Dancers at the End of Time (53 page)

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."

"…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 —

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!
 "

But Brannart could not respond to her knowing, sympathetic smile. He looked bemused.

"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.