Dancers at the End of Time (63 page)

"Exactly, Jherek. By bad chance I was not able to forestall your going to Brannart, borrowing a machine and returning to the nineteenth century. I was, I assure you, as surprised to encounter you there as you were surprised to see me! Luckily, in one of my roles, as High Court Judge, I arranged to preside at your trial…"

"…and you could not acknowledge me, because of the Morphail Effect!"

"Yes. But I did arrange for the Effect to work at the very moment of your apparent execution. This led me to make other discoveries about the Nature of Time, but I could not afford, even then, to tell you of my plans. Mrs. Underwood had to remain where she was (itself regarded as an impossibility by Brannart) while I worked. I returned here, as soon as possible, desperately trying to remedy matters but gradually learning more and more things which conflicted with Brannart's theories. I was able to contact Mrs. Persson and she was of considerable help to me. I arranged to meet her here, by the by…"

"She has arrived," Amelia Underwood told him.

"I am very pleased. She wishes to watch — but I move ahead of myself. The next thing I learned, on my return, was that you had again vanished, Jherek. But you had made a discovery which was to alter my whole research. I had heard rumours about a method of recycling Time, but had dismissed them. The Nursery you discovered not only proved that it was possible, but showed 
how
 it was possible. It meant that much of what I had been doing was no longer necessary. But you, of course, were still stranded. I risked much to return and rescue you all, exposing myself to the Morphail Effect and, indeed, suffering from it. I became stranded in the nineteenth century, and if it had not been for that time-travelling fellow, what's-his-name, arriving out of the blue, I might never have hit upon the solution to my problem. He was able to give me a great deal of information about alternate time-cycles — he was from one himself, of course — and I regret that, in order to save myself embarrassment (for by then I had exposed myself too far and my disguises, as it were, were wearing rather thin) I had to go along with the Home Secretary's scheme for commandeering his time-craft and sending it after you. I did not imagine the complications I have witnessed…"

"It seems to me, Lord Jagged," murmured Amelia Underwood, "that your problems would not have arisen at all, had you anticipated certain ordinary human factors…"

"I bow to your criticism, Amelia. I deserve it. But I was a man obsessed — and needing to act, I thought, with great urgency. All the various fluctuations created in the mega-flow — largely because of me, I'll admit — were actually contributing to the general confusion. The present condition of this universe would not have manifested itself for a while yet, but for the energy used by the cities in our various schemes. But all that will change now, with luck."

"Change? You say it is too late."

"Did I give you that impression? I am sorry. I wish that you had not had to suffer so much, particularly since it now appears that my whole experiment was pointless."

"Then we cannot settle in the past, as you planned?" said Jherek.

"Pointless!" Amelia gasped with indignation.

"Well, yes and no."

"Did you not deliberately place us in the Palaeozoic as part of your experiment, Lord Jagged?"

"No, Amelia. I was not deceiving you. I thought I sent you here."

"Instead we went back."

"That is what I am coming to. You did not, strictly speaking, go back. You went 
forward
, and thus countered the Morphail Effect at core!"

"How so?"

"Because you completed a circle. If Time is a circle (and it is only one way of looking at it) and we travel it round, we go, of course, from the End to the Beginning quite swiftly, do you see? You overshot the End — you went completely round and back to the Beginning."

"And deceived the Morphail Effect!" said Jherek, clapping his hands together.

"In a word, yes. It means that we can, if we so desire, all escape the End of Time merely by jumping forward to the Beginning. The disadvantages, however, are considerable. We should not, for one thing, have the power of the cities…"

But Jherek's excitement dismissed these quibbles. "And so, like Ovid, you return to lead us from Time's captivity into the promised land — forward, as you might put it, Jagged, into the past!"

"Not so." His father laughed. "There is no need for any of us to leave this planet or this period."

"But final destruction looms, if it is not already upon us."

"Nonsense — what has given you that impression?"

"Come," said Jherek beginning to rise, "I'll show you."

"But I have much more to tell you, my son."

"Later — when you have seen."

