Morlock Night

3

"Come on, Hocker. Wake up. It's not as bad as all that."

The toe of a boot rudely prodded me in the ribs. I opened my eyes, which I thought had closed upon my last earthly vision, and saw Dr. Ambrose standing over me. A thin smile was upon his death-pale, handsome face.

"You!" I cried, raising myself upon my elbows. "Fiend! What ungodly tricks have you been playing upon me?" I would have stood up and taken the man's neck in my hands but for the silver point of his walking stick that he held against my chest.

"Control yourself, Hocker." The smile vanished. "Tricks, indeed! If a blindfolded man was walking upon the edge of a cliff and someone else tore the cloth from his eyes, no matter how much seeing his danger scared the fellow, would you call it a 'trick'? Good Lord, Hocker, you should be grateful to me, instead of spitting out your spleen at me as though you were someone with an actual grievance. Now come on, stand up and pull yourself together, man. All shall be explained. Here, take a swig of this. It'll help clear your head."

He put aside his walking stick, bent down and grasped me by the arm. As he drew me up my legs were a trifle unsteady from muscle fatigue; he pressed a small silver flask to my lips. I drank and found myself swallowing brandy, good but with an unfamiliar aftertaste to it. Its warmth spread across my chest and oddly up the back of my head. My dizziness and a ringing in my ears melted away and my tired legs stopped trembling.

Ambrose took away the nearly empty flask and stowed it in his coat. "Got your heart back again?" he asked.

I nodded, then looked at the scene around us. Another wave of dismay swept against me. "My God!" I cried. "This is the worst yet! What's happened here? What's happened to the city?"

Over the vista broke a cold gray light, such as seen in those false dawns that are neither night nor true morning, when the world and all its contents seem but shapes of mist, formed of vain hope and desire… If you awake from troubled sleep at such a time, you can only sit by the window and think of those that have been lost to you, those that followed your parents into those cold and heartless regions below the grass, silent and dark. Eventually morning comes and the world resumes its solidity, but another tiny thread of ice has been stitched into your heart forever.

Such was the illumination by which I saw the ruins of London. But now they did not seem just freshly battered by war, but weathered away by passing centuries. The heaps of rubble had lost their jagged edges, sinking under mould and decaying vegetation. The road was cracked and riven, as though the Earth beneath was shrinking with age. As I surveyed the appalling scene a small, shinyblack thing like a salamander darted to the crest of one low mound, glared at us with eyes like two pinpoints of light, then darted away. Another one, but with inky bat wings, flapped up from one of the street's cracks, then curved away on the chilling breeze that came from the west.

"Not a pretty sight, eh, Hocker." Ambrose lifted his walking stick and pointed with it to the horizon. "This is the way it is all the way to the ocean, and in all the lands beyond as well."

"My God," I said. "What have you brought me to? Is this some future time when Man and Morlock both have rotted away? What comes after this, for God's sake?"

"Nothing comes after this, actually," said Ambrose briskly. "And nothing before, either. Your good, comfortable year of 1892 and all the other years of Victoria's reign, and all the rest of the Earth's existence from its gaseous birth to its final fiery plunge back into the sun, are no more. What you see around you are the rocks and shoals of Eternity after the Sea of Time has been drained away. Such is the final upshot of all that mucking about with Time Travel."

"You don't mean-" I stammered. "Surely not- surely this isn't the end of it all." The scene's oppressive gloom weighed heavier and heavier upon me.

"My dear fellow," said Ambrose mildly, "this is no end to everything, this is everything. The Alpha and Omega of the Earth's existence. Nothing but this through all Time, Past and Present – if those words still meant anything."

"But how?" I seized his arm in desperation. "How could it, have happened?"

"You yourself ate dinner with the man who built the Time Machine, and heard his story. Even such a trifling little excursion as his was in fact so gross a violation of the Universe's natural order as to make distant galaxies warp from their courses! That such power ever fell, however unwittingly, into a mortal man's control was no license for him to actually go and use it. And then when the Morlocks gained control of the Time Machine, and sent whole armies trooping back and forth between your century and theirs – can't you imagine what happened? A temporal implosion! Our little pocket of the Universe was sucked out of the flow of Time and into this dark, unchanging abyss."

His language and manner of speaking had become more vehement, breaking through the cool demeanour with which he had first addressed me. Evidently the sight of the Earth forsaken by Time – and God? – affected him more deeply than he had wished to show.

