Dancers at the End of Time Read online

  She wished that things had been different, sometimes, and that she really was a widow. Or, at least, single. Or single and in her own time where she and Jherek might be married in a proper church by a proper priest. When these thoughts came she drove them away firmly.

  It was her duty to remember that one day she might have the opportunity of returning to 23 Collins Avenue, Bromley, preferably in the spring of 1896. Preferably on the night of April 4 at three o'clock in the morning (more or less the time she had been abducted) so that then no one might have to wonder what had happened. She was sensible enough to know that no one would believe the truth and that the speculation would be at once more mundane and more lurid than the actuality. That aspect of her return was not, in fact, very attractive.

  None the less, duty was duty.

  It was often hard for her to remember what duty actually was in this — this rotting paradise. It was hard, indeed, to cling to all one's proper moral ideals when there was so little evidence of Satan here — no war, no disease, no sadness (unless it was desired), no death, even. Yet Satan must be present. And was, of course, she recalled, in the sexual behaviour of these people. But somehow that did not shock her as much as it had, though it was evidence of the most dreadful decadence. Still, no worse, really than those innocent children, natives of Pawtow Island in the South Seas, where she had spent two years as her father's assistant after Mother had died. They had had no conception of sin, either.

  An intelligent, if conventional, woman, Mrs. Amelia Underwood sometimes wondered momentarily if she were doing the right thing in teaching Mr. Jherek Carnelian the meaning of virtue.

  Not, of course, that he showed any particular alacrity in absorbing her lessons. She did, on occasions, feel tempted to give the whole thing up and merely enjoy herself (within reason) as she might upon a holiday. Perhaps that was what this age represented — a holiday for the human race after millennia of struggle? It was a pleasant thought. And Mr. Carnelian had been right in one thing — all her friends, her relatives and, naturally, Mr. Underwood, her whole society, the British Empire itself (unbelievable thought that was!) were not only dead a million years, crumbled to dust, they were forgotten. Even Mr. Carnelian had to piece together what he knew of her world from a few surviving records, references by other, later, ages to the 19th century. And Mr. Carnelian was regarded as the planet's greatest specialist in the 19th century. This depressed her. It made her desperate. The desperation made her defiant. The defiance led her to reject certain values which had once seemed to her to be immutable and built solidly into her character. These feelings, luckily, came mainly at night when she was in her own bed and Mr. Carnelian was elsewhere.

  And sometimes, when she was tempted to leave the sanctuary of her bed, she would sing a hymn until she fell asleep.

  Jherek Carnelian would often hear Mrs. Amelia Underwood singing at night (he had taken to keeping the same hours as the object of his love) and would wake up in some alarm. The alarm would turn to speculation. He would have liked to have believed that Mrs. Underwood was calling to him; some ancient love song like that of the Factory Siren who had once lured men to slavery in the plastic mines.

  Unfortunately the tunes and the words were more than familiar to him and he associated them with the very antithesis of sexual joy. He would sigh and try, without much success, to go back to sleep as her high, sweet voice sang "Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light…" over and over again.

  Little by little Jherek's ranch began to change its appearance as Mrs. Underwood made a suggestion here, offered an alternative there, and slowly altered the house until, she assured him, it was almost all that a good Victorian family house should be. Jherek found the rooms rather small and cluttered. He felt uncomfortable in them. He found the food, which she insisted they both eat, heavy and somewhat dull. The little Gothic towers, the wooden balconies, the carved gables, the red bricks offended his aesthetic sensibilities even more than the grandiose creations of the Duke of Queens. One day, while they ate a lunch of cold roast beef, lettuce, cucumber, watercress and boiled potatoes, he put down the cumbersome knife and fork with which, at her request, he had been eating the food and said:

  "Mrs. Amelia Underwood. I love you. You know that I would do anything for you."

  "Mr. Carnelian, we agreed…"

  He raised his hand. "But I put it to you, dear lady, that this environment you have had me create has become just a little boring, to say the least. Do you not feel like a change?"

