These accumulated exponentially across time and thus created this future world. And while the lower hominids and draconids are unaware of the ongoing changes, the Magi have inferred their existence during "hundreds of years of pondering" which they know to have been "imaginary centuries". They are tormented by this knowledge, to the point that they long to die, to never have been and to put an end to this imaginary existence. They are also foresee the inevitable future rise of the lizard 'draconids' race, leading to a total collapse of civilisation and the reversion of the world to one of unchanging forest and water. For their part, the race of Angels feel acute pain at any new change, "like the snap of a whip infinitely long" - starting from the very moment when they felt themselves come into being "Oldest of the Old Races, though the last which the Otherhood's changes brought into being". They know their future, too - unbearably, they know that the rate of random changes will become worse and worse, and that this world, which they love, is doomed to "sicken and fail". Therefore, they charge the President pro tem to "put out this world like a light". He must go back, prevent Winterset (who is himself) from killing Rhodes - and thereby annul the Otherhood, destroy this alternate history which the Otherhood brought into being, and restore the "true" Original Situation. Crying bitterly, the President sees no choice but to do it. Meanwhile, a younger Winterset has arrived in 1893 Cape Town and has no difficulty in gaining the trust of Cecil Rhodes, as he exactly fits the type of young man Rhodes likes to have about him (which is why the Otherhood chose Winterset for the job). But at the moment of opportunity - when Rhodes trustingly turns his back in the night, and Winterset could shoot him and make good his escape - Winterset fails to pull the trigger, due to some kind of an outside interference. (Winterset dimly remembers an apparition appearing during his sleep - evidently the older Winterset/President "pro tem" using some kind of future-hypnosis). Winterset's failure to act has immediate, far-reaching and irreversible results: Rhodes survives, the Otherhood is therefore never formed, and there is no backup team with a time-machine to take Winterset back to the future - indeed, the future he came from no longer exists. Winterset is trapped in the past, enters the service of Rhodes and witnesses first-hand the ugly and brutal side of Rhodes's independent colony-building - very far from Winterset's idea of the British Empire in which he grew up.