Dancers at the End of Time (49 page)

"But my conscience," she said. "Can I be free from that?"

His face fell. "Oh, yes, of course, your conscience. I was forgetting it." The car sank to the lawn.

"You did not leave it, then, behind? In Eden?"

"There? I had greater need of it, did I not?"

"I thought you suggested otherwise."

"Then condemn me as fickle. All women are so."

"You contradict yourself, but apparently without relish."

"Ha!" She was the first to leave the craft. "You refuse to accuse me, Mr. Carnelian? You will not play the game? The old game?"

"I did not know there was a game, Amelia. You are disturbed? The set of your shoulders reveals it.

I am confused."

She rounded on him, but her face was softening. Her eyes held disbelief, fast fading. "You do not try me for my femininity? I am not accused of womanliness?"

"All this is meaningless."

"Then perhaps there is a degree of freedom here, at the End of Time, mixed with all your cruelties."

"Cruelties?"

"You keep slaves. Casually, you destroy anything which bores you. Have you no consideration for these time-travellers you capture? Was I not captured so — and put in a menagerie? And Yusharisp — bartered for me. Even in my age such barbarities are banished!"

He accepted her admonishment. He bowed his head. "Then you must teach me what is best," he said. "Is this 'morality'?"

She was overwhelmed, suddenly, by the enormity of her responsibility. Was it salvation she brought to Paradise, or was it merely guilt? She hesitated. "We shall discuss it, in the fullness of time," she told him.

They set foot upon the crazy paving of the path, between low yew-hedges. The ranch — Gothic red brick reproduction of her ideal Bromley villa — awaited them. A parrot or two perched on chimneys and gables; they seemed to flute a welcome.

"It is as you left it," he said. He was proud. "But, elsewhere, I have built for you a 'London', so that you shall not be homesick. It still pleases you, the ranch?"

"It is as I remember it."

He understood that he read disappointment in her tone.

"You compare it now with the original, I suppose."

"It has the essentials of the original."

"But remains a 'mere copy', eh? Show me…"

She had reached the porch, ran a hand over the painted timber, fondled a still-blooming rose (for none had faded since she had vanished), touched the flower to her nose. "It has been so long," she murmured. "I needed familiarity, then."

"You do not need it now?"

"Ah, yes. I am human. I am a woman. But perhaps there are other things which come to mean more. I felt, in those days, that I was in hell — tormented, mocked, abused — in the company of the mad. I had no perspective."

He opened the door, with its stained-glass panels. Potted plants, pictures, carpets of Persian design, dark paint, were revealed in the gloom of the entrance hall.

"If there are additions…" he began.

"Additions!" She was half amused. She inspected the what-nots and the aspidistras with a disdainful eye. "No more, I think."

"Too cluttered, now?" He closed the door and caused light to blossom.

"The house could be bigger. More windows, perhaps. More sun. More air."

He smiled. "I could remove the roof."

"You could, indeed!" She sniffed. "Yet it is not as musty as I supposed it would be. How long is it since you departed it?"

"That's difficult. We can only find out by conferring with our friends. They will know. My range of scents has much improved since I visited 1896. I agree that it was an area in which I was weak. But my palette is altogether enriched."

"Oh, this will do, Mr. Carnelian. For the present, at any rate."

"You cannot voice your disquiet?"

She turned kind eyes on him. "You possess a sensitivity often denied by your behaviour."

"I love you," he said simply. "I live for you."

She coloured. "My rooms are as I left them? My wardrobe remains intact?"

"Everything is there."

"Then I will rejoin you for lunch." She began to mount the stairs.

"It will be ready for you," he promised. He went into the front parlour, staring around him at this Collins Avenue of the mind, peering through the windows at the gentle green hills, the mechanical cows and sheep with their mechanical cow-boys and shepherds, all perfectly reproduced to make her feel at home. He admitted to himself that her response had bewildered him. It was almost as if she had lost her taste for her own preferred environment. He sighed. It had seemed so much easier, when her ideas were definite. Now that she herself found them difficult to define, he was at a loss. Antimacassars, horsehair furniture, red, black and yellow carpets of geometrical pattern, framed photographs, thick-leaved plants, the harmonium with which she had eased her heart, all now (because she seemed to have disapproved) accused him as a brute who could never please any woman, let alone the finest woman who had ever breathed. Still in the stained rags of his nineteenth-century suit, he slumped into an armchair, head on hand, and considered the irony of his situation. Not long since, he had sat in this house with Mrs.

