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.* * *When Wilson, Chief of Security at Portland, arrived at his office, his assistant handed him a message:“The Billy Celeste, U.S.Navy from 1980 has landed and requests permission to disembark.”Wilson looked at his assistant and raised an eyebrow.“Fever?”“And how.Even the cockroaches.”Wilson reached for a standard “Quarantine and Repatriation” form.“That’s Nordenholz’s ship, isn’t it?”“Right.”“Miserable old bastard.One of these days he’s going to find my foot up his skinny ass.” He signed the form and tossed it into the Out basket.LOCKER ROOMIt is Christmas Eve and Toby is alone in the locker room.The old YMCA building has been sold and only a few boys still stay on.They have moved into the locker room because it is warmer and the showers are there.Now all the other boys have gone away somewhere for Christmas and Toby knows that most of them will not be coming back, since the building has to be vacated by January 18, 1924.Toby is reading The Time Machine by H.G.Wells.I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle.I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then …I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling …I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling.They are excessively unpleasant.There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash.As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing …The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye.… The sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band.… Minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring …There is a stew simmering on a gas ring and occasionally Toby stirs it, listening to the chimes from the Salvation Army mission across the street playing “Silent Night.” He remembers other Christmases, the smell of pine and plum pudding and the oil smell of his steam engine.He had been brought up in a three-story red brick house in a middle-western town.When he was six years old his parents died, in the flu epidemic of 1918.After that, a series of uncles and foster parents took care of him.Nobody wanted Toby for long, though he was a beautiful boy with yellow hair and huge blue eyes like deep lakes.He made people uneasy.There was a sleepy animal quiescence about him.He never talked except in answer to a question or to express a need.His silence seemed to hold a threat or a criticism, and people didn’t like it.And there was something else: Toby smelled.It was a sulfurous rank animal smell that permeated his room and drifted from his clothes.His father and mother had had the same smell about them, and they kept a number of pets: cats, raccoons, ferrets and skunks.“The little people,” his mother called them.Toby took the little people with him wherever he went, and his uncle John, an executive on the way up, liked big people.“John, we have to get rid of that boy.He smells like a polecat,” Toby’s aunt would say.“Well, Martha, perhaps there’s something wrong with his glands.” The uncle blushed, feeling that glands was a dirty word.Metabolism would have been much better …“That’s not all.There’s something in his room.Something he carries about with him.Some sort of animal.”“Now Martha.…”“I tell you, John, he’s evil.… Did you notice the way he was looking at Mr.Norton? Like some horrible little gnome.…”Mr.Norton was John’s boss.He had indeed been visibly discomfited by Toby’s silent appraising stare.Looking back, Toby could see the twinkle of Christmas-tree ornaments.Far away his father points to Betelgeuse in the night sky.The locker room holds the silence of absent male voices like a deserted gymnasium or barracks.The boys have built a partition of beaverboard and set up their cots in this improvised room.There is a long table with initials carved in the top, folding chairs, and a few old magazines in the main room where the gas ring is located.In one corner is a withered Christmas tree that Toby pulled out of a trash can.This is part of his stage set.He is waiting for someone.He tastes the stew.It is flat and the meat is tough and stringy.He adds two bouillon cubes.Another fifteen or twenty minutes.Meanwhile, he will take a shower.Naked, waiting for the water to heat up, he is examining the graffiti in the toilet cubicle, running his hands over phallic drawings with the impersonal interest of an antiquarian.He is a plant, an intrusion.He has never seen the other boys, a whiff of steaming pink flesh, snapping towels, purple bruises.He leans against the wall of the toilet as silver spots boil slowly in front of his eyes.Christmas Eve, 1923: You can see the old YMCA building.Someone he carried with: Hi/ …“Hi.It’s me, Toby.”His father points to a few boys still staying there … the shower’s silence.Other boys have gone away.Part time in this improvised room.Building has to be vacated by the folding time machine where the gas ring is hot occasionally
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