Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter Page A

paces we found ourselves in darkness beyond the reach of the street lamps that graced the street in front of the building.
    Â Â "Pssst! Hocker, Tafe – over here!" I turned and saw Ambrose's form separate from the deepest shadows along the fence. He beckoned us toward him. "Cheerful business, what?" he said when the three of us had formed a little conspiratorial knot against the iron railings.
    Â Â "Why have you brought us here?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "What's our business got to do with some private clinic?"
    Â Â "You'll see." Ambrose drew a cylindrical object from beneath his cloak.. It was a ship captain's brass-bound telescope which he quickly extended to its full length. "Take a sight on that large window there," he said, handing the telescope to me.
    Â Â I obliged, and soon had focused the glass upon the window Ambrose had pointed out. The lenses were of excellent – or magical? – quality, revealing the room beyond the window pane in full detail.
    Â Â "Well?" demanded Ambrose. "What do you see?"
    Â Â "Hmm… I see a rather nicely appointed room, more like a drawing room of someone's home than a clinical facility. Books, fire on the grate, all that sort of thing. And an elderly man sitting in a wing chair, reading from a book." I passed the telescope to Tafe, who in turn focused it upon the window in question. "Is any of that important?" I asked.
    Â Â "The man you see up there," said Ambrose coolly, "is none other than the reincarnated King Arthur, defender of Britain."
    Â Â "But… but that's an old man in there!" I exclaimed. "Quite silver-haired!"
    Â Â "Arthur has been born and grown old in many lives," said Ambrose. "Except those lives when he was cut down in the prime of his youth while performing his duty to England and all Christendom."
    Â Â "But he's an old man now ," I said. "What hope do we have of defeating the Morlocks with a champion like that?"
    Â Â "Spoken like a snotty youngster," said Ambrose. "Old age is a great warrior's best time, when his military abilities are tempered with the truest wisdom. No, it's not Arthur's advanced years in this life that have weakened him and thus prevent him from leading the battle against the Morlocks. There are other factors at work here."
    Â Â "Such as?"
    Â Â "My dear Hocker, we are in the process of unravelling this mystery together. You and Tafe are my allies in piecing together a truth of which I possess only a few fragments. I know that Arthur is disastrously enfeebled at the present time, and I know who is responsible. But how it has been done and what we are to do about it are matters we are to discover jointly."
    Â Â "I take it then," said I, "that Arthur is being held prisoner in this place? By whom?"
    Â Â "Someone else just came into the room," said Tafe with her eye to the telescope. She peered intently at the lighted window for several more seconds, then murmured, "This is incredible. It looks like–"
    Â Â "Let me see." I took the telescope from her willing hand and focused on the room's interior. "By God!" I exclaimed. "It– it is you!" I lowered the telescope and whirled upon Ambrose. "The man talking to Arthur is the exact twin of you! What's going on here?"
    Â Â Without a word of explanation, Ambrose took the telescope from me and gazed at the two figures revealed through the window, the grey but still noble-looking old man and the unnervingly exact double of Ambrose himself. "Yes," he murmured, taking the telescope from his eye and collapsing it to its smallest form. "You've seen him. An old nemesis of mine, of all humanity to be exact; roused to activity again by this fiendish Time-juggling of the Morlocks."
    Â Â "But who – or what – is he?"
    Â Â "He is now going under the name of Dr. Merdenne, of Paris, the founder and head surgeon of his private clinic here in London. But I have known him in other times and places far removed from