Dancers at the End of Time (78 page)

As they stretched out, one at each station of the cloth, Amelia sighed, evidently glad to relax, as was Jherek.

"Now, Lord Jagged," Amelia began, ignoring the food, "you said there was an alternative…"

"Let us eat quietly for a moment," he said. "You will admit the common sense of becoming as calm as possible after today's events, I know."

"Very well." She selected a prune from a nearby dish. He chose a chestnut.

Conscious that the encounter was between Jagged and Amelia, Jherek and the Iron Orchid said little. Instead they munched and watched the seabirds wheeling while listening to the whisper of the waves on the shore.

Of the four, the Iron Orchid, in her orchids, supplied the only brilliant colour to the scene; Jherek, Amelia and Lord Jagged were still in grey. Jherek thought that his father had chosen an ideal location for the picnic and smiled drowsily when his mother remarked that it was like old times. It was as if the world had never been threatened, as if his adventures had never taken place, yet now he had gained an entire family. It would be pleasant, he thought, to make a regular habit of these picnics; surely even Amelia must be enjoying the simplicity, the sunshine, the relative solitude. He glanced at her. She was thoughtful and did not notice him. As always, he was warmed by feelings of the utmost tenderness as he contemplated her grave beauty, a beauty which showed itself at its best when she was unaware of attention, as now, or when she slept. He smiled, wondering if she would agree to a ceremony, not public or grandiose as the ones they had recently witnessed but private and plain, in which they should be properly married. He was sure that she yearned for it.

She looked up and met his eyes. She smiled briefly before speaking to his father: "And now, Lord Jagged — the alternative."

"It is within my power," said Jagged, responding to her briskness, "to send you into the future."

She became instantly guarded again. "Future? There is none."

"Not for this world — and there will be none at all, when this week has passed. But we are still capable of moving back and forth in the conventional time-cycle — just for the next seven days. When I say 'the future' I mean, of course, 'the past' — I can send you forward to the Palaeozoic, as I originally hoped. You would go forward and therefore not be at all subject to Morphail's Law. There is a slight danger, though I would not say much. Once in the Palaeozoic you would not be able to return to this world and, moreover, you would become mortal."

"As Olympians sent to Earth," she said.

"And denied your god-like powers," he added. "The rings will not work in the Palaeozoic, as you already know. You would have to build your own shelters, grow and hunt your own food. There are no material advantages at all, though you would have the advice and help of the Time Centre, doubtless, if it remains. That, I must remind you, is subject to the Morphail Effect. If you intended to bear children…"

"It would be unthinkable that I should not," she told him firmly.

"…you would not have the facilities you have known in 1896. There would be a risk, though probably slight, of disease."

"We should be able to take tools, medicines and so forth?"

"Of course. But you would have to learn to use them."

"Writing materials?"

"An excellent idea. There would be no problem, I think I have an 
Enquire Within
 and a 
How
 
Things Work
 somewhere."

"Seeds?"

"You would be able to grow most things — and think how they would proliferate, with so little competition. In a few hundred years' time, before your death almost certainly, what a peculiar ecology would develop upon the Earth! Millions of years of evolution would be bypassed. There is time-travel for you, if you like!"

"Time to create a race almost entirely lacking in primitive instincts — and without need of them!"

"Hopefully."

She addressed Jherek, who was having difficulty coming to grips with the point of the conversation.

"It would be our trust. Remember what we discussed, Jherek, dear? A combination of my sense of duty and your sense of freedom?"

"Oh, yes!" He spoke brightly, breathlessly, as he did his best to assimilate it all.

"What splendid children they could be!"

"Oh, indeed!"

"It will be a trial for you, too," said Jagged gently.

"Compared with the trials we have already experienced, Lord Jagged, the ones to come will be as nothing."

The familiar smile touched his lips. "You are optimistic."

"Given a grain of hope," she said. "And you offer much more." Her grey eyes fixed on him. "Was this always part of your plan?"

"Plan? Call it my own small exercise in optimism."

