Dancers at the End of Time (74 page)

He reached the ground, staggering.

"Amelia." He could barely see for his tears; he stood hopeless and trembling, his heart pounding, gasping for air.

He heard sobbing and it was not his own sobbing. He lifted his head.

She lay there, in the black dust of the city, her face upon her arm. She wept.

Half-sure that this was a terrible illusion, merely a recollection from the city's memory, he approached her. He fell on his knees beside her. He touched her grey sleeve.

She looked up at him. "Oh, Jherek! He told me that I was no longer his wife…"

"He has said as much before."

"He called me 'impure'. He said that my presence would taint the high purpose of his mission, that even now I tempted him … Oh, he said so many things. He threw me from the machine. He hates me."

"He hates sanity, Amelia. I think it is true of all such men. He hates truth. It is why he accepts the comforting lie. You would have been of no use to him."

"I was so full of my resolve. I loved you so much. I fought so hard against my impulse to stay with you."

"You would martyr yourself in response to the voice of Bromley? To a cause you know to be at best foolish?" He was surprised by his words and it was plain that he surprised her, also.

" 
This
 world has no cause at all," she told him, as he held her against him. "It has no use for one such as me!"

"Yet you love me. You trust me?"

"I trust you, Jherek. But I do not trust your background, your society — all this…" She stared bleakly at the city. "It prizes individuality and yet it is impossible to feel oneself an individual in it. Do you understand?"

He did not, but he continued to comfort her.

He helped her to her feet.

"I can see no future for us here," she told him. She was exhausted. He summoned his locomotive.

"There is no future," he agreed, "only the present. Surely it is what lovers have always wished for."

"If they are nothing but lovers, Jherek, my dear." She sighed deeply. "Well, there is scarcely any point to my complaints." Her smile was brave. "This is my world and I must make the best of it."

"You shall, Amelia."

The locomotive appeared, puffing between high, ragged towers.

"My sense of duty —" she began.

"To yourself, as I said. My world esteems you as Bromley never could. Accept that esteem without reserve; it is given without reserve."

"Blindly, however, as children give. One would wish to be respected for — for noble deeds."

He saw clarity, at last. "Your going to Harold — that was 'noble'?"

"I suppose so. The self-sacrifice…"

" 'Self-sacrifice' — another. And is that 'virtuous'?"

"It is thought so, yes."

"And 'modest'?"

"Modesty is often involved."

"Your opinion of your own actions is 'modest'?"

"I hope so."

"And if you do nothing save what your own spirit tells you to do — that is 'lazy', eh? Even 'evil'?"

"Scarcely evil, really, but certainly unworthy…"

The locomotive came to a rest beside them, where the chronomnibus had lately been.

"I am enlightened at last!" he said. "And to be 'poor', is that frowned upon by Bromley."

She began to smile. "Indeed, it is. But I do not approve of such notions. In my charity work, I tried to help the poor as much as I could. We had a missionary society, and we collected money so that we could purchase certain basic comforts…"

"And these 'poor' ones, they exist so that you might exercise your own impulses towards 'nobility'

and 'self-sacrifice'. I understand!"

"Not so, Jherek. The poor — well, they just 
exist
. I, and others like me, tried to ease their conditions, tried to find work for the unemployed, medicine for their sick."

"And if they did not exist? How, then, would you express yourself?"

"Oh, there are many other causes, all over the world. Heathen to be converted, tyrants to be taught justice, and so on. Of course, poverty is the chief source of all the other problems…"

"I could perhaps create some 'poor' for you."

"That would be terrible. No, no! I disapproved of your world before I understood it. Now I do not disapprove — it would be irrational of me. I would not change it. It is I who must change." She began to weep again. "I who must try to understand that things will remain as they are throughout eternity, that the same dance will be danced over and over again and that only the partners will differ…"

"We have our love, Amelia."

Her expression was anguished. "But can't you see, Jherek, that it is what I fear most! What is love without time, without death?"

"It is love without sadness, surely."

"Could it be love without purpose?"

"Love is love."

"Then you must teach me to believe that, my dear."

