Newman was the most recent addition to this special isolated fraternity and its youngest member. The men took an instant liking to him; it had been a very long time since most of them had seen a child, although Newman preferred not to be thought a child and tried whensoever possible to acquit himself in the blustering, stouthearted ways of men. Sometimes Professor Chivery, during his most confused moments, would mistake Newman for a youthful Harry Scadger, whom he had tutored when Harry was the same age as Newman. And Newman would never correct him, for there were things that Newman learnt from the professor when playing to the old man’s faulty memory that were good to know: games and tricks with numbers and mathematical theorems that could be put to practical application. Chivery was especially fond of explaining why a circle could not be squared, basing his staunch belief that this ancient geometric conundrum was insoluble on the fact that pi was a transcendental number. He was alone in this regard, most mathematical scholars of the Dell, and the great arithmeticians who taught them through the Ensyke, believing it only a matter of time before quadrature of the circle could be taken to proof.
Chivery was alone in another respect; he had been placed with the Limbo Returnees, though he was not one. The reason could hardly be discerned, though some of Newman’s attic-mates wondered if his obsessitor diagnosis made him perfect company for the Outland-obsessed Returnees.
“Newman, why do you stare at him so?” asked one of the men. He was a lean, spindle-limbed man with a long, scraggly beard and his name was Quilp. Christopher Quilp had lived for many years in this cock-loft, though not so long as George, and had spent a goodly number of those years of occupancy whittling little soldiers from blocks of wood. The soldier he presently held in his hand — very nearly finished but for the buttons and pockets of its uniform — was soon to be added to the company of a veritable miniature battalion of other such whittled soldiers. It was not a hard look that he gave Newman, for Mr. Quilp was quite fond of the boy, and enjoyed playing “Waterloo” with him upon the floor during those times in which Newman would allow the young child within him to come out for a bit of a juvenile frolic.
“I have noticed a pattern about the professor,” said Newman, happy to explain his sudden interest in Chivery’s repose.“I’ve noticed first that when he has had a hard night and is crying and calling out in his slumber, his restless state continues when he rises in the morning.”
“Yes, that is where we get the term ‘restless,’ boy — from getting no rest.” This from a man named Bolo who was quick with a quip. He yawned and then closed his eyes again upon his pillow in a corner of the room. Although the men were pale-skinned from having been separated for so long from the browning rays of the sun — the windows of the attic room having been boarded up and then plastered over many years ago — Bolo’s epidermis was without any colour whatsoever, so that one need not look too close to see the trails of all the veins in his face and neck and arms.
“Newman was making a point, Bolo,” chastised George Muntle.“Finish your point, Newman.”
“I was going to say what else I have found in the pattern. After the turbulent sleep, the professor seems very different the next day — and sometimes he even begins to make sense.”
George thought for a moment. “Newman is right. There are such moments, as we all well know, and they do tend to follow a night of troubled sleep. It is as if the man’s brain in repose is attempting to repair itself. I have played chess with him on such days, for he is quite sharp and coherent then. By the bye, Quilp, whittle me a new rook, for there is one that has lost nearly all of its crenellation. Formerly I had thought Chivery wholly healed during such amazing periods. But they do not last. He inevitably lapses back into his wonted state of lunacy.”
“Alas and alack,” said Bolo, cracking the joints in his thumbs.
George smiled. “But perhaps this will be one of those days in which I shall be in for a good game of chess.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Muntle, I’m not quite up for chess,” said the professor, raising his head to rest it upon the shelf of his palm. “For there is far more important business that we must attend to to-day.”
The professor rose to put himself into the Hindoo sitting position and to address not only George, but Newman and his other attic companions, at least two of whom greeted this temporary state of sanity and coherence on the part of the professor with commendatory applause.
“My sleep was troubled last night by dreams of what is soon to come and by the fact that I am helpless to do anything about it.”
“Yes, we know the dreams well, Professor,” said George. “It is the Noah story, is it not? That there is to be a great flood and all will perish save a ridiculous number of animal pairs that could not possibly fit themselves into the ark unless it be the size of France.”
The Professor nodded. “That story, Muntle, or at least the way I told it, was wholly symbolistic.”
“So what, then, does the flood represent?” asked Bolo in a loud voice from the other end of the long room.
“Why, it represents what it actually is. In true fact, I am fearful that a flood is soon to wash all over this entire valley.”
“And kill us all,” said Quilp without animation. “Yes, we’re quite familiar with how it all plays out, old boy. Have you anything new to add that doesn’t include placing your notebooks before us and asking us to glean meaning from all the numbers and mathematical formulæ scribbled in them?”
“Yet there is meaning. A great deal of meaning,” expostulated the professor. “Newman, do you not believe me? Have even you become so inured to my — my—?”
“Ravings?” offered Bolo, still reclined upon the floor in a lounging aspect.
“That is what I do?”
“Most certainly,” said Quilp. “We stopt listening long ago. Because we know that you’re mad — generally speaking — except for the stray moment of pure and clear perspicuity, which we now know generally comes after a very restless night, such as the one you just had.”
“Is it forenoon? It feels like afternoon.”
“Does it matter what time it is, Professor Chivery?” asked Bolo. “When every hour feels like every other hour in this perpetually candle-lighted warren?”
“What do all the numbers mean, Professor?” asked Newman. “Tell us now whilst it could possibly make a little sense to our dull minds.”
“Do you really wish to know?” asked the professor with an excited lift to his voice. “For I have been most eager to tell you since I completed my calculations roughly two days ago.”
George laughed. “Is that why you’ve stopt writing in your notebooks, Chivery?”
“I had thought it was because he had finally run out of room,” injected the comical Mr. Bolo.
“No, no, no! I would have celebrated it at that moment, had my communicative faculties been sharper.”
“Then what is Stage One?” asked George. “You have mentioned a ‘stage one’ and then a ‘stage two’ quite often in your ravings. Tell us now whilst you are lucid. We’ll listen.”
“Of course we’ll listen,” added Bolo. “For what else is there to do in this rat-nest but talk and listen?”
“And lose all of your toothpicks to me in every game of backgammon we play,” jeered Newman in warm jest.