse could pull a carriage ten miles by night and arrive with no hair out of place for the return trip. But come, enough of this for the moment. Let me get this hand bandaged up and I’ll take you to just the right fellow to help you out.”

*   *   *

Except I couldn’t. I found Baker Street with no problems, but 221B remained invisible to me. I paced up and down the street in a rage, howling my frustration to a stunned-looking Victor Hatherley. I assured him that the address I was looking for ought to be right here. I showed him 335 and 339 and insisted that the missing address was not—as one might assume—337, but was in fact my old residence 221B. I cursed the missing door for some minutes, while Hatherley stared at me as if I were an utter madman.

Finally, he cleared his throat, pointed at a blank stretch of wall and softly said, “You mean that door?”

“What? What? You can see it?” I shouted, clutching at his sleeve.

He gave me a slow, careful nod, as if he were very afraid of me.

“Open it,” I said.

He did. Baker Street bowed, wobbled, and expanded by thirty feet. I could feel it happening—sort of a sweeping, stretching, bending of the fabric of reality. My head swam and I vomited in my mouth a bit, but then swallowed it back down in triumph.

“Erm… are you all right?” Hatherley asked me.

“Fine. I’m fine. Just flush with victory, that is all. Let’s go in.”

“After you,” he said, which made me realize I still had a problem.

I couldn’t see the doorway. I could see part of the door held in Victor’s hand, but if I tried to look at where it connected to the building I got freshly nauseous. Which is not to say I did not attempt to go in anyway. Indeed, I vomited two or three times trying to determine where the disembodied hunk of door in Victor Hatherley’s left hand connected to the blank wall. But I just could not. The damned thing was all shimmery and elastic and made no sense. I got sick from staring at it. I tried to walk in, though the doorway was invisible to me. I stood just by the door Hatherley