Moorcock Michael. An Alien Heat

   "The Morphail Effect," he said. "You can't stay in the past once you have visited the future. Well, not often. And not for long. I don't know why. Neither does Morphail. Reconcile yourself, Mrs. Amelia Underwood, to the knowledge that you must spend eternity here (such as it is). Spend it with me!"
   "Mr. Carnelian. No more!"
   He slouched to the far side of the footplate.
   "I agree to accompany you, to spend my time with you, because I felt it was my duty to try to imbue in you some vestige of a moral education. I shall continue in that attempt. However, if, after a while, it seems to me that there is no hope for you, I shall give up. Then I shall refuse to see you for any reason, whether you keep me prisoner or not!"
   He sighed. "Very well, Mrs. Amelia Underwood. But months ago you promised to explain what Virtue was and how I might pursue it. You have still not managed a satisfactory explanation."
   "Nil desperandum," she said. Her back grew imperceptibly straighter. "Now…"
   And she told him the story of Sir Parsifal as the gold, ebony and ruby locomotive puffed across the sky, trailing glorious clouds of blue and silver smoke behind it.
   And so the time went by, until both Mrs. Amelia Underwood and Jherek Carnelian had become thoroughly used to each other's company. It was almost as if they were married (save for one thing — and that did not seem as important as it had, for Jherek was, like all his people, extremely adaptable) and on terms of friendly equality, at that. Even Mrs. Amelia Underwood had to admit there were some advantages to her situation.
   She had few responsibilities (save her self-appointed responsibility concerning Jherek's moral improvement) and no household duties. She did not need to hold her tongue when she felt like making an astute observation. Jherek certainly did not demand the attention and respect which Mr. Underwood had demanded when they had lived together in Bromley. And there had been moments in Mrs. Underwood's life in this disgusting and decadent age when she had, for the first time ever, sensed what freedom might mean. Freedom from fear, from care, from the harsher emotions. And Jherek was kind. There was no doubting his enormous willingness to please her, his genuine liking for her character as well as her beauty. She wished that things had been different, sometimes, and that she really was a widow. Or, at least, single. Or single and in her own time where she and Jherek might be married in a proper church by a proper priest. When these thoughts came she drove them away firmly.
   It was her duty to remember that one day she might have the opportunity of returning to 23 Collins Avenue, Bromley, preferably in the spring of 1896. Preferably on the night of April 4 at three o'clock in the morning (more or less the time she had been abducted) so that then no one might have to wonder what had happened. She was sensible enough to know that no one would believe the truth and that the speculation would be at once more mundane and more lurid than the actuality. That aspect of her return was not, in fact, very attractive.
   None the less, duty was duty.
   It was often hard for her to remember what duty actually was in this — this rotting paradise. It was hard, indeed, to cling to all one's proper moral ideals when there was so little evidence of Satan here — no war, no disease, no sadness (unless it was desired), no death, even. Yet Satan must be present. And was, of course, she recalled, in the sexual behaviour of these people. But somehow that did not shock her as much as it had, though it was evidence of the most dreadful decadence. Still, no worse, really than those innocent children, natives of Pawtow Island in the South Seas, where she had spent two years as her father's assistant after Mother had died. They had had no conception of sin, either.
   An intelligent, if conventional, woman, Mrs. Amelia Underwood sometimes wondered momentarily if she were doing the right thing in teaching Mr. Jherek Carnelian the meaning of virtue.
   Not, of course, that he showed any particular alacrity in absorbing her lessons. She did, on occasions, feel tempted to give the whole thing up and merely enjoy herself (within reason) as she might upon a holiday. Perhaps that was what this age represented — a holiday for the human race after millennia of struggle? It was a pleasant thought. And Mr. Carnelian had been right in one thing — all her friends, her relatives and, naturally, Mr. Underwood, her whole society, the British Empire itself (unbelievable thought that was!) were not only dead a million years, crumbled to dust, they were forgotten . Even Mr. Carnelian had to piece together what he knew of her world from a few surviving records, references by other, later, ages to the 19th century. And Mr. Carnelian was regarded as the planet's greatest specialist in the 19th century. This depressed her. It made her desperate. The desperation made her defiant. The defiance led her to reject certain values which had once seemed to her to be immutable and built solidly into her character. These feelings, luckily, came mainly at night when she was in her own bed and Mr. Carnelian was elsewhere.
   And sometimes, when she was tempted to leave the sanctuary of her bed, she would sing a hymn until she fell asleep.
   Jherek Carnelian would often hear Mrs. Amelia Underwood singing at night (he had taken to keeping the same hours as the object of his love) and would wake up in some alarm. The alarm would turn to speculation. He would have liked to have believed that Mrs. Underwood was calling to him; some ancient love song like that of the Factory Siren who had once lured men to slavery in the plastic mines. Unfortunately the tunes and the words were more than familiar to him and he associated them with the very antithesis of sexual joy. He would sigh and try, without much success, to go back to sleep as her high, sweet voice sang "Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light…" over and over again.
