He said hoarsely, “Kleph—”
The tableau by the window broke. Every head turned, and Oliver saw the faces of strangers staring at him, some few in embarrassment avoiding his eyes, but most seeking them out with that avid, inhuman curiosity which is common to a type in all crowds at accident scenes. But these people were here by design, audience at a vast disaster timed almost for their coming.
Kleph got up unsteadily, her velvet dinner gown tripping her as she rose. She set down a cup and swayed a little as she came toward the door, saying, “Oliver … Oliver—” in a sweet, uncertain voice. She was drunk, he saw, and wrought up by the catastrophe to a pitch of stimulation in which she was not very sure what she was doing.
Oliver heard himself saying in a thin voice not his own, “W-what was it, Kleph? What happened? What—” But “happened” seemed so inadequate a word for the incredible panorama below that he had to choke back hysterical laughter upon the struggling questions, and broke off entirely, trying to control the shaking that had seized his body.
Kleph made an unsteady stoop and seized a steaming cup. She came to him, swaying, holding it out – her panacea for all ills.
“Here, drink it, Oliver – we are all quite safe here, quite safe.” She thrust the cup to his lips and he gulped automatically, grateful for the fumes that began their slow, coiling surcease in his brain with the first swallow.
“It was a meteor,” Kleph was saying. “Quite a small meteor, really. We are perfectly safe here. This house was never touched.”
Out of some cell of the unconscious Oliver heard himself saying incoherently, “Sue? Is Sue—” He could not finish.
Kleph thrust the cup at him again. “I think she may be safe – for a while. Please, Oliver – forget about all that and drink.”
“But you knew!” Realization of that came belatedly to his stunned brain. “You could have given warning, or—”
“How could we change the past?” Kleph asked. “We knew – but could we stop the meteor? Or warn the city? Before we come we must give our word never to interfere—”
* * *
Their voices had risen imperceptibly to be audible above the rising volume of sound from below. The city was roaring now, with flames and cries and the crash of falling buildings. Light in the room turned lurid and pulsed upon the walls and ceiling in red light and redder dark.
Downstairs a door slammed. Someone laughed. It was high, hoarse, angry laughter. Then from the crowd in the room someone gasped and there was a chorus of dismayed cries. Oliver tried to focus upon the window and the terrible panorama beyond, and found he could not.
It took several seconds of determined blinking to prove that more than his own vision was at fault. Kleph whimpered softly and moved against him. His arms closed about her automatically, and he was grateful for the warm, solid flesh against him. This much at least he could touch and be sure of, though everything else that was happening might be a dream. Her perfume and the heady perfume of the tea rose together in his head, and for an instant, holding her in this embrace that must certainly be the last time he ever held her, he did not care that something had gone terribly wrong with the very air of the room.
It was blindness – not continuous, but a series of swift, widening ripples between which he could catch glimpses of the other faces in the room, strained and astonished in the flickering light from the city.
The ripples came faster. There was only a blink of sight between them now, and the blinks grew briefer and briefer, the intervals of darkness more broad.
From downstairs the laughter rose again up the stairwell. Oliver thought he knew the voice. He opened his mouth to speak, but a door nearby slammed open before he could find his tongue, and Omerie shouted down the stairs.
“Hollia?” he roared above the roaring of the city. “Hollia, is that you?”
She laughed again, triumphantly. “I warned you!” her hoarse, harsh voice called. “Now come out in the street with the rest of us if you want to see any more!”
“Hollia!” Omerie shouted desperately. “Stop this or—”
The laughter was derisive. “What will you do, Omerie? This time I hid it too well – come down in the street if you want to watch the rest.”
* * *
There was angry silence in the house. Oliver could feel Kleph’s quick, excited breathing light upon his cheek, feel the soft motions of her body in his arms. He tried consciously to make the moment last, stretch it out to infinity. Everything had happened too swiftly to impress very clearly on his mind anything except what he could touch and hold. He held her in an embrace made consciously light, though he wanted to clasp her in a tight, despairing grip, because he was sure this was the last embrace they would ever share.
The eye-straining blinks of light and blindness went on. From far away below the roar of the burning city rolled on, threaded together by the long, looped cadences of the sirens that linked all sounds into one.
Then in the bewildering dark another voice sounded from the hall downstairs. A man’s voice, very deep, very melodious, saying:
“What is this? What are you doing here? Hollia – is that you?”
Oliver felt Kleph stiffen in his arms. She caught her breath, but she said nothing in the instant while heavy feet began to mount the stairs, coming up with a solid, confident tread that shook the old house to each step. Then Kleph thrust herself hard out of Oliver’s arms. He heard her high, sweet, excited voice crying, “Cenbe! Cenbe!” and she ran to meet the newcomer through the waves of dark and light that swept the shaken house.
* * *
Oliver staggered a little and felt a chair seat catching the back of his legs. He sank into it and lifted to his lips the cup he still held. Its steam was warm and moist in his face, though he could scarcely make out the shape of the rim.
He lifted it with both hands and drank.
* * *
When he opened his eyes it was quite dark in the room. Also it was silent except for a thin, melodious humming almost below the threshold of sound. Oliver struggled with the memory of a monstrous nightmare. He put it resolutely out of his mind and sat up, feeling an unfamiliar bed creak and sway under him.
This was Kleph’s room. But no – Kleph’s no longer. Her shining hangings were gone from the walls, her white resilient rug, her pictures. The room looked as it had looked before she came, except for one thing.
In the far corner was a table – a block of translucent stuff – out of which light poured softly. A man sat on a low stool before it, leaning forward, his heavy shoulders outlined against the glow. He wore earphones and he was making quick, erratic notes upon a pad on his knee, swaying a little as if to the tune of unheard music.
The curtains were drawn, but from beyond them came a distant, muffled roaring that Oliver remembered from his nightmare. He put a hand to his face, aware of a feverish warmth and a dipping of the room before his eyes. His head ached, and there was a deep malaise in every limb and nerve.
As the bed creaked, the man in the corner turned, sliding the earphones down like a collar. He had a strong, sensitive face above a dark beard, trimmed short. Oliver had never seen him before, but he had that air Oliver knew so well by now, of remoteness which was the knowledge of time itself lying like a gulf between them.
When he spoke his deep voice was impersonally kind.
“You had too much euphoriac, Wilson,” he said, aloofly sympathetic. “You slept a long while.”
“How long?” Oliver’s throat felt sticky when he spoke.
The man did not answer. Oliver shook his head experimentally. He said, “I thought Kleph said you don’t get hangovers from—” Then another thought interrupted the first, and he said quickly, “Where is Kleph?” He looked confusedly toward the door.