"You conspire against your entire society. What your fellows could see as your morbid interest in morality actually threatens the status quo — a status quo that has existed for at least a million years, in this form alone! Would you have all your friends as miserably self-conscious as me?" Li Pao was laughing. His lovely yellow face shone like a small sun. "You know my disapproval of your world and its pleasures."
"You have bored me often enough…" Jherek was amiable.
"I admit that I should be sad to see it destroyed. It is reminiscent of that Nursery you discovered, before you disappeared. I should hate to see these children face to face with reality."
"All this —" the sweep of an arm — "is not 'reality'?"
"Illusion, every scrap. What would happen to you all if your cities were to close down in an instant, if your heat and your light — the simplest of animal needs — were taken from you? What would you do?"
Jherek could see little point in the question. "Shiver and stumble," he said, "until death came. Why do you ask?"
"You are not frightened by the prospect?"
"It is no more real than anything else I experience or expect to experience. I would not say that it is the most agreeable fate. I should try to avoid it, of course. But if it became inevitable, I hope I should perish with good grace."
Li Pao shook his head, amused. "You are incorrigible. I hoped to convince you, now that you, of all here, have rediscovered your humanity. Yet perhaps fear is no good thing. Perhaps it is only we, the fearful, who attempt to instil our own sense of urgency into others, who avoid reality, who deceive others into believing that only conflict and unhappiness lead us to the truth."
"It is a view expressed even at the End of Time, Li Pao." The Iron Orchid joined them, sporting an oddly wrought garment, stiff and metallic and giving off a glow; it framed her face and her body, which was naked and of a conventional, female shape. "You hear it from Werther de Goethe. From Lord Shark. And, of course, from Mongrove himself."
"They are perverse. They adopt such attitudes merely to provide contrast."
"And you, Li Pao?" asked Jherek. "Why do you adopt them?"
"They were instilled into me as a child. I am conditioned, if you like, to make the associations you describe."
"No instincts guide you, then?" asked the Iron Orchid. She laid a languid arm across her son's shoulders. Apparently absent-minded, she stroked his cheek.
"You speak of instincts? You have none, save the seeking of pleasure." The little Chinese shrugged. "You have need of none, it could be said."
"You do not answer her question." Jherek Carnelian found himself a fraction discomfited by his mother's attentions. His eyes sought for Amelia, but she was not in sight.
"I argue that the question is meaningless, without understanding of its import."
"Yet…?" murmured the Iron Orchid, and her finger tickled Jherek's ear.
"My instincts and my reason are at one," said Li Pao. "Both tell me that a race which struggles is a race which survives."
"We struggle mightily against boredom," she said. "Are we not inventive enough for you, Li Pao?"
"I am unconvinced. The prisoners in your menageries — the time-travellers and the space-travellers — they condemn you. You exploit them. You exploit the universe. This planet and perhaps the star around which it circles draws its energy from a galaxy which, itself, is dying. It leeches on its fellows. Is that just?"
Jherek had been listening closely. "My Amelia said something not dissimilar. I could understand her little better, Li Pao. Your world and hers seem similar in some respects and, from what I know of them, menageries are kept."
"Prisons, you mean? This is mere sophistry, Jherek Carnelian, as you must realize. We have prisons for those who transgress against society. Those who occupy them are there because they gambled — normally they staked their personal freedom against some form of personal gain."
"The time-travellers often believe they stake their lives, as do the space-travellers. We do not punish them. We look after them."
"You show them no respect," said Li Pao.
The Iron Orchid pursed her lips in a kind of smile. "Some are too puzzled, poor things, to understand their fate, but those who are not soon settle. Are you not thoroughly settled, Li Pao? You are rarely missed at parties. I know many other time-travellers and space-travellers who mingle with us, scarcely ever taking up their places in the menageries. Do we use force to keep them there, my dear? Do we deceive them?"
"Sometimes."
"Only as we deceive one another, for the pleasure of it."
Once more, Li Pao preferred to change ground. He pointed a chubby finger at Jherek. "And what of 'your Amelia'? Was she pleased to be manipulated in your games? Did she take pleasure in being made a pawn?"
Jherek was surprised. "Come now, Li Pao. She was never altered physically — and certainly into nothing fishy."
Li Pao put his finger to a tooth and sighed.
The Iron Orchid pulled Jherek away, still with her arm about his shoulders. "Come, fruit of my loins. You will excuse us, Li Pao?"
Li Pao's bow was brief.
"I have seen Mrs. Underwood," the Iron Orchid said to Jherek, as they flew higher to where only a few people drifted. "She looks more beautiful than ever. She was good enough to compliment me on my costume. You recognize the character?"
"I think not."
"Mrs. Underwood did, when I reminded her of the legend. A beautiful little story I had one of the cities tell me. I did not hear all the story, for the city had forgotten much, but enough was gained to make the costume. It is the tale of Old Florence and the Night of Gales and of the Lady in the Lamp, who tended to the needs of five hundred soldiers in a single day! Imagine! Five hundred!" She licked purple lips and grinned. "Those ancients! I have it in mind to re-enact the whole story. There are soldiers here, too, you know. They arrived fairly recently and are in the menagerie of the Duke of Queens. But there are only twenty or so."
"You could make some of your own."
"I know, flesh of my flesh, but it would not be quite the same. It is your fault."
"How, maternal, eternal flower?"
"Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Reproductions, where originals can be discovered, are an absolute anathema. And they become scarcer, they vanish so quickly."
"Time-travellers?"
"Naturally. The space-travellers remain. But of what use are they?"
"Morphail has spoken to you, headiest of blooms?"
"Oh, a little, my seed. But all is Warning. All is Prophecy. He rants. You cannot hear him; not the words. I suppose Mrs. Underwood shall be gone soon. Perhaps then things will return to a more acceptable pattern."
"Amelia remains with me," said Jherek, detecting, he thought, a wistful note in his mother's voice.
"You keep her company exclusively," said the Iron Orchid. "You are obsessed. Why so?"
"Love," he told her.
"But, as I understand it, she makes no expression of love. You scarcely touch!"
"Her customs are not as ours."
"They are crude, then, her customs!"
"Different."
"Ah!" His mother was dismissive. "She inhabits your whole mind. She affects your taste. Let her steer her own course, and you yours. Who knows, later those courses might again cross. I heard something of your adventures. They have been furious and stunning. Both of you need to drift, to recuperate, to enjoy lighter company. Is it you, bloom of my womb, keeping her by your side, when she would run free?"
"She is free. She loves me."
"I say again — there are no signs."
"I know the signs."
"You cannot describe them?"
"They lie in gesture, tone of voice, expression in the eyes."
"Ho, ho! This is too subtle for me, this telepathy! Love is flesh touched against flesh, the whispered word, the fingernail drawn delicately down the spine, the grasped thigh. There is no throb, Jherek, to this love of yours. It is pale — it is mean, eh?"
"No, giver of life. You feign obtuseness, I can tell. But why?"
Her glance was intense, for her, but cryptic.
"Mother? Strongest of orchids?"
But she had twisted a power-ring and was falling like a stone, with no word of reply. He saw her drop and disappear into a large crowd which swarmed at about the halfway point, below.
He found his mother's behaviour peculiar. She exhibited moods he had never encountered before. She appeared to have lost some of her wit and substituted malice (for which she had always had a delicious penchant, but the malice needed the wit to make it entertaining); she appeared to show a dislike for Amelia Underwood which she had not shown earlier. He shook his head and fingered his chin. How was it, that she could not, as she had always done in the past, delight in his delight? With a shrug, he aimed himself for a lower level.
A stranger sped to greet him from a nearby gallery. The stranger was clad in sombrero, fancy vest, chaps, boots and bandoliers, all in blinding red.
"Jherek, my pod, my blood! Why fly so fast?"
Only the eyes revealed identity, and even this confused him for a second before he realized the truth.
"Iron Orchid. How you proliferate!"
"You have met the others, already?"
"One of them. Which is the original?"
"We could all claim that, but there is a programme. At a certain time several vanish, one remains. It matters not which, does it? This method allows one to circulate better."
"You have not yet met Amelia Underwood?"
"Not since I visited you at your ranch, my love. She is still with you?"
He decided to avoid repetition. "Your disguise is very striking."
"I represent a great hero of Mrs. Underwood's time. A bandit king — a rogue loved by all — who came to rule a nation and was killed in his prime. It is a cycle of legend with which you must be familiar."
"The name?"
"Ruby Jack Kennedy. Somewhere…" she cast about … "you should find me as the treacherous woman who, in the end, betrayed him. Her name was Rosie Lee." The Iron Orchid dropped her voice. "She fell in love, you know, with an Italian called 'The Mouser', because of the clever way he trapped his victims…"
He found this conversation more palatable and was content to lend an ear, while she continued her delighted rendering of the old legend with its theme of blood, murder and revenge and the curse which fell upon the clan because of the false pride of its patriarch. He scarcely listened until there came a familiar phrase (revealing her taste for it, for she was not to know that one of her alter egos had already made it): "Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Do you not feel, Jherek, that invention is being thwarted by experience? Remember how we used to stop Li Pao from giving us details of the ages we sought to recreate? Were we not wiser to do so?"