   Little by little Jherek's ranch began to change its appearance as Mrs. Underwood made a suggestion here, offered an alternative there, and slowly altered the house until, she assured him, it was almost all that a good Victorian family house should be. Jherek found the rooms rather small and cluttered. He felt uncomfortable in them. He found the food, which she insisted they both eat, heavy and somewhat dull. The little Gothic towers, the wooden balconies, the carved gables, the red bricks offended his aesthetic sensibilities even more than the grandiose creations of the Duke of Queens. One day, while they ate a lunch of cold roast beef, lettuce, cucumber, watercress and boiled potatoes, he put down the cumbersome knife and fork with which, at her request, he had been eating the food and said:
   "Mrs. Amelia Underwood. I love you. You know that I would do anything for you."
   "Mr. Carnelian, we agreed…"
   He raised his hand. "But I put it to you, dear lady, that this environment you have had me create has become just a little boring, to say the least. Do you not feel like a change?"
   "A — change? But, sir, this is a proper house. You told me yourself that you wished me to live as I had always lived. This is very similar, now, to my own house in Bromley. A little larger, perhaps, and a little better furnished — but I could not resist that. I saw no point in not taking the opportunity to have one or two of the things I might not have had in my — my past life."
   With a deep sigh he contemplated the fireplace with its mantelplace crammed with little china articles, the absolutely tiny aspidistras and potted palms, the occasional tables, the sideboard, the thick carpets, the dark wallpaper, the gas-mantles, the dull curtains (at the windows), the pictures and the motifs which read, in Mrs. Underwood's people's own script VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD or WHAT MEAN THESE STONES?
   "A little colour," he said. "A little light. A little space."
   "The house is very comfortable," she insisted.
   "Aha." He returned his attention to the animal flesh and unseasoned vegetables before him (reminiscent, he feared, of Mongrove's table).
   "You told me how delighted you were in it all," she said reasonably. She was puzzled by his despondent manner. Her voice was sympathetic.
   "And I was," he murmured.
   "Then?"
   "It has gone on," he said, "for a long time now, you see. I thought this was merely one of the environments you would choose."
   "Oh." She frowned. "Hm," she said. "Well, we believe in stability, you see, Mr. Carnelian. In constancy. In solid, permanent things." She added apologetically: "It was our impression that our way of life would endure pretty much unchanged for ever. Improving, of course, but not actually altering very much. We visualised a time when all people would live like us. We believed that everyone wanted to live like us, you see." She put down her knife and fork. She reached over and touched his shoulder. "Perhaps we were misguided. We were evidently wrong. That is indisputable to me, of course. But I thought you wanted a nice house, that it would help you…" She removed her hand from his shoulder and sat back in her mahogany chair. "I do feel just a little guilty, I must say. I did not consider that your feeling might be less than gratified by all this…" She waved her hands about to indicate the room and its furnishings. "Oh, dear."
   He rallied. He smiled. He got up. "No, no. If this is what you want, then it is what I want, of course. It will take a bit of getting used to, but…" He was at a loss for words.
   "You are unhappy, Mr. Carnelian," she said softly. "I do not believe I have ever seen you unhappy before."
   "I have never been unhappy before," he said. "It is an experience. I must learn to relish it, as Mongrove relishes his misery. Though Mongrove's misery seems to have rather more flair than mine. Well, this is what I desired. This is what is doubtless involved in love — and Virtue, too, perhaps."
   "If you wish to send me back to Mr. Mongrove…" she began nobly.
   "No! Oh, no! I love you too much."
   This time she made no verbal objection to his declaration.
   "Well," she said determinedly, "we must make an effort to cheer you up. Come —" She stretched out her hand. Jherek took her hand. He thrilled. He wondered.
   She led him into the parlour where the piano was. "Perhaps some jolly hymn?" she suggested. "What about 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'?" She smoothed her skirt under her as she sat down on the stool. "Do you know the words now?"
   He could not get the words out of his mind. He had heard them too often, by night as well as by day. Dumbly he nodded.
   She struck a few introductory chords on the piano and began to sing. He tried to join in, but the words would not come out. His throat felt both dry and tight. Amazed, he put his hand to his neck. Her own voice petered out and she stopped playing, swinging round on the stool to look up at him. "What about a walk?" she said.
   He cleared his throat. He tried to smile. "A walk?"
   "A good brisk walk, Mr. Carnelian, often has a palliative effect."
   "All right."
   "I'll get my hat."