"Then what are we to do?" I cried. "If Time no longer exists – are we to stay like this without end?" I could conceive of no more cheerless hell than being condemned to this wretched spot.

"Well, Mr. Hocker," said Dr. Ambrose, again smiling. "Of all the questions that a man can ask, I do love that one. What are we to do? The best question that can ever be asked, indeed. Because you must know what to do before you can do it. Eh? Don't you think so, my good Hocker?"

"For God's sake, you torment me with these riddles." Anger and indignation filled my breast, as I felt he was making mock of me. "If you know of some way of escaping this dreadful place, show it to me. I've, near gone out of my head as it is from all you've done to me. To me, and to – Tafe!" A pang of guilt struck me as I realised I had forgotten the companion who had saved my life. "Where is she?" I demanded. "What's happened to her?"

"Calm down, Hocker. The woman's perfectly safe. I've tended her injuries and deposited her in a warm bed, elsewhere. You'll have to inform me of all the adventures you two had together."

"Elsewhere!" I grabbed him by both shoulders and spun him roughly about to face me. "Elsewhere! There's no end to your damned lies. This isn't the final doom of the Earth, then, is it?"

"But it is, Hocker." He casually brushed my hands away from himself. "This is the Earth when Time no longer exists for it. But you asked for a way out? Perhaps, Hocker, perhaps. Not an escape exactly but… a prevention. A thwarting."

"What do you mean?"

"If this," said Ambrose, striking the ground with his walking stick, "is what remains when the Sea of Time – let's call it that, it's a nice metaphor – when the Sea of Time, as I say, has been drained away. Then obviously the thing to do is to go back and dam the hole through which it escaped. Eh? Doesn't it strike you that way?"

"I don't know." I felt suddenly weary. "I'm not sure I understand you. So much has happened. I'm very tired…"

"That's understandable," soothed Dr. Ambrose's voice. "Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I'd like to," I murmured. The vista around us seemed to darken.

"Then just close your eyes. That's it," came his voice, a little fainter. "Don't worry about falling. You're not really standing upright anyway, are you?"

Dimly, I was aware I was lying on a bed. The soft yellow glow of a gas lamp seeped under my eyelids for a second, then was gone. "Where's Tafe?" I mumbled.

"She's upstairs." Ambrose's voice was far away now. "Don't worry about her. Just sleep, Hocker. You're going to need all the strength you can summon very soon!"

The last I heard was the sound of a door being pulled shut.

I awoke with a calm, rested heart although my sleep had been full of nightmares. Visions of dark shapes moving in a dark world blurred and faded behind my eyes.

On a small table beside the bed in which I lay – and where in Creation was that? my refreshed mind was already wondering – I found a box of safety matches and a candle. I soon discovered my clothes draped across the ornately carved foot of the bed. They had through some miracle been restored to their original condition, clean and untorn.

I dressed quickly and hurried from the bedchamber. A murmur of distant voices led me down a short hallway to a wide staircase. The warm glow of gaslight diffused upward from the room at the base of the stairs. I snuffed the candle and descended.

Seated at a heavy oak table were Dr. Ambrose and a young man. Only when I was standing at the side of the table did I recognise the young man to be no man at all, but Tafe outfitted in a man's suit and collar. The elegant cut and the confidence with which she wore it all served to disguise her femininity from anyone who was not aware of her true status. She pulled a thick black cigar from her mouth and winked at me through a cloud of tobacco smoke. The only sign of her recent wounds was a white line, as of a long healed cut, beneath her jaw.

"Hocker," said Ambrose genially, "glad to see you up and about. Great things are afoot, me lad, and I want you to be in for your full share of them. Have a chair."

From between the table's legs, carved into griffins, I drew a seat and joined them. Ambrose pushed a platter of roast beef, steaming from the blood-red centre of its slices, coarse bread and a glass of dark lager toward me. "Much explaining to be done," he said, "and it would sit poorly on an empty stomach."

In truth, I was famished and needed little persuasion. Ambrose refilled my glass when it was only half drained. "From a little ale-house in the Berkshire moors," he noted, stoppering the jug. Tafe leaned back in her chair and drew luxuriously on her cigar with all the aspect of one sunk fast into the grip of some new-found pleasure.

"Mmm. Yes. Quite good, really," I managed to say between mouthfuls. "Surely you're having some?"

"We've dined already," said Ambrose, waving a hand at a pair of dirty dishes at the other end of the table. "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 all so strong."

