He came to a stop.
“And that is it?” I asked.
“That is it,” he told me. “I hope we thought of everything.”
“I believe you did,” I told him. “Now, if Cemetery will only buy it.”
“I think they already have,” said O’Gillicuddy. “You are here, aren’t you? And I am here and the museum’s here and the temporal selector is waiting for you.”
“You thought of everything,” said Cynthia, with some scorn and anger. “There is one thing you forgot. What about Fletcher’s composition? How could you have forgotten that? If it hadn’t been for his dream of making a composition, none of this would have come about. You don’t know how he worked for it and dreamed of it and . . .”
“I thought you might ask that,” said O’Gillicuddy. “If you’ll just step across the hall to the auditorium . . .”
“You mean you have it here!”
“Of course we have it here. Mr. Carson and Bronco did a splendid job of it. It is a masterpiece. It has lived all these years. It will live forever.”
I shook my head, bewildered.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Carson?” asked O’Gillicuddy. “You should be very pleased.”
“Don’t you see what you’ve done,” said Cynthia, angrily, her eyes bright with tears. “Experiencing it would spoil it all. How could you possibly suggest that he see and hear and feel a work he has not even done? You should not have told him. Now it will always be in the back of his mind that he must create a masterpiece. He wasn’t even thinking about a masterpiece. He was just planning to do a competent piece of work and now you . . .”
I put out a hand to stop her. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll know, of course. But Bronco will be there with me. He’ll keep me to the mark.”
“Well, in such a case,” said O’Gillicuddy, rising, “there is just one more thing for you to do before you go back to your time. There are some friends waiting outside to say hello to you.”
He came spidering around the table on his unhuman legs attached to his unhuman body and we followed him out the door, down the corridor, and across the foyer.
They were lined up outside the porch, the five of them, waiting there for us-the war machines, Elmer and Bronco and Wolf.
It was a little awkward. We stood on the porch, looking at them and they looked back at us.
“We’ll be waiting for you when you go back,” said Elmer. “We’ll all be waiting for you.”
“I can understand the war machines being there,” said Cynthia. “We asked them to meet us, but you . . .”
“Wolf came and got us,” said Bronco.
“How could he?” I asked. “You were out to get him. You’d already gotten two of his fellows and . . .”
“He play it cute,” said Bronco. “He make to play with us. He romp all around us, keeping out of reach. He lay down on his back and kick his legs in air. He grin at us with teeth. We figure he want us to follow him. He make it seem important.”
Wolf grinned at us-with teeth.
“It’s time to go,” said O’Gillicuddy. “We only wanted you to be sure they would be waiting for you.”
We turned and followed him back into the building.
I said to Cynthia, “It will soon be over for you. You can go back to Alden and fill Thorney in with everything that happened…”
“I’m not going back,” she said.
“But I don’t see . . .”
“You’ll be going on with your composition. Would you have room for an apprentice assistant?”
“I think I would,” I said.
“You remember, Fletch, what you told me when we thought we were trapped back there in time? You said that you would love me. I intend to hold you to that ”
I reached out and found her hand.
I wanted to be held to it.
The End…Moo!