The Ancient Shadows lfteot-3 Read online

  "For how long?" Casually polite, the Iron Orchid raised a brow.

  "The current shortage has lasted for about a century."

  "You have found no means of ending the shortage?"

  "Oh, we have the means. But there is the moral question. Is it good for us to end the shortage?"

  For a second there came a faint expression of puzzlement upon the Iron Orchid's face, and then, with a polite wave of an ortolan leg, she turned away.

  " 'Fatness Is Faithlessness'," quoted Dafnish Armatuce. " 'The Lean Alone Learn'." She realized then that these maxims were meaningless to them, but the zeal which touched the missionary touched her, and she continued: "In Armatuce we believe that it is better to have less than to have enough, for those who have enough always feel the need for too much, whereas we only quell the yearning for sufficient, do you see?" She explained: " 'Greed Kills'. 'Self-indulgence Is Suicide'. We stay hungry so that we shall never be tempted to eat more than we need and thus risk, again, the death of the planet. 'Austerity Is Equilibrium'."

  "Your world recovers from disaster, then?" said Lord Jagged sympathetically.

  "It has recovered, sir." She was firm. "Thanks to the ancestors of the Armatuce. Now the Armatuce holds what they achieved in trust. 'Stable Is He Who Stoic Shall Be'."

  "You fear that without this morality you would reproduce the disaster?"

  "We know it," she said.

  "Yet —" he spread his hands — "you find a world still here when you did not expect it and no evidence that your philosophy has survived."

  She scarcely heard the words, but she recognized the sly, pernicious tone. She squared her shoulders. "We would return now, if you please. The boy has eaten."

  "You will have nothing?"

  "Will you show me to my ship?"

  "Your ship will not work."

  "What? You refuse to let me leave?"

  As succinctly as possible, Lord Jagged explained the Morphail Effect, concluding, "Therefore you can never really return to your own Age and, if you left this one, might well be killed or at very least stranded in a less congenial era."

  "You think I lack courage? That I would not take the risk?"

  He pursed his lips and let his gaze fall upon the gorging boy. She followed his meaning and put two fingers softly upon her cheek.

  "Eat now," said the tall lord with a tender gesture.

  Absently, she touched a morsel of mutton to her tongue.

  A shadow moved across the field, cast by a beast, porcine and grey, which with lumbering grace performed a somersault or two in the sky. Overhead there were now several more objects and creatures pirouetting, diving, spiralling — a small red biplane, a monstrous mosquito, a winged black and white cat, a pale green stingray — while below the owners of these entrants jostled, laughed and talked: a motley of races (some Earthly beasts, others extraterrestrial; but mostly humanoid), clothed and decorated in all manner of fanciful array. On the edges of the blue and white field there had sprouted marquees, flagpoles, lines of bunting, crowded together and waving boisterously, so that she could no longer see beyond their confines. She let the mutton melt, took one plum and consumed it, drank an inch of water from a goblet, and her meal was done, though the effort of will involved in resisting a leaf of lettuce only by a fraction succeeded in balancing the guilt experienced at having allowed herself to eat the second half of the fruit. Meanwhile Snuffles' jaws continued to move with dedicated precision.

  Several large, fiery wheels went by, a score of feet above her head, drowning with their hissing the loud babble of the crowd.

  "Cwumbs!" exclaimed Sweet Orb Mace, with a knowing wink at her, as if they shared a secret. "Goah Blimey!"

  The words were meaningless, but he appeared to be under the impression that she would understand them.

  Deliberately, she guided her glance elsewhere. Everyone was applauding.

  "Chariots of Fire!" bellowed a deep, proprietorial voice. "Chariots of Fire! Number Seventy-Eight!"

  "We shan't forget, dear Duke of Queens," sang a lady whose gilded skin clashed sickeningly with her green mouth and glowing, emerald eyes.

  "My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake," murmured Lord Jagged. "Would you like to meet her?"

  "Can she be of help to me? Can she give me practical advice?" The rhetoric rang false, even in her own ears.

  "She is the Patron of Brannart Morphail, our greatest, maddest scientist, who knows more about the Nature of Time than anyone else in history, so he tells us. He will probably want to interview you shortly."

  "Why should one of your folk require a Patron?" she asked with genuine interest.

  "We seek traditions wherever we can find them. We are glad to get them. They help us order our lives, I suppose. Doubtless Brannart dug his tradition up from some ancient tape and took a fancy to it. Of late, because of the enthusiasm of the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek, we have all become obsessed with morality…"

  "I see little evidence of that."

