Dancers at the End of Time (67 page)

"Good morning, Jherek, my darling!"

He swallowed a small piece of toast. It seemed to stick in his throat. His voice was not loud. "Good morning, Amelia. You slept well?"

"Oh, I did! I woke up a new woman. 
The
 new woman, if you would have it. Ha, ha!"

He tried to clear the piece of toast from his throat. "You seem very new. The change in appearance is radical."

"I would scarcely call it that, dear Jherek. Merely an aspect of my personality I have not shown you before. I determined to be less stuffy, to take a more positive view of the world and my place in it.

Today, my love, we 
create
!"

"Create?"

"It is what you suggested we do."

"Ah, yes. Of course. What shall we create, Amelia?"

"There is so much."

"To be sure. As a matter of fact, I had become fairly settled — that is, I had not intended…"

"Jherek, you were famous for your invention. You set fashion after fashion. Your reputation demands that you express yourself again. We shall build a scene to excel all those we have so far witnessed. And we shall have a party. We have accepted far too much hospitality and offered none until now!"

"True, but…"

She laughed at him, pushing aside her kedgeree, ignoring her porridge. She sipped at her coffee, staring out through the window at her hedges and her gardens. "Can you suggest anything, Jherek?"

"Oh — a small 'London' — we could make it together. As authentic as anything."

" 'London'? You would not repeat an earlier success, surely?"

"It was an initial suggestion, nothing more."

"You are admiring my new dress, I see."

"Bright and beautiful." He recalled the hymn they had once sung together. He opened his lips and took a deep breath, to sing it, but she forestalled him.

"It is based on a picture I saw in an illustrated magazine," she told him. "An opera, I think — or perhaps the music hall. I wish I knew some music hall songs. Would the cities be able to help?"

"I doubt if they can remember any."

"They are concerned these days, I suppose, with duller things. With Jagged's work."

"Well, not entirely…"

She rose from the table, humming to herself. "Hurry, Jherek dear. The morning will be over before we have begun!"

Reluctantly, as confused by this role as he had been confused when first they had met, he got up, almost desperately trying to recapture a mood which had always been normal to him, until, it seemed, today.

She linked her arm in his, her step rather springier than usual, perhaps because of the elaborate boots she wore, and they left the house and entered the garden. "I think now I should have kept my palace," she said. "You do not find the cottage dull?"

"Dull? Oh, no!"

He was surprised that she gave every hint of disapproving of his remark. She cast speculative eyes upon the sky, turned a power-ring, and made a garish royal blue tint where a moment ago there had been a relatively subdued sunrise. She added broad streaks of bright red and yellow. "So!"

Beyond the willows and the cypresses was what remained of the wasteland. "Here," she said, "is what Jagged told us was to be our canvas. It can contain anything — any folly the human mind can invent. Let us make it a splendid folly, Jherek. A vast folly."

"What?" He began to cheer, though forebodings remained. "Shall we seek to outdo the Duke of Queens?"

"By all means!"

He was dressed in modest dove-grey today; a frock-coat and trousers, a waistcoat and shirt. He produced a tall hat and placed it, jaunty, on his head. Hand went to ring. Columns of water seemed to spring from the ground, as thick as redwoods, and as tall, forming an arch that in turn became a roof through which the sun glittered.

"Oh, you are too cautious, Jherek!" Her own rings were used. Great cliffs surrounded them and over every cliff gushed cataracts of blood, forming a sea on which bobbed obsidian islands filled with lush, dark vegetation; and now the sun burned almost black above and peculiar sounds came to them across the ocean of blood, from the islands.

"It is very grand," said Jherek, his voice small. "But I should not have believed…"

"It is based on a nightmare I once had."

"A horse?"

"A dream."

Something dark reared itself from the water. There was a brief flash of teeth, reminiscent of the creatures they had encountered in the Palaeozoic, of a snake-like and powerful body, an unpleasant rushing sound as it submerged again. He looked to her for an explanation.

"An impression," she said, "of a picture I saw as a girl, at the Crystal Palace I think. Oh, you would not believe some of the nightmares I had then. Until now I had forgotten them almost completely. Does the scene please you, Jherek? Will it please our friends?"