  "A — change? But, sir, this is a proper house. You told me yourself that you wished me to live as I had always lived. This is very similar, now, to my own house in Bromley. A little larger, perhaps, and a little better furnished — but I could not resist that. I saw no point in not taking the opportunity to have one or two of the things I might not have had in my — my past life."

  With a deep sigh he contemplated the fireplace with its mantelplace crammed with little china articles, the absolutely tiny aspidistras and potted palms, the occasional tables, the sideboard, the thick carpets, the dark wallpaper, the gas-mantles, the dull curtains (at the windows), the pictures and the motifs which read, in Mrs. Underwood's people's own script VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD or WHAT MEAN THESE STONES?

  "A little colour," he said. "A little light. A little space."

  "The house is very comfortable," she insisted.

  "Aha." He returned his attention to the animal flesh and unseasoned vegetables before him (reminiscent, he feared, of Mongrove's table).

  "You told me how delighted you were in it all," she said reasonably. She was puzzled by his despondent manner. Her voice was sympathetic.

  "And I was," he murmured.

  "Then?"

  "It has gone on," he said, "for a long time now, you see. I thought this was merely one of the environments you would choose."

  "Oh." She frowned. "Hm," she said. "Well, we believe in stability, you see, Mr. Carnelian. In constancy. In solid, permanent things." She added apologetically: "It was our impression that our way of life would endure pretty much unchanged for ever. Improving, of course, but not actually altering very much. We visualised a time when all people would live like us. We believed that everyone wanted to live like us, you see." She put down her knife and fork. She reached over and touched his shoulder. "Perhaps we were misguided. We were evidently wrong. That is indisputable to me, of course. But I thought you wanted a nice house, that it would help you…" She removed her hand from his shoulder and sat back in her mahogany chair. "I do feel just a little guilty, I must say. I did not consider that your feeling might be less than gratified by all this…" She waved her hands about to indicate the room and its furnishings. "Oh, dear."

  He rallied. He smiled. He got up. "No, no. If this is what you want, then it is what I want, of course.

  It will take a bit of getting used to, but…" He was at a loss for words.

  "You are unhappy, Mr. Carnelian," she said softly. "I do not believe I have ever seen you unhappy before."

  "I have never been unhappy before," he said. "It is an experience. I must learn to relish it, as Mongrove relishes his misery. Though Mongrove's misery seems to have rather more flair than mine.

  Well, this is what I desired. This is what is doubtless involved in love — and Virtue, too, perhaps."

  "If you wish to send me back to Mr. Mongrove…" she began nobly.

  "No! Oh, no! I love you too much."

  This time she made no verbal objection to his declaration.

  "Well," she said determinedly, "we must make an effort to cheer you up. Come —" She stretched out her hand. Jherek took her hand. He thrilled. He wondered.

  She led him into the parlour where the piano was. "Perhaps some jolly hymn?" she suggested.

  "What about 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'?" She smoothed her skirt under her as she sat down on the stool. "Do you know the words now?"

  He could not get the words out of his mind. He had heard them too often, by night as well as by day. D
umbly he nodded.

  She struck a few introductory chords on the piano and began to sing. He tried to join in, but the words would not come out. His throat felt both dry and tight. Amazed, he put his hand to his neck. Her own voice petered out and she stopped playing, swinging round on the stool to look up at him. "What about a walk?" she said.

  He cleared his throat. He tried to smile. "A walk?"

  "A good brisk walk, Mr. Carnelian, often has a palliative effect."

  "All right."

  "I'll get my hat."

  A few moments later she joined him outside the house. The grounds of the house were not very large either, now. The prairie, the buffalo, the cavalrymen and the parrots had been replaced by neat privet hedges (some clipped into ornamental shapes), shrubs and rock gardens. The most colour was supplied by the rose garden which had several different varieties, including one which she had allowed him to invent for her, the Mrs. Amelia Underwood, which was a bluish green.