"Very well." With a swirl of his robes, Lord Jagged of Canaria helped first Amelia, then his wife, to their feet. "It would probably be a good idea, anyway, to seek out Mrs. Persson and the others. But really, Jherek, this uncharacteristic alarmism is scarcely called for."

From their picnic Captain Mubbers and Rokfrug looked up. "Troll?" said the leader of the Lat through a mouthful of plumcake; but his lieutenant calmed him, "Grushfalls, hrunt fresha." They gave their attention back to the food and scarcely noticed as the four humans stepped carefully out of the little pastoral glade and into the lurid, flickering light of that vast expanse of ruins whose very atmosphere, it now seemed to Jherek, gave off a faint, chilly scent of death.

"I must say," Jagged paused in his rapid, stately stride, "the city suffers a certain lassitude…"

"Oh, Jagged, you understate!" His son was beside him, while the ladies, in conference, came a little way behind.

Streamers of half-metallic, half-organic matter, of a dusty lavender shade, wriggled across their path as if withdrawn by the squat building on their right. In the gloom, it was impossible to tell their nature.

"But it revives," Jagged said. "Look there, is that not a newly created conduit?" The pipe he indicated, running to left and right of them, did seem new, though very ordinary.

"It is no sign, paternal Jagged. The illusions proliferate."

His father was insouciant. "If you'll have it so." There was a glint in his eye. "Youth was ever obstinate."

Jherek Carnelian detected irony in his father, his friend. "Ah, sardonic Jagged, it is so good to have your companionship again! All trepidation vanishes!"

"Your confidence warms me." Jagged's gesture was expansive. "What, after all, is a father for but to give comfort to his children?"

"Children?"

A casual wave. "One forms attachments, here and there, in Time. But you, Jherek, are my only heir."

"A song?"

"A son, my love."

As they advanced through the glowing semi-darkness, Jherek infected by Jagged's apparently causeless optimism, sought for signs which would indicate that the city came back to life. Perhaps there were indeed signs of this revivification: that light which, as he had seen, glowed a robust blue, and light which now burned steady crimson; moreover, the regular pounding from beneath his feet put him in mind of the beat of a strengthening heart. But, no. How could it be?

Fastidious as ever, Lord Jagged folded back one of his sleeves so that it should not trail in the fine rust which lay everywhere upon the ground. "We can rely upon the cities," he said, "even if we cannot ever hope fully to understand them."

"You speculate, Jagged. The evidence is all to the contrary. Their sources of power have dissipated."

"The sources exist. The cities have discovered them."

"Even you, Jagged, cannot be so certain." But Jherek spoke now to be denied.

"You are aware, then, of all the evidence?" Jagged paused, for ahead of them was darkness. "Have we reached the outskirts?"

"It seems so."

They waited for the Iron Orchid and Amelia Underwood, who had fallen some distance behind. To Jherek's surprise the two women appeared to be enjoying one another's company. No longer did they glare or make veiled attacks. They might have been the oldest of friends. He wondered if he would ever come to understand these subtle shifts of attitude in women; yet he was pleased. If all were to perish, it would be as well to be on good terms at the end. He hailed them.

Here the city shed a wider shaft of light into the landscape beyond: a pale, cracked, barren expanse no longer deserving the appellation "earth"; a husk that might crumble to invisible dust at a touch.

The Iron Orchid twisted a white pleat. "Dead."

"And in the last stages of decay." Amelia was sympathetic.

The Orchid put her back to the scene. "I cannot accept," she said levelly, "that this is my world. It was so vital."

"It's vitality was stolen, so Mongrove says." Jherek contemplated the darkness which his mother refused.

"That's true of all life, in a sense." Lord Jagged touched, for a second, his wife's hand. "Well, the core remains."

"Is it not already rotten, Lord Jagged?" Perhaps Amelia regretted her remorselessness as she glimpsed the Orchid's face.

"It can be revived, one supposes."

"It is cold … complained the Iron Orchid, moving further away, towards the interior.

"We drift, surely," Jherek said. "There is no sun. Not another star survives. Not a single meteorite.

We drift in eternal darkness — and that darkness must, dear parent, shortly engulf us, too!"

"You over-dramatize, my boy."

"Possibly he does not." The Orchid's voice lacked timbre.