She had only half his attention. "I'll admit that our entertainments lack something in savour for me, since I journeyed through Time. And, of course, I myself could be said to be the cause of the fashion you find distressing."
She, in her own turn, had given his statements no close attention. She glared discontentedly about the hall. "I believe they call it 'social realism'," she muttered.
"My 'London' began a specific trend towards the recreation of observed reality…" he continued, but she was waving a hand at him, not because she disagreed, but because he interrupted a monologue.
"It's the spirit, my pup, not the expression. Something has changed. We seem to have lost our lightness of touch. Where is our relish for contrast? Are we all to become antiquarians and nothing more? What is happening to us, Jherek. It is — darkening…"
This particular Iron Orchid's mood was very different from that of the other mother, already encountered. If she merely desired an audience while she rambled, he was happy to remain one, though he found her argument narrow.
Perhaps the argument was the only one held by this facsimile, he thought. After all, the great advantage of self-reproduction was that it was possible to hold as many different opinions as one wished, at the same time.
As a boy, Jherek remembered, he had witnessed some dozen Iron Orchids in heated debate. She had enjoyed a phase where she found it easier to divide herself and argue, as it were, face to face, than to attempt to arrange her thoughts in the conventional manner. This facsimile, however, was proving something of a bore (always the danger, if only one opinion were held and rigorously maintained), though it had that quality which saves the bore from snubs or ostracism — and, unfortunately, encourages it to retain the idea that it is an interesting conversationalist — it had a quality of pathos.
Pathos, thought Jherek, was not normally evident in his mother's character. Had he detected it in the facsimile he had previously encountered? Possibly…
"I worship surprises, of course," she continued. "I embrace variety. It is the pepper of existence, as the ancients said. Therefore, I should be celebrating all these new events. These 'time-warps' of Brannart's, these disappearances, all these comings and goings. I wonder why I should feel — what is it? — 'disturbed'? — by them. Disturbed? Have you ever known me 'disturbed', my egg?"
He murmured: "Never…"
"Yes, I am disturbed. But what is the cause? I cannot identify it. Should I blame myself, Jherek?"
"Of course not…"
"Why? Why? Joy departs; Zest deserts me — and is this replacement called Anxiety? Ha! A disease of time-travellers, of space-voyagers to which we, at the End of Time, have always been immune. Until now, Jherek…"
"Softest of skins, strongest of wills, I do not quite…"
"If it has become fashionable to rediscover and become infected by ancient psychoses, then I'll defy fashion. The craze will pass. What can sustain it? This news of Mongrove's? Some machination of Jagged's? Brannart's experiments?"
"Symptoms both, the latter two," he suggested. "If the universe is dying…"
But she had been steering towards a new subject, and again she revealed the obsession of her original. Her tone became lighter, but he was not deceived by it. "One may also, of course, look to your Mrs. Underwood as an instigator…"
The statement was given significant emphasis. There was the briefest of pauses before the name and after it. She goaded him to defend her or deny her, but he would not be lured.
Blandly he replied. "Magnificent blossom, Li Pao would have it that the cause of our confusion lay within our own minds. He believes that we hold Truth at bay whilst embracing Illusion. The illusion, he hints, begins to reveal itself for what it is. That is why, says Li Pao, we know concern."
She had become an implacable facsimile. "And you, Jherek. Once the gayest of children! The wittiest of men! The most inventive of artists! Joyful boy, it seems to me that you turn dullard. And why? And when? Because Jagged encouraged you to play Lover! To that primitive…"
"Mother! Where is your wit? But to answer, well, I am sure that we shall soon be wed. I detect a difference in her regard for me."
"A conclusion? I exult!"
Her lack of good humour astonished him. "Firmest of metals, do not, I pray, make a petitioner of me. Must I placate a virago when once I was assured of the good graces of a friend?"
"I am more than that, I hope, blood of my blood."
It occurred to him that if he had rediscovered Love, then she had rediscovered Jealousy. Could the one never exist without the presence of the other?
"Mother, I beg you to recollect…"
A sniff from beneath the sombrero. "She ascends, I see. She has her own rings, then?"
"Of course."
"You think it wise, to indulge a savage —?"
Amelia hovered close to, in earshot now. A false smile curved the lips of the shade, this imperfect doppelganger. "Aha! Mrs. Underwood. What beautiful simplicity of taste, the blue and white!"
Amelia Underwood took time to recognize the Iron Orchid. Her nod was courteous, when she did so, but she refused to ignore the challenge. "Overwhelmed entirely by the brilliant exoticism of your scarlet, Mrs. Carnelian."
A tilt of the brim. "And what role, my dear, do you adopt today?"
"I regret we came merely as ourselves. But did I not see you earlier, in that box-like costume, then later in a yellow gown of some description? So many excellent disguises."
"I think there is one in yellow, yes. I forget. Sometimes, I feel so full of rich ideas, I must indulge more than one. You must think me coarse, dear ancestor."
"Never that, lushest of orchids."
Jherek was amused. It was the first time he had heard Mrs. Underwood use such language. He began to enjoy the encounter, but the Iron Orchid refused further sport. She leaned forward. Her son was blessed with an ostentatious kiss; Amelia Underwood was pecked. "Brannart has arrived. I promised him an account of 1896. Surly he might be, but rarely dull. For the moment, then, dear children."
She began to pirouette downwards. Jherek wondered where she had seen Brannart Morphail, for the hunchbacked, club-footed scientist was not in evidence.
Amelia Underwood settled on his arm again. "Your mother seems distraught. Not as self-contained as usual."
"It is because she divides herself too much. The substance of each facsimile is a little thin." He explained.
"Yet it is clear that she regards me as an enemy."
"Hardly that. She is not, you see, herself…"
"I am complimented, Mr. Carnelian. It is a pleasure to be taken seriously."
"But I am concerned for her. She has never been serious in her life before."
"And you would say that I am to blame."
"I think she is perturbed, sensing a loss of control in her own destiny, such as we experienced at the Beginning of Time. It is an odd sensation."
"Familiar enough to me, Mr. Carnelian."
"Perhaps she will come to enjoy it. It is unlike her to resist experience."
"I should be glad to advise her on how best to cope."
He sensed irony, at last. He darted a glance of enquiry. Her eyes laughed. He checked a desire to hug her, but he touched her hand, very delicately, and was thrilled.
"You have been entertaining them all," he said, "down there?"
"I hope so. Language, thanks to your pills, is no problem. I feel I speak my own. But ideas can sometimes be difficult to communicate. Your assumptions are so foreign."
"Yet you no longer condemn them."
"Make no mistake — I continue to disapprove. But nothing is gained by blunt denials and denunciations."
"You triumph, as you know. It is that which the Iron Orchid finds uncomfortable."
"I appear to be enjoying some small social success. That, in turn, brings embarrassment."
"Embarrassment?" He bowed to O'Kala Incarnadine, as Queen Britannia, who saluted him.
"They ask me my opinion. Of the authenticity of their costumes."
"The quality of imagination is poor."
"Not at all. But none is authentic, though most are fanciful and many beautiful. Your people's knowledge of my age is sketchy, to say the least."
By degrees, they were drifting towards the bottom of the hall.
"Yet it is the age we know most about," he said. "Mainly because I have studied it and set the fashion for it, of course. What is wrong with the costumes?"
"As costumes, nothing. But few come close to the theme of '1896'. There is a span, say, of a thousand years between one disguise and another. A man dressed in lilac ducks and wearing a crusty (and I must say delicious looking) pork pie upon his head announced that he was Harald Hardrede."
"The prime minister, yes?"
"No, Mr. Carnelian. The costume was impossible, at any rate."
"Could he have been this Harald Hardrede, do you think? We have a number of distinguished temporal adventurers in the menageries."
"It is unlikely."
"Several million years have passed, after all, and so much now relies on hearsay. We are entirely dependent upon the rotting cities for our information. When the cities were younger, they were more reliable. A million years ago, there would have been far fewer anachronisms at a party of this kind. I have heard of parties given by our ancestors (your descendants, that is) which drew on all the resources of the cities in their prime. This masque must be feeble in comparison. There again, it is pleasant to use one's own imagination to invent an idea of the past."
"I find it wonderful. I do not deny that I am stimulated by it, as well as confused. You must consider me narrow-minded…"
"You praise us too much. I am overjoyed that you should find my world at last acceptable, for it leads me to hope that you will soon agree to be my —"
"Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, and she pointed. "There is Brannart Morphail. We must give him our news."
11. A Few Quiet Moments in the Menagerie
12. In Which Lord Mongrove Reminds Us of Inevitable Doom
"You have bored me often enough…" Jherek was amiable.
"I admit that I should be sad to see it destroyed. It is reminiscent of that Nursery you discovered, before you disappeared. I should hate to see these children face to face with reality."
"All this —" the sweep of an arm — "is not 'reality'?"
"Illusion, every scrap. What would happen to you all if your cities were to close down in an instant, if your heat and your light — the simplest of animal needs — were taken from you? What would you do?"
Jherek could see little point in the question. "Shiver and stumble," he said, "until death came. Why do you ask?"
"You are not frightened by the prospect?"
