Dancers at the End of Time (52 page)

"I argue that the question is meaningless, without understanding of its import."

"Yet…?" murmured the Iron Orchid, and her finger tickled Jherek's ear.

"My instincts and my reason are at one," said Li Pao. "Both tell me that a race which struggles is a race which survives."

"We struggle mightily against boredom," she said. "Are we not inventive enough for you, Li Pao?"

"I am unconvinced. The prisoners in your menageries — the time-travellers and the space-travellers — they condemn you. You exploit them. You exploit the universe. This planet and perhaps the star around which it circles draws its energy from a galaxy which, itself, is dying. It leeches on its fellows. Is that just?"

Jherek had been listening closely. "My Amelia said something not dissimilar. I could understand her little better, Li Pao. Your world and hers seem similar in some respects and, from what I know of them, menageries are kept."

"Prisons, you mean? This is mere sophistry, Jherek Carnelian, as you must realize. We have prisons for those who transgress against society. Those who occupy them are there because they gambled — normally they staked their personal freedom against some form of personal gain."

"The time-travellers often believe they stake their lives, as do the space-travellers. We do not punish them. We look after them."

"You show them no respect," said Li Pao.

The Iron Orchid pursed her lips in a kind of smile. "Some are too puzzled, poor things, to understand their fate, but those who are not soon settle. Are 
you
 not thoroughly settled, Li Pao? You are rarely missed at parties. I know many other time-travellers and space-travellers who mingle with us, scarcely ever taking up their places in the menageries. Do we use force to keep them there, my dear? Do we deceive them?"

"Sometimes."

"Only as we deceive one another, for the pleasure of it."

Once more, Li Pao preferred to change ground. He pointed a chubby finger at Jherek. "And what of 'your Amelia'? Was she pleased to be manipulated in your games? Did she take pleasure in being made a pawn?"

Jherek was surprised. "Come now, Li Pao. She was never altered physically — and certainly into nothing fishy."

Li Pao put his finger to a tooth and sighed.

The Iron Orchid pulled Jherek away, still with her arm about his shoulders. "Come, fruit of my loins.

You will excuse us, Li Pao?"

Li Pao's bow was brief.

"I have seen Mrs. Underwood," the Iron Orchid said to Jherek, as they flew higher to where only a few people drifted. "She looks more beautiful than ever. She was good enough to compliment me on my costume. You recognize the character?"

"I think not."

"Mrs. Underwood did, when I reminded her of the legend. A beautiful little story I had one of the cities tell me. I did not hear all the story, for the city had forgotten much, but enough was gained to make the costume. It is the tale of Old Florence and the Night of Gales and of the Lady in the Lamp, who tended to the needs of five hundred soldiers in a single day! Imagine! Five hundred!" She licked purple lips and grinned. "Those ancients! I have it in mind to re-enact the whole story. There are soldiers here, too, you know. They arrived fairly recently and are in the menagerie of the Duke of Queens. But there are only twenty or so."

"You could make some of your own."

"I know, flesh of my flesh, but it would not be quite the same. It is your fault."

"How, maternal, eternal flower?"

"Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Reproductions, where originals can be discovered, are an absolute anathema. And they become scarcer, they vanish so quickly."

"Time-travellers?"

"Naturally. The space-travellers remain. But of what use are they?"

"Morphail has spoken to you, headiest of blooms?"

"Oh, a little, my seed. But all is Warning. All is Prophecy. He rants. You cannot hear him; not the words. I suppose Mrs. Underwood shall be gone soon. Perhaps then things will return to a more acceptable pattern."

"Amelia remains with me," said Jherek, detecting, he thought, a wistful note in his mother's voice.

"You keep her company exclusively," said the Iron Orchid. "You are obsessed. Why so?"

"Love," he told her.

"But, as I understand it, she makes no expression of love. You scarcely touch!"

"Her customs are not as ours."

"They are crude, then, her customs!"

"Different."

"Ah!" His mother was dismissive. "She inhabits your whole mind. She affects your taste. Let her steer her own course, and you yours. Who knows, later those courses might again cross. I heard something of your adventures. They have been furious and stunning. Both of you need to drift, to recuperate, to enjoy lighter company. Is it you, bloom of my womb, keeping her by your side, when she would run free?"

