Time’s Eye

Today it wasn’t the destiny of empires that was on anybody’s mind. The soldiers streamed out over the heavily trampled patch of earth that served as the fort’s parade ground, heading for a spot perhaps a hundred yards from the gate. There, Josh could see what looked like a pawnbroker’s ball hovering in the air. It was silvered, and glinted brightly in the sunlight. A crowd of perhaps fifty troopers, orderlies and noncombatants had gathered under that mysterious sphere, a mob in various states of informal dress.

In the middle of it all, of course, was Ruddy. Even now he was taking command of the situation, stalking back and forth beneath the hovering ball, peering up at it through his gig-lamp spectacles and scratching his chin as if he were as sage as Newton. Ruddy was short, no more than five feet six, and somewhat squat, perhaps a little pudgy. He had a broad face, a defiant mustache and over bristling eyebrows a wide slab of a forehead already exposed by a receding tide of hair. Bristling— yes, thought Josh with a kind of exasperated fondness, bristling was the word for Ruddy. With his stiff, if vigorous, bearing, he looked thirty-nine, not nineteen. He had an unsightly red blemish on his cheek, his “Lahore sore,” that he thought had come from an ant bite, which would respond to no treatment.

The soldiers sometimes mocked Ruddy for his self-importance and pomposity—no fighting man had much time for noncombatants anyhow. But at the same time they were fond of him; in his dispatches to the CMG, and in his barrack-room tales, Ruddy loaned these “Tommies,” far from home, a rough eloquence they lacked themselves.

Josh pushed his way through the crowd to Ruddy. “I can’t see what’s so strange about this floating fellow—a conjuring trick?”

Ruddy grunted. “More likely some trickery by the Tsar. A new type of heliograph, perhaps.”

They were joined by Cecil de Morgan, the factor. “If it’s jadoo ,I’d like to know the secret of the magic. Here—you.” He approached one of the sepoys. “Your cricket bat—may I borrow it? …” He got hold of the bat and waved it through the air. He passed it under and around the floating ball. “You see? There’s really no possibility of anything holding it up, no invisible wire or glass rod, however contorted.”

The sepoys were less amused. “Asli nahin! Fareib!”

Ruddy muttered, “Some are saying this is an Eye, an Evil Eye. Perhaps we need a nuzzoo-watto to avert its baleful gaze.”

Josh placed a hand on his shoulder. “My friend, I think you’ve imbibed more of India than you care to admit. It’s probably a balloon, filled with hot air. Nothing more exciting than that.”

But Ruddy was distracted by a worried-looking junior officer who came shoving through the crowd, evidently searching for somebody. Ruddy hurried over to speak with him.

“A balloon, you say?” de Morgan said to Josh. “Then how does it hold so still in the breeze? And—watch this!” He swung the cricket bat over his head like an axe, and slammed it against the floating sphere. There was a resounding smash, and to Josh’s astonishment the bat just bounced off the sphere, which remained as immovable as if it was set in rock. De Morgan held up the bat, and Josh saw it had splintered. “Hurt my blooming fingers! Now tell me, sir, have you ever seen such a thing?”

“Not I,” Josh admitted. “But if there’s a way to make a profit out of it, Morgan, I’m sure you’re the man.”

“ De Morgan, Joshua.” De Morgan was a factor, who made a handsome living from supplying Jamrud and other forts of the Frontier. Aged about thirty, he was a tall, oleaginous sort of man. Even here, miles from the nearest town, he wore a new khaki suit dyed a delicate olive green, a sky-blue tie, and a pith helmet as white as snow. He was a type, Josh was learning, who was attracted to the fringe of civilization, where there were fat profits to be made and a certain slackness to the enforcement of the law. The officers disapproved of him and his like, but de Morgan kept himself popular enough with his supplies of beer and tobacco for the men, even prostitutes when possible, and occasional bags of hashish for the officers—and for Ruddy too.

Despite de Morgan’s stunt, the show seemed to be over. As the sphere didn’t move or spin, or open up, or fire bullets, the audience appeared to be getting bored. Besides, some of them were shivering in this unseasonably cold afternoon, as that wind from the north continued to blow. One or two drifted back to the fort, and the party began to break up.

But now there was shouting from the edge of the group: something else unusual had turned up. De Morgan, his nostrils flaring, once more on the scent of opportunity, ran off that way.

Ruddy plucked at Josh’s shoulder. “Enough of these magic tricks,” he said. “We should get back. We’re soon going to have a lot of work, I fear!”

“What do you mean?”