   A few moments later she joined him outside the house. The grounds of the house were not very large either, now. The prairie, the buffalo, the cavalrymen and the parrots had been replaced by neat privet hedges (some clipped into ornamental shapes), shrubs and rock gardens. The most colour was supplied by the rose garden which had several different varieties, including one which she had allowed him to invent for her, the Mrs. Amelia Underwood, which was a bluish green.
   She closed the front door and put her arm in his. "Where shall we go?" she said.
   Again the touch of her hand produced the thrill and the thrill was, astonishingly, translated into a feeling of utter misery.
   "Wherever you think," he said.
   They went up the crazy-paving path to the garden gate, out of the gate and along the little white road in which stood several gas lamps. The road led up between two low, green hills. "We'll go this way," she said.
   He could smell her. She was warm. He looked bleakly at her lovely face, her glowing hair, her pretty summer frock, her neat, well-proportioned figure. He turned his head away with a stifled sob.
   "Oh, come along now, Mr. Carnelian. You'll soon feel better once you've some of this good, fresh air in your lungs." Passively he allowed her to lead him up the hill until they walked between lines of tall cypresses which fringed fields in which cows and sheep grazed, tended by mechanical cowherds and shepherds who could not, even close to, be told from real people.
   "I must say," she told him, "this landscape is as much a work of art as any of Reynolds' pictures. I could almost believe I was in my own, dear Kent countryside."
   The compliment did not relieve his gloom.
   They crossed a little crooked bridge over a tinkling stream. They entered a cool, green wood of oaks and elms. There were even rooks nesting in the elms and red squirrels running along the boughs of oaks.
   But Jherek's feet dragged. His step became slower and slower and at last she stopped and looked closely up into his face, her own face full of tenderness.
   And, in silence, he took her awkwardly in his arms. She did not resist him. Slowly the depression began to lift as their faces drew closer together. Gradually his spirits rose until, at the very moment their lips touched, he knew an ecstasy such as he had never known before.
   "My dear," said Mrs. Amelia Underwood. She was trembling as she pressed her precious form against him and put her arms around him. "My own, dear, Jherek…"
   And then she vanished.
   She was gone. He was alone.
   He gave a great scream of pain. He whirled, looking everywhere for some sign of her. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood! Mrs. Amelia Underwood!"
   But all there was of her was the wood, with its oaks and its elms, its rocks and its squirrels.
   He rose into the air and sped back to the little house, his coat-tails flapping, his hat flying from his head.
   He ran through the overfurnished rooms. He called to her but she did not reply. He knew that she would not. Everything she had had him create for her — the tables, the sofas, the chairs, the beds, the cabinets, the knick-knacks, seemed to mock him in his grief and thus increase the pain.
   And at last he collapsed upon the grass of the rose garden and, holding a rose of a peculiar bluish-green, he wept, for he knew very well what had happened.
   Lord Jagged? Where was he? Lord Jagged had told Jherek that it would happen like this.
   But Jherek had changed. He could no longer appreciate the splendid irony of the joke. For everyone but Jherek would see it as a joke and a clever one.
   My Lady Charlotina had claimed her vengeance.

10. The Granting of Her Heart's Desire

   My Lady Charlotina would have hidden Mrs. Amelia Underwood very well. As he recovered a little of his composure Jherek began to wonder how he might rescue his love. There would be no point in going to My Lady Charlotina's (his first impulse) and simply demanding the return of Mrs. Underwood. My Lady Charlotina would only laugh at him the more. No, he must visit Lord Jagged of Canaria and seek his advice. He wondered now, why Lord Jagged had not come to visit him since he had taken up with Mrs. Amelia Underwood. Perhaps Jagged had stayed away out of a rather overdeveloped sense of tact?
   With a heavy heart Jherek Carnelian went to the outbuilding where, at Mrs. Underwood's suggestion he had stored his locomotive.
   The door of the outbuilding was opened with a key, but he could not find the key. Mrs. Underwood had always kept it.
   He was reluctant to disseminate the outbuilding now (she had been a stickler about observing certain proprieties of her own day and the business of keys and locks was one of the chief ones, it seemed), for all that it was frightfully ugly. But, with her disappearance, everything of Mrs. Underwood's had become sacred to him. If he never found her again this little Gothic house would stand in the same spot forever.
   At length, however, he was forced to disseminate the door, order the locomotive out, and remake the door behind him. Then he set off.
   As he flew towards Lord Jagged's the thought kept recurring to him that My Lady Charlotina would have seen nothing particularly wrong in disseminating Mrs. Amelia Underwood completely and irrevocably. It was unlikely that My Lady Charlotina would have gone that far — but it was possible. In that case Mrs. Underwood might be gone forever. She could not be resurrected if every single atom of her being had been broken down and spread across the face of the Earth. Jherek kept this sort of thought back as best he could. If he brooded on it there was every chance, he feared, of his falling into a depressive trance from which he would never wake.
