Dancers at the End of Time (30 page)

"Producing the time jump is relatively easy," said Nurse, studying a bank of instruments in her laboratory as Jherek came rushing in (he had returned, briefly, to his ranch to get some translator pills and study his records in order to make himself a suit of clothes which would not set him apart from the denizens of 1896). "Oh, that's yours, by the way. I found it under your pillow when I was making your bed." The old robot pointed at the deceptor-gun resting on one of her benches. With a murmur of thanks, Jherek picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of his black overcoat. "The problem is," Nurse went on, "in getting the spacial co-ordinates correctly fixed. A city called London (I'd never heard of it until you mentioned it) in an island called England. I've had to consult some pretty ancient memory banks, I can tell you, but I think it's sorted out now."

"I can go?"

"You were always an impatient one, Jerry." Nurse laughed affectionately. She still seemed to have it implanted in her that she had brought Jherek up since he had been a young boy. "But — yes — I think you can set off soon. I do hope you're aware of the dangers, however."

"I am, Nurse."

"What on earth are you wearing, my boy? It looks like something I once saw in Tyrant Pecking Pa's remake of the classic 
David Copperfield Meets the Wolf Man
. I considered it rather fanciful, then. But Pecking Pa always ran to 
emotional
 authenticity rather than period exactitude, I was told. At least, that's what he used to say. I met him once, you know. Some years ago, when his father was still alive. His father was so different; a gentleman. You wouldn't have known they were related. His father made all those wonderful, charming movies. They were a joy to live through. The whole society took part, of course. You'd be far too young to remember the pleasure of having even a small part in 
Young Adolf
 
Hitler
 or 
The Four Loves of Captain Marvel
. When Pecking Pa VIII came to power all the romance vanished. Realism became the rage. And someone suffers, every time, during a Realism period (I mean, who supplies the blood? Not the Tyrant himself!)"

Privately, Jherek Carnelian was very grateful to Pecking Pa VIII for his excesses in the name of Realism. Without them, Nurse would not be here now.

"The stories were pretty much the same, of course," said Nurse, fiddling with some controls and making a screen turn to liquid gold, "only more blood. There, that should do it. I hope there was just the one location for London on this island of yours. It's very 
small
, Jerry." She turned her great metal head to look at him. "What I would call a bit of a low-budget country."

Jherek wasn't, as usual, following her too clearly. But he nodded and smiled.

"Still, small productions quite often produced interesting pictures," said Nurse, with a touch of condescension. "Hop into the box, Jerry, there's a good lad. I'll be sorry to see you go, but I suppose I'll have to get used to it, now. I wonder how many will remember their old Nurse in a few years time. Still, it's a fact of life I have to face. Starlets must become stars some day."

Jherek stepped gingerly into the cylindrical chamber in the middle of the laboratory.

"Goodbye, Jerry," said Nurse's voice from outside, before the buzzing became too loud, "try to remember everything I taught you. Be polite. Listen for your cues. Keep away from casting couches.

Camera! Action!"

And the cylinder seemed to begin to spin (though it might have been Jherek spinning). He clapped his hands to his ears to keep out the noise. He groaned. He fainted.

He moved through a country that was all soft, shifting colours and whose people were bodiless, kindly with sweet voices. He fell back and he was falling through the fabric of the ages, down and down to the very beginnings of mankind's long history.

He felt pain, as he had felt it before, but he did not mind it. He knew depressions such as he had never experienced, but they did not concern him. Even the joy which came to him was a joy he did not care about. He knew that he was borne upon the winds of Time and he knew, beyond any question, that at the end of this journey he would be reunited with his lost love, the beautiful Mrs. Amelia Underwood.

And when he reached 1896 he would not allow himself to be sidetracked from his great Quest for Bromley, as he had been sidetracked before by Snoozer Vines.

He heard his own voice calling, ecstatic and melodic. "Mrs. Underwood! Mrs. Underwood! I am coming! Coming! Coming!"