"I think so."

"You are not as enthusiastic as I had hoped you would be."

"I am. I am enthusiastic, Amelia. Astonished, however."

"I am glad I astonish you, Jherek dear. It means, then, that our party has every chance of success, does it not?"

"Oh, yes."

"I shall make a few more touches but leave the rest until later. Let us go into the world now."

"To —?"

"To offer invitations."

He acquiesced and called for his locomotive. They boarded her, setting course for Castle Canaria where they hoped to find the Iron Orchid.

"The Lat are still with us?" Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, licked lush lips and widened her already very wide blue eyes to assume that particular look of heated innocence so attractive to those who loved her (and who did not?). "Oh, what splendid news, Iron Orchid! They raped me, you know, an enormous number of times. You cannot see them now, since my resurrection, but my elbows were both bright red!" Her dress, liquid crystal, coruscated as she lifted her arms. They walked together through the dripping, glassy passage in one of Mrs. Underwood's obsidian islands; at the far end of the tunnel was reddish light, reflected from the bloody sea beyond. "The atmosphere is rather good here, don't you think?"

"A trifle reminiscent of something of Werther's."

"None the worse for that, dearest Orchid."

"You have always found his work more attractive than I have." (They had been rivals once, however, for sighing de Goethe.)

The light was blocked. My Lady Charlotina rustled towards them, in organdie and tulle of clashing greens. She staggered for a second as a wave struck the island and it tilted, then righted itself. "Have you seen the 
beasts?
 One has eaten poor O'Kala." She giggled. "They are fond of goats, it seems."

"I thought the beasts good," agreed her friend. The Orchid had retained white as her main effect, but had added a little pale yellow (Jagged's colours) here and there. The yellow looked well on her lips, against the pallor of her skin. "And the smell. So heavy."

"Not too sweet?" asked Mistress Christia.

"For me, no."

"And your 
marriage
, oracular Orchid," breathed My Lady Charlotina, giving her ears a pinch, to increase the size of the lobes. She added earrings. "I have just heard. But should we call you Orchid still?

Is it not Lady Jagged now?"

They moved back towards the opening in the passage.

"I had not considered it." The Iron Orchid was the first to reach the open. Her son was there, leaning against a dark green palm, staring into the depths of the crimson ocean.

"With Jherek," said My Lady Charlotina enviously, from behind her, "you begin a dynasty. Imagine that!"

All three women emerged now and saw him. He looked up, as if he had thought himself alone.

"We interrupt a reverie…" said Mistress Christia kindly.

"Oh, no…" He still wore clothes his Amelia had considered suitable — a straw boater, a bright blazer, white shirt and white flannels. "

"Well, Jherek?" His mother approached closer, amused, "Shall you be presenting us with a son, you and your Amelia?"

"An air?"

"A boy, my boy!"

"Aha! I rather doubt it. We cannot marry, you see."

"Your father and I, Jherek, were not formally married when…"

"But she has reservations," he told her gloomily. "Her husband, who is still in the city, haunts us. But perhaps she changes…"

"Her inventions indicate as much."

A sigh. "They do."

"You do not find this lake, these cliffs, these beasts, magnificently realized?"

"Of course I do." He raised his head to watch the blood as it roared from every edge. "Yet I am disturbed, mother."

"Resentful of her hidden talent, you mean!" The Iron Orchid chided him.

"Where is she?" My Lady Charlotina cast about. "I must congratulate her. All her work, Jherek?

Nothing yours?"

"Nothing."

"Exquisite!"

"She was with Li Pao when I last saw her," Jherek said. "On one of the farther islands."

"I was glad Li Pao returned in time," the Iron Orchid said. "I should miss him. But so many others are gone!"

"And nothing for a menagerie, save what we make ourselves," complained My Lady Charlotina.

She produced a sunshade (the fashion had been set by Amelia) and twirled it. "We live in difficult days, audacious Orchid."

"But challenging."

"Oh, yes."

"The Duke of Queens has those round aliens," said Mistress Christia.