She was to be Amelia Carnelian; she insisted upon it. They found seeds and bulbs, preserved by the cities, and they planted them in her gardens. They began a new life, as man and wife. She was teaching him to read again, and to write, and if Jherek felt contentment she, at least, felt a degree more secure; his assurances of fidelity became credible to her. But though the sun shone and the days and nights came and went with a regularity unusual at the End of Time, they were without seasons. She feared for her crops.

Though she watered them carefully, no shoots appeared, and one day she decided to turn a piece of ground to see how her potatoes fared. She found that they had gone rotten. Elsewhere not a single seed had put out even the feeblest root. He came upon her as she dug frantically through her vegetable garden, searching for one sign of life. She pointed to the ruined tubers.

"Imperfectly preserved, I suppose," he suggested.

"No. We tasted them. These are the same. It is the earth that ruins them. It is not true soil at all. It is without goodness. It is barren, Jherek, as everything is fundamentally barren in this world." She threw down the spade; she entered the house. With Jherek at her heels, she went to sit at a window looking out towards her rose-garden.

He joined her, feeling her pain but unable to find any means of banishing it.

"Illusion," she said.

"We can experiment, Amelia, to make earth which will allow your crops to grow."

"Oh, perhaps…" She made an effort to free herself from her mood, then her brow clouded again.

"Here is your father, like an Angel of Death come to preside at the funeral of my hopes."

It was Lord Jagged, stepping with jaunty tread along the crazy paving, waving to her.

Jherek admitted him. He was all bustle and high humour. "The time comes. The circuit is complete. I let the world run through one more full week, to establish the period of the loop, then we're saved forever! My news displeases you?"

Jherek spoke for Amelia. "We do not care to be reminded of the manner in which the world is maintained, Father!"

"You will notice no outward effects."

"We shall have the 
knowledge
 of what has happened," she murmured. "Illusions cease to satisfy, Lord Jagged."

"Call me Father, too!" He seated himself upon a chaise-longue, spreading his limbs. "I should have guessed you very happy by now. A shame."

"If one's only function is to perpetuate illusion, and one has known real life, one is inclined to fret a little," said she with ungainly irony. "My crops have perished."

"I follow you, Amelia. What do you feel, Jherek?"

"I feel for Amelia," he answered. "If she were happy, then I would be happy." He smiled. "I am a simple creature, father, as I have often been told."

"Hm," said Lord Jagged. He eased himself upward and was about to say more when, in the distance, through the open windows, they heard a sound.

They listened.

"Why," said Amelia, "it is a band."

"Of what?" asked Jherek.

"A musical band," his father told him. He swept from the house. "Come, let's see!"

They all ran through the walks and avenues until they reached the white gate in the fence Amelia had erected around the trees. The lake of blood had long since vanished and gentle green hills replaced it.

They could see a column of people, far away, marching towards them. Even from here, the music was distinct.

"A brass band!" cried Amelia. "Trumpets, trombones, tubas —!"

"And a silver band!" declared Lord Jagged, with unfeigned enthusiasm. "Clarinets, flutes, saxophones!"

"Bass drums — hear!" For the moment her miseries were gone. "Snare drums, tenor drums, timpani…"

"A positive profusion of percussion!" added Jherek, wishing to include himself in the excitement.

"Ta-ta-ta- 
ta
! Hooray!" He made a cap for himself, so that he might fling it into the air. "Hooray!"

"Oh, look!" Amelia had forgotten her distress entirely, for the moment at least. "So many! And is that the Duke of Queens?"

"It is!"

The band — or rather the massed bands, for there must have been at least a thousand mechanical musicians — came marching up the hill towards them, with flags flying, plumes nodding, boots and straps shining, scarlet and blue, silver and black, gold and crimson, green and yellow.

Father, son and wife hung over the white gate like so many children, waving to the Duke of Queens, who marched at the front, a long pole whirling in the air above him, two others whirling on either side, a baton in one hand, a swagger-cane in the other, a huge handle-bar moustache upon his face, and a monstrous bearskin tottering on his head, goose-stepping so high that he almost fell backwards with every movement of his legs. And the band had grown so loud, though it remained in perfect time, that it was utterly impracticable to try to speak, either to the Duke of Queens or to one another.