"It is no more real than anything else I experience or expect to experience. I would not say that it is the most agreeable fate. I should try to avoid it, of course. But if it became inevitable, I hope I should perish with good grace."
Li Pao shook his head, amused. "You are incorrigible. I hoped to convince you, now that you, of all here, have rediscovered your humanity. Yet perhaps fear is no good thing. Perhaps it is only we, the fearful, who attempt to instil our own sense of urgency into others, who avoid reality, who deceive others into believing that only conflict and unhappiness lead us to the truth."
"It is a view expressed even at the End of Time, Li Pao." The Iron Orchid joined them, sporting an oddly wrought garment, stiff and metallic and giving off a glow; it framed her face and her body, which was naked and of a conventional, female shape. "You hear it from Werther de Goethe. From Lord Shark. And, of course, from Mongrove himself."
"They are perverse. They adopt such attitudes merely to provide contrast."
"And you, Li Pao?" asked Jherek. "Why do you adopt them?"
"They were instilled into me as a child. I am conditioned, if you like, to make the associations you describe."
"No instincts guide you, then?" asked the Iron Orchid. She laid a languid arm across her son's shoulders. Apparently absent-minded, she stroked his cheek.
"You speak of instincts? You have none, save the seeking of pleasure." The little Chinese shrugged. "You have need of none, it could be said."
"You do not answer her question." Jherek Carnelian found himself a fraction discomfited by his mother's attentions. His eyes sought for Amelia, but she was not in sight.
"I argue that the question is meaningless, without understanding of its import."
"Yet…?" murmured the Iron Orchid, and her finger tickled Jherek's ear.
"My instincts and my reason are at one," said Li Pao. "Both tell me that a race which struggles is a race which survives."
"We struggle mightily against boredom," she said. "Are we not inventive enough for you, Li Pao?"
"I am unconvinced. The prisoners in your menageries — the time-travellers and the space-travellers — they condemn you. You exploit them. You exploit the universe. This planet and perhaps the star around which it circles draws its energy from a galaxy which, itself, is dying. It leeches on its fellows. Is that just?"
Jherek had been listening closely. "My Amelia said something not dissimilar. I could understand her little better, Li Pao. Your world and hers seem similar in some respects and, from what I know of them, menageries are kept."
"Prisons, you mean? This is mere sophistry, Jherek Carnelian, as you must realize. We have prisons for those who transgress against society. Those who occupy them are there because they gambled — normally they staked their personal freedom against some form of personal gain."
"The time-travellers often believe they stake their lives, as do the space-travellers. We do not punish them. We look after them."
"You show them no respect," said Li Pao.
The Iron Orchid pursed her lips in a kind of smile. "Some are too puzzled, poor things, to understand their fate, but those who are not soon settle. Are you not thoroughly settled, Li Pao? You are rarely missed at parties. I know many other time-travellers and space-travellers who mingle with us, scarcely ever taking up their places in the menageries. Do we use force to keep them there, my dear? Do we deceive them?"
"Sometimes."
"Only as we deceive one another, for the pleasure of it."
Once more, Li Pao preferred to change ground. He pointed a chubby finger at Jherek. "And what of 'your Amelia'? Was she pleased to be manipulated in your games? Did she take pleasure in being made a pawn?"
Jherek was surprised. "Come now, Li Pao. She was never altered physically — and certainly into nothing fishy."
Li Pao put his finger to a tooth and sighed.
The Iron Orchid pulled Jherek away, still with her arm about his shoulders. "Come, fruit of my loins. You will excuse us, Li Pao?"
Li Pao's bow was brief.
"I have seen Mrs. Underwood," the Iron Orchid said to Jherek, as they flew higher to where only a few people drifted. "She looks more beautiful than ever. She was good enough to compliment me on my costume. You recognize the character?"
"I think not."
"Mrs. Underwood did, when I reminded her of the legend. A beautiful little story I had one of the cities tell me. I did not hear all the story, for the city had forgotten much, but enough was gained to make the costume. It is the tale of Old Florence and the Night of Gales and of the Lady in the Lamp, who tended to the needs of five hundred soldiers in a single day! Imagine! Five hundred!" She licked purple lips and grinned. "Those ancients! I have it in mind to re-enact the whole story. There are soldiers here, too, you know. They arrived fairly recently and are in the menagerie of the Duke of Queens. But there are only twenty or so."
"You could make some of your own."
"I know, flesh of my flesh, but it would not be quite the same. It is your fault."
"How, maternal, eternal flower?"
"Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Reproductions, where originals can be discovered, are an absolute anathema. And they become scarcer, they vanish so quickly."
"Time-travellers?"
"Naturally. The space-travellers remain. But of what use are they?"
"Morphail has spoken to you, headiest of blooms?"
"Oh, a little, my seed. But all is Warning. All is Prophecy. He rants. You cannot hear him; not the words. I suppose Mrs. Underwood shall be gone soon. Perhaps then things will return to a more acceptable pattern."
"Amelia remains with me," said Jherek, detecting, he thought, a wistful note in his mother's voice.
"You keep her company exclusively," said the Iron Orchid. "You are obsessed. Why so?"
"Love," he told her.
"But, as I understand it, she makes no expression of love. You scarcely touch!"
"Her customs are not as ours."
"They are crude, then, her customs!"
"Different."
"Ah!" His mother was dismissive. "She inhabits your whole mind. She affects your taste. Let her steer her own course, and you yours. Who knows, later those courses might again cross. I heard something of your adventures. They have been furious and stunning. Both of you need to drift, to recuperate, to enjoy lighter company. Is it you, bloom of my womb, keeping her by your side, when she would run free?"
"She is free. She loves me."
"I say again — there are no signs."
"I know the signs."
"You cannot describe them?"
"They lie in gesture, tone of voice, expression in the eyes."
"Ho, ho! This is too subtle for me, this telepathy! Love is flesh touched against flesh, the whispered word, the fingernail drawn delicately down the spine, the grasped thigh. There is no throb, Jherek, to this love of yours. It is pale — it is mean, eh?"
"No, giver of life. You feign obtuseness, I can tell. But why?"
Her glance was intense, for her, but cryptic.
"Mother? Strongest of orchids?"
But she had twisted a power-ring and was falling like a stone, with no word of reply. He saw her drop and disappear into a large crowd which swarmed at about the halfway point, below.
He found his mother's behaviour peculiar. She exhibited moods he had never encountered before. She appeared to have lost some of her wit and substituted malice (for which she had always had a delicious penchant, but the malice needed the wit to make it entertaining); she appeared to show a dislike for Amelia Underwood which she had not shown earlier. He shook his head and fingered his chin. How was it, that she could not, as she had always done in the past, delight in his delight? With a shrug, he aimed himself for a lower level.
A stranger sped to greet him from a nearby gallery. The stranger was clad in sombrero, fancy vest, chaps, boots and bandoliers, all in blinding red.
"Jherek, my pod, my blood! Why fly so fast?"
Only the eyes revealed identity, and even this confused him for a second before he realized the truth.
"Iron Orchid. How you proliferate!"
"You have met the others, already?"
"One of them. Which is the original?"
"We could all claim that, but there is a programme. At a certain time several vanish, one remains. It matters not which, does it? This method allows one to circulate better."
"You have not yet met Amelia Underwood?"
"Not since I visited you at your ranch, my love. She is still with you?"
He decided to avoid repetition. "Your disguise is very striking."
"I represent a great hero of Mrs. Underwood's time. A bandit king — a rogue loved by all — who came to rule a nation and was killed in his prime. It is a cycle of legend with which you must be familiar."
"The name?"
"Ruby Jack Kennedy. Somewhere…" she cast about … "you should find me as the treacherous woman who, in the end, betrayed him. Her name was Rosie Lee." The Iron Orchid dropped her voice. "She fell in love, you know, with an Italian called 'The Mouser', because of the clever way he trapped his victims…"
He found this conversation more palatable and was content to lend an ear, while she continued her delighted rendering of the old legend with its theme of blood, murder and revenge and the curse which fell upon the clan because of the false pride of its patriarch. He scarcely listened until there came a familiar phrase (revealing her taste for it, for she was not to know that one of her alter egos had already made it): "Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Do you not feel, Jherek, that invention is being thwarted by experience? Remember how we used to stop Li Pao from giving us details of the ages we sought to recreate? Were we not wiser to do so?"
She had only half his attention. "I'll admit that our entertainments lack something in savour for me, since I journeyed through Time. And, of course, I myself could be said to be the cause of the fashion you find distressing."
She, in her own turn, had given his statements no close attention. She glared discontentedly about the hall. "I believe they call it 'social realism'," she muttered.
"My 'London' began a specific trend towards the recreation of observed reality…" he continued, but she was waving a hand at him, not because she disagreed, but because he interrupted a monologue.
"It's the spirit, my pup, not the expression. Something has changed. We seem to have lost our lightness of touch. Where is our relish for contrast? Are we all to become antiquarians and nothing more? What is happening to us, Jherek. It is — darkening…"
This particular Iron Orchid's mood was very different from that of the other mother, already encountered. If she merely desired an audience while she rambled, he was happy to remain one, though he found her argument narrow.