Ambrose nodded, sober-faced. "Yes," he said quietly. "Something so large as this… When I first talked with you, so long ago it seems even to me, what was it said? Do you recall your words?"

"Truthfully, no."

" It took an Arthur to drive out the Saxons in the Fifth Century. It would take another hero such as that to fight fiends like the Morlocks… and where is such an Arthur Redivivus to be found?" Those were very perceptive words, Hocker. An intuitive grasp of the situation. Arthur Redivivus, indeed. Well put, that."

"Come, come," I said. "I'm well aware of the stories concerning King Arthur and his return from his death-like sleep whenever England is threatened, but that's all myths, and legends, and… hmm…"

"Myths and legends," said Ambrose, smiling wickedly. "The same as Merlin, I suppose? I'm flattered to sense that you've come to accept my true identity, but why should you pull short of the whole truth?"

My eyes flicked from his face to Tafe's impassively listening countenance, and back again. "King Arthur is alive?"

"Most assuredly."

"And you know where he is?"

"Of course," said Ambrose. "His and my destinies are much intertwined. I always know where he is."

"And-" My mind raced with possibilities. "And he's prepared to lead some sort of armed expeditionary force against the Morlocks?"

"Not quite. There's, ah, difficulties involved, shall we say."

Through the thick, stratifying layers of cigar haze I gazed at the enigmatic figure across from me. Could all he had said be true? What hope was there if it turned out to be lies? King Arthur lives… "Can we go to him?" I said. "See him?" I still had many questions, many points I did not yet understand, but I was willing to let those ride for the moment.

"Let us find a hansom outside," said Ambrose, rising from the table. "He's here in the very city of London itself."

Stepping outside of Dr. Ambrose's lodgings gave me my first sight of London since those nightmarish scenes of destruction and despair. My heart leaped to see the familiar outlines, whole and unbroken, silhouetted against the setting sun. Lamps were being lit all over the city to show the glowing pulse of a great metropolis in the full stretch of its powerful life. But if Ambrose's words were true, were there not even now dark things moving in the undispelled shadows? The very ground beneath our feet was being eaten away…

Soon Dr. Ambrose had hailed a hansom and, after giving directions to the river, assisted Tafe and myself inside. "I shall meet you at your destination," he said, standing on the curb. "Circumstances dictate that I follow a more circuitous route." He closed the hansom's door and signalled the driver on his topside ledge into motion.

How easily Tafe seemed to be taking this all in her stride! Child of a time more than one generation hence, she sat in the hansom's slightly tattered elegance, looking for all the world like some young Continental buck with no greater business to follow than seeing England on a grand tour organised by rich parents. Through the hansom's window she watched the passing cityscape and evening pedestrians with avid curiosity but no signs of being startled or amazed by any of it. Those responses had been denied her at birth by the swift and violent tenor of her own times.

"I say, Tafe," I addressed her. "What do you think of this Ambrose fellow? How much of what he's been telling us do you suppose is true?"

She turned to face me, her dark, intelligent eyes flashing from her mannish disguise like a young George Sand. There was clearly a keen wit in addition to the fighting spirit I had already had the chance to observe. "Ambrose?" she said. "Might be lying through his teeth for all we know. But what choice do we have except to follow along with him for now? If he's telling the truth about all these Morlocks and stuff then we've got to help him in whatever he's planning. And if he's lying, using us for something evil – aiding the Morlocks, maybe? – we'll have a better chance of fighting him if he thinks we trust him."

Her calm, unemotional analysis preoccupied my thoughts. I lapsed into silence, mulling over her words to the rhythm of the cabhorse's hooves, while she went back to watching the passing London scene.

Soon enough the hansom halted and we alighted. The driver, already paid his fare by Dr. Ambrose, rattled off. Looking about us, I recognised the building in front of us. I had observed it several times before on my various peregrinations about the city. Prompted by idle curiosity, I had even inquired in some nearby shops as to the building's nature, for it was a quite imposing modern edifice, set behind a high iron fence and well-groomed lawns. Yet seemingly it was inhabited only by an aged caretaker who saw that no street urchins or burglars penetrated its shuttered windows and thus gained access to its unlit interior. The local shopkeepers rumoured it to be a private clinic established by some wealthy foreign physician who had yet to make his appearance and begin his practice.

Things had apparently changed since last I had seen the building, for now the windows were all brightly lit up. As Tafe and watched from the street, the silhouetted figure of a nurse in her starched cap passed across one of the lower windows.

