Dancers at the End of Time (72 page)

"Let us discuss a different topic," he suggested brightly.

"It is scarcely a prison, dear," said the Iron Orchid pinching, with finger and thumb, the wing of a straying butterfly tickling her chin.

"Some would call it Heaven," tactfully said the time-traveller. "Nirvana."

"Oh, true. Fitting reward for a dead Hindu! But I am a live Christian." Her smile was an attempt to break the atmosphere.

"Speaking of that," said the time-traveller, "I am able to do one last favour for Lord Jagged, and for you all, I dare say." He laughed.

"What is it?" said Jherek, grateful for the change of subject.

"I have agreed to take Mr. Underwood and the policemen back to 1896 before I continue on my journey."

"What?" It was almost a breath from Amelia, slow and soft.

"You probably do not know that something happened in the city quite recently. They believe that God appeared to them and are anxious to return so that they might…"

"We have seen them," Jherek told him anxiously.

"Aha. Well, since I was responsible for bringing them here, when Lord Jagged suggested that I take them back —"

"Jagged!" exclaimed Amelia Underwood rising. "This is all his plot."

"Why should Jagged 'plot'?" The Iron Orchid was astonished. "What interest has he in your husband, my dear?"

"None, save where it concerns me." She turned upon the disconcerted Jherek. "And you, Jherek. It is an extension of his schemings on our behalf. He thinks that with Harold gone I shall be willing to —"

she paused. "To accept you."

"But he has abandoned his plans for us. He told us as much, Amelia."

"In one respect."

Mildly the Orchid interjected. "I think you suspect Jagged of too much cunning, Amelia. After all, he is much involved with a somewhat larger scheme. Why should he behave as you suggest?"

"It is the only question for which I have no ready answer." Amelia raised fingers to her forehead.

A knock at the front door. Jherek sprang to answer, glad of respite, but it was his father, all in voluminous lemon, his features composed and amused. "Good morning to you, my boy."

Lord Jagged of Canaria stepped into the sitting room and seemed to fill it. He bowed to them all and was stared at.

"Do I interrupt? I came to tell you, sir," addressing the time-traveller, "that the quartz has hardened satisfactorily. You can leave in the morning, as you planned."

"With Harold and Inspector Springer and the rest!" almost shouted Amelia.

"Ah, you know."

"We know everything —" her colour was high, her eyes fiery — "save why you arranged this!"

"The time-traveller was good enough to say that he would transport the gentlemen back to their own period. It is their last chance to leave. No other will arise."

"You made sure, Lord Jagged, that they should wish to leave. This ridiculous vision!"

"I fear that I do not follow your reasoning, beautiful Amelia." Lord Jagged looked questioningly at Jherek.

Amelia sank to the sofa, teeth in knuckles.

"It seems to us," Jherek loyally told his father, "that you had something to do with Harold Underwood's recent vision in which God appeared to him in a burning sphere and ordered him to return to 1896 with a mission to warn his world of terrors to come."

"A vision, eh?" Jagged smiled. "But he will be considered mad if he tries to do that. Are they all so affected?"

"All!" mumbled Amelia viciously from behind her fist.

"They will not be believed, of course." Jagged seemed to muse, as if all this news were new.

"Of course!" Amelia removed her knuckles from her mouth. "And thus they will be unable to affect the future. Or, if they are caught by the Morphail Effect, it will be too late for them to return here. This world will be closed to them. You have staged everything perfectly, Lord Jagged."

"Why should I stage such scenes?"

"Could it be to ensure that I stay with Jherek?"

"But you 
are
 with him, my dear." Innocent surprise.

"You know what I mean, I think, Lord Jagged."

"Are you concerned for your husband's safety if he returns?"

"I think his life will scarcely change at all. The same might not be said for poor Inspector Springer and his men, but even then, considering what has already happened to them. I have no particular fears.

Quite likely it is the best that could happen. But I object to your part in arranging matters so — so suitably."

"You do me too much credit, Amelia."

"I think not."