Perhaps the argument was the only one held by this facsimile, he thought. After all, the great advantage of self-reproduction was that it was possible to hold as many different opinions as one wished, at the same time.
As a boy, Jherek remembered, he had witnessed some dozen Iron Orchids in heated debate. She had enjoyed a phase where she found it easier to divide herself and argue, as it were, face to face, than to attempt to arrange her thoughts in the conventional manner. This facsimile, however, was proving something of a bore (always the danger, if only one opinion were held and rigorously maintained), though it had that quality which saves the bore from snubs or ostracism — and, unfortunately, encourages it to retain the idea that it is an interesting conversationalist — it had a quality of pathos.
Pathos, thought Jherek, was not normally evident in his mother's character. Had he detected it in the facsimile he had previously encountered? Possibly…
"I worship surprises, of course," she continued. "I embrace variety. It is the pepper of existence, as the ancients said. Therefore, I should be celebrating all these new events. These 'time-warps' of Brannart's, these disappearances, all these comings and goings. I wonder why I should feel — what is it? — 'disturbed'? — by them. Disturbed? Have you ever known me 'disturbed', my egg?"
He murmured: "Never…"
"Yes, I am disturbed. But what is the cause? I cannot identify it. Should I blame myself, Jherek?"
"Of course not…"
"Why? Why? Joy departs; Zest deserts me — and is this replacement called Anxiety? Ha! A disease of time-travellers, of space-voyagers to which we, at the End of Time, have always been immune. Until now, Jherek…"
"Softest of skins, strongest of wills, I do not quite…"
"If it has become fashionable to rediscover and become infected by ancient psychoses, then I'll defy fashion. The craze will pass. What can sustain it? This news of Mongrove's? Some machination of Jagged's? Brannart's experiments?"
"Symptoms both, the latter two," he suggested. "If the universe is dying…"
But she had been steering towards a new subject, and again she revealed the obsession of her original. Her tone became lighter, but he was not deceived by it. "One may also, of course, look to your Mrs. Underwood as an instigator…"
The statement was given significant emphasis. There was the briefest of pauses before the name and after it. She goaded him to defend her or deny her, but he would not be lured.
Blandly he replied. "Magnificent blossom, Li Pao would have it that the cause of our confusion lay within our own minds. He believes that we hold Truth at bay whilst embracing Illusion. The illusion, he hints, begins to reveal itself for what it is. That is why, says Li Pao, we know concern."
She had become an implacable facsimile. "And you, Jherek. Once the gayest of children! The wittiest of men! The most inventive of artists! Joyful boy, it seems to me that you turn dullard. And why? And when? Because Jagged encouraged you to play Lover! To that primitive…"
"Mother! Where is your wit? But to answer, well, I am sure that we shall soon be wed. I detect a difference in her regard for me."
"A conclusion? I exult!"
Her lack of good humour astonished him. "Firmest of metals, do not, I pray, make a petitioner of me. Must I placate a virago when once I was assured of the good graces of a friend?"
"I am more than that, I hope, blood of my blood."
It occurred to him that if he had rediscovered Love, then she had rediscovered Jealousy. Could the one never exist without the presence of the other?
"Mother, I beg you to recollect…"
A sniff from beneath the sombrero. "She ascends, I see. She has her own rings, then?"
"Of course."
"You think it wise, to indulge a savage —?"
Amelia hovered close to, in earshot now. A false smile curved the lips of the shade, this imperfect doppelganger. "Aha! Mrs. Underwood. What beautiful simplicity of taste, the blue and white!"
Amelia Underwood took time to recognize the Iron Orchid. Her nod was courteous, when she did so, but she refused to ignore the challenge. "Overwhelmed entirely by the brilliant exoticism of your scarlet, Mrs. Carnelian."
A tilt of the brim. "And what role, my dear, do you adopt today?"
"I regret we came merely as ourselves. But did I not see you earlier, in that box-like costume, then later in a yellow gown of some description? So many excellent disguises."
"I think there is one in yellow, yes. I forget. Sometimes, I feel so full of rich ideas, I must indulge more than one. You must think me coarse, dear ancestor."
"Never that, lushest of orchids."
Jherek was amused. It was the first time he had heard Mrs. Underwood use such language. He began to enjoy the encounter, but the Iron Orchid refused further sport. She leaned forward. Her son was blessed with an ostentatious kiss; Amelia Underwood was pecked. "Brannart has arrived. I promised him an account of 1896. Surly he might be, but rarely dull. For the moment, then, dear children."
She began to pirouette downwards. Jherek wondered where she had seen Brannart Morphail, for the hunchbacked, club-footed scientist was not in evidence.
Amelia Underwood settled on his arm again. "Your mother seems distraught. Not as self-contained as usual."
"It is because she divides herself too much. The substance of each facsimile is a little thin." He explained.
"Yet it is clear that she regards me as an enemy."
"Hardly that. She is not, you see, herself…"
"I am complimented, Mr. Carnelian. It is a pleasure to be taken seriously."
"But I am concerned for her. She has never been serious in her life before."
"And you would say that I am to blame."
"I think she is perturbed, sensing a loss of control in her own destiny, such as we experienced at the Beginning of Time. It is an odd sensation."
"Familiar enough to me, Mr. Carnelian."
"Perhaps she will come to enjoy it. It is unlike her to resist experience."
"I should be glad to advise her on how best to cope."
He sensed irony, at last. He darted a glance of enquiry. Her eyes laughed. He checked a desire to hug her, but he touched her hand, very delicately, and was thrilled.
"You have been entertaining them all," he said, "down there?"
"I hope so. Language, thanks to your pills, is no problem. I feel I speak my own. But ideas can sometimes be difficult to communicate. Your assumptions are so foreign."
"Yet you no longer condemn them."
"Make no mistake — I continue to disapprove. But nothing is gained by blunt denials and denunciations."
"You triumph, as you know. It is that which the Iron Orchid finds uncomfortable."
"I appear to be enjoying some small social success. That, in turn, brings embarrassment."
"Embarrassment?" He bowed to O'Kala Incarnadine, as Queen Britannia, who saluted him.
"They ask me my opinion. Of the authenticity of their costumes."
"The quality of imagination is poor."
"Not at all. But none is authentic, though most are fanciful and many beautiful. Your people's knowledge of my age is sketchy, to say the least."
By degrees, they were drifting towards the bottom of the hall.
"Yet it is the age we know most about," he said. "Mainly because I have studied it and set the fashion for it, of course. What is wrong with the costumes?"
"As costumes, nothing. But few come close to the theme of '1896'. There is a span, say, of a thousand years between one disguise and another. A man dressed in lilac ducks and wearing a crusty (and I must say delicious looking) pork pie upon his head announced that he was Harald Hardrede."
"The prime minister, yes?"
"No, Mr. Carnelian. The costume was impossible, at any rate."
"Could he have been this Harald Hardrede, do you think? We have a number of distinguished temporal adventurers in the menageries."
"It is unlikely."
"Several million years have passed, after all, and so much now relies on hearsay. We are entirely dependent upon the rotting cities for our information. When the cities were younger, they were more reliable. A million years ago, there would have been far fewer anachronisms at a party of this kind. I have heard of parties given by our ancestors (your descendants, that is) which drew on all the resources of the cities in their prime. This masque must be feeble in comparison. There again, it is pleasant to use one's own imagination to invent an idea of the past."
"I find it wonderful. I do not deny that I am stimulated by it, as well as confused. You must consider me narrow-minded…"
"You praise us too much. I am overjoyed that you should find my world at last acceptable, for it leads me to hope that you will soon agree to be my —"
"Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, and she pointed. "There is Brannart Morphail. We must give him our news."
11. A Few Quiet Moments in the Menagerie
"…And thus it was, mightiest of minds, that we returned," concluded Jherek, reaching for a partridge tree which drifted past — he picked two fruits, one for himself and one for Mrs. Underwood, at his side. "Is the information enough to recompense for my loss of your machine?"
"Scarcely!" Brannart had added another foot or two to his hump since they had last met. Now it towered, taller than his body, tending to overbalance him. Perhaps to compensate, he had increased the size of his club foot. "A fabrication. Your tale defies logic. Everywhere you display ignorance of the real nature of Time."
"I thought we brought fresh knowledge, um, Professor," said she, half-distracted as she watched a crocodile of some twenty boys and girls, in identical dungarees, float past, following yet another Iron Orchid, a piping harlequin, towards the roof. Argonheart Po, huge and jolly, in a tall white chef's hat (he had come as Captain Cook), rolled in their wake, distributing edible revolvers. "It would suggest, for instance, that it is now possible for me to return to the nineteenth century, without danger."
"You still wish to return, Amelia?" What was the lurch in the region of his navel? He dissipated the remainder of his partridge.
"Should I not?"
"I assumed you were content."
"I accept the inevitable with good grace, Mr. Carnelian — that is not necessarily contentment."
"I suppose it is not."
Brannart Morphail snorted. His hump quivered. He began to tilt, righted himself. "Why have you two set out to destroy the work of centuries? Jagged has always envied me my discoveries. Has he connived with you, Jherek Carnelian, to confuse me?"