And at last the sensation of falling had stopped and he opened his eyes, expecting to find himself still in the cylinder, but he was not. He was lying upon soft grass under a large, warm sun. There were trees and not far off the glint of water. He saw people walking about, all dressed in costumes appropriate to the late 19th century — men and women, children, dogs. In the distance he saw a carriage go by, drawn by horses. One of the inhabitants started to stroll slowly, purposefully towards him and he recognized the man's suit. He had seen many such during his previous stay in 1896. Quickly he slipped his hand in his pocket, took out a translator pill and popped it into his mouth. He began to stand up.

"Excuse me, sir," said the man heavily, "but I was wondering as to whether you could 
read
."

"As a matter of fact," began Jherek, but was cut off.

"Because I was looking at that there notice, not four yards off, which plainly states, if I'm not mistaken, that you are requested not to set foot on this particular stretch of lawn, sir. Therefore, if you would kindly return to the public walk, I for one would be relieved to inform you that you had returned to the path of righteousness and were no longer breaking one of the byelaws of the Royal Borough of Kensington. Moreover, I must point out, sir, that if I was ever to catch you committing the same felony in this here park, I would be forced to take your name and address and see that a notice to appear in court on a particular date was served on you." And the man laughed. "Sorry, sir," he said in a more natural tone, "but you shouldn't really be on the grass."

"Aha!" said Jherek. "I follow. Thank you, um — officer — that's it, isn't it? It was inadvertent…"

"I'm sure it was, sir. You being a Frenchman, by your accent, wouldn't understand our ways. It's more free and easy over there, of course."

Jherek stepped rapidly to the path and began to walk in the direction of a pair of large marble gate-posts he could see in the distance. The policeman fell in beside him, chatting casually about France and other foreign places he had read about. Eventually, he saluted and walked off down another path, leaving Jherek wishing that he had enquired the way to Bromley.

At least, thought Jherek, it was a relief not to be attracting quite so much attention as he had during his last trip to the Dawn Age. People still glanced at him from time to time and he felt rather self-conscious, as one might, but he was able to walk along the street and enjoy the sights without interruption. Carriages, hansoms, dairymen's drays, tradesmen's vans, all went by, filling the air with the creak of axles, the clopping of horses' hooves, the rattling of the wheels. The sun was bright and warm and the smells of the street had a very different quality to the one they had had during Jherek's previous stay. He realized that it must be summer now. He paused to smell some roses which were spilling over the wall of the park. They were beautiful. There was a 
texture
 to the scent which he had never been able to reproduce. He inspected the leaves of a cypress and here, too, found that his own work lacked a certain subtlety of detail which was difficult to define. He found himself delighting, even more than before, in the beauties of 1896. He stopped to stare as a two-storeyed omnibus went by, pulled by huge, muscular horses. On the open top deck be-ribboned straw hats nodded, sunshades twirled and blazers blazed; while below, through dusty windows and a confusion of advertisements, sat the dourer travellers, their eyes upon their newspapers and penny magazines. Once or twice a motor car would wheeze past, its exhaust mingling with the dust from the street, its driver swathed in a long coat and white cap, in spite of the heat, and Jherek would watch it in smiling wonderment.

He removed his top hat, wondering why his face seemed damp, and then he realized to his delight that he was 
sweating
. He had witnessed this phenomenon before, in the inhabitants of this period, but had never dreamed of experiencing it personally. Glancing at the faces of the people who passed by — all in different stages of youth or decay, all male or female (without choice, he remembered, with a thrill of excitement) — he saw that many of them were sweating, too. It added to his sense of identification with them. He smiled at them, as if to say "Look, I am like you," but, of course, they did not understand.

Some, indeed, frowned at him, while two ladies walking together giggled and blushed.

He continued along the road in a roughly eastward direction, noticing that the traffic grew thicker.

The park ended on his left and a fresh one appeared on his right. Boys with bundles of newspapers and placards began to run about shouting, men with long poles began to poke them into lanterns which stood on thin, tall pedestals at regular intervals along the sides of the pavement, and the air became a little cooler, the sky a little darker.