"However, if you think it would be best to keep Harold Underwood and the policemen in the city, I am sure that the time-traveller can be dissuaded…"

"You know it is too late. Harold and the others want nothing more than to return."

"Then why are you so upset?"

Jherek interposed. "Ambiguous parent, if you are the author of all this — if you have played God as Amelia suggests — then be frank with us."

"You are my family. You are all my confidants. Frankness is not, admittedly, my forte. I am not prone to making claims or to denying accusations. It is not in my nature, I fear. It is an old time-travelling habit, too. If Harold Underwood experienced a vision in the city and it was not a hallucination — and you'll all admit the city is riddled with them, they run wild there — then who is to argue that he has not seen God?"

"Oh, this is the rankest blasphemy!"

"Not quite that, surely," murmured the time-traveller. "Lord Jagged has a perfectly valid point."

"It was you, sir, who first accused him of playing at God!"

"Ah. I was upset. Lord Jagged has been of considerable help to me, of late…"

"So you have said."

As the voices rose, only the Iron Orchid remained where she had been sitting, watching the proceedings with a degree of quiet amusement.

"Jagged," said his son desperately, "do you categorically deny —"

"I have told you, my boy, I am incapable of it. I think it is a kind of pride." The lord in yellow shrugged. "We are all human."

"You would be more, sir, it seems!" accused Amelia.

"Come now, dear lady. You are over-excited. Surely the matter is not worth…" The time-traveller waved his hands helplessly.

"My coming seems to have created some sort of tension," said Lord Jagged. "I only stopped by in order to pick up my wife and the time-traveller, to see how you were settling down, Amelia…"

"I shall settle down, sir — if I do — in my own way and in my own time, without help from you!"

"Amelia," Jherek implored, "there is no need for this!"

"You will calm me, will you!" Her eyes were blazing on them all. All stepped back. "Will you?"

Lord Jagged of Canaria began to glide towards the door, followed by his wife and his guest.

"Machiavelli!" she cried after him. "Meddler! Oh, monstrous, dandified Prince of Darkness!"

He had reached the door and he looked back, his eyes serious for a fraction of a moment. "You honour me too much, madam. I seek only to correct an imbalance where one exists."

"You'll admit your part in this?"

Already his shoulder had turned and the collar hid his face. He was outside, floating to where his great swan awaited him. She watched from the window. She was breathing heavily, was reluctant, even, to let Jherek take her hand.

He tried to excuse his father. "It is Jagged's way. He means only good…"

"He can judge?"

"I think you have hurt his feelings, Amelia."

"I hurt his? Oho!" She removed the hand from his grasp and folded both under her heaving breast.

"He makes fools of all!"

"Why should he wish to? Why should he, as you say, play God?"

She watched the swan as it disappeared in the pale blue sky. "Perhaps he does not know, himself,"

she said softly.

"Harold can be stopped. Jagged said so."

She shook her head and moved back into the room. Automatically, she began to gather up the cups and place them on the tray. "He will be happier in 1896, without question. Now, at any rate. The damage is done. And he has a mission. He has a duty to perform, as he sees it. I envy him."

He followed her reasoning. "We shall go to seek for seeds today. As we planned. Some flowers."

She shrugged. "Harold believes he saves the world. Jagged believes the same. I fear that growing flowers will not satisfy my impulses. I cannot live, Jherek, unless I feel my life is useful."

"I love you," was all he could answer.

"But you do not need me, my dear." She put down the tray and came to him. He embraced her.

"Need?" he said. "In what respect?"

"It is the woman that I am. I tried to change, but with poor success. I merely disguised myself and you saw through that disguise at once. Harold needed me. My world needed me. I did a great deal of charitable work, you know. Missionary work, of sorts, too. I was not inactive in Bromley, Jherek."

"I am sure that you were not, Amelia, dearest…"

"Unless I have something more important than myself to justify —"

"There is nothing more important than yourself, Amelia."

"Oh, I understand the philosophy which states that, Jherek —"

"I was not speaking philosophically, Amelia. I was stating fact. You are all that is important in my life."

"You are very kind."

"Kind? It is the truth!"