Underwood and made tentative suggestions for its improvement. She had forbidden any change. Then she had gone and all that he had left of her was the house itself. As a substitute, he had come to love it.

Now it was she who suggested improvements (of almost exactly the kind he had proposed) and he felt a deep reluctance to alter a single potted palm, a solitary sideboard. Nostalgia for those times when he had courted her and she had tried to teach him the meaning of virtue, when they had sung hymns together in the evenings (it had been she, again, who had insisted upon a daily time-scale similar to that which she had known in Bromley), filled him — and with nostalgia came trepidation, that his hopes were doomed.

At every stage, when she had been close to declaring her love for him, to giving herself to him, she had been thwarted. It was almost as if Jagged watched them, deliberately manipulating every detail of their lives. Easier to think that, perhaps, than to accept an arbitrary universe.

He rose from the chair and, with an expression of defiance (she had always insisted that he follow her conventions) created a hole in the ceiling through which he might pass and enter his own room, a haven of glittering white, gold and silver. He restored the floor to completeness and his ruby ring cleansed his body of Palaeozoic grime, placed wafting robes of white spider-fur about him, brought ease to his mind as it dawned on him that his old powers (and therefore his old innocence) were restored to him. He stretched himself and laughed. There was certainly much to be said for being at the mercy of the primeval elements, to be swept along by circumstances one could not in any way control, but it was good to return, to feel one's identity expand again, unchecked. Creatively, he knew that he would be capable of the best entertainments he had yet given his world. He felt the need for company, for old friends to whom he could retail his adventures. Had his mother, the magnificent Iron Orchid, yet returned to the End of Time? Was the Duke of Queens as vulgar as ever, or had his experiences taught him taste? Jherek became eager for news.

In undulating white, he left his room and began to cross the landing, crammed with nooks which in turn were crammed with little china figurines, china vases, china flowers, china animals, to the stairs. His emerald power-ring brought him delicate scents, of Lower Devonian ferns, of nineteenth-century streets, of oceans and of meadows. His step grew lighter as he descended to the dining room. "All things bright and beautiful," he sang, "all creatures great and small…"

A turn of his amber ring and an ethereal orchestra accompanied him. The amethyst — and peacocks stepped behind him, his train in their prim beaks, their feathers at full flourish. He passed an embroidered motto — he still could not read it, but she had told him its sense (if sense it were!): "What Mean These Stones?" he carolled. "What Mean These — tra-la-la — Stones?"

His spider-fur robes began to brush ornaments from the shelves at the side of the stairs. With scarcely any feelings of guilt at all, he widened the steps a little, so that he could pass more freely.

The dining room, dark, with heavy curtains and brown, gloomy furniture, dampened his spirits for only a second. He knew what she had once demanded — partially burned animal flesh, near-tasteless vegetables — and he ignored it. If she no longer dictated her pleasures, then he would offer his own again.

The table bloomed exotic. A reminder of their recent adventures — a spun-sugar water-scorpion glittering as a centre-piece — two translucent scarlet jellies, two feet high, in the image, to the life, of Inspector Springer. A couple of herds of animated marzipan cows and sheep (to satisfy her relish for fauna) grazing, in miniature, at the bases of the jellies. Everywhere: fronds of yellow, blue, pink, white, lilac and purple, of savoury, brittle pastry. Not a typical table, for Jherek usually chose for colour and preferred to limit himself to two, with one predominating — perhaps not a tasteful table, even — but a jolly one, that he hoped she would appreciate. Great green pools of gravy; golden mounds of mustards; brown, steaming custards, and pies in a dozen pastel shades; bowls of crystals — cocaine in the blue, heroin in the silver, sugar in the black —and tottering pyramids of porridge — a dish for any mood, to satisfy every appetite. He stood back, grinning his pleasure. It was unplanned, it was crowded, but it had a certain zest, he felt, that she would appreciate.

He struck the nearby gong. Her feet were already upon the stairs.

She entered the room. "Oh!"

"Lunch, my lovely Amelia. Flung together, I fear, but all quite edible."

She eyed the little marzipan ruminants.