"Everything that has happened recently — it might have been designed to have led up to this."

"Yes, I suppose that's true." He looked at his son. "I could be envious of you, my boy."

"Of me? For what, Father?"

Jagged was contemplating Amelia again. His voice was distant, perhaps a touch sad. "Oh, for many things…"

The Iron Orchid put down an unfinished walnut. "They have no time-machine," she said tartly. "And they have not the training to travel without one."

"I have Brannart's abandoned machine. It is an excellent one — the best he has ever produced. It is already stocked. You can set off as soon as you wish."

"I am not sure that life in the Palaeozoic is entirely to my taste," said Jherek. "I would leave so many friends behind, you see."

"And you would age, dear," added the Orchid. "You would grow infirm. I cannot imagine…"

"You said that we should have several hundred years, Lord Jagged?" Amelia began to rise.

"You would have a life-span about the same as Methusalah's, at a guess. Your genes are already affected, and then there would be the prevailing conditions. I think you would have time to grow old quite gracefully — and see several generations follow you."

"That is worthwhile immortality, Jherek," she said to him. "To become immortal through one's children."

"I suppose so…"

"And those children would become your friends," added his father. "As we are friends, Jherek."

"You would not come with us?" He had so recently gained this father, he could not lose him so soon.

"There is another alternative. I intend to take that."

"Could not we…?"

"It would be impossible. I am an inveterate time-traveller, my boy. I cannot give it up. There is still so much to learn."

"You gave us the impression there was nothing left to explore," said Amelia.

"But if one goes 
beyond
 the End of Time, one might experience the beginning of a whole 
new
 cycle in the existence of what Mrs. Persson terms 'the multiverse'. Having learned to dispense with time-machines — and it is a trick impossible to teach — I intend to fling myself completely outside the present cycle. I intend to explore infinity."

"I was not aware…" began the Orchid.

"I shall have to go alone," he said.

"Ah, well. I was becoming bored with marriage. After today, anyway, it could scarcely be called a novelty!"

Amelia went to stand beside a rock, staring landwards.

Jherek said to Jagged: "It would mean that we should be parted forever, then — you and I, Jagged."

"As to that, it depends upon my fate and what I learn in my explorations. It is possible that we shall meet. But it is not probable, my boy."

"It would make Amelia happy," said Jherek.

"And I would be happy," Lord Jagged told him softly. "Knowing that, whatever befalls me, you and yours will go on."

Amelia wheeled round at this. "Your motives are clear at last, Lord Jagged."

"If you say so, Amelia." From a sleeve he produced pale yellow roses and offered them to her.

"You prefer to see me as a man moved entirely by self-interest. Then see me so!" He bowed as he presented the bouquet.

"It is how you justify your decisions, I think," She accepted the flowers.

"Oh, you are probably right."

"You will say nothing, even now, of your past?"

"I have no past." His smile was self-mocking. "Only a future. Even that is not certain,"

"I believe," said Jherek suddenly, "that I weary of ambiguity. At least, at the Beginning of Time, there is little of that."

"Very little," she said, coming to him. "Our love could flourish, Jherek dear."

"We would be truly husband and wife?"

"It would be our moral duty." Her smile held unusual merriment. "To perpetuate the race, my dear."

"We could have a ceremony?"

"Perhaps, Lord Jagged —"

"I should be glad to officiate. I seem to remember that I have civil authority, as a Registrar…"

"It would 
have
 to be a civil ceremony," she said.

"We shall be your Adam and Bede after all, Jagged!" Jherek put his arm around his Amelia's waist.

"And if we keep the machine, perhaps we could visit the future, just to see how it progressed, eh?"