"I wonder what he sent us here for," said Tafe. "And where is he?"

Indeed, the mysterious Dr. Ambrose was nowhere to be seen. "Perhaps he has been delayed," I conjectured. "By whatever it was that necessitated his travelling separately."

"Well, we can't just stand around here." Tafe started walking along the high iron fence that surrounded the clinic's grounds. I followed her and within a few paces we found ourselves in darkness beyond the reach of the street lamps that graced the street in front of the building.

"Pssst! Hocker, Tafe – over here!" I turned and saw Ambrose's form separate from the deepest shadows along the fence. He beckoned us toward him. "Cheerful business, what?" he said when the three of us had formed a little conspiratorial knot against the iron railings.

"Why have you brought us here?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "What's our business got to do with some private clinic?"

"You'll see." Ambrose drew a cylindrical object from beneath his cloak.. It was a ship captain's brass-bound telescope which he quickly extended to its full length. "Take a sight on that large window there," he said, handing the telescope to me.

I obliged, and soon had focused the glass upon the window Ambrose had pointed out. The lenses were of excellent – or magical? – quality, revealing the room beyond the window pane in full detail.

"Well?" demanded Ambrose. "What do you see?"

"Hmm… I see a rather nicely appointed room, more like a drawing room of someone's home than a clinical facility. Books, fire on the grate, all that sort of thing. And an elderly man sitting in a wing chair, reading from a book." I passed the telescope to Tafe, who in turn focused it upon the window in question. "Is any of that important?" I asked.

"The man you see up there," said Ambrose coolly, "is none other than the reincarnated King Arthur, defender of Britain."

"But… but that's an old man in there!" I exclaimed. "Quite silver-haired!"

"Arthur has been born and grown old in many lives," said Ambrose. "Except those lives when he was cut down in the prime of his youth while performing his duty to England and all Christendom."

"But he's an old man now," I said. "What hope do we have of defeating the Morlocks with a champion like that?"

"Spoken like a snotty youngster," said Ambrose. "Old age is a great warrior's best time, when his military abilities are tempered with the truest wisdom. No, it's not Arthur's advanced years in this life that have weakened him and thus prevent him from leading the battle against the Morlocks. There are other factors at work here."

"Such as?"

"My dear Hocker, we are in the process of unravelling this mystery together. You and Tafe are my allies in piecing together a truth of which I possess only a few fragments. I know that Arthur is disastrously enfeebled at the present time, and I know who is responsible. But how it has been done and what we are to do about it are matters we are to discover jointly."

"I take it then," said I, "that Arthur is being held prisoner in this place? By whom?"

"Someone else just came into the room," said Tafe with her eye to the telescope. She peered intently at the lighted window for several more seconds, then murmured, "This is incredible. It looks like-"

"Let me see." I took the telescope from her willing hand and focused on the room's interior. "By God!" I exclaimed. "It- it is you!" I lowered the telescope and whirled upon Ambrose. "The man talking to Arthur is the exact twin of you! What's going on here?"

Without a word of explanation, Ambrose took the telescope from me and gazed at the two figures revealed through the window, the grey but still noble-looking old man and the unnervingly exact double of Ambrose himself. "Yes," he murmured, taking the telescope from his eye and collapsing it to its smallest form. "You've seen him. An old nemesis of mine, of all humanity to be exact; roused to activity again by this fiendish Time-juggling of the Morlocks."

"But who – or what – is he?"

"He is now going under the name of Dr. Merdenne, of Paris, the founder and head surgeon of his private clinic here in London. But I have known him in other times and places far removed from this. Perhaps the high point of his many previous careers was when he was known as Ibrahim, high counsellor to the Great Suleiman, back in the days when the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith and a constant menace to Christian Europe. Arthur and I both struggled with him then, and narrowly averted the defeat and extinction of all Christendom."

"This Merdenne is immortal, then – like you."

Ambrose's eyes narrowed to slits as he continued his gaze at the distant window. "Immortal, yes," he said. "But not like me. Merdenne – for so shall we call him now, as his true name should never be pronounced – is a caricature of myself and my powers, dedicated to a lust for evil dominion over men. But not as their ruler. Rather he lies dormant in the bowels of the Earth until an opportunity arises to manipulate in secret those of brutal and domineering ambitions. Thus he was Suleiman's counsellor, and now has thrown his wiles behind the Morlocks, with the dark hope of making himself the secret power behind their rule of all Time. He, even more than the Morlocks themselves, is our cruellest and most implacable enemy – subtle and with powers great as my own." Ambrose fell silent, gazing with unreadable emotions at the lighted window and the two small figures beyond the glass.

