Dancers at the End of Time (2 page)

Jherek looked to his left and was pleased to see that his aircar (resembling a steam locomotive of the early 20th century, but of about half the size, in gold, ebony and rubies) was still where they had left it.

He looked again at the pagoda, craning his neck, for his mother still relaxed with her head against his shoulder. His mother, too, turned to look as a winged figure left the roof of the pagoda and flew crazily away towards the east, swerving and dipping, circling back, narrowly missing the sharp edge of the pagoda's crest, and at last disappearing.

"Oh," said the Iron Orchid getting to her feet. "It is the Duke of Queens and his wings. Why will he insist that they are successful?" She waved a vague hand at the departed duke. "Goodbye. Playing one of his solitary games, again, I suppose." She looked down at the remains of the lunch and made a face. "I must clear this away." With a wave of the ring on her left hand she disseminated the lunch and watched the dust drift away on the air. "Will you be going there, this evening? To his party?" She moved her slender arm, heavy with brown brocade, and touched her forehead with her fingertips.

"I think so." He disseminated his own pillows. "I have a great liking for the Duke of Queens."

His lips pursed a trifle, Jherek Carnelian pondered the pink sea. "Even if I do not always appreciate his colour sense."

He turned and walked over the crushed bone beach to his aircar. He clambered into the cabin.

"All aboard, my strong, my sweet, Iron Orchid!"

She chuckled and reached up to him.

From the footplate he reached down, seized her waist and swung her aboard.

"Off to Pasadena!"

He sounded his whistle.

"Shuffle off to Buffalo!"

Responding to the sonic signal, the little locomotive took magnificently to the air, shunting up the sky, with lovely, lime-coloured steam puffing from its smokestack and from beneath its wheels.

"Oh, they gave him his augurs at Racine-Virginia," sang Jherek Carnelian, donning a scarlet and cloth-of-gold engineer's cap, "saying steam-up, you're way behind time! It ain't '98, it's old '97. You got to get on down that old Nantucket line!"

The Iron Orchid settled back in her seat of plush and ermine (an exact reproduction, she understood, of the original) and watched her son with amusement as he opened the firedoor and shovelled in the huge black diamonds which he had made specially to go with the train and which, though of no particular use in fuelling the aircar, added aesthetic texture to the recreation.

"Where do you
find
all these old songs, Carnelian, my own?"

"I came across a cache of 'platters,' " he told her, wiping honest sweat from his face with a silk rag.

The train swept rapidly over a sea and a range of mountains. "A form of sound-storage of the same period as the original of this aircar. A million years old, at least, though there's some evidence that they, themselves, are reproductions of other originals. Kept in perfect condition by a succession of owners."

He slammed the firedoor shut and discarded the platinum shovel, joining her upon the couch and staring down at the quaintly moulded countryside which Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, had begun to build a while ago and then abandoned.

It was not elegant. In fact it was something of a mess. Two-thirds of a hill, in the fashion of the 91st century post-Aryan landscapers, supported a snake-tree done after the Saturnian manner but left uncoloured; part of an 11th century Gothic ruin stood beside a strip of river of the Bengali Empire period.

You could see why she had decided not to finish it, but it seemed to Jherek that it was a pity she had not bothered to disseminate it. Someone else would, of course, sooner or later.

"Carrie Joan," he sang, "she kept her boiler going. Carrie Joan, she filled it full of wine. Carrie Joan didn't stop her rowing. She had to get to Brooklyn by a quarter-past nine!"

He turned to the Iron Orchid.

"Do you like it? The quality of the platters isn't all it could be, but I think I've worked out all the words now."

"Is that what you were doing last year?"

She raised her fine eyebrows. "I heard the noises coming from your Hi-Rise." She laughed. "And I thought it was to do with sex." She frowned. "Or animals." She smiled. "Or both."

The locomotive began to spiral down, hooting, towards Jherek's ranch. The ranch had taken the place of the Hi-Rise. A typical building of the 19th century, done in fibafome and thatch, each corner of its veranda roof was supported by a wooden Indian, some forty feet high. Each Indian had a magnificent pearl, twelve inches in diameter, in his turban, and a beard of real hair. The Indians were the only extravagant detail in the otherwise simple building.