   The locomotive at last reached Lord Jagged's castle — all bright yellow, in the shape of an ornamental bird cage and a modest seventy-five feet tall — and began to circle while Jherek sent a message to his friend.
   "Lord Jagged? Can you receive a visitor? It is I, Jherek Carnelian, and my business is of the gravest importance."
   There was no reply. The locomotive circled lower. There were various "boxes" suspended on antigravity beams in the birdcage. Each box was a room used by Lord Jagged. He might be in any one of them. But, no matter which room he occupied, he would be bound to hear Jherek's request.
   "Lord Jagged?"
   It was plain that Lord Jagged was not at home. There was a sense of desertion about his castle as if it had not been used for several months. Had something happened to the Lord of Canaria?
   Had My Lady Charlotina taken vengeance on him, too, for his part in the theft of the alien?
   Oh, this was savage!
   Jherek turned his locomotive toward the North and Werther de Goethe's tomb, expecting to find that his mother, the Iron Orchid, had also vanished.
   But Werther's tomb — a vast statue of himself lying serenely dead with a gigantic Angel of Death hovering over his body and several sorrowing women kneeling beside him — was still occupied by the black pair. They were, in fact, on the roof near the feet of the reclining statue but Jherek did not see them at first, for both they and the statue were completely black.
   "Jherek, my sorrow!" His mother sounded almost animated. Werther merely glowered and gnawed his fingernails in the background as the locomotive landed on the flat parapet, bringing a startling dash of colour to the scene. "Jherek, what ill tidings bring you here?" His mother produced a black handkerchief and wiped black tears from her black cheeks.
   "Ill tidings, indeed," he said. He felt offended by what at the present moment seemed to him to be a mockery of his real anguish. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood has been abducted — perhaps destroyed — and My Lady Charlotina is almost certainly the cause of it."
   "Her vengeance , of course!" breathed the Iron Orchid, her black eyes widening and a certain kind of amusement glinting in them. "Oh! Oh! Woe! Thus is great Jherek brought low! Thus is the House of Carnelian ruined! Oi moi! Oi moi!" And she added, conversationally, "What do you think of that last touch?"
   "This is serious, mother, who brought me precious life…"
   "Only so that you might suffer its torments! I know! I know! Oh, woe!"
   "Mother!" Jherek was screaming. "What shall I do?"
   "What can you do?" Werther de Goethe broke in. "You are doomed, Jherek. You are damned! Fate has singled you out, as it has singled me out, for an eternity of anguish." He uttered his bitter laugh. "Accept this dreadful knowledge. There is no solution. No escape. You were granted a few short moments of bliss so that you might suffer all the more exquisitely when the object of your bliss was snatched from you."
   "You know what happened?" Jherek asked suspiciously.
   Werther looked embarrassed. "Well, My Lady Charlotina did take me into her confidence a week or two ago…"
   "Devil!" cried Jherek. "You did not try to warn me?"
   "Of the inevitable? What good would it have done? And," said Werther sardonically, "we all know how prophets are treated these days! People do not like to hear the truth!"
   "Wretch!" Jherek turned to confront the Iron Orchid. "And you, mother, did you know what Charlotina planned?"
   "Not exactly, my misery. She merely said something about granting Mrs. Underwood her heart's desire."
   "And what is that? What can it be but a life with me?"
   "She did not explain." The Iron Orchid dabbed at her eyes. "She feared, not doubt, that I would betray her plan to you. After all, we are of the same fickle flesh, my egg."
   Jherek said grimly: "I see there is nothing for me to do but confront My Lady Charlotina herself."
   "Is this not what you wanted?" said Werther, sitting on a ledge above their heads, leaning his black back against his statue's marble knee and moodily swinging his legs. "Did you not court disaster when you courted Mrs. Underwood? I seem to recall some plan…"
   "Be silent! I love Mrs. Underwood more than I love myself!"
   "Jherek," said his mother reasonably, "you can take these things too far, you know."
   "There it is! I am thoroughly in love. I am totally in love. My passion rules me. It is no longer a game!"
   "No longer a game!" Even Werther de Goethe sounded shocked.
   "Farewell, black, black betrayers. Traitors in jet — farewell!"
   And Jherek swept back to his locomotive, pulled the whistle and hurled his aircar high into the dark and cheerless sky.
   "Do not struggle against your destiny, Jherek!" he heard Werther cry. "Shake not your fist against uncompromising Fate! Plead not for mercy from the Norns, for they are deaf and blind!"
   Jherek did not reply. Instead he let a great sob escape his lips and he murmured her name and the sound of her name brought all the aching anguish back to his soul so that at last he was silent.