Lord Jagged shook his head. "If you go further forward, once you have stopped, you will immediately become subject to the Morphail Effect again. Therefore time travel will be impossible. You will be creating your future, but if you ever dare try to find out what the future will be like, then it will almost certainly cease to exist. You will have to reconcile yourself to making the most of one lifetime in one place. Amelia can teach you that." He stroked his chin. "There will be something in the genes, I suppose. And you already know much about the nature of Time. Ultimately a new race of time-travellers could exist, not subject to the Morphail Effect. It might mean the abolition of Time, as we have understood it up to now. And Space, too, would assume, therefore, an entirely different character. The experiment might mean —"

"I think that we shall try not to indulge in experiments of that sort, Lord Jagged." She was firm.

"No, no, of course not." But his manner remained speculative.

The Iron Orchid was laughing. She, too, had risen to her feet, her orchids whispering as she moved.

"At least, at the Beginning of Time, they'll be free from your further interference, Jagged."

"Interference?"

"And this world, too, may go its own way, within its limitations." She kissed her husband. "You leave many gifts behind you, cunning Lord of Canaria!"

"One does what one can." He put his hand into hers. "I would take you with me, Orchid, if I could."

"I think that temperamentally I am content with things as they are. Call me conservative, if you will, but there is a certain predictability about life at the End of Time which suits me."

"Well, then, all our temperamental needs are satisfied. Jherek and Amelia go to work as colonists, founding a whole new culture, a new history, a new kind of race. It should prove very different, in some aspects, from the old one. I travel on, as my restless brain moves me. And you, dearest Orchid, stay.

The resolution seems satisfactory."

"There might be others here," Amelia said, after an internal struggle with her conscience, "who might also wish to become 'colonists'. Li Pao, for instance."

"I had considered that, but it complicates matters. I am afraid that Li Pao is doomed to spend eternity in this particular paradise."

"It seems a shame," she said. "Could you not —?"

He raised a hand. "You accused me of manipulating Fate, Amelia. You are wrong — I merely offer a certain resistance to it. I win a few little battles, that is all. Li Pao's fate is now settled. He will dance with the others, at the End of Time." He made references to her quotation and as he did so he lifted his hat as if he acknowledged some previous point she had made. Jherek sighed and was glad of his own decision for, if nothing else, it would, as he had said, mean no more of these mysteries.

"Then you condemn them all to this terrible mockery of existence." Amelia frowned.

Jagged's laughter was frank. "You remain, in spite of all your experiences, a woman of your time, Amelia! Our beautiful Iron Orchid finds this existence quite natural."

"It has a simplicity, you see," agreed the Orchid, "which I did not find, for instance, in your age, my dear. I do not have the courage, I suppose, to confront such complications as I witnessed in 1896.

Though," she hastened to add, "I enjoyed my short visit thoroughly. I suppose it is mortality which makes people rush about so. This world is more leisurely, probably because we are not constrained by the prospect of death. It is, I would be the first to admit, entirely a matter of taste. You choose your work, your duty, and your death. I choose pleasure and immortality. Yet, if I were in your position, I should probably make the decisions you have made."

"You are the most understanding of mothers-in-law!" cried Amelia, hugging her. "There will be some things I shall regret leaving here."

The Iron Orchid touched Amelia's neck with a hand subtly coloured to match her costume; her tongue moistened her lower lip for an instant; her expression caused Amelia to blush. "Oh, indeed,"

breathed the Orchid, "there is much we might have done together. And I shall miss Jherek, of course, as I am sure will Jagged."

Amelia became her old, stern self. "Well, there'll be little time to make all the arrangements necessary before we leave, if we go tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" said Jherek. "I was hoping…"

"It would be best to go as soon as possible," she told him. "Of course, if you have changed your mind and wish to remain with — your parents, and your friends…"

"Never. I love you. I have followed you across a world and through Time. I will go with you wherever you choose, Amelia."

Her manner softened. "Oh, my dear." She linked her arm in his.

Lord Jagged said. "I suggest we stroll along the beach for a bit." He offered an exquisite arm to Amelia and, after scarcely any hesitation at all, she took it. The Iron Orchid took Jherek's free arm, and thus joined, they began to walk along the pale yellow shore; as handsome and as happy a family group as any one might find in history.