A cold wind swirled around us, and I shivered. Ambrose glanced at me sharply. "Yes," he said. "You're right. Here in the darkness is no place to speak of things like this. Let us find a little warmth and human noise in which to shelter ourselves. Dark secrets and plans will lead to dark actions soon enough."

He led us to a small pub a few streets away, where the stout proprietor in his stained apron nodded to Ambrose as if he were a long-familiar customer. Soon three of Ambrose's excellent cigars were turning the air blue in a booth at the rear of the pub, as we worked our way down through a pitcher of dark beer.

"It's like this," said Ambrose. The glowing tip of his cigar danced in the smoky haze. "King Arthur is reborn every generation in time to intercede against the direst threat facing the cherished Christian and human ideals that are embodied in England more than any other place. It's a commentary on humanity's penchant for mischief, inasmuch as there's always a threat to Christendom. Evil exists on its own but the best and brightest must be guarded as though they were but flickering candle flames; Hence Arthur and his cycle of lives and deaths.

"But-" His cigar jabbed at us. "It's more complicated than just that. The Fates have their little jokes and trials for us all. Arthur lives again and again, but each time he is born he has no memory of being Arthur. He grows into manhood – coward, fool, or even a hero – unaware that he is England's greatest defender called forth in her time of need."

"Then of what use is his being Arthur?" I said. "If he lives as no more than any other man, good or bad – of what good is his other true self that is locked away?"

"Quite right, Hocker. Very perceptive." Ambrose drew long and meditatively upon his cigar. "Locked away indeed – but there is a key."

I glanced over at Tafe but her expression remained unchanged behind her own veil of exhaled smoke.

"The key is Excalibur," said Ambrose quietly. "Arthur's sword, though it is much older than even he. Its power has diminished since the long distant age when Arthur's ancestor Fergus chopped mountains in two with it. But it is still a weapon of great strength, and more than that. Every time Arthur dies, Excalibur returns into the earth and is lost – until it finds its way into the hands of one who can read the inscription on its blade and doing so, knows that he is not the person he thought he was, that the name he bore is not his true one, that he is in fact Arthur Pendragon, the defender of England. Sword and key – Excalibur is both."

"That is all very well, I'm sure," said I, "but where is this magical weapon at the present moment? I trust you know of its whereabouts."

"Not so simple as that, Hocker." Ambrose's lean face darkened with his inner thoughts. "Arthur was reincarnated in this life as one Henry Morsmere – now Brigadier-General Morsmere – after a long and minorly distinguished military career – and found the sword Excalibur somewhere in the smoking aftermath of one of the Crimean battlefields. I was watching him from behind the blackened remnant of a tree and saw him stoop down at the sight of his seemingly accidental discovery. When he stood back up with the blade in his hands I could see that he had read the inscription and that he knew who he truly was. No longer General Morsmere, but Arthur. His eyes were as dark as wells with the memories of the many lives and accumulated centuries through which he's been."

"Just like that, eh?" said I. "He remembers everything?"

Ambrose nodded. "In an instant it happens and he is transformed. The inscription on Excalibur's blade is formed in an ancient runic script. The reading of these words summons up Arthur's real identity to his mind. I saw it happen on that Crimean battlefield as I had seen it happen many times before, but I did not reveal myself to him then, though he would certainly have recognised me as his trusted adviser and friend. Things were not yet at a stage where his intervention was needed. Soon enough that messy, blundering business in the Crimea was ended, and Arthur – still posing for convenience's sake as General Morsmere – returned to England, retired from his military status and took a suite at the Savoy to await the coming of the task for which he had been summoned to life again. He kept Excalibur hidden under a false bottom of his old military campaign chest"

"I see." The image occupied me of Gen. Morsmere/Arthur sitting alone in his hotel suite, patiently waiting for the danger to England to appear for which he had been summoned to life again. Sometimes, no doubt, he must have taken Excalibur from his chest's secret compartment and lightly ran a whetstone down its gleaming length. And other times he very likely looked out the window upon our bustling, modern and prosperous world, and thought – ah, what would he have thought? For some reason I couldn't imagine this proud old warrior-king looking upon the scene with much satisfaction. I cut short my melancholy musing and returned my attention to Ambrose's exposition.