"I feel the same for you, as you know, my dear. I did not love Harold. I can see that I did not. But he had certain weaknesses which could be balanced by my strengths. Something in me was satisfied that is satisfied no longer. In your own way, in your very confidence, your innocence, you are strong…"

"You have — what is it? — character? — which I lack."

"You are free. You have a conception of freedom so great that I can barely begin to sense it. You have been brought up to believe that nothing is impossible, and your experience proves it. I was brought up to believe that almost everything was impossible, that life must be suffered, not enjoyed."

"But if I have freedom, Amelia, you have conscience. I give you my freedom. In exchange, you give me your conscience." He spoke soberly. "Is that not so?"

She looked up into his face. "Perhaps, my dear."

"It is what I originally sought in you, you'll recall."

She smiled. "True."

"In combination, then, we give something to the world."

"Possibly." She returned to her tea-cups, lifting the tray. He sprang to open the door. "But does this world want what, together, we can give it?"

"It might need us more than it knows."

She darted him an intelligent look as he followed her into the kitchen. "Sometimes, Jherek Carnelian, I come close to suspecting that you have inherited your father's cunning."

"I do not understand you."

"You are capable of concocting the most convincing of arguments, on occasion. Do you deliberately seek to mollify me?"

"I stated only what was in my mind."

She put on a pinafore. She was thoughtful as she washed the tea-cups, handing them to him as each one was cleaned. Unsure what to do with them, he made them weightless so that they drifted up to the ceiling and bobbed against it.

"No," she said at last, "this world does not need me. Why should it?"

"To give it texture."

"You speak only in artistic terms."

"I know no others. Texture is important. Without it a surface quickly loses interest."

"You see morality only as texture?" She looked about for the cups, noted them on the ceiling, sighed, removed her pinafore.

"The texture of a painting is its meaning."

"Not the subject?"

"I think not. Morality gives meaning to life. Shape at any rate."

"Texture is not shape."

"Without texture the shape is barren."

"You lose me. I am not used to arguing in such terms."

"I am scarcely used to arguing at all, Amelia!"

They returned to the sitting room, but she would advance into the garden. He went with her. Many flowers sweetened the air. She had recently added insects, a variety of birds to sing in the trees and hedges. It was warm; the sun relaxed them both. They went hand-in-hand along a path between rose trellises, much as they had wandered once in their earliest days together. He recalled how she had been snatched from him, as he had been about to kiss her. A hint of foreboding was pushed from his mind.

"What if these hedges were bare," he said, "if there was no smell to the roses, no colour to the insects, they would be unsatisfying, eh?"

"They would be unfinished. Yet there is a modern school of painting — was such a school, in my time — that made a virtue of it. Whistlerites, I believe they were called. I am not too certain."

"Perhaps the leaving out was meant to tell us something too, Amelia? What was important was what was absent."

"I don't think these painters said anything to that effect, Jherek. I believe they claimed to paint only what the eye saw. Oh, a neurotic theory of art, I am sure…"

"There! Would you deny this world your common sense? Would you let it be neurotic?"

"I thought it so, when first I came. Now I realize that what is neurotic in sophisticated society can be absolutely wholesome in a primitive one. And in many respects, I must say, your society shares much in common with some of those our travellers experienced when first landing upon South Sea islands. To be sinful, one must have a sense of sin. That is my burden, Jherek, and not yours. Yet, it seems, you ask me to place that burden on you, too. You see, I am not entirely selfish. I do you little good."

"You give meaning to my life. It would have none without you." They stood by a fountain, watching her goldfish swimming. There were even insects upon the surface of the water, to feed them.

She chuckled. "You can argue splendidly, when you wish, but you shall not change my feelings so quickly. I have already tried to change them myself for you. I failed. I must think carefully about my intentions."

"You consider me bold, for declaring myself while your husband is still in our world?"

"I had not quite considered it in those terms." She frowned. She drew away from him, moving around the pool, her dress dappled with bright spots of water from the fountain. "I believe you to be serious, I suppose. As serious as it is possible for you to be."