  "We are still having difficulty defining what it is," he told her. "My Lady Charlotina — our latest time travellers — Mother and Son — Dafnish and Snuffles Armatuce."

  "How charming. How unusual. Tell me, delightful Dafnish, are you claimed yet?"

  "Claimed?" Dafnish Armatuce looked back at the departing Jagged.

  "We vie with one another to be hosts to new arrivals," he called. His wave was a little on the airy side. "You are 'claimed', however, as my guests. I will see you anon."

  "Greedy Jagged! Does he restock his menagerie?" My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake stroked her crochet snood as her eyes swept up from Dafnish's toes and locked with Dafnish's eyes for a moment. "Your figure? Is it your own, my dear?"

  "I fail to understand you."

  "Then it is! Ha, ha!" Mood changed, My Lady Charlotina made a curtsey. "I will find you some friends. My talent, they say, is as a Catalyst!"

  "You are modest, cherubic Charlotina! You have all the talents in the catalogue!" In doublet and hose reminiscent of pre-cataclysm decadence, extravagantly swollen, catechrestically slashed and galooned, bearing buttons the size of cabbages, the shoes with toes a yard or two long and curled to the knees, the cap peaked to jut more than a foot from the face, beruffed and bedecked with thin brass chains, a big-buckled belt somewhere below the waist so as, in whole, to make Sweet Orb Mace seem mother naked, a youth bent a calculated leg before continuing with his catechism of compliment. "Let me cast myself beneath the cataract of your thousand major virtues, your myriad minor qualities, O mistress of my soul, for though I am considered clever, I am nought but your lowliest catechumen, seeking only to absorb the smallest scraps of your wisdom so that I may, for one so small, be whole!" Whereupon he flung himself to the grass on velvet knees and raised powdered, imploring hands.

  "Good afternoon, Doctor Volospion." She relished the flattery, but paused no longer, saying over her shoulder, "You smell very well today."

  Unconcerned, Doctor Volospion raised himself to his feet, his cap undulating, his chains jingling, and his rouged lips curved in a friendly smile as he saw Dafnish Armatuce.

  "I seek a lover," he explained, peeling a blade of blue grass from his inner thigh. "A woman to whom I can give my All. It is late in the season to begin, perhaps, with so many exquisite Romances already under way or even completed (as in Werther's case), but I am having difficulty in finding a suitable recipient." His expression, as he stared at her, became speculative. "May I ask your sex, at present?"

  "I am a woman, sir, and a mother. An Armatuce, mate to a cousin of the Armatuce, sworn to suffer and to serve together until my son shall be ready to suffer and to serve in my place."

  "You would not like to link your fate with mine, to give yourself body and soul to me until the End of Time (which, of course, is not far off, I hear)?"

  "I would not."

  "I came late to the fashion, you see, and now most are already bored with it, I understand. But there is, surely, the fulfilment of abandonment. Is it not de
licious to throw oneself upon another's mercy — to make him or her the absolute master of one's fate?" He took a step closer, peering into her immobile countenance, his eye sparkling. "Ah! Do I tempt you? I see that I do!"

  "You do not!"

  "Your tone lacks conviction."

  "You are deceived, Doctor Volospion."

  "Could we have our bodies so engineered as to produce another child?"

  "My operation is past. I have my child. No more can bloom."

  She turned to search for Snuffles, fearing suddenly for the safety of his person as well as for his mind, for she was now aware that this folk had no scruples, no decency, no proper inhibitions even where that most sacrosanct of subjects was concerned. "Snuffles!"

  "Here, mama!"

  The boy was in conversation with a tall, thin individual wearing a crenellated crown as tall as himself.

  "To me!"

  He came reluctantly, waddling, snatching a piece of pastry from the table as he passed, wheezing, his little protective suit bearing a patina of creams and gravies, his hair sticky with confectionery, his face rich with the traces of his feast.

  Someone had begun to build cloud-shapes, interweaving colours and kinds and creating the most unlikely configurations. She seized his sweetened hand, tempted to remonstrate, to read him a lesson, to forbid further food, but she knew the dangers of identifying her own demands upon herself with what she expected from her son. Too often, she had learned, had ancient parents forbidden their children food merely because they could not or would not eat themselves, forbidden children childish pleasures because those pleasures tempted them, too. She would not transfer. Let the boy, at least, enjoy the experience. His training would save him, should they ever return. A lesson would be learned. And if they did not return, well, it would not profit him to retain habits which put him at odds with the expectations of society. And should it seem inevitable that they were permanently marooned, she could decide when he would be mature enough to become an adult, grant him that status herself and so put an end to her own misery.