Jherek, realizing that night was falling and that he had become so entranced by the atmosphere that he was, again, in danger of being deflected from his path, decided that it was time to make for Bromley.

He remembered that Snoozer Vines had told him that he would need to take a train and that the trains left from somewhere called "Victoria" or possibly "Waterloo."

He went up to a passer-by, a portly gentleman dressed rather like himself who was in the process of purchasing a newspaper from a small boy.

"Excuse me, sir," said Jherek, raising his hat. "I wonder if you would be good enough to help me."

"Certainly, sir, if I can," said the portly gentleman genially, replacing his money in his waistcoat pocket.

"I am trying to reach the town of Bromley, which is in Kent, and I wondered if you knew which train station I would need."

"Well," said the portly gentleman with a frown. "It will either be Victoria or Waterloo, I should think.

Or possibly London Bridge. Possibly all three. I would suggest that you purchase a railway guide, sir. I can see from the cut of your jib that you're a stranger to our shores — and an investment, if you intend to travel about this fair island, in a railway guide will pay you handsome dividends in the long run. I am sorry I cannot be of more assistance. Good evening to you." And the portly gentleman rolled away, calling out:

"Cab! Cab!"

Jherek sighed and continued to walk up the busy street which seemed to become increasingly densely populated with every passing moment. He wished that he had mastered the logic of reading when he had had the chance. Mrs. Underwood had tried to teach him, but she had never really explained the principles to his satisfaction. With the logic fully understood, a translation pill would do the rest for him, working its peculiar restructuring effect upon his brain-cells.

He tried to stop several people, but they all seemed too busy to want to talk to him, and at last he reached an intersection crammed with traffic of every description. Bewildered he came to another stop, staring over the hansoms, four-wheelers and carts at the statue of a naked bowman with wings on his ankles, doubtless some heroic aviator who had taken part in the salvation of London during one of its periodic wars with other of the island's city-states. The noise was almost overwhelming, and now darkness added to his confusion. He thought he recognized some of the buildings and landmarks, from his last trip to the past, but he could not be sure. They were inclined to look very much alike. Across the street he saw the gold and crimson front of a house which seemed, for some reason, more as he had originally imagined 19th century houses to be. It had large windows with lace curtains from behind which poured warm gaslight. Other curtains, of red velvet held by cords of woven gold, were drawn back from the windows and from within there came a number of pleasant smells. Jherek decided that he would give up trying to stop one of the busy passers-by and ask for help, instead, at one of these houses. Nervously, he plunged into the traffic, was missed first by an omnibus, then by a hansom cab, then by a four-wheeler, was cursed at roundly by almost everyone and arrived panting and dusty on the other side of the road.

Standing outside the gold and crimson building, Jherek realized that he was not sure of how to begin making his enquiry. He saw a number of people go through the doors as he watched, and concluded that some sort of party was taking place. He went to one of the windows and peered, as best he could, through the lace curtains. Men in black suits very much like his own, but wearing large white aprons around their waists, hurried about, bearing trays of food, while at tables, some large and some small, sat groups of men and women, eating, drinking and talking. It was definitely a party. Here, surely, would be someone who could help him.

At he stared, Jherek saw that at a table in the far corner sat a group of men, dressed in slightly different style to most of the others. They were laughing, pouring foaming wine from large green bottles, having an animated conversation. With a shock, Jherek thought that one of the men, dressed in a light yellow velvet jacket, a loose scarlet cravat covering a good deal of his shirt front, bore a startling resemblance to his old friend Lord Jagged of Canaria. He seemed to be on familiar terms with the other men. At first Jherek told himself that this could only be Lord Jagger, the judge at his trial, and decided that he could see points about the handsome, lazy face which distinguished him from Jagged, but he knew that he deceived himself. Obviously coincidence could explain the resemblance, both of name and features, but here was his opportunity to decide the truth. He left the windows and pushed open the doors of the house.