"By rights," My Lady Charlotina told her bitterly, with a glance at Jherek, "at least one of those is mine. Still, not very much of an acquisition, by any real standards. I suppose they'll be prized now, however."

"He remains very proud of them." Mistress Christia moved to hug Jherek. "You seem sad, handsomest of heroes."

"Sad? Is that the emotion? I am not sure I am enjoying it, Mistress Christia."

"Why sad?"

"I am not at all sure."

"You seek to rival Werther, that is it. You are in competition!"

"I had not thought of Werther."

"Here he is!" The Iron Orchid and My Lady Charlotina pointed together. Werther had seen them from above and came circling down on his coffin-shaped car. His cape and hood were black and white checks and he had removed all the flesh from his face so that his skull was revealed and only his dark eyes, in the recesses of the sockets, gave it life. "Where is Mrs. Underwood, Jherek?" said Werther. "I must honour her. This is the most beautiful creation I have seen in a millennium!"

They were slow to answer. Only Jherek pointed to a distant island.

"Oho!" said Mistress Christia, and she winked at the Iron Orchid. "Amelia makes another conquest."

Jherek kicked at a piece of rock. It resisted his foot. Again, he sighed. His boater fell from his head.

He stooped and picked it up.

The women linked arms and rose together into the air. "We go to Amelia," called back the Iron Orchid. "Shall you join us, Jherek?"

"In a moment."

He had only recently escaped the press of guests who flocked about his intended bride, for she was at the centre and all congratulated her on her creation, her costume, her comportment and if they spoke to him, it was to praise Amelia. And over there on the other island, she chattered, she was witty, she held them but — and he could define it no better — she was not his Amelia.

He turned, at the sound of a footfall, and it was the time-traveller, hands in pockets, looking quite as glum as he did himself. "Good afternoon to you, Jherek Carnelian. My Lady Charlotina passed on your invitation. Lord Mongrove brought me. This is all very fanciful. You must have journeyed further inland, during your stay in the Palaeozoic, than I realized."

"To the creek?"

"Beyond the creek there are landscapes very similar to this — wild and beautiful, you know. I assumed this to be a perverse version. Ah, to see again the rain falling through sunshine on a Palaeozoic morning, near the great waterfalls, with the ferns waving in a light wind which ripples the waters of the lake."

"You make me envious." Jherek stared at his reflection, distorted in the blood. "I sometimes regret our return, though I know now we should have starved."

"Nonsense. With decent equipment and a little intelligence one could live well in the Palaeozoic."

The time-traveller smiled. "So long as one resisted the urge to swim in the creeks. That fish, by the by, is very tasty. Sweet, you know. Like a kind of ham."

"Um," said Jherek, looking towards the island where Amelia Underwood held court.

"It seems to me," murmured the time-traveller after a pause, "that all the romance has gone out of time-travel since I first began. I was one of the first, you know. Perhaps the very first."

"A pioneer," Jherek confirmed.

"Quite so. It would be a terrible irony indeed if I were to be marooned here, when your Lord Jagged puts his time-recycling plan into operation. I crossed eons, crossed the barriers between the worlds, and now I am threatened with being imprisoned forever in the same week, repeated over and over again, throughout eternity." He uttered something resembling a staccato snort. "Well, I shall not allow it. If I cannot get help with repairs to my craft, I shall risk the journey back and ask for the support of the British Government. It will be better than this."

"Brannart refuses his aid?"

"He is involved, I gather, in building a machine of his own. He refuses to accept Lord Jagged's theories or his solutions."

Jherek's smile was faint. "For thousands of years Brannart was the Lord of Time. His Effect was one of the few laws known to that imprecise science. Suddenly he is dethroned, without authority. It is no wonder that he became so agitated recently, that he still utters warnings. Yet there would be much he could continue to do. Your Guild would welcome his knowledge, would it not?"

"Possibly. He is not what I would call a true scientist. He imposes his imagination upon the facts, rather than using that imagination to investigate. It is probably not his fault, for you all do that, and with considerable success. In most cases you are in the position to alter all the Laws of Nature which, in my own time, were regarded as unalterable."