A pause. Silence. Quartermain found he didn’t know what to say next.
Goodbye then?
The old man nodded, his eyes misted with tears.
His bed, the coverlet, his body was flat as a tabletop. What had been there for seventy years was now totally and completely gone.
‘Goodbye,’ said Mr Quartermain into the still night air.
I wonder, he thought, where, oh just where in hell he has gone?
The great courthouse clock struck three.
And Mr Quartermain slept.
Douglas opened his eyes in the dark. The town clock finished the last stroke of three.
He looked at the ceiling. Nothing. He looked at the windows. Nothing. Only the night breeze fluttered the pale curtains.
‘Who’s there?’ he whispered.
Nothing.
‘Someone’s here,’ he whispered.
And at last he asked again, ‘Who,’ he said, ‘is there?’
Here, something murmured.
‘What?’
Me, something spoke in the night.
‘Who’s me?’
Here, was the quiet answer.
‘Where?’
Here, quietly.
‘Where?’
And Douglas looked all around and then down.
‘There?’
Yes, oh, yes.
Down along his body, below his chest, below his navel, between his two hipbones, where his legs joined. There it was.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered.
You’ll find out.
‘Where did you come from?’
A billion years past. A billion years yet to come.