"But we do not deny the truth of your discoveries, dear Brannart. We merely reveal that they are partial, that there is not one Law of Time, but many!"
"But you bring no proof."
"You are blind to it, Brannart. We are the proof. Here we stand, immune to your undeniably exquisite but not infallible Effect. It is a fine Effect, most brilliant of brains, and applies in billions, at least, of cases — but occasionally…"
A large green tear rolled down the scientist's cheek. "For millennia I have tried to keep the torch of true research alight, single-handed. While the rest of you have devoted your energies to phantasies and whimsicalities, I have toiled. While you have merely exploited the benefits built up for you by our ancestors, I have striven to carry their work further, to understand that greatest mystery of all…"
"But it was already fairly understood, Brannart, most dedicated of investigators, by members of this Guild I mentioned…"
"…but you would thwart me even in that endeavour, with these fanciful tales, these sensational anecdotes, these evidently concocted stories of zones free from the influence of my beloved Effect, of groups of individuals who prove that Time has not a single nature but several … Ah Jherek! Is such cruelty deserved, by one who has sought to be only a servant of learning, who has never interfered — criticized a little, perhaps, but never interfered — in the pursuits of his fellows?"
"I sought merely to enlighten…"
My Lady Charlotina went by in a great basket of lavender, only her head visible in the midst of the mound. She called out as she passed. "Jherek! Amelia! Luck for sale! Luck for sale!" She had made the most, it was plain, of her short spell of temporal tourism. "Do not bore them too badly, Brannart. I am thinking of withdrawing my patronage."
Brannart sneered. "I play such charades no longer!" But it seemed that he did not relish the threat. "Death looms, yet still you dance, making mock of the few who would help you!"
Mrs. Underwood understood. She murmured: "Wheldrake knew, Professor Morphail, when he wrote in one of his last poems —
"It is very good," said Jherek dutifully, recalling Captain Bastable's success. "Ah, yes … I seem to recall it now." He raised empty, insincere eyes towards the roof, as he had seen them do. "You must quote me some of Wheldrake's verses, too, some day."
The sidelong look she darted him was not unamused.
"Tcha!" said Brannart Morphail. The small floating gallery in which he stood swung wildly as he shifted his footing. He corrected it. "I'll listen to nonsense no longer. Remember, Jherek Carnelian, let your master Lord Jagged know that I'll not play his games! From henceforth I'll conduct my experiments in secret! Why should I not? Does he reveal his work to me?"
"I am not sure that he is with us at the End of Time. I meant to enquire…"
"Enough!"
Brannart Morphail wobbled away from them, stamping impatiently on the floor of his platform with his monstrous boot.
The Duke of Queens spied them. "Look, most honoured of my guests! Wakaka Nakooka has come as a Martian Pastorellan from 1898."
The tiny black man, himself a time-traveller, turned with a grin and a bow. He was giving birth to fledgeling hawks through his nose. They fluttered towards the floor, now littered with at least two hundred of their brothers and sisters. He swirled his rich cloak and became a larger than average Kopps' Owl. With a flourish, off he flew.
"Always birds," said the Duke, almost by way of apology. "And frequently owls. Some people prefer to confine themselves by such means, I know. Is the party entertaining you both?"
"Your hospitality is as handsome as ever, most glamorous of Dukes." Jherek floated beside his friend, adding softly: "Though Brannart seems distraught."
"His theories collapse. He has no other life. I hope you were kind to him, Jherek."
"He gave us little opportunity," said Amelia Underwood. Her next remark was a trifle dry. "Even my quotation from Wheldrake did not seem to console him."
"One would have thought that your discovery, Jherek, of the Nursery and the children would have stimulated him. Instead, he ignores Nurse's underground retreat, with all its machinery for the control of Time. He complains of trickery, suggests we invented it in order to deceive him. Have you seen your old school-chums, by the by?"
"A moment ago," Jherek told him. "Are they enjoying their new life?"
"I think so. I give them less discipline than did Nurse. And, of course, they begin to grow now that they are free of the influence of the Nursery."
"You have charge of them?"
The Duke seemed to swell with self-esteem. "Indeed I have — I am their father. It is a pleasant sensation. They have excellent quarters in the menagerie."
"You keep them in your menagerie, Duke?" Mrs. Underwood was shocked. "Human children?"
"They have toys there — playgrounds and so on. Where else would I keep them, Mrs. Underwood?"
"But they grow. Are not the boys separated from the girls?"
"Should they be?" The Duke of Queens was curious. "You think they will breed, eh?"
"Oh! " Mrs. Underwood turned away.
"Jherek." The Duke put a large arm around his friend's shoulders. "While on the subject of menageries, may I take you to mine, for a moment — at least until Mongrove arrives? There are several new acquisitions which I'm sure will delight you."
Jherek was feeling overwhelmed by the party, for it had been a good while since he had spent so much time in the company of so many. He accepted the Duke's suggestion with relief.
"You will come too, Mrs. Underwood?" The Duke asked from politeness, it appeared, not enthusiasm.
"I suppose I should. It is my duty to inspect the conditions under which those poor children are forced to live."
"The nineteenth century had certain religious attitudes towards children, I understand," said the Duke conversationally to her as he led them through a door in the floor. "Were they not worshipped and sacrificed at the same time?"
"You must be thinking of another culture," she told him. She had recovered something of her composure, but there was still a trace of hostility in her manner towards her flamboyant host.
They entered a classic warren of passages and halls, lined with force-bubbles of varying sizes and shapes containing examples of thousands of different species, from a few viruses and intelligent microcosmic life to the gigantic two-thousand-foot-long Python Person whose spaceship had crashed on Earth some seven hundred years before. The cages were well-kept and reproduced, as exactly as was possible, the environments of those they contained. Mrs. Underwood had, herself, experience of such cages. She looked at these with a mixture of disgust and nostalgia.
"It seemed so simple, then," she murmured, "when I thought myself merely damned to Hell."
The Duke of Queens brushed at his fine Dundrearies. "My homo-sapiens collection is somewhat sparse at present, Mrs. Underwood — the children, a few time-travellers, a space-traveller who claims to be descended from common stock (though you would not credit it!). Perhaps you would care to see it after I have shown you my latest non-human acquisitions?"
"I thank you, Duke of Queens, but I have little interest in your zoo. I merely wished to reassure myself that your children are reasonably and properly looked after; I had forgotten, however, the attitudes which predominate in your world. Therefore, I think I shall —"
"Here we are!" Proudly the scarlet duke indicated his new possessions. There were five of them, with globular bodies into which were set a row of circular eyes (like a coronet, around the entire top section of the body) and a small triangular opening, doubtless a mouth. The bodies were supported by four bandy limbs which seemed to serve as legs as well as arms. The colour of these creatures varied from individual to individual, but all were nondescript, with light greys and dark browns proliferating.
"Is it Yusharisp and some friends?" Jherek was delighted to recognize the gloomy little alien who had first brought them the news of the world's doom. "Why has not Mongrove…?"
"These are from Yusharisp's planet," explained the Duke of Queens, "but they are not him. They are five fresh ones! I believe they came to look for him. In the meantime, of course, he has been home and returned here."
"He is not aware of the presence of his friends on our planet?"
"Not yet."
"You'll tell him tonight?"
"I think so. At an appropriate moment."
"Can they communicate?"
"They refuse to accept translation pills, but they have their own mechanical translators, which are, as you know, rather erratic."
Jherek pressed his face against the force-bubble. He grinned at the inmates. He smiled. "Hello! Welcome to the End of Time!"
China-blue eyes glared vacantly back at him.
"I am Jherek Carnelian. A friend of Yusharisp's," he told them agreeably.
"The leader, the one in the middle, is known as Chief Public Servant Shashurup," the Duke of Queens informed him.
Jherek made another effort. He waved his fingers. "Good afternoon, Chief Public Servant Shashurup!"
"Why-ee (skree) do you continue-oo too-too-to tor(roar)-ment us?" asked the CPS. "All we a(kaaar)sk(skree) is (hiss) that-tat-tat you do-oo-oo us(ushush) the cour(kur-kur-kur) tesy-ee of com-com-communicat(tate-tate)ing our requests to your representat(tat-tat)ives!" He spoke wearily, without expectation of answer.
"We have no 'representatives', save ourselves," said Jherek. "Is there anything wrong with your environment? I'm sure that the Duke of Queens would be only too pleased to make any adjustments you saw fit…"
"Skree-ee-ee," said CPS Shashurup desperately. "It is not(ot-ot) in our nat(tate-tate)ure to (skree) make(cake-cake) threat(et-et-et)s, but we must warn you (skree) that unless we are re(skree)lea(skree)sed our peo(pee-pee)ple will be forced to take steps to pro(pro-pro)tect us and secure(ure-ure) our release. You are behaving childishly! It is imposs(oss-oss)ible to believe(eve-eve-eve) that a race grown so old can still(ill-ill) skree-skree yowl eek yaaaarrrrk!"
Only Mrs. Underwood showed any genuine interest in the Chief Public Servant's attempts to communicate with them. "Shouldn't you release them, Duke of Queens?" she asked mildly. "I thought it was argued that no life-form was kept here against its will."