  She closed the front door and put her arm in his. "Where shall we go?" she said.

  Again the touch of her hand produced the thrill and the thrill was, astonishingly, translated into a feeling of utter misery.

  "Wherever you think," he said.

  They went up the crazy-paving path to the garden gate, out of the gate and along the little white road in which stood several gas lamps. The road led up between two low, green hills. "We'll go this way," she said.

  He could smell her. She was warm. He looked bleakly at her lovely face, her glowing hair, her pretty summer frock, her neat, well-proportioned figure. He turned his head away with a stifled sob.

  "Oh, come along now, Mr. Carnelian. You'll soon feel better once you've some of this good, fresh air in your lungs." Passively he allowed her to lead him up the hill until they walked between lines of tall cypresses which fringed fields in which cows and sheep grazed, tended by mechanical cowherds and shepherds who could not, even close to, be told from real people.

  "I must say," she told him, "this landscape is as much a work of art as any of Reynolds' pictures. I could almost believe I was in my own, dear Kent countryside."

  The compliment did not relieve his gloom.

  They crossed a little crooked bridge over a tinkling stream. They entered a cool, green wood of oaks and elms. There were even rooks nesting in the elms and red squirrels running along the boughs of oaks.

  But Jherek's feet dragged. His step became slower and slower and at last she stopped and looked closely up into his face, her own face full of tenderness.

  And, in silence, he took her awkwardly in his arms. She did not resist him. Slowly the depression began to lift as their faces drew closer together. Gradually his spirits rose until, at the very moment their lips touched, he knew an ecstasy such as he had never known before.

  "My dear," said Mrs. Amelia Underwood. She was trembling as she pressed her precious form against him and put her arms around him. "My own, dear, Jherek…"

  And then she vanished.

  She was gone. He was alone.

  He gave a great scream of pain. He whirled, looking everywhere for some sign of her. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood! Mrs. Amelia Underwood!"

  But all there was of her was the wood, with its oaks and its elms, its rocks and its squirrels.

  He rose into the air and sped back to the little house, his coat-tails flapping, his hat flying from his head.

  He ran through the overfurnished rooms. He called to her but she did not reply. He knew that she would not. Everything she had had him create for her — the tables, the sofas, the chairs, the beds, the cabinets, the knick-knacks, seemed to mock him in his grief and thus increase the pain.

  And at last he collapsed upon the grass of the rose garden and, holding a rose of a peculiar bluish-green, he wept, for he knew very well what had happened.

  Lord Jagged? Where was he? Lord Jagged had told Jherek that it would happen like this.

  But Jherek had changed. He could no longer appreciate the splendid irony of the joke. For everyone but Jherek would see it as a joke and a clever one.

  My Lady Charlotina had claimed her vengeance.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Granting of Her Heart's Desire

  My Lady Charlotina would have hidden Mrs. Amelia Underwood very well. As he recovered a little of his composure Jherek began to wonder how he might rescue his love. There would be no point in going to My Lady Charlotina's (his first impulse) and simply demanding the return of Mrs. Underwood.

  My Lady Charlotina would only laugh at him the more. No, he must visit Lord Jagged of Canaria and seek his advice. He wondered now, why Lord Jagged had not come to visit him since he had taken up with Mrs. Amelia Underwood. Perhaps Jagged had stayed away out of a rather overdeveloped sense of tact?

  With a heavy heart Jherek Carnelian went to the outbuilding where, at Mrs. Underwood's suggestion he had stored his locomotive.

  The door of the outbuilding was opened with a key, but he could not find the key. Mrs. Underwood had always kept it.

  He was reluctant to disseminate the outbuilding now (she had been a stickler about observing certain proprieties of her own day and the business of keys and locks was one of the chief ones, it seemed), for all that it was frightfully ugly. But, with her disappearance, everything of Mrs. Underwood's had become sacred to him. If he never found her again this little Gothic house would stand in the same spot forever.

