Dancers at the End of Time (73 page)

"Ah, you find me superficial." He was saddened.

"Not that. Not now."

"Then —?"

"I remain confused, Jherek."

They stood on opposite sides of the pool, regarding each other through the veil of falling silvery water. Her beauty, her auburn hair, her grey eyes, her firm mouth, all seemed more desirable than ever.

"I wish only to honour you," he said, lowering his eyes.

"You do so, already, my dear."

"I am committed to you. Only to you. If you wished, we could try to return to 1896…"

"You would be miserable there."

"Not if we were together, Amelia."

"You do not know my world, Jherek. It is capable of distorting the noblest intentions, of misinterpreting the finest emotions. You would be wretched. And I would feel wretched, also, to see one such as you transformed."

"Then what is to be the answer?"

"I must think," she said. "Let me walk alone for a while, my dearest."

He acknowledged her wish. He strode for the house, driving back the thoughts that suggested he would never see her again, shaking off the fear that she would be snatched from him, as she had been snatched once before, telling himself that it was merely association and that circumstances had changed.

But how radically, he wondered, had they changed?

He reached the house. He closed the door behind him. He began to wander from room to room, avoiding only her apartments, the interior of which he had never seen, though he retained a deep curiosity about them, had often restrained an impulse to explore.

It came to him, as he entered his own bedroom and lay down upon the bed, still in his nightshirt and dressing gown, that perhaps all these new feelings were new only to him. Jagged, he felt sure, had known such feelings in the past — they had made him what he was. He vaguely recollected Amelia saying something about the son being the father, unwounded by the world. Did he grow more like Jagged? The thoughts of the previous night came back to him, but he refused to let them flourish. Before long, he had fallen asleep.

He was awakened by the sound of her footfall as she came slowly upstairs. It seemed to him that, on the landing, she paused at his door before her own door opened and she entered her rooms. He lay still for a little while, perhaps hoping that she would return. He got up, disseminating his night-clothes, naked as he listened; she did not come back. He used one of his power-rings to make a loose blouse and long kilt, in dark green. He left the bedroom and stood on the landing, hearing her moving about on the other side of the wall.

"Amelia?"

There was no reply.

He had grown tired of introspection. "I will return soon, my dear," he called.

Her voice was muffled. "Where do you go?"

"Nowhere."

He descended, passing through the kitchen and into the garden at the back, where he normally kept his locomotive. He boarded the craft, whistling the tune of 
Carrie Joan
, feeling just a hint of nostalgia for the simpler days before he had met Amelia at the party given by the Duke of Queens. Did he regret the meeting? No.

The locomotive steamed into the sky, black, silver and gold now. He noticed how strange the two nearby scenes looked — the thatched house and its gardens, the lake of blood. They clashed rather than contrasted with each other. He wondered if she would mind if he disseminated the lake, but decided not to interfere.

He flew over transparent purple palaces and towering, quivering pink and puce mounds of unremarkable workmanship and imprecise invention, over a collection of gigantic prone figures, apparently entirely made of chalk, over a half-finished forest, and under a black thunderstorm whose lightning, in his opinion, was thoroughly overdone, but he refused to let the locomotive bear him back towards the city, to which his thoughts constantly went these days, perhaps because it was the city of his conception, perhaps because Lord Jagged and Nurse worked there (if they did), perhaps because he might study the man who remained his rival, at least until the next morning. He had no inclination to visit any of the friends whose company would normally give him pleasure; he considered going to Mongrove's rainy crags, but Mongrove would be of no help to him. Perhaps, he thought, he should choose a site and make something, to exercise his imagination in some ordinary pursuit, rather than let it continue to create impossible emotional dilemmas for him. He had just decided that he would try to build a reproduction of the Palaeozoic seashore and had found a suitable location when he heard the voice of Bishop Castle above him.

The bishop rode in a chariot whose wheels rotated, red and flaming, but which was otherwise of ordinary bronze, gold and platinum. His hat, one of his old crenellated kind, was immediately visible over the side of the chariot, but it was a moment before Jherek noticed his friend's face.

