The Anubis Gates

A portly little red-haired fellow was staring at him from the corner by the Royal Exchange, so Doyle, having developed a wariness of the scrutiny of strangers, walked purposefully away east, toward Gracechurch Street, which would lead him down to London Bridge and across the river to Kusiak’s.

Could Ashbless have been intentionally lying? But why on earth should he want to? Doyle looked furtively behind, but the red-haired lad wasn’t following him. You’d better relax, he told himself—every time somebody looks at you directly you assume it’s one of Horrabin’s beggar agents. Well, he thought, resuming the puzzle, the next event I think I’m sure of in the Ashbless chronology is that he’s seen to shoot one of the Dancing Apes in one of the Exchange Alley coffee houses on Saturday the twenty-second of this month. But I can’t wait a week and a half. I’d be too far gone with pneumonia to benefit from even twentieth century medicine, probably. I’ll have to—God help me!—approach Doctor Romany. The thought made him feel sick. Maybe if I, I don’t know, strap a pistol around my neck, and keep my finger near the trigger, and tell him, “We bargain or I’ll blow my own head off, and you won’t learn one thing… ” Would he dare to call my bluff? Would I dare let it be a bluff?

He was passing a narrow street off Aldgate, and somebody crossing one of the rooftop bridges was whistling. Doyle slowed to listen. It was a familiar tune, and so melancholy and nostalgic that it almost seemed chosen as a fitting accompaniment for his lonely evening walk. What the hell is the name of that, he wondered absently as he walked on. Not Greensleeves, not Londonderry Air …

He froze and his eyes widened in shock. It was Yesterday, the Beatles song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

For a moment he just stood there, stunned, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand.

Then he was running back. “Hey!” he yelled when he was below the little bridge, though there was nobody on it now. “Hey, come back! I’m from the twentieth century too!” A couple of passersby were giving him the warily entertained look people save for street lunatics, but nobody peered down from the rooftop level. “Damn it,” Doyle yelled despairingly, “Coca Cola, Clint Eastwood, Cadillac!”

He ran into the building and blundered his way upstairs and even managed to find and open the roof door, but there was no one in sight up there. He crossed the little bridge and then descended through the other building, panting, but singing Yesterday as loudly as he could, and shouting the lyrics down all cross corridors. He drew many complaints but didn’t get anyone who seemed to know what the song was.

“I’ll give you a place to hide away, mate,” shouted one furious old man who seemed to think Doyle’s behavior had been specifically calculated to upset him, “if you don’t get out of here this instant!” He shook both fists at Doyle.

Doyle hurried down the last flight of stairs and opened the door out to the street. By this time he was beginning to doubt that he’d even really heard it. I probably heard something that sounded like it, he thought as he drew the door shut behind him, and wanted so much to believe somebody else had found a way back to 1810 that I convinced myself it was the Beatles tune.

The sky was still a gray luminescence behind the rooftops, but it was darkening. He hurried on southward, toward London Bridge. I don’t want to be late for the six-thirty shift at Kusiak’s stable, he reflected wearily—I need that job.

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