"She is free. She loves me."

"I say again — there are no signs."

"I know the signs."

"You cannot describe them?"

"They lie in gesture, tone of voice, expression in the eyes."

"Ho, ho! This is too subtle for me, this telepathy! Love is flesh touched against flesh, the whispered word, the fingernail drawn delicately down the spine, the grasped thigh. There is no throb, Jherek, to this love of yours. It is pale — it is mean, eh?"

"No, giver of life. You feign obtuseness, I can tell. But why?"

Her glance was intense, for her, but cryptic.

"Mother? Strongest of orchids?"

But she had twisted a power-ring and was falling like a stone, with no word of reply. He saw her drop and disappear into a large crowd which swarmed at about the halfway point, below.

He found his mother's behaviour peculiar. She exhibited moods he had never encountered before.

She appeared to have lost some of her wit and substituted malice (for which she had always had a delicious penchant, but the malice needed the wit to make it entertaining); she appeared to show a dislike for Amelia Underwood which she had not shown earlier. He shook his head and fingered his chin. How was it, that she could not, as she had always done in the past, delight in his delight? With a shrug, he aimed himself for a lower level.

A stranger sped to greet him from a nearby gallery. The stranger was clad in sombrero, fancy vest, chaps, boots and bandoliers, all in blinding red.

"Jherek, my pod, my blood! Why fly so fast?"

Only the eyes revealed identity, and even this confused him for a second before he realized the truth.

"Iron Orchid. How you proliferate!"

"You have met the others, already?"

"One of them. Which is the original?"

"We could all claim that, but there is a programme. At a certain time several vanish, one remains. It matters not which, does it? This method allows one to circulate better."

"You have not yet met Amelia Underwood?"

"Not since I visited you at your ranch, my love. She is still with you?"

He decided to avoid repetition. "Your disguise is very striking."

"I represent a great hero of Mrs. Underwood's time. A bandit king — a rogue loved by all — who came to rule a nation and was killed in his prime. It is a cycle of legend with which you must be familiar."

"The name?"

"Ruby Jack Kennedy. Somewhere…" she cast about … "you should find me as the treacherous woman who, in the end, betrayed him. Her name was Rosie Lee." The Iron Orchid dropped her voice.

"She fell in love, you know, with an Italian called 'The Mouser', because of the clever way he trapped his victims…"

He found this conversation more palatable and was content to lend an ear, while she continued her delighted rendering of the old legend with its theme of blood, murder and revenge and the curse which fell upon the clan because of the false pride of its patriarch. He scarcely listened until there came a familiar phrase (revealing her taste for it, for she was not to know that one of her alter egos had already made it):

"Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Do you not feel, Jherek, that invention is being thwarted by experience? Remember how we used to stop Li Pao from giving us details of the ages we sought to recreate? Were we not wiser to do so?"

She had only half his attention. "I'll admit that our entertainments lack something in savour for me, since I journeyed through Time. And, of course, I myself could be said to be the cause of the fashion you find distressing."

She, in her own turn, had given his statements no close attention. She glared discontentedly about the hall. "I believe they call it 'social realism'," she muttered.

"My 'London' began a specific trend towards the recreation of observed reality…" he continued, but she was waving a hand at him, not because she disagreed, but because he interrupted a monologue.

"It's the spirit, my pup, not the expression. Something has changed. We seem to have lost our lightness of touch. Where is our relish for contrast? Are we all to become antiquarians and nothing more?

What is happening to us, Jherek. It is — darkening…"

This particular Iron Orchid's mood was very different from that of the other mother, already encountered. If she merely desired an audience while she rambled, he was happy to remain one, though he found her argument narrow.

Perhaps the argument was the only one held by this facsimile, he thought. After all, the great advantage of self-reproduction was that it was possible to hold as many different opinions as one wished, at the same time.