On and on it marched, with its sousaphones, its kolaphones, its brownophones, its telophones and its gramophones, performing intricate patterns, weaving in and out of itself, making outrageously difficult steps coupled with peculiar time-signatures; with its euphoniums and harmoniums, pianos and piccolos, its banjos, its bongos and its bassoons, saluting, marking time, forming fours, bagpipes skirling, bullroarers whirling, ondes Martenot keening, cellos groaning, violins wailing, Jew's harps boinging, swannee whistles, wailing, tubular bells tolling, calliopes wheezing, guitars shrieking, synthesizers sighing, ophicleides panting, gongs booming, organs grinding, sweet potatoes warbling, xylophones clattering, serpents blaring, bones rattling, glockenspiels tinkling, virginals whispering, bombardons moaning, until it had marshalled itself before the gate. And then it stopped.

"Haydn, eh?" said Lord Jagged knowledgeably as the proud Duke approached.

" 
Yellow Dog Charlie
, according to the tape reference." The Duke of Queens was beaming from beneath his bearskin. "But you know how mixed up the cities are. Something from your period again, Mrs. Un—"

"Carnelian," she murmured.

"—derwood. We simply can't leave it alone, can we? I've seen a craze last a thousand years, unabated."

"Your enthusiasms always tend to prolong themselves beyond the capabilities of your contemporaries, ebullient bandsman, most carefree of capellmeisters, most glorious of gleemen!"

congratulated Lord Jagged. "Have you marched far?"

"The parade is to celebrate my first venture into connubial harmony!"

"Music?" enquired Jherek.

"Marriage." A wink at Jherek's father. "Lord Jagged will know what I mean."

"A wedding?" laconically supplied Jagged.

"A wedding, yes! It is all the rage. Today — I think it's today — I am joined in holy matrimony (admit my grasp of the vocabulary!) to the loveliest of ladies, the beautiful Sweet Orb Mace."

"And who conducts the rites?" asked Amelia.

"Bishop Castle. Who else? Will you come, and be my best men and women?"

"Well…"

"Of course we'll come, gorgeous groom." Lord Jagged leapt the gate to embrace the Duke before he departed. "And bring gifts, too. Green for a groom and blue for a bride!"

"Another custom?"

"Oh, indeed."

Amelia pursed her lips and frowned at Lord Jagged of Canaria. "It is astonishing that so many of our old customs are remembered, sir."

His patrician head moved to meet her eyes; he wore the faintest of smiles. "Oh, didn't you know? In the general confusion, with the translation pills and so forth, it seems that we are all talking nineteenth-century English. It serves. It serves."

"You arranged this?"

Blandly, he replied. "I am constantly flattered by your suggestions, Amelia. I admire your perceptions, though it would seem to me that you are inclined to over-interpret, on occasion."

"If you would have it so, sir." She curtsied, but her expression was hardly demure.

Fearful of further tension between the two, Jherek said: "So we are again to be guests at the Duke of Queens'. You are not disturbed by the prospect, Amelia?"

"We have been invited. We shall attend. If it be a mock marriage, it will certainly be an extravagant one."

Lord Jagged of Canaria was looking at her through perceptive eyes and it was as if his mask had fallen for a moment.

She was baffled by this sudden sincerity; she avoided that eye.

"Very well, then," said Jherek's father briskly, "We shall meet again soon, then?"

"Soon," she said.

"Farewell," he said, "to you both." He strode for his swan which swam on a tiny pond he had manufactured for parking purposes. He was soon aloft. A wave of yellow froth and he was gone.

"So marriage is the fashion now," she said as they walked back to the house.

He took her hand. "We are already married," he said.

"In God's eyes, as we used to say. But God looks down on this world no longer. We have only a poor substitute. A poseur."

They entered the house. "You speak of Jagged again, Amelia?"

"He continues to disturb me. It would seem he has satisfied himself, seen all his schemes completed.