The locomotive landed in the corral and Jherek, whose interest in the ancient world had, off and on, sustained itself for nearly two years, held out his hand to help the Iron Orchid disembark. For a moment she hesitated as she attempted to remember what she must do. Then she grasped his hand and jumped to the ground crying:

"Geronimo!"

Together they made for the house.

The surrounding landscape had been designed to fit in with the ranch. The sky contained a sunset, which silhouetted the purple hills, and the black pines, which topped them. On the other side was a range containing a herd of bison. Every few days there would emerge from a cunningly hidden opening in the ground a group of mechanical 7th cavalrymen who would whoop and shout and ride round and round the bison shooting their arrows into the air before roping and branding the beasts. The bison had been specially grown from Jherek's own extensive gene-bank and didn't seem to care for the operation although it should have been instinctive to them. The 7th cavalry, on the other hand, had been manufactured in his machine shop because he had a distaste for growing people (who were inclined to be bad-mannered when the time came for their dissemination).

"What a beautiful sunset," said his mother, who had not visited him since the Hi-Rise days. "Was the sun really as huge as that in those days?"

"Bigger," he said, "by all accounts. I toned it down rather, for this."

She touched his arm. "You were always inclined to be restrained. I like it."

"Thank you."

They went up the white winding staircase to the veranda, breathing in the delicious scent of magnolia which grew on the ground beside the basement section of the house. They crossed the veranda and Jherek manipulated a lever which, depressed, allowed the door to open so that they could enter the parlour — a single room occupying the whole of this floor. The remaining eight floors were given over to kitchens, bedrooms, cupboards and the like.

The parlour was a treasure house of 19th century reproductions, including a magnificent pot-bellied stove carved from a single oak and a flowering aspidistra which grew from the centre of the grass carpet and spread its rubbery branches over the best part of the room.

The Iron Orchid hovered beside the intricate lattice-work shape which Jherek had seen in an old holograph and reproduced in steel and chrome. It was like a huge egg standing on its end and it rose as high as the ceiling.

"And what is this, my life force?" she asked him.

"A spaceship," he explained. "They were constantly attempting to fly to the moon or striving to repel invasions from Mars. I'm not sure if they were successful, though of course there are no Martians these days. Some of their writers were inclined to tell rather tall tales, you know, doubtless with a view to entertaining their companions."

"Whatever possessed them to
try
! Into
space
!"

She shuddered. People had lost the inclination to leave the Earth centuries ago.

Naturally, space-travellers called on the planet from time to time, but they were, as often as not, boring fellows with not much to offer. They were usually encouraged to leave as soon as possible or, if one should catch somebody's fancy, he would be retained in a collection.

Even Jherek had no impulse to time-travel, though time-travellers would arrive occasionally in his era. He could have travelled through time himself, if he had wished, and very briefly visited his beloved 19th century. But, like most people, he found that the real places were rather disappointing. It was much better to indulge in imaginative recreation of the periods or places. Nothing, therefore, would spoil the full indulgence of one's fancies, or the thrill of discovery as one unearthed some new piece of information and added it to the texture of one's reproduction.

A servo entered and bowed. The Iron Orchid handed it her clothes (as she had been instructed to do by Jherek — another custom of the time) and went to stretch her wonderful body under the aspidistra tree.

Jherek was pleased to note she was wearing breasts again and thus did not clash with her surroundings. Everything was in period. Even the servo wore a derby, an ulster, chaps and stout brogues and carried several meerschaum pipes in its steel teeth. At a sign from its master it rolled away.

Jherek went to sit with his back against the bole of the aspidistra. "And now, lovely Iron Orchid, tell me what you have been doing."

She looked up at him, her eyes shining. "I've been making babies, dearest. Hundreds of them!" She giggled. "I couldn't stop. Cherubs, mainly. I built a little aviary for them, too. And I made them trumpets to blow and harps to pluck and I composed the sweetest music you ever heard. And they played it!"

"I should like to hear it."

"What a shame." She was genuinely upset that she had not thought of him, her favourite, her only real son. "I'm making microscopes now. And gardens, of course, to go with them. And tiny beasts. But perhaps I'll do the cherubs again some day. And you shall hear them, then."

"If I am not being 'virtuous,' " he said archly.