He beamed. "I knew you'd like those. And Inspector Springer? Does he not amuse you?"

Fingers flew to lips; a sound escaped her nostrils. The bosom rose and then was slow to fall; she was almost as red as the jelly.

"You are distressed."

Eruption. She doubled, gasping.

"Fumes?" He stared wildly. "Something poisonous?"

"Oh, ho, ho…" She straightened, hand at back of hip. "Oh, ho, ho!"

He relaxed. "You 
are
 amused." He pulled back her chair, as she had trained him to do. She slumped down, still shaking, picking up a spoon. "Oh, ho, ho…"

He joined in. "Oh, ho, ho."

It was thus, before they had put a morsel to their mouths, that the Iron Orchid found them. They saw her in the doorway, after some time. She was smiling. She was resplendent.

"Dear Jherek, wonder of my womb! Astonishing Amelia, ancestress without compare! Do you hide from us all? Or are you just returned? If so, you are the last. All travellers are back — even Mongrove, you know. He has returned from space — gloomier, if anything, than before. We speculated. We expected your return. Jagged was here — he said that he sent you on, but that only the machine arrived, bereft of passengers. Some would have it — Brannart Morphail in particular — that you were lost forever in some primitive age — destroyed. I disbelieved, naturally. There was talk, earlier, of an expedition, but nothing came of it. Today, at My Lady Charlotina's, there was a rumour of a fluctuation — a time-machine had been sensed for a second or two on one of Brannart's instruments. I knew it must be you!"

She had chosen red for her chief colour. Her crimson eyes glittered with maternal joy at her son restored to her. Her scarlet hair curled itself here and there about her face, as if in ecstasy, and her poppy-coloured flesh seemed to vibrate with pleasure. As she moved, her perspex gown, almost the colour of clementines, creaked a little.

"You know there is to be a celebration?" she said. A party so that we may all hear Mongrove's news. He has consented to appear, to speak. And the Duke of Queens, Bishop Castle, My Lady Charlotina — we shall be there to give our tales. And now you and Mrs. Underwood? Where have you been, you rogues? Hiding here, or adventuring through History?"

Mrs. Underwood began: "We have had a tiring experience, Mrs. Carnelian, and I think…"

"Tiring? Mrs. What? Tiring? I'm not certain of the meaning. But Mrs. Carnelian — that is excellent.

I never thought — yes, excellent. I must tell the Duke of Queens." She cruised for the door. "But I'll interrupt your meal no longer. The theme for the celebration is of course 1896 —" a gesture to Mrs.

Underwood — "and I know you will both surpass yourselves! Farewell!"

Mrs. Underwood implored him: "We are not going?"

"We must!"

"It is expected?"

He knew secret glee in his own cunning. "Oh, indeed it is," he said.

"Then, of course, I shall go with you."

He eyed her crisp cream dress, her pinned auburn hair. "And the beauty of it is," he said, "that if you go as you are, the purity of your conception will outshine all others!"

She snapped a branch from a savoury frond.

First there came a broad plane, a vast, level carpet of pale green; the jade power-boat sped low over this — then avenues approached — spaced to have their entrances arranged around the perimeter of a semi-circle; each avenue leading inwards to a hub. The air-car selected one. Cypresses, palms, yews, elders, redwoods, pines, shoe and plane trees, sped by on either side — their variety proclaiming that the Duke of Queens had not lost his vulgar touch (Jherek wondered, now, if he would have it otherwise). The focus became visible, ahead, but they heard the music before they recognized details of the Duke's display.

"A waltz!" cried Mrs. Underwood (she had renounced the sensible day dress for fine blue silk, white lace, a flounce or two, even the suggestion of a bustle, and the hat she wore was two feet across at the brim; on her hands, lace gloves, and in them a blue and white parasol). "Is it Strauss, Mr. Carnelian?"

In the tweeds she had helped him make, he leaned back against the side of the car, his face half-shaded by his cap. One hand fingered his watch-chain, the other steadied the briar-wood pipe she had considered fitting ("a manlier, more mature air, altogether," she had murmured with satisfaction, after the brogues were on his feet and the cravat adjusted, "your figure would be envied anywhere" and then she had become a fraction confused). He shook his head. "Or Starkey, or Stockhausen. I was never as familiar as I should have been with the early primitives. Lord Jagged would know. I hope he is there."