  At length, however, he was forced to disseminate the door, order the locomotive out, and remake the door behind him. Then he set off.

  As he flew towards Lord Jagged's the thought kept recurring to him that My Lady Charlotina would have seen nothing particularly wrong in disseminating Mrs. Amelia Underwood completely and irrevocably. It was unlikely that My Lady Charlotina would have gone that far — but it was possible. In that case Mrs. Underwood might be gone forever. She could not be resurrected if every single atom of her being had been broken down and spread across the face of the Earth. Jherek kept this sort of thought back as best he could. If he brooded on it there was every chance, he feared, of his falling into a depressive trance from which he would never wake.

  The locomotive at last reached Lord Jagged's castle — all bright yellow, in the shape of an ornamental bird cage and a modest seventy-five feet tall — and began to circle while Jherek sent a message to his friend.

  "Lord Jagged? Can you receive a visitor? It is I, Jherek Carnelian, and my business is of the gravest importance."

  There was no reply. The locomotive circled lower. There were various "boxes" suspended on antigravity beams in the birdcage. Each box was a room used by Lord Jagged. He might be in any one of them. But, no matter which room he occupied, he would be bound to hear Jherek's request.

  "Lord Jagged?"

  It was plain that Lord Jagged was not at home. There was a sense of desertion about his castle as if it had not been used for several months. Had something happened to the Lord of Canaria?

  Had My Lady Charlotina taken vengeance on him, too, for his part in the theft of the alien?

  Oh, this was savage!

  Jherek turned his locomotive toward the North and Werther de Goethe's tomb, expecting to find that his mother, the Iron Orchid, had also vanished.

  But Werther's tomb — a vast statue of himself lying serenely dead with a gigantic Angel of Death hovering over his body and several sorrowing women kneeling beside him — was still occupied by the black pair. They were, in fact, on the roof near the feet of the reclining statue but Jherek did not see them at first, for both they and the statue were completely black.

  "Jherek, my sorrow!" His mother sounded almost animated. Werther merely glowered and gnawed his fingernails in the background as the locomotive landed on the flat parapet, bringing a startling dash of colour to the scene. "Jherek, what ill tidings bring you here?" His mother produced a black handkerchief and wiped black tears from her black cheeks.

  "Ill tidings, indeed," he said. He felt offended by what at the present moment seemed to him to be
a mockery of his real anguish. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood has been abducted — perhaps destroyed — and My Lady Charlotina is almost certainly the cause of it."

  "Her vengeance, of course!" breathed the Iron Orchid, her black eyes widening and a certain kind of amusement glinting in them. "Oh! Oh! Woe! Thus is great Jherek brought low! Thus is the House of Carnelian ruined! Oi moi! Oi moi!" And she added, conversationally, "What do you think of that last touch?"

  "This is serious, mother, who brought me precious life…"

  "Only so that you might suffer its torments! I know! I know! Oh, woe!"

  "Mother!" Jherek was screaming. "What shall I do?"

  "What can you do?" Werther de Goethe broke in. "You are doomed, Jherek. You are damned!

  Fate has singled you out, as it has singled me out, for an eternity of anguish." He uttered his bitter laugh.

  "Accept this dreadful knowledge. There is no solution. No escape. You were granted a few short moments of bliss so that you might suffer all the more exquisitely when the object of your bliss was snatched from you."

  "You know what happened?" Jherek asked suspiciously.

  Werther looked embarrassed. "Well, My Lady Charlotina did take me into her confidence a week or two ago…"

  "Devil!" cried Jherek. "You did not try to warn me?"

  "Of the inevitable? What good would it have done? And," said Werther sardonically, "we all know how prophets are treated these days! People do not like to hear the truth!"

  "Wretch!" Jherek turned to confront the Iron Orchid. "And you, mother, did you know what Charlotina planned?"