NEIL STAYED AS LONG AS THEY’D LET HIM, THEN TOOK MY pedestal home with him, since the nurses kept tripping over it. I dreamed about it last night, though, dreamed that it was still here, next to the bed, keeping me company while I slept. I woke to the sound of it—or dreamed that I woke—just before dawn, recognizing the whir of those tiny wheels across the linoleum. I opened an eye and waited, perfectly still. The dark plywood mass was next to me, moving slowly toward the foot of the bed like a giant tortoise. Nobody was visible from here, so whoever—or whatever—propelled it was most certainly under the bed.
I sat up. The pedestal stopped in its tracks, playing dead. I almost giggled, since it reminded me of one of those movies where an intruder poses as a statue to keep from being seen. Nobody here but us pedestals. I cocked my head and listened, hearing only a distant, tinny siren and a blubbery snore from another bed, probably Mrs. Haywood’s. It was still dark in the room, but the big windows had begun to turn a pale and pearly blue. I lay still for a while, mimicking sleep, and soon enough the pedestal began to move again. After a moment or two, some part of it (those steps, I presume) struck the leg of the bed with a rude bonk, provoking its hijacker to emit a small, exasperated groan.
I knew who it was before he came out. I caught a whiff of wet loam and wood smoke and stale sweat, with something sharply herbal at the core. It was odd to recognize him from the smell alone, because I’d never used that sense on him before. Like everyone else who claims to know him well, I’ve always been limited to what I could see and hear. The smell was right for him, I realized, and it somehow put me at ease. I stayed calm even when he abandoned his efforts at stealth and climbed onto the pedestal to grin at me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked in a stern whisper.
He pointed to the pedestal, then to the door.
“No way,” I said. “It stays.”
He shook his head.
“I’m calling the nurse.”
This only made him cackle ecstatically. I gazed around to see if he’d woken any of the other patients, but the place was quiet. He climbed down from the pedestal, using those funny little steps of Neil’s, then sprang up onto the bed with enviable agility. I pulled the covers up under my chin and tried to stare him down, getting an eyeful in the process.
He seemed several centuries older in real life. What made him so authentic was not so much those familiar Earth-blue eyes as the specks of crud encrusted in their corners. I could see liver spots at this distance, and the genuine crepiness of the skin on his neck. When he smiled, I saw a broken tooth, yellow as antique scrimshaw; when he turned his head for a moment, I glimpsed a blackhead in the folds of his pointy ear. Every new imperfection just made him more like the real thing.
I remember thinking: This is incredible. What will Philip come up with next?
He just sat there for a moment, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap, letting me take him in.
“You’re early,” I said.
He widened his eyes and shrugged, then dug into the pocket of his tattered tweed trousers and produced a tarnished gold watch—obviously broken—which he consulted with grave ceremony, tapping its face and nodding, as if it explained everything.