   And he came to Lake Billy the Kid, all serene and dancing in the sunlight, and he had a mind to destroy the Lake and Under-the-Lake and My Lady Charlotina and her menagerie and her caverns — to destroy the whole globe if need be. But he contained his rage, for Mrs. Amelia Underwood might even now be a prisoner in one of those caverns.
   He left his locomotive drifting a few inches above the surface of the lake and he went through the Gateway in the Water and came to the cave with the walls of gold and the roof and floor of mirrored silver and My Lady Charlotina was waiting for him, knowing that he would come.
   "I knew that you would come, my victim," she purred.
   She was dressed in a gown of lily-coloured stuff through which her soft, pink body might be observed. And her pale hair was piled upon her head and secured by a coronet of platinum and pearls. And her face was serene and stern and proud and her eyes were narrowed and pleased and she smiled at him. She smiled at him. And she lay upon a couch covered in white samite over which white roses had been strewn. All the roses were white save one and that one she fingered. It was a rose of a peculiar bluish-green colour. Even as he approached her she opened her mouth and, with sharp ivory teeth, plucked a petal from the rose and tore that petal into tiny pieces which flecked her red lips and her chin and fell upon her bodice.
   "I knew you would come."
   He stretched out his arms and his hands became claws and he walked on stiff legs with his eyes on her long throat and would have seized her had not a force barrier stopped him, a force barrier of her own recipe which he could not neutralise.
   He paused then.
   "You are without wit, or charm, or beauty, or grace," he said sharply.
   She was taken aback. "Jherek! Isn't that a little strong?"
   "I mean it!"
   "Jherek! Your humour! Where is it? Where? I thought you'd be amused at this turn of events. I planned it so carefully." She had the air of disappointed hostess, of someone who had given a party like that of the Duke of Queens (which nobody, of course, had forgotten or would forget until the Duke of Queens, who was still upset by it, managed to conceive some really out of the ordinary entertainment).
   "Yes! And all knew of the plan, save myself and Mrs. Amelia Underwood."
   "But that, naturally, was an important part of the jest!"
   "My Lady Charlotina, you have gone too far! Where is Mrs. Amelia Underwood? Return her to me at once!"
   "I shall not!"
   "And, for that matter, what have you done with Lord Jagged of Canaria? He is not in his castle."
   "I know nothing of Lord Jagged. I haven't seen him for months. Jherek! What is the matter with you? I was expecting some counter-jest. Is this it? If so, it is a poor return for mine…"
   "The Iron Orchid said that you granted Mrs. Underwood her heart's desire. What did you mean by that?"
   "Jherek! You're becoming dull. This is extraordinary. Come and make love to me, Jherek, if nothing else!"
   "I loathe you."
   "Loathe? How interesting! Come and make —"
   "What did you mean?"
   "What I said. I gave her the thing she desired most."
   "How could you know what she desired most?"
   "Well, I took the liberty of sending a little eavesdropper, a mechanical flea, to listen to some of your conversations. It soon became evident what she wanted most. And so I waited for the right moment, today — and then I did it!"
   "Did what? Did what?"
   "Jherek you have lost all your wit. Can't you guess?"
   He frowned. "Death? She did at one point say that she would prefer death to…"
   "No, no!"
   "Then what?"
   "Oh, what a bore you have become! Let me make love to you and then…"
   "Jealousy! Now I understand. You love me yourself. You have destroyed Mrs. Underwood because you think that then I will love you. Well, madam, let me tell you —"
   "Jealousy? Destroyed? Love? Jherek you have thrown yourself thoroughly into your part, I can see. You are most convincing. But I fear, something is missing — some hint of irony which would give the role a little more substance."
   "You must tell me, My Lady Charlotina, what you have done with Mrs. Amelia Underwood."
   She yawned.
   "Tell me!"
   "Mad, darling Jherek, I granted her…"
   "What did you do?"
   "Oh, very well! Brannart!"
   "Brannart?"
   The hunchbacked scientist limped from one of the tunnel mouths and began to cross the mirrored floor, looking down appreciatively at his appearance.
   "What has Brannart Morphail to do with this?" Jherek demanded.
   "I had to employ his help. And he was eager to experiment."
   "Experiment?" said Jherek in a horrible whisper.
   "Hello, Jherek. Well, she'll be there now. I only hope it's successful. If so, then it will open up new roads of inquiry for me. I am still interested in the fact that she did not come here in a time-machine…"
   "What have you done, Brannart?"
   "What? Well, I sent her back to her own time, of course. In one of the machines in my collection. If all went well she should be there by now. April 4, 1896, 3 a .m. Bromley, Kent, England. Temporal co-ordinates should offer no real trouble, but there might be a slight variance on the spatial. So unless something happened on the way back — you know, a chronostorm or something — she will…"
   "You mean — you sent her back to … Oh!" Jherek sank to his knees in despair.