"So," he continued, with another wave of his cigar, "when I became at last aware of the grim situation with the Morlocks – for with my old adversary's guidance they had managed to conceal themselves from my notice until their invasion plans were well underway – I then hied myself to Arthur's pied-aterre in order that we could formulate together a strategy to roust the Morlocks from their toehold in the London sewers of this time. But when I arrived at his Savoy suite I discovered not Arthur, but-" He broke off to take a quick pull at his beer.

"Who was it?" I interjected.

"No one." Grey flakes of ash floated down to the table. "No one at all. Arthur was gone. None of the hotel staff had seen General Morsmere, as they knew him, for several days. Inveigling myself into his suite, I found that Excalibur was missing as well from the secret compartment in Morsmere's chest."

"Abducted!" I cried. "Abducted by this opponent of yours who now calls himself Merdenne."

"Quite right, Hocker, as I soon found out through my own sources. I have a large network of people who, through friendship, fear or finance, manage to keep an eye on most things that happen in London for me. One such informant quickly discovered Arthur's whereabouts – Merdenne's clinic." Which was also the first revelation to me that my old adversary was involved in all this."

"But I don't understand," said I. "If, as you say, Arthur's fighting prowess is undiminished by age and he was in possession of his miraculous Excalibur as well, how were his abductors able to overpower him and bear him off to Merdenne's clinic? Surely he would at least have put up enough of a struggle to alarm the management of the Savoy. And by what deviltry is he kept a hapless prisoner in the clinic?"

"Those are mysteries, Hocker, that are quite deeper than my present knowledge." Ambrose's eyes darkened with brooding. "Many answers will depend upon your getting Arthur out of Merdenne's grasp."

I glanced across at Tafe and saw that even her eyes had widened a bit in surprise. "What was that," said I to Ambrose, "about getting Arthur out of the clinic?"

"Yes, well, quite frankly, it's going to be up to you and Tafe. That's the whole point of my enlisting you as my allies. It would be disastrous for me even to attempt to enter the clinic. The automatic result would be my death and an enormous increase in Merdenne's own power. The very building itself is a trap designed to leech off my spiritual power and transfer it to Merdenne. No, as I said, the task falls to you and Tafe – to enter the clinic, find both Arthur and Excalibur, and bring them both out again."

"But surely," I protested, "if Merdenne can devise a trap such as that for you, no doubt even worse pitfalls await lesser figures such as we two. What better chance would Tafe and I have in such a place."

"No chance at all," said Ambrose placidly. "The only exit you would make would be as cinders and ashes rising out of one of the clinic's chimneys, and the Morlock's invasion plans would continue apace. True enough are your forebodings – if Merdenne were to be aware of your having entered the clinic."

"And what's to prevent that? Surely the place is rigged with alarms enough to warn him of any surreptitious visitors."

"Indeed so, Hocker. You anticipate my every precaution. But alarms, effective as they might ordinarily be, are of little avail to someone who is, shall we say, too distracted to hear them."

"You propose, then, to divert Merdenne's attention while Tafe and I invade his stronghold and liberate Arthur? How, pray, do you intend to do that?" A touch of sarcasm entered my voice, increased by my anxiety over the whole project.

"That," said Ambrose, "is my concern. You needn't worry over it."

"And what should happen if your ploy fails and Merdenne discovers the invasion before we are quit of the premises? What then?"

"Then, Hocker, he will hideously murder you and Tafe, hide Arthur in some new place beyond my powers of discovery, and all will be lost. It is as simple as that."

"Oh." My cigar had gone out, and I pulled disconsolately at the dead stub.

"Well, Hocker?" said Ambrose after a moment's silence on all our parts. "I can't very well force you to help in a matter like this."

"I suppose not. Still – one never really plans on encountering this sort of thing."

"Show a little backbone," said Tafe. They were the first words she had spoken since we had entered the pub. "Things will get pretty rotten soon enough if you don't do anything at all. You saw what it'll be like. At least this way we've got a chance of preventing all that."

Shamed at this rebuke from a woman, I nodded. "When do we start?" I dropped the cigar stub to the littered floor and ground it beneath my boot heel.

"Capital," said Ambrose. "We haven't a moment to lose. Listen…"

Tafe and I leaned our heads closer toward him. I followed the outlines of his plan, while the cowardly portion of my heart turned away and fled.