"I am so glad to see you, Jherek. I wished to congratulate you — well, Amelia, really — on yesterday's party."

"I will tell her, ebullient Bishop."

"She is not with you?"

"She remains at home."

"A shame. But you must come and see this, Jherek. I don't know what Brannart has been trying, but I would say it had gone badly wrong for him. Would you be amused for a few minutes?"

"I can think of nothing I should want more."

"Then follow me!"

The chariot banked away, flying north, and obediently Jherek set a course behind it.

In a moment Bishop Castle was laughing and shouting, pointing at the ground. "Look! Look!"

Jherek saw nothing but a patch of parched, unused earth. Then dust swirled and a conical object appeared, its outer casing whirling counter to another within. The whirling stopped and a man emerged from the cone. For all that he wore breathing equipment and carried a large bag, the man was recognizable as Brannart Morphail by his hump and his club foot. He turned, as if to tell the other occupants of the cone not to leave, but already a number of small figures had tumbled out and stood there, hands on hips, looking around them, glaring through their goggles. It was Captain Mubbers and the remnants of his crew. He gesticulated at Brannart, tapping his elbow several times. Wet, smacking noises could be heard, even from where Jherek and Bishop Castle hovered watching.

At length, after an argument, they all crowded back into the cone. The two shells whirled again and the cone vanished. Bishop Castle was beside himself with laughter, but Jherek could not see why he was so amused.

"They have been doing that for the past four hours, to my knowledge!" roared Bishop Castle. "The machine appears. It stops. They disembark, argue, and get back in again. All exactly the same. Wait…"

Jherek waited and, sure enough, the dust swirled, the cone reappeared, Brannart and then Captain Mubbers and his men got out, they argued and returned to the ship. Each movement had been the same.

"What is happening, Bishop?" Jherek asked, as soon as the next wave of laughter had subsided.

"Some sort of time-loop, evidently. I wondered what Brannart was up to. He schemed, I gather, with the Lat — offering to take them back to a period when their space-ship — and space — still existed — if they would help him. He swore me to secrecy, but it cannot matter now."

"What did he plan?" In the confusion Jherek realized he had forgotten to warn Jagged of what he had seen.

"Oh, he was not too clear. Wished to thwart Jagged in some way, of course. Go back in time and change events."

"Then what has happened to him now?"

"Isn't it obvious? Ho, ho, ho!"

"Not to me."

"He's hoist by his own petard — caught in a particularly unpleasant version of the Morphail Effect.

He arrives in the past, certainly, but only to be flung back to the present immediately. As a result he's stuck. He could go round and round for ever, I suppose…"

"Should we not try to rescue him?"

"Jagged is the only one qualified to do that, Jherek, I'd say. If we tried to help we might find ourselves caught in the loop, too."

Jherek watched as the cone appeared for the third time and the figures went through their set ritual.

He tried to laugh, but he could not find it as amusing as did his friend.

"I wonder if Jagged knew of this," continued Bishop Castle, "and trapped Brannart into the situation. What a fine revenge, eh?"

Everyone, it seemed, suspected his father of a scheme. However, Jherek was not in a mood to defend Lord Jagged again today.

Bishop Castle brought his chariot closer to Jherek's locomotive. "By the by, Jherek, have you seen Doctor Volospion's latest? It's called 'The History of the World in Miniature' — the entire history of mankind from start to finish, all done with tiny reproductions at incredible speed — it can be slowed down to observe details of any particular millennium — it lasts a full week!"

"It is reminiscent, is it not, of something of Jagged's?"

"Is it? Well, Volospion always saw himself as a rival to Jagged, and perhaps hopes to fill his shoes, now that he is occupied with other things. O'Kala Incarnadine has been safely resurrected, by the by, and has lost interest in being a goat. He has become some kind of leviathan, with his own lake. Now that is a copy — of Amelia's creation. Well, if you'll forgive me, I'll be on my way. Others will want to see this."

For the fourth time, the whirling cone appeared, Brannart and the Lat emerged. As Bishop Castle flew off Jherek dropped closer. He was still unable to understand them.