   "Her heart's desire," said My Lady Charlotina. "Now do you appreciate the succulent irony of it, my tragic Jherek? See how I have produced your reversal? Isn't it a charming revenge? Surely you are amused?"
   Jherek did his best to rally himself. Shaking, he raised himself to his feet and he looked past the smiling Lady Charlotina at Brannart Morphail, who, as usual, had missed all the nuances.
   "Brannart. You must send me there, too. I must follow her. She loves me. She was on the point of declaring that love…"
   "I know! I know!" My Lady Charlotina clapped her hands.
   "Of declaring that love, when she was snatched from me. I must pursue her — across a million years if need be — and bring her back. You must help me, Brannart."
   "Ah!" My Lady Charlotina giggled with delight. "Now I understand you, Jherek. How daring! How clever! Of course — it has to be! Brannart, you must help him."
   "But the Morphail Effect…" Brannart Morphail stretched his hands imploringly out to her. "It is highly unlikely that the past will accept Mrs. Underwood back. It might propel her into her own near future — in fact that's the most likely thing — but it will send Jherek anywhere, back here, further forward, to oblivion possibly. Visitors from the future cannot exist in the past. The traffic, is, effectively, one-way. That is the Morphail Effect."
   "You will do as I ask, Brannart," said Jherek. "You will send me back to 1896."
   "You may have only a few seconds in that time — I cannot guarantee how long — before it — it spits you out." Brannart Morphail spoke slowly, as if to an idiot. "To make the attempt is dangerous enough. You could be destroyed in any one of a dozen different ways, Jherek. Take my advice…"
   "You will do as he asks, Brannart," said My Lady Charlotina, tossing aside the rose of a peculiar bluish-green. "Can you not appreciate a properly realised drama when it is presented to you? What else can Jherek do? It is inevitable."
   Again Brannart objected, growling to himself. But My Lady Charlotina drifted over to him and whispered something in his ear and the growling ceased and he nodded. "I will do what you want, Jherek, though it is, in all senses, a waste of time."

11. The Quest for Bromley

   The time machine was a sphere full of milky fluid in which the traveller floated enclosed in a rubber suit, breathing through a mask attacked to a hose leading into the wall of the machine.
   Jherek Carnelian looked at it in some distaste. It was rather small, rather battered. There were what looked like scorch marks on its metallic sides.
   "Where did it come from, Brannart?" He stretched his rubber-swathed limbs.
   "Oh, it could be from almost anywhere. In deciphering the internal dating system I came to the conclusion that it's from a period about two thousand years before the period you want to visit. That's why I chose it for you. It seemed that it might slightly improve your chances." Brannart Morphail pottered about his laboratory, which was crammed with instruments and machinery, most of them in various stages of disrepair, from many different ages. Most of the least sophisticated looking instruments were the inventions of Brannart Morphail himself.
   "Is it safe?" Gingerly Jherek touched the pitted metal of the sphere. Some cracks appeared to have been welded over. It had done a lot of service, that time machine.
   "Safe? What time machine is safe? It's as safe as any other." Brannart waved a dismissive hand. "It is you, Jherek, who want to travel in it. I have tried to dissuade you from pursuing this folly further."
   "Brannart, you have no imagination. No sense of drama, Brannart," chided My Lady Charlotina, her eyes twinkling as she lounged on her couch in a corner of the laboratory.
   Taking a deep breath, Jherek clambered into the machine and adjusted his breathing apparatus before lowering himself into the fluid.
   "You are a martyr , Jherek Carnelian!" sighed My Lady Charlotina. "You may perish in the service of temporal exploration. You will be remembered as a Hero, should you die — crucified, tempestuous time-traveller, Casanova of Chrononauts, upon the Cross of Time!" Her couch sped forward and she reached out to press in his right hand a translation pill and, into his left, a crushed rose of a peculiar bluish-green.
   "I intend to save her, My Lady Charlotina, to bring her back." His voice came out as a somewhat muffled squeak.
   "Of course you do! And you are a splendid saviour Jherek!"
   "Thank you." He still maintained a cool attitude towards her. She seemed to have forgotten that it was because of her that he was forced into this dangerous action.
   Her couch fell back. She waved a green handkerchief. "Speed through the hours, my Horos! Through the days and the months! The centuries and the millennia, most dedicated of lovers — as Hitler sped to Eva. As Oscar sped to Bosie! On! On! Oh, I am moved . I am entranced. I am faint with rapture!"
   Jherek scowled at her, but he took her gifts with him as he slipped deeper into the sphere and felt the airlock close over his head. He floated, uncomfortably weightless, and readied himself for his plunge into the timestream.
   Through the fluid he could see the instruments, cryptographic, unconventional, seeming to swim, as he swam, in the fluid. They made no sound, there was no movement on their faces.