"Ah," said the Duke, dusting at his braid, "that is so, by and large. But if I let them go immediately, some rival will acquire them. I have not yet had time to display them as mine, you see."
"Then how long must they remain prisoners?"
"Prisoners? I do not understand you, Mrs. Underwood. But they'll stay here until after this party for Mongrove, at least. I'll conceive a special entertainment later, at which I may display them to full advantage."
"Irr-re-re-sponsible oaf(f-f-f)!" cried CPS Shashurup, who had overheard some of this. "Your people already suck(uck-uck) the universe dry and we do not complain(ain-ain-ain). Oh, but we shall see (skree-skree-skree) a change when we are free (ee-ee-ee-ee)!"
The Duke of Queens glanced at his index-finger's nail, in which a small, perfect picture formed. It showed him the party above.
"Ah, Mongrove has arrived at last. Shall we return?"
"Scarcely!" Brannart had added another foot or two to his hump since they had last met. Now it towered, taller than his body, tending to overbalance him. Perhaps to compensate, he had increased the size of his club foot. "A fabrication. Your tale defies logic. Everywhere you display ignorance of the real nature of Time."
"I thought we brought fresh knowledge, um, Professor," said she, half-distracted as she watched a crocodile of some twenty boys and girls, in identical dungarees, float past, following yet another Iron Orchid, a piping harlequin, towards the roof. Argonheart Po, huge and jolly, in a tall white chef's hat (he had come as Captain Cook), rolled in their wake, distributing edible revolvers. "It would suggest, for instance, that it is now possible for me to return to the nineteenth century, without danger."
"You still wish to return, Amelia?" What was the lurch in the region of his navel? He dissipated the remainder of his partridge.
"Should I not?"
"I assumed you were content."
"I accept the inevitable with good grace, Mr. Carnelian — that is not necessarily contentment."
"I suppose it is not."
Brannart Morphail snorted. His hump quivered. He began to tilt, righted himself. "Why have you two set out to destroy the work of centuries? Jagged has always envied me my discoveries. Has he connived with you, Jherek Carnelian, to confuse me?"
"But we do not deny the truth of your discoveries, dear Brannart. We merely reveal that they are partial, that there is not one Law of Time, but many!"
"But you bring no proof."
"You are blind to it, Brannart. We are the proof. Here we stand, immune to your undeniably exquisite but not infallible Effect. It is a fine Effect, most brilliant of brains, and applies in billions, at least, of cases — but occasionally…"
A large green tear rolled down the scientist's cheek. "For millennia I have tried to keep the torch of true research alight, single-handed. While the rest of you have devoted your energies to phantasies and whimsicalities, I have toiled. While you have merely exploited the benefits built up for you by our ancestors, I have striven to carry their work further, to understand that greatest mystery of all…"
"But it was already fairly understood, Brannart, most dedicated of investigators, by members of this Guild I mentioned…"
"…but you would thwart me even in that endeavour, with these fanciful tales, these sensational anecdotes, these evidently concocted stories of zones free from the influence of my beloved Effect, of groups of individuals who prove that Time has not a single nature but several … Ah Jherek! Is such cruelty deserved, by one who has sought to be only a servant of learning, who has never interfered — criticized a little, perhaps, but never interfered — in the pursuits of his fellows?"
"I sought merely to enlighten…"
My Lady Charlotina went by in a great basket of lavender, only her head visible in the midst of the mound. She called out as she passed. "Jherek! Amelia! Luck for sale! Luck for sale!" She had made the most, it was plain, of her short spell of temporal tourism. "Do not bore them too badly, Brannart. I am thinking of withdrawing my patronage."
Brannart sneered. "I play such charades no longer!" But it seemed that he did not relish the threat. "Death looms, yet still you dance, making mock of the few who would help you!"
Mrs. Underwood understood. She murmured: "Wheldrake knew, Professor Morphail, when he wrote in one of his last poems —
But Brannart could not respond to her knowing, sympathetic smile. He looked bemused.
Alone, then, from my basalt height
I saw the revellers rolling by —
Their faces all bemasked,
Their clothing all bejewelled —
Spread cloaks like paradise's wings in flight
Gowns grown so hell-fire bright!
And purple lips drained purple flasks,
And gem-hard eyes burned cruel.
Were these old friends I would have clasped?
Were these the dreamers of my youth?
Ah, but old Time conquers more than flesh!
(He and his escort Death.)
Old Time lays waste the spirit, too!
And Time conquers Mind,
Time conquers Mind —
Time Rules! "
"It is very good," said Jherek dutifully, recalling Captain Bastable's success. "Ah, yes … I seem to recall it now." He raised empty, insincere eyes towards the roof, as he had seen them do. "You must quote me some of Wheldrake's verses, too, some day."
The sidelong look she darted him was not unamused.
"Tcha!" said Brannart Morphail. The small floating gallery in which he stood swung wildly as he shifted his footing. He corrected it. "I'll listen to nonsense no longer. Remember, Jherek Carnelian, let your master Lord Jagged know that I'll not play his games! From henceforth I'll conduct my experiments in secret! Why should I not? Does he reveal his work to me?"
"I am not sure that he is with us at the End of Time. I meant to enquire…"
"Enough!"
Brannart Morphail wobbled away from them, stamping impatiently on the floor of his platform with his monstrous boot.
The Duke of Queens spied them. "Look, most honoured of my guests! Wakaka Nakooka has come as a Martian Pastorellan from 1898."
The tiny black man, himself a time-traveller, turned with a grin and a bow. He was giving birth to fledgeling hawks through his nose. They fluttered towards the floor, now littered with at least two hundred of their brothers and sisters. He swirled his rich cloak and became a larger than average Kopps' Owl. With a flourish, off he flew.
"Always birds," said the Duke, almost by way of apology. "And frequently owls. Some people prefer to confine themselves by such means, I know. Is the party entertaining you both?"
"Your hospitality is as handsome as ever, most glamorous of Dukes." Jherek floated beside his friend, adding softly: "Though Brannart seems distraught."
"His theories collapse. He has no other life. I hope you were kind to him, Jherek."
"He gave us little opportunity," said Amelia Underwood. Her next remark was a trifle dry. "Even my quotation from Wheldrake did not seem to console him."
"One would have thought that your discovery, Jherek, of the Nursery and the children would have stimulated him. Instead, he ignores Nurse's underground retreat, with all its machinery for the control of Time. He complains of trickery, suggests we invented it in order to deceive him. Have you seen your old school-chums, by the by?"
"A moment ago," Jherek told him. "Are they enjoying their new life?"
"I think so. I give them less discipline than did Nurse. And, of course, they begin to grow now that they are free of the influence of the Nursery."
"You have charge of them?"
The Duke seemed to swell with self-esteem. "Indeed I have — I am their father. It is a pleasant sensation. They have excellent quarters in the menagerie."
"You keep them in your menagerie, Duke?" Mrs. Underwood was shocked. "Human children?"
"They have toys there — playgrounds and so on. Where else would I keep them, Mrs. Underwood?"
"But they grow. Are not the boys separated from the girls?"
"Should they be?" The Duke of Queens was curious. "You think they will breed, eh?"
"Oh! " Mrs. Underwood turned away.
"Jherek." The Duke put a large arm around his friend's shoulders. "While on the subject of menageries, may I take you to mine, for a moment — at least until Mongrove arrives? There are several new acquisitions which I'm sure will delight you."
Jherek was feeling overwhelmed by the party, for it had been a good while since he had spent so much time in the company of so many. He accepted the Duke's suggestion with relief.
"You will come too, Mrs. Underwood?" The Duke asked from politeness, it appeared, not enthusiasm.
"I suppose I should. It is my duty to inspect the conditions under which those poor children are forced to live."
"The nineteenth century had certain religious attitudes towards children, I understand," said the Duke conversationally to her as he led them through a door in the floor. "Were they not worshipped and sacrificed at the same time?"
"You must be thinking of another culture," she told him. She had recovered something of her composure, but there was still a trace of hostility in her manner towards her flamboyant host.
They entered a classic warren of passages and halls, lined with force-bubbles of varying sizes and shapes containing examples of thousands of different species, from a few viruses and intelligent microcosmic life to the gigantic two-thousand-foot-long Python Person whose spaceship had crashed on Earth some seven hundred years before. The cages were well-kept and reproduced, as exactly as was possible, the environments of those they contained. Mrs. Underwood had, herself, experience of such cages. She looked at these with a mixture of disgust and nostalgia.
"It seemed so simple, then," she murmured, "when I thought myself merely damned to Hell."
The Duke of Queens brushed at his fine Dundrearies. "My homo-sapiens collection is somewhat sparse at present, Mrs. Underwood — the children, a few time-travellers, a space-traveller who claims to be descended from common stock (though you would not credit it!). Perhaps you would care to see it after I have shown you my latest non-human acquisitions?"
"I thank you, Duke of Queens, but I have little interest in your zoo. I merely wished to reassure myself that your children are reasonably and properly looked after; I had forgotten, however, the attitudes which predominate in your world. Therefore, I think I shall —"
"Here we are!" Proudly the scarlet duke indicated his new possessions. There were five of them, with globular bodies into which were set a row of circular eyes (like a coronet, around the entire top section of the body) and a small triangular opening, doubtless a mouth. The bodies were supported by four bandy limbs which seemed to serve as legs as well as arms. The colour of these creatures varied from individual to individual, but all were nondescript, with light greys and dark browns proliferating.