"Ah, now I begin to understand the meaning. If you have an impulse to do something — you do the opposite. You want to be a man, so you become a woman. You wish to fly somewhere, so you go underground. You wish to drink, but instead you emit fluid. And so on. Yes, that's splendid. You'll set a fashion, mark my words. In a month, blood of my blood,
everyone
will be virtuous. And what shall we do then? Is there anything else? Tell me!"

"Yes. We could be 'evil' — or 'modest' — or 'lazy' — or 'poor' — or, oh, I don't know — 'worthy.' There's hundreds."

"And you would tell us how to be it?"

"Well…" He frowned. "I still have to work out exactly what's involved. But by that time I should know a little more."

"We'll all be grateful to you. I remember when you taught us Lunar Cannibals. And Swimming. And — what was it — Flags?"

"I enjoyed Flags," he said. "Particularly when My Lady Charlotina made that delicious one which covered the whole of the western hemisphere. In metal cloth the thickness of an ant's web. Do you remember how we laughed when it fell on us?"

"Oh, yes!" She clapped her hands. "Then Lord Jagged built a Flag Pole on which to fly it and the pole melted so we each made a Niagara to see who could do the biggest and used up every drop of water and had to make a whole new batch and you went round and round in a cloud raining on everyone, even on Mongrove. And Mongrove dug himself an underground Hell, with devils and everything, out of that book the time-traveller brought us, and he set fire to Bulio Himmler's 'Bunkerworld 2' which he didn't know was right next door to him and Bulio was so upset he kept dropping atom bombs on Mongrove's Hell, not knowing that he was supplying Mongrove with all the heat he needed!"

They laughed heartily.

"Was it really three hundred years ago?" said Jherek nostalgically.

He plucked a leaf from the aspidistra and reflectively began to chew it. A little blue juice ran down his beige chin.

"I sometimes think," he continued, "that I haven't known a better sequence of events. It seemed to go on and on, one thing leading neatly to another. Mongrove's Hell, you know, also ruined my menagerie, except for one creature that escaped and broke most of his devils. Everything went up, in my menagerie, otherwise. Because of Himmler, really. Or because of Lady Charlotina. Who's to say?"

He discarded the leaf.

"It's strange," he said. "I haven't kept a menagerie since. I mean, almost everyone has some sort of menagerie, even you, Iron Orchid."

"Mine is so
small
. Compare it with the Everlasting Concubine's, even."

"You've three Napoleons. She has none."

"True. But I'm honestly not sure whether any one of them is genuine."

"It is hard to tell," he agreed.

"And she does have an absolutely genuine Attila the Hun. The trouble she went to, too, to make that particular trade. But he's such a bore."

"I think that's why I stopped collecting," he said. "The genuine items are often less interesting than the fakes."

"It's usually the case, fruit of my loins." She sank into the grass again. This last reference was not to the literal truth. In fact, as Jherek remembered, his mother had been some sort of male anthropoid at the actual moment of his birth and had forgotten all about him until, by accident, six months later she came upon the incubator in the jungle she had built. He had still been nursed as a new-born baby by the incubator. But she had kept him. He was glad of that. So few human beings, as such, were born these days.

Perhaps that was why, being a natural born baby, as it were, he felt such an affinity with the past, thought Jherek. Many of the time-travellers — even some of the space-travellers — had been children, too.

He did get on well with some of the people who had chosen to live outside the menageries and adopt the ways of this society.

Pereg Tralo, for instance, who had ruled the world in the 30th century simply because he had been the last person to be born out of an actual womb! A splendid, witty companion. And Clare Cyrato, the singer from the 500th — a peculiar freak, due to some experiment of her mother's, she too had entered life as a baby. Babies, children, adolescents — everything!

It was an experience he had not regretted. What experience could be regretted? And he had been the darling of all his mother's friends. His novelty lasted well into his teens. With delight they had watched him
grow
! Everyone envied him. Everyone envied the Iron Orchid, though for a while she had distinctly tired of him and gone away to live in the middle of a mountain. Everyone envied him, that is, except Mongrove (who would certainly not have admitted it, anyway) and Werther de Goethe, who had also been born a baby. Werther, of course, had been a trial and had not enjoyed himself nearly so much.