They followed her and, almost immediately, came upon the machines used by the time-traveller and by Mrs. Persson and Captain Bastable.

"But where are our friends?" mused Lord Jagged.

"They were here not long since," Jherek told him. "The Morphail Effect?"

"Here!" Lord Jagged's look was frankly sceptical.

"Could they be with Yusharisp and the others?" Jherek smiled vaguely at Amelia and his mother, who had linked arms. He was still puzzled by the change in them. It had something to do, he felt, with the Iron Orchid's marriage to Lord Jagged, this banishment of the old tension. "Shall we seek them out, venturesome Jagged?"

"You know where to look?"

"Over there."

"Then lead on, my innocent!" Lord Jagged, as had often been his way in the old days, appeared to be relishing a private joke. He stood aside for Jherek.

The light from the city glittered, for a moment sharp rather than murky, and a building that had been a ruin now seemed whole to Jherek, but elsewhere there were creakings and murmurings and groanings, all suggestive of the city's decline. Again they emerged at the edge, and here the light was very dim indeed. It was not until he heard a sound that Jherek was able to advance.

"If (skree) you would take back to their (yelp) own time this (skree) group, it would at least (roar) reduce the problem to tidier proportions, Mrs. (yelp) Persson."

They were all assembled, now, about the Pweelian spacecraft — Inspector Springer and his constables, the Duke of Queens, huge, melancholy Mongrove, the time-traveller in his Norfolk jacket and plus-fours, Mrs. Persson and Captain Bastable in their black uniforms, gleaming like sealskin. Only Harold Underwood, Sergeant Sherwood and the Lat were missing. Against the mould-like exterior of the Pweelian spaceship the Pweelians themselves were hard to distinguish. Beyond the group lay the now-familiar blackness of the infinite void.

They heard Mrs. Persson. "We made no preparations for passengers. As it is, we are anxious to return to our base to begin certain important experiments needed to verify our understanding of the multiverse's intersections…"

Lord Jagged, his pale yellow robes in contrast to the general nocturnal colouring of his surroundings, strolled into the group, leaving Jherek and the two women to follow. Jagged's private mirth was unabated. "You are as anxious as ever, my dear Yusharisp." Though it must have been some time since last he had seen the alien, Jagged had no difficulty in identifying him. "And so you persist in taking the narrower view?"

The little creature's many eyes glared distastefully at the newcomer. "I should have (roar) thought, Lord Jagged, that no broader view (yelp) existed!" He became suspicious. "Have you (skree) been here all along?"

"Only recently returned." Lord Jagged performed a brief bow. "I apologize. There were difficulties.

A fine judgement is required, so close to the end of all things, if one is to arrive with matter beneath one's feet or find oneself in absolute vacuum!"

"At least (roar) you'll admit…"

"Oh, I don't think we need disagree, Mr. Yusharisp. Let us accept the fact that we shall always be temperamentally at odds. This is the moment for realism, is it not?"

Yusharisp, whilst remaining suspicious, subsided.

CPS Shushurup intervened. "Everything is settled (skree). We intend to requisition (skree) whatever we can salvage from the (roar yelp) city in order to further our survival plans. If you wish to (yelp) help, and share the subsequent benefit (skree) of our work…"

"Requisition? Salvage?" Lord Jagged raised a cool eyebrow. It seemed that his tall collar quivered.

"Why should that be necessary?"

"We have (skree) not the time to (roar) spare to (skree) explain again!"

Lord Mongrove lifted his heavy head, contemplating Jagged through dismal eyes, his voice as doom-laden as ever, though he spoke as if he had never associated himself with the extra-terrestrials.

"They have this scheme, equivocal Jagged, to build a self-contained environment which will outlast the final collapse of the cities." He was a bell, tolling the futility of struggle. "It has certain merits."

Lord Jagged was openly dismissive. He was dry. He was contemptuous. "I am sure it would suit the Pweelian preference for tidiness as opposed to order. For simplification as opposed to multiplicity of choice." The patrician features displayed stern dismay. "But they have no business, Lord Mongrove, interfering with the workings of our city (which I am sure they understand poorly)."