"Is it Yusharisp and some friends?" Jherek was delighted to recognize the gloomy little alien who had first brought them the news of the world's doom. "Why has not Mongrove…?"
"These are from Yusharisp's planet," explained the Duke of Queens, "but they are not him. They are five fresh ones! I believe they came to look for him. In the meantime, of course, he has been home and returned here."
"He is not aware of the presence of his friends on our planet?"
"Not yet."
"You'll tell him tonight?"
"I think so. At an appropriate moment."
"Can they communicate?"
"They refuse to accept translation pills, but they have their own mechanical translators, which are, as you know, rather erratic."
Jherek pressed his face against the force-bubble. He grinned at the inmates. He smiled. "Hello! Welcome to the End of Time!"
China-blue eyes glared vacantly back at him.
"I am Jherek Carnelian. A friend of Yusharisp's," he told them agreeably.
"The leader, the one in the middle, is known as Chief Public Servant Shashurup," the Duke of Queens informed him.
Jherek made another effort. He waved his fingers. "Good afternoon, Chief Public Servant Shashurup!"
"Why-ee (skree) do you continue-oo too-too-to tor(roar)-ment us?" asked the CPS. "All we a(kaaar)sk(skree) is (hiss) that-tat-tat you do-oo-oo us(ushush) the cour(kur-kur-kur) tesy-ee of com-com-communicat(tate-tate)ing our requests to your representat(tat-tat)ives!" He spoke wearily, without expectation of answer.
"We have no 'representatives', save ourselves," said Jherek. "Is there anything wrong with your environment? I'm sure that the Duke of Queens would be only too pleased to make any adjustments you saw fit…"
"Skree-ee-ee," said CPS Shashurup desperately. "It is not(ot-ot) in our nat(tate-tate)ure to (skree) make(cake-cake) threat(et-et-et)s, but we must warn you (skree) that unless we are re(skree)lea(skree)sed our peo(pee-pee)ple will be forced to take steps to pro(pro-pro)tect us and secure(ure-ure) our release. You are behaving childishly! It is imposs(oss-oss)ible to believe(eve-eve-eve) that a race grown so old can still(ill-ill) skree-skree yowl eek yaaaarrrrk!"
Only Mrs. Underwood showed any genuine interest in the Chief Public Servant's attempts to communicate with them. "Shouldn't you release them, Duke of Queens?" she asked mildly. "I thought it was argued that no life-form was kept here against its will."
"Ah," said the Duke, dusting at his braid, "that is so, by and large. But if I let them go immediately, some rival will acquire them. I have not yet had time to display them as mine, you see."
"Then how long must they remain prisoners?"
"Prisoners? I do not understand you, Mrs. Underwood. But they'll stay here until after this party for Mongrove, at least. I'll conceive a special entertainment later, at which I may display them to full advantage."
"Irr-re-re-sponsible oaf(f-f-f)!" cried CPS Shashurup, who had overheard some of this. "Your people already suck(uck-uck) the universe dry and we do not complain(ain-ain-ain). Oh, but we shall see (skree-skree-skree) a change when we are free (ee-ee-ee-ee)!"
The Duke of Queens glanced at his index-finger's nail, in which a small, perfect picture formed. It showed him the party above.
"Ah, Mongrove has arrived at last. Shall we return?"
12. In Which Lord Mongrove Reminds Us of Inevitable Doom
"Truly, my dear friends, I, too, disbelieved, as you do…" moaned Mongrove from the centre of the hall, "…but Yusharisp showed me withered planets, exhausted stars — matter collapsing, disintegrating, fading to nothing … Ah, it is bleak out there. It is bleak beyond imagining." His great, heavy head dropped towards his broad, bulky chest and a monstrous sigh escaped him. Massive hands clasped themselves together just above his mighty stomach. "All that is left are ghosts and even the ghosts fade. Civilizations that, until recently, spanned a thousand star-systems, have become merely a whisper of static from a detector screen. Gone without trace. Gone without trace. As we shall go, my friends." Mongrove's gaze upon them was a mixture of sympathy and accusation. "But let my guide Yusharisp, who risked his own life to come to us, to warn us of our fate, and to whom none but I would listen, tell you in his own words."
"Scarce(skree)ly — scarcely any life survives in the universe," said the globular alien. "The process of collapse continues faster than (roar) I predicted. This is partially (skree) the fault of the people of this planet. Your cities (yelp) draw their energy from the easiest available (skree-skree) source. Now they (roar) suck raw energy from disintegrating novae, from already (skree) dying suns. It is the only reason why (skree) you still (yelp) survive!"
Bishop Castle stood at Jherek's left shoulder. He leaned to murmur: "In truth I become quickly bored with boredom. The Duke of Queens' efforts to make entertainment from that alien are surely useless, as even he must see now." But he lifted his head and dutifully cried: "Hurrah! Hurrah!" and applauded.
Mongrove lifted a hand. "Yusharisp's point is that we are contributing to the speed with which the universe perishes. If we were to use less energy for pursuits like — like this party — we could slow down the rate of collapse. It is all running out, dear friends!"
My Lady Charlotina said, in a loud whisper, "I thought Mongrove shunned what he called 'materialism'. This talk smacks of it, if I'm not mistaken. But, then, I probably am." She smiled to herself.
But Li Pao said firmly: "He echoes only what I have been saying for years."
An Iron Orchid, in red and white checks and a simple red and white domino, linked arms with Bishop Castle. "The world does grow boring, I agree, most concise of clerics. Everyone seems to be repeating themselves." She giggled. "Especially me!"
"It is even in our power, thanks to our cities, to preserve this planet," continued Mongrove, raising his voice above what had become a general babble of conversation. "Yusharisp's people sent us their finest minds to help. They should have arrived by now. When they do, however, there is just a chance that there will still be time to save our world."
"He must be referring to those we have just seen in the Duke's menagerie," said Mrs. Underwood. She gripped Jherek's arm. "We must tell Lord Mongrove where they are!"
Jherek patted her hand. "We could not. It would be in very bad taste to spoil the Duke's surprise."
"Bad taste?"
"Of course."
She subsided, frowning.
Milo de Mars went by, leaving a trail of perfectly symmetrical gold six-pointed stars in her wake. "Forgive me, Lord Mongrove," she fluted, as the giant petulantly brushed the metallic things aside.
"Oh, what self-satisfied fools you are!" cried Mongrove.
"Should we not be? It seems an excellent thing to be," said Mistress Christia in surprise. "Is it not what, we are told, the human race has striven for, all these millions of years? Is it not contentment?" She twirled her Grecian gown. "Is that not what we have?"
"You have not earned it," said Li Pao. "I think that is why you will not make efforts to protect it."
Amelia smiled approval, but Jherek was puzzled. "What does he mean?"
"He speaks of the practical basis of the morality you were so anxious to understand, Mr. Carnelian."
Jherek brightened, now that he realized they touched upon a subject of interest. "Indeed? And what is this practical basis?"
"In essence — that nothing is worth possessing unless it has been worked for."
He said, with a certain slyness, "I have worked hard to possess you, dearest Amelia."
Again amusement threatened to get the better of her. The struggle showed on her face for only a moment before she was once more composed. "Why, Mr. Carnelian, will you always insist on confusing the issue with the introduction of personal matters?"
"Are such matters less important?"
"They have their place. Our conversation, I thought was a trifle more abstract. We discussed morality and its usefulness in life. It was a subject dear to my father's heart and the substance of many a sermon."
"Yet your civilization, if you'll forgive me saying so, did not survive for any great length of time. A couple of hundred years saw its complete destruction."
She was nonplussed, but soon found an answer: "It is not to do with the survival of civilizations, as such, but with personal satisfaction. If one leads a moral life, a useful life, one is happier."
He scratched his head beneath the tweed cap. "It seems to me that almost everyone at the End of Time is happier, however, than were those I encountered in your Dawn Age era. And morality is a mystery to us, as you know."
"It is a mindless happiness — how shall it survive the disaster Lord Mongrove warns us about?"
"Disaster, surely, is only that if one believes it to be important. How many here, would you say, believe in Mongrove's doom?"
"But they will."
"Are you certain?"
She cast an eye about her. She could not say that she was certain.
"But are you not afraid, even a little?" she asked him.
"Afraid? Well, I would regret the passing of all this variety, this wit. But it has existed. Doubtless something like it will exist again."
She laughed and she took his arm. "If I did not know you better, Mr. Carnelian, I should mistake you for the wisest and most profound of philosophers."
"You flatter me, Amelia."
Mongrove's voice continued to boom from the babble, but the words were indistinct. "If you will not save yourselves, think of the knowledge you could save — the inherited knowledge of a million generations!"