   Then one of the dials flickered. A series of green and red figures came and went. Jherek's stomach grew tight.
   He felt his body shift. Then it was all still again. It seemed that the machine had rolled over.
   He could hear his breath hissing in the tube. The machine was so uncomfortable, the rubber suit so restricting, that he was almost on the point of suggesting they try a different machine.
   Then the same dial flickered again. Green and red. Then two more dials came to life. Blue and yellow. A white light flashed rapidly. The speed of the flashing grew faster and faster.
   He heard a gurgling noise. A thump. The liquid in which he floated became darker and darker.
   He felt pain (he had never really felt physical pain before).
   He screamed, but his voice was muffled.
   He was on his way.
   He fainted.
   He woke up. He was being jolted horribly. The sphere seemed to have cracked. The fluid was rushing out of the crack and as a result his body was being bumped from side to side as the sphere rolled along. He opened his eyes. He closed them. He wailed.
   Air hissed as the tube was wrenched from his face. The plastic lining of the machine began to sink until Jherek lay with his back against the metal of the wall, realising that the sphere had stopped rolling. He groaned. He was bruised everywhere. Still, he consoled himself, he was suffering now. No one could doubt that.
   He looked at the jagged crack in the sphere. He would have to find another time machine, wherever he was, for this one had failed to take the strain of the trip. If he was in 1896 and could find Mrs. Amelia Underwood (assuming that she, herself, had arrived back safely) he would have to approach an inventor and borrow a machine. Still, that was the slightest difficulty he would encounter, he was sure.
   He tried to move his body and yelped as what had been a relatively dull pain turned, for a moment, into throbbing agony. The pain slowly died. He shivered as he felt the cold air blowing through the time machine's ruptured wall. It seemed to be dark beyond the crack.
   He got up, wincing, and stripped off the suit. Underneath was his crumpled Victorian coat and trousers, in a delicate scarlet and purple. He checked that his power rings were still on his fingers and was satisfied. There was the ruby, there the emerald and there the diamond. The air, while cold, also smelled very strange, very thick. He coughed.
   He edged his way to the crack and stepped through into the darkness. It was extremely misty. The machine seemed to have landed on some hard, man-made surface, on the edge of a stretch of water. A flight of stone steps led up through the mist and it was probable that the machine had bumped down these before it shattered. High above he could see a dim light, a yellow light, flickering.
   He shivered.
   This was not what he had expected. If he were in Dawn Age London, then the whole city was deserted! He had imagined it to be packed with people — with millions of people, for this was also the age of the Multitude Cultures.
   He decided to make for the light. He stumbled towards the steps. He touched his face and felt the dampness clinging to it. Then he realised what it was he was experiencing and he gave an involuntary sigh of delight.
   "Fog…"
   It was fog.
   Rather more cheerfully he felt his way up the steps and eventually struck his shoulder against a metal column. On the top of the column glowed a gas-lamp very similar to those Mrs. Amelia Underwood had asked him to make for her. He patted the lamp. He was in the right period at least. Brannart Morphail had been unduly pessimistic.
   But was it the right place. Was this Bromley? He looked back through the fog at the wide stretch of murky water. Mrs. Underwood had spoken much of Bromley, but she had never mentioned a large river. Still, it could be London, which was near Bromley, and, if so, that river was the Thames. Something hooted from the depths of the fog. He heard a thin, distant shout. Then there was silence again.
   He found himself in a narrow alley-way with an uneven, cobbled surface. There were sheets of paper pasted on the dark, brick walls on both sides of the alley. Jherek saw that the paper was covered in graphics and writing but, of course, he could not read anything. Even the translation pills, which worked their subtle engineering upon the brain cells, could not teach him to decipher a written language. He realised that he was still holding the pill My Lady Charlotina had given him. He would wait until he met someone before swallowing it. In his other hand was the crushed rose; all, for the present, that he had left of Mrs. Amelia Underwood.
   The alley opened onto a street and here the fog was a little lighter. He could see a few yards in both directions and there were several more lamps whose yellow light tried to penetrate the fog.
   But still the place seemed deserted as he followed the street, looking with fascination at house after crumbling house as he passed. A few of the houses did have lights shining from behind the blinds at their windows. Once or twice he heard a muffled voice. For some reason, then, the population was staying inside. Doubtless he would find an answer to this mystery in time.
   The next street he reached was wider still and here were taller houses (though in the same decrepit state) with their lower windows displaying a variety of objets d'art — here sewing machines, mangles, frying pans — there beds and chairs, tools and clothing. He paused every minute to glance in at these windows. The owners were right to display their treasures so proudly. And what a profusion! Admittedly some of the objects were a little smaller, a little darker, than he had imagined and many, of course, he could not recognise at all. However, when he and Mrs. Underwood returned, he would be able to make her considerably more artefacts to please her and remind her of home.