As a boy, Jherek remembered, he had witnessed some dozen Iron Orchids in heated debate. She had enjoyed a phase where she found it easier to divide herself and argue, as it were, face to face, than to attempt to arrange her thoughts in the conventional manner. This facsimile, however, was proving something of a bore (always the danger, if only one opinion were held and rigorously maintained), though it had that quality which saves the bore from snubs or ostracism — and, unfortunately, encourages it to retain the idea that it is an interesting conversationalist — it had a quality of pathos.

Pathos, thought Jherek, was not normally evident in his mother's character. Had he detected it in the facsimile he had previously encountered? Possibly…

"I worship surprises, of course," she continued. "I embrace variety. It is the pepper of existence, as the ancients said. Therefore, I should be celebrating all these new events. These 'time-warps' of Brannart's, these disappearances, all these comings and goings. I wonder why I should feel — what is it? — 'disturbed'? — by them. Disturbed? Have you ever known me 'disturbed', my egg?"

He murmured: "Never…"

"Yes, I am disturbed. But what is the cause? I cannot identify it. Should I blame myself, Jherek?"

"Of course not…"

"Why? Why? Joy departs; Zest deserts me — and is this replacement called Anxiety? Ha! A disease of time-travellers, of space-voyagers to which we, at the End of Time, have always been immune. Until now, Jherek…"

"Softest of skins, strongest of wills, I do not quite…"

"If it has become fashionable to rediscover and become infected by ancient psychoses, then I'll defy fashion. The craze will pass. What can sustain it? This news of Mongrove's? Some machination of Jagged's? Brannart's experiments?"

"Symptoms both, the latter two," he suggested. "If the universe is dying…"

But she had been steering towards a new subject, and again she revealed the obsession of her original. Her tone became lighter, but he was not deceived by it. "One may also, of course, look to your Mrs. Underwood as an instigator…"

The statement was given significant emphasis. There was the briefest of pauses before the name and after it. She goaded him to defend her or deny her, but he would not be lured.

Blandly he replied. "Magnificent blossom, Li Pao would have it that the cause of our confusion lay within our own minds. He believes that we hold Truth at bay whilst embracing Illusion. The illusion, he hints, begins to reveal itself for what it is. That is why, says Li Pao, we know concern."

She had become an implacable facsimile. "And you, Jherek. Once the gayest of children! The wittiest of men! The most inventive of artists! Joyful boy, it seems to me that you turn dullard. And why?

And when? Because Jagged encouraged you to play Lover! To that primitive…"

"Mother! Where is your wit? But to answer, well, I am sure that we shall soon be wed. I detect a difference in her regard for me."

"A conclusion? I exult!"

Her lack of good humour astonished him. "Firmest of metals, do not, I pray, make a petitioner of me. Must I placate a virago when once I was assured of the good graces of a friend?"

"I am more than that, I hope, blood of my blood."

It occurred to him that if he had rediscovered Love, then she had rediscovered Jealousy. Could the one never exist without the presence of the other?

"Mother, I beg you to recollect…"

A sniff from beneath the sombrero. "She ascends, I see. She has her own rings, then?"

"Of course."

"You think it wise, to indulge a savage —?"

Amelia hovered close to, in earshot now. A false smile curved the lips of the shade, this imperfect doppelganger. "Aha! Mrs. Underwood. What beautiful simplicity of taste, the blue and white!"

Amelia Underwood took time to recognize the Iron Orchid. Her nod was courteous, when she did so, but she refused to ignore the challenge. "Overwhelmed entirely by the brilliant exoticism of your scarlet, Mrs. Carnelian."

A tilt of the brim. "And what role, my dear, do you adopt today?"

"I regret we came merely as ourselves. But did I not see you earlier, in that box-like costume, then later in a yellow gown of some description? So many excellent disguises."

"I think there is one in yellow, yes. I forget. Sometimes, I feel so full of rich ideas, I must indulge more than one. You must think me coarse, dear ancestor."

"Never that, lushest of orchids."

Jherek was amused. It was the first time he had heard Mrs. Underwood use such language. He began to enjoy the encounter, but the Iron Orchid refused further sport. She leaned forward. Her son was blessed with an ostentatious kiss; Amelia Underwood was pecked. "Brannart has arrived. I promised him an account of 1896. Surly he might be, but rarely dull. For the moment, then, dear children."