"Hrunt!" cried Captain Mubbers.

"Ferkit!" declared Brannart Morphail.

Blows were exchanged. They returned to the craft.

Jherek wondered if he should not continue on to Castle Canaria and tell Lord Jagged what was happening, but the sight had distressed him too much and he did not relish a further encounter with his father and mother today. He decided to return with the news to Amelia.

It was almost twilight as he directed the locomotive home. The darkness seemed to come quicker than usual and it was beneath a starless, moonless sky that he eventually located the house where only one light burned at a single window.

He was surprised, as he landed, to note that the window was not Amelia's but his own. He did not recall leaving a light there. He felt alarm as he entered the house and ran upstairs. He knocked at her door. "Amelia! Amelia!" There was no reply. Puzzled, he opened his door and went in. The lamp burned low, but there was sufficient light to see that his Amelia occupied the bed, her face turned away from him, the great sable sheet drawn tightly around her body so that only her head was visible.

"Amelia?"

She did not turn, though he could see that she was not asleep. He could do nothing but wait.

Eventually, she spoke in a small, unsteady voice. "As a woman, I shall always be yours."

"Are we —? Is this marriage?"

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes; her expression was serious. Her lips parted.

He kneeled upon the bed; he took her head in his hands. He kissed her eyes. She moved convulsively and he thought he alarmed her until he realized that she was struggling free of the sheet, to open her arms to him, to hold him, as if she feared to fall. He took her naked shoulders in his arm, he stroked her cheek, experiencing a sensation at once violent and tender — a sensation he had never left before. The smell of her body was warm and sweet.

"I love you," he said.

"I shall love you for ever, my dear," she replied. "Believe me."

"I do."

Her words seemed subtly inappropriate and the old sense of foreboding came and went. He kissed her. She gasped and her hands went beneath his blouse; he felt her nails in his flesh. He kissed her shoulder. She drew him to her.

"It is all I can give you…" She seemed to be weeping.

"It is everything."

She groaned. With a touch of a power-ring he disrobed, stroking the tears on her cheek, kissing her trembling shoulder, until at last he drew back the sheet and pressed himself upon her.

"The lamp," she said. He caused it to vanish and they were in complete darkness.

"Always, Jherek."

"Oh, my dearest."

She hugged him. He touched her waist. "Is this what you do?" he asked. "Or is it this?"

Then they made love; and in the fullness of time they slept.

The sun had risen. He felt it upon his eyelids and he smiled At last the future, with its confusion and its fears, was banished; nothing divided them. He turned, so that his first sight of the morning would be of her; but even as he turned the foreboding came back to him. She was not there. There was a trace of her warmth, little more. She was not in the room. He knew that she was not in the house.

"Amelia!"

This was what she had decided. He recalled her anecdote of the young man who had only dared declare his love when he knew he would never see her again. All his instincts had told him, from that moment by the fountain, that it was her intention to answer her Victorian conscience, to go back with Harold Underwood to 1896, to accept her responsibilities. It was why she had said what she said to him last night. As a woman, she would always be his, but as a wife she was committed to her husband.

He plunged from his bed, opening the window, and, naked, flung himself into the dawn sky, flying as rapidly as his power-rings could carry him, rushing towards the city, her name still on his lips, like the mad cry of a desolate seabird.

"Amelia!"

Once before he had followed her thus, coming too late to stop her return to her own time. Every sensation, every thought was repeated now, as the air burned his body with the speed of his flight.

Already he planned how he might pursue her back to Bromley.

He reached the city. It seemed to sleep, it was so still.

And near the brink of the pit he saw the great open structure of the time-machine, the chronomnibus. Aboard he could see the time-traveller at the controls, and the policemen, all in white robes, with their helmets upon their heads, and Inspector Springer, also in white, wearing his bowler, and Harold Underwood with his hay-coloured hair and his pince-nez twinkling in the early sun. And he glimpsed Amelia, in her grey suit, seemingly struggling with her husband. Then the outlines of the machine grew faint, even as he descended. There was a shrill sound, like a scream, and the machine faded away and was gone.