   Now he could see a more intense light ahead. And he saw human figures there, heard voices. He struck off across the street and at that moment his ears were filled by a peculiar clacking noise, a rattling noise. He heard a shout. He looked to his left and saw a black beast emerging from the fog. Its eyes rolled, its nostrils flared.
   "A horse!" he cried. "It is a horse!"
   He had often made his own, of course, but it was not the same as seeing the original.
   Again the shout.
   He shouted back, cheering and waving his arms.
   The horse was drawing something behind it — a tall black carriage on top of which was perched a man with a whip. It was the man who was shouting.
   The horse stood up on its hind legs as Jherek waved. It seemed to him that the horse was waving back to him. Strange to be greeted by a beast upon one's first arrival in a century.
   Then Jherek felt something strike him on the head and he fell down and to one side as the horse and carriage clattered past and disappeared into the fog.
   Jherek tried to get up, but he felt faint again. He groaned. There were people running towards him now, from the direction of the bright light. Soon, as he raised himself to his hands and knees, he saw about a dozen men and women all like himself, dressed in period, standing in a circle around him. Their faces were heavy and serious. None of them spoke at first.
   "What —?" He realised that they would not understand him. "I apologise. If you wait one moment…"
   Then they were all babbling at once. He raised the translation pill to his lips and swallowed it.
   "Foreigner o' some kind. A Russian, most likely, round'ere. Off one o' their boats…" he heard a man say.
   "Have you any idea what happened to me just then?" Jherek asked him.
   The man looked astonished and pushed his battered bowler hat onto the back of his head. "I coulda swore you wos a foreigner!"
   "You wos knocked darn by an 'ansom, that's wot 'appened to you, me old gonoph," said another man in a tone of great satisfaction. This man wore a large cloth cap shading his eyes. He put his hands into the pockets of his trousers and continued sagely: " 'Cause you waved at the 'orse an' made it rear up, didn't you?"
   "Aha! And one of its hoofs struck my head, eh?"
   "Yus!" said the first man in a tone of congratulation, as if Jherek had just passed a difficult test.
   One of the women helped Jherek to get to his feet. She seemed a bit wrinkled and she smelt very strongly of something Jherek could not identify. Her face was covered in a variety of paints and powders.
   She leered at him.
   Politely, Jherek leered back.
   "Thank you," he said.
   "That's all right, lovey," said the lady. " 'Ad one too many meself, I reckon." She laughed a harsh, cackling laugh and addressed the gathering in general. " 'Aven't we all, at two o'clock in the morning? I can tell you're a toff," she told him, looking him up and down. "Bin to a party, 'ave you? Or maybe you're an artiste — a performer, eh?" She twitched her hips and made her long skirt swing.
   "I'm sorry…" said Jherek. "I don't…"
   "There, there," she said, planting a wet kiss on his moist and dirty face. "Wanna warm bed for the night, do yer?" She snuggled her body against him, adding in a murmur for his ears alone, "It won't cost yer much. I like the looks o' you."
   "You wish to make love to me?" he said, realisation dawning. "I'm flattered. You are very wrinkled. It would be interesting. Unfortunately, however, I am —"
   "Cheek!" She dropped her arm from his. "Bleedin' cheek! Nasty drunken bastard!" She flounced off while all the others jeered after her.
   "I offended her, I think," said Jherek. "I didn't mean to."
   "Somefink of an achievement, that," said a younger man wearing a yellow jacket, brown trousers and a brown, curly-brimmed bowler. He had a thin, lively face. He winked at Jherek. "Elsie is gettin' on a bit."
   The concept of age had never really struck Jherek before, though he knew it was a feature of this sort of period. Now, as he looked around him at the people and saw that they were in different stages of decay, he realised what it meant. They had not deliberately moulded their features in this way. They had no choice.
   "How interesting," he said to himself.
   "Well, 'ave a good look," said one of the men. "Be my guest!"
   Understanding that he was about to offend another one, Jherek quickly apologised. Then he pointed to the source of the light. "I was on my way over there. What is it?"
   "That's the coffee-stall," said the young man in the yellow coat. "The very hub of Whitechapel, that is. As Piccadilly is to the Empire, so Charley's coffee-stall is to the East End. You'd better 'ave a cup while you're at it. Charley's coffee'll kill or cure you, that's for certain!"
   The young man led Jherek to a square van which was open on one side. From the opening a canvas awning extended for several feet and under this awning the customers were now reassembling. Inside the van were several large metal containers (evidently hot) a lot of white china cups and plates and a variety of different objects which were probably food of some kind. A big man with whiskers and the reddest face Jherek had ever seen stood in the van, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a striped apron over his chest, and served the other people with cups of liquid which he drew from the metal containers.