An Iron Orchid, in green velvet and brocade, glided by beside Brannart Morphail, who was discoursing along lines very similar to Mongrove's, though it was evident he did not listen to the gloomy giant. With some alarm, Jherek heard her say: "Of course, you are completely right, Brannart. As a matter of fact, I have it in mind to take a trip through time myself. I know you would disapprove, but it is possible that I could be of use to you…"
Jherek heard no more of his mother's remarks. He shrugged, dismissing them as the expression of a passing foible.
Sweet Orb Mace was making love to Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, in a most interesting fashion. Their intertwined bodies drifted amongst the other guests. Elsewhere, Orlando Chombi, Kimick Rentbrain and O'Kala Incarnadine linked hands in a complicated aerial dance, while the recently re-styled Countess of Monte Carlo extended her substance until she was thirty feet tall and all but invisible; this, it seemed, for the entertainment of the Nursery children, who gathered around her and laughed with delight.
"We have a duty to our ancestors!" groaned Mongrove, now, for the moment, out of sight. Jherek thought he was buried somewhere in the sudden avalanche of blue and green roses tipped from Doctor Volospion's Pegasus-drawn platform. "And to those (skree) who follow us…" added a piping but somewhat muffled voice.
Jherek sighed. "If only Jagged would reveal himself, Amelia! Then, I am sure, any confusion would be at an end."
"He might be dead," she said. "You feared as much."
"It would be a difficult loss to bear. He was my very best friend. I have never known anyone, before, who could not be resurrected."
"Mongrove's point — that no one shall be resurrected after the apocalypse."
"I agree the prospect is more attractive, for then none should feel a loss." They drifted towards the floor, still littered with the feebly fluttering fledgling hawks. Many had already expired, for Wakaka Nakooka had forgotten to feed them. Absently, Jherek dissipated them, so that they might descend and stand there, looking up at a party grown less sedate than when first they had arrived.
"I thought you were of the opinion that we should live forever, Amelia?" he said, still peering upwards.
"It is my belief , not my opinion."
He failed to distinguish the difference.
"In the Life Beyond," she said. She tried to speak with conviction, but her voice faltered, adding to herself: "Well, yes, perhaps there is still a Life Beyond, hard though it is to imagine. Ah, it is so difficult to retain one's ordinary faith…"
"It is the end of everything!" continued Mongrove, from somewhere within the mountain of roses. "You are lost! Lost! You will not listen! You will not understand! Beware! Oh, beware!"
"Scarce(skree)ly — scarcely any life survives in the universe," said the globular alien. "The process of collapse continues faster than (roar) I predicted. This is partially (skree) the fault of the people of this planet. Your cities (yelp) draw their energy from the easiest available (skree-skree) source. Now they (roar) suck raw energy from disintegrating novae, from already (skree) dying suns. It is the only reason why (skree) you still (yelp) survive!"
Bishop Castle stood at Jherek's left shoulder. He leaned to murmur: "In truth I become quickly bored with boredom. The Duke of Queens' efforts to make entertainment from that alien are surely useless, as even he must see now." But he lifted his head and dutifully cried: "Hurrah! Hurrah!" and applauded.
Mongrove lifted a hand. "Yusharisp's point is that we are contributing to the speed with which the universe perishes. If we were to use less energy for pursuits like — like this party — we could slow down the rate of collapse. It is all running out, dear friends!"
My Lady Charlotina said, in a loud whisper, "I thought Mongrove shunned what he called 'materialism'. This talk smacks of it, if I'm not mistaken. But, then, I probably am." She smiled to herself.
But Li Pao said firmly: "He echoes only what I have been saying for years."
An Iron Orchid, in red and white checks and a simple red and white domino, linked arms with Bishop Castle. "The world does grow boring, I agree, most concise of clerics. Everyone seems to be repeating themselves." She giggled. "Especially me!"
"It is even in our power, thanks to our cities, to preserve this planet," continued Mongrove, raising his voice above what had become a general babble of conversation. "Yusharisp's people sent us their finest minds to help. They should have arrived by now. When they do, however, there is just a chance that there will still be time to save our world."
"He must be referring to those we have just seen in the Duke's menagerie," said Mrs. Underwood. She gripped Jherek's arm. "We must tell Lord Mongrove where they are!"
Jherek patted her hand. "We could not. It would be in very bad taste to spoil the Duke's surprise."
"Bad taste?"
"Of course."
She subsided, frowning.
Milo de Mars went by, leaving a trail of perfectly symmetrical gold six-pointed stars in her wake. "Forgive me, Lord Mongrove," she fluted, as the giant petulantly brushed the metallic things aside.
"Oh, what self-satisfied fools you are!" cried Mongrove.
"Should we not be? It seems an excellent thing to be," said Mistress Christia in surprise. "Is it not what, we are told, the human race has striven for, all these millions of years? Is it not contentment?" She twirled her Grecian gown. "Is that not what we have?"
"You have not earned it," said Li Pao. "I think that is why you will not make efforts to protect it."
Amelia smiled approval, but Jherek was puzzled. "What does he mean?"
"He speaks of the practical basis of the morality you were so anxious to understand, Mr. Carnelian."
Jherek brightened, now that he realized they touched upon a subject of interest. "Indeed? And what is this practical basis?"
"In essence — that nothing is worth possessing unless it has been worked for."
He said, with a certain slyness, "I have worked hard to possess you, dearest Amelia."
Again amusement threatened to get the better of her. The struggle showed on her face for only a moment before she was once more composed. "Why, Mr. Carnelian, will you always insist on confusing the issue with the introduction of personal matters?"
"Are such matters less important?"
"They have their place. Our conversation, I thought was a trifle more abstract. We discussed morality and its usefulness in life. It was a subject dear to my father's heart and the substance of many a sermon."
"Yet your civilization, if you'll forgive me saying so, did not survive for any great length of time. A couple of hundred years saw its complete destruction."
She was nonplussed, but soon found an answer: "It is not to do with the survival of civilizations, as such, but with personal satisfaction. If one leads a moral life, a useful life, one is happier."
He scratched his head beneath the tweed cap. "It seems to me that almost everyone at the End of Time is happier, however, than were those I encountered in your Dawn Age era. And morality is a mystery to us, as you know."
"It is a mindless happiness — how shall it survive the disaster Lord Mongrove warns us about?"
"Disaster, surely, is only that if one believes it to be important. How many here, would you say, believe in Mongrove's doom?"
"But they will."
"Are you certain?"
She cast an eye about her. She could not say that she was certain.
"But are you not afraid, even a little?" she asked him.
"Afraid? Well, I would regret the passing of all this variety, this wit. But it has existed. Doubtless something like it will exist again."
She laughed and she took his arm. "If I did not know you better, Mr. Carnelian, I should mistake you for the wisest and most profound of philosophers."
"You flatter me, Amelia."
Mongrove's voice continued to boom from the babble, but the words were indistinct. "If you will not save yourselves, think of the knowledge you could save — the inherited knowledge of a million generations!"
An Iron Orchid, in green velvet and brocade, glided by beside Brannart Morphail, who was discoursing along lines very similar to Mongrove's, though it was evident he did not listen to the gloomy giant. With some alarm, Jherek heard her say: "Of course, you are completely right, Brannart. As a matter of fact, I have it in mind to take a trip through time myself. I know you would disapprove, but it is possible that I could be of use to you…"
Jherek heard no more of his mother's remarks. He shrugged, dismissing them as the expression of a passing foible.
Sweet Orb Mace was making love to Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, in a most interesting fashion. Their intertwined bodies drifted amongst the other guests. Elsewhere, Orlando Chombi, Kimick Rentbrain and O'Kala Incarnadine linked hands in a complicated aerial dance, while the recently re-styled Countess of Monte Carlo extended her substance until she was thirty feet tall and all but invisible; this, it seemed, for the entertainment of the Nursery children, who gathered around her and laughed with delight.
"We have a duty to our ancestors!" groaned Mongrove, now, for the moment, out of sight. Jherek thought he was buried somewhere in the sudden avalanche of blue and green roses tipped from Doctor Volospion's Pegasus-drawn platform. "And to those (skree) who follow us…" added a piping but somewhat muffled voice.
Jherek sighed. "If only Jagged would reveal himself, Amelia! Then, I am sure, any confusion would be at an end."
"He might be dead," she said. "You feared as much."
"It would be a difficult loss to bear. He was my very best friend. I have never known anyone, before, who could not be resurrected."
"Mongrove's point — that no one shall be resurrected after the apocalypse."
"I agree the prospect is more attractive, for then none should feel a loss." They drifted towards the floor, still littered with the feebly fluttering fledgling hawks. Many had already expired, for Wakaka Nakooka had forgotten to feed them. Absently, Jherek dissipated them, so that they might descend and stand there, looking up at a party grown less sedate than when first they had arrived.
"I thought you were of the opinion that we should live forever, Amelia?" he said, still peering upwards.
"It is my belief , not my opinion."
He failed to distinguish the difference.
"In the Life Beyond," she said. She tried to speak with conviction, but her voice faltered, adding to herself: "Well, yes, perhaps there is still a Life Beyond, hard though it is to imagine. Ah, it is so difficult to retain one's ordinary faith…"
"It is the end of everything!" continued Mongrove, from somewhere within the mountain of roses. "You are lost! Lost! You will not listen! You will not understand! Beware! Oh, beware!"