  The crowd seemed to close in on her. Doctor Volospion had already wandered away, but there were others — every one of whom was a living, mocking parody of all she held to be admirable in Man. Her heart beat faster, at last unchecked. She sought for the only being in that whole unnatural, fatuous farrago who might help her escape, but Lord Jagged was gone.

  And My Lady Charlotina broke through the throng, Death's Harlequin grinning and triumphant, drawing another woman with her. "A contemporary, dear Dafnish. Mutual reminiscence is now possible!"

  "I must go…" began the time traveller. "Snuffles wearies. We can sleep in our ship."

  "No, no! The air fete is hardly begun. You shall stay and converse with Miss Ming."

  Miss Ming, at first bored, brightened, giving Dafnish Armatuce a quick glance which was at once questioning and appraising, warm and calculating. Miss Ming was a heavily built young woman whose long fair hair had been carefully brushed but had acquired no more of a lustre than her pale, unwholesome skin. She wore, for this Age, a simple costume, tight dungarees of glowing orange and a shirt and short jacket of pale blue. Now Dafnish Armatuce had her whole attention, was granted Miss Ming's smile of knowing and insincere sympathy.

  "Your year?" My Lady Charlotina creased her golden forehead. "You said…"

  "1922."

  "Miss Ming is from 2067. Until recently she lived at Doctor Volospion's menagerie. One of the few human survivors, in fact."

  Miss Ming's abrupt, monotonous voice might have seemed surly had it not been for the eagerness with which she imparted meaningless (to Dafnish Armatuce) confidences, coming closer than was necessary and placing intimate fingers upon her shoulder to say: "Some of Mongrove's diseases escaped and struck down half the inhabitants of Doctor Volospion's menagerie. By the time the discovery was made, resurrection was out of the question. Mongrove refuses to apologize. Doctor Volospion shuns him. I didn't know time travel was discovered in 1922. And," a girlish pout, "they told me that I was the first woman to go into Time."

  Surely, Dafnish thought, she sensed aggression here.

  "An all-woman team launched the craft." Miss Ming spoke significantly. "I was the first."

  And Dafnish Armatuce, her boy hard alongside, chanted at this threat: "Time travel, Miss Ming, is the creation and the copyright of the Armatuce. We built the first backward-shifting ships two years ago, in 1920. This year, in 1922, I was chosen to go forward."

  Miss Ming pursed lips which became thin and down-turned at the corners, giving her a slight leonine look, but she did not seek conflict. "Can we both be deluded? I am an historian, after all! I cannot be wrong. Aha! Illumination. A.D.?"

  "I regret…"

  "From what event does your calendar run?"

  "From the First Birth."

  "Of Christ?"

  "Of a child, following the catastrophe in which all became barren. A method was discovered whereby —"

  "There you have the answer! We are not even from the same millennium. Nonetheless," Miss Ming linked an arm through hers before she could react, and held it tight, "it needn't stop friendship. How delicate you are. How exquisite. Almost," insinuatingly, "a child yourself."

  Dafnish pulled free. "Snuffles." She began to dab at his face with her wetted glove. The little boy turned resigned eyes upward and watched the circling machines and beasts. The crowd sighed and swayed, and they were jostled.

  "You are married?" implacably continued Miss Ming. "In your own Age?"

  "To a cousin of the Armatuce, yes." Dafnish's manner became more distant as she tried to move on, but Miss Ming's warm hand slipped again into the crook of her elbow. The fingers pressed into her flesh. She was chilled.

  Three white bats swooped by, performing acrobatics in unison, their twenty-foot wings making the air hiss. A trumpet sounded. There was applause.

  "I was divorced, before my journey." Miss Ming paused, perhaps in the hope of some morbid revelation from her new friend, then continued, girl-to-girl: "His name was Donny Stevens. He was well thought of as a scientist — a popular and powerful family too — very old — in Iowa. Rich. But he was like all men. You know. They think they're doing you a favour if they can get to your cubicle once a month, and if it's once a week, they're Casanova! No thanks! Someone said — Betty Stern, I think — that he had that quality of aggressive stupidity which so many women find attractive in a man: they think it's strength of character and, once they've committed themselves to that judgement, maintain it against all the evidence. Betty said dozens of the happiest marriages are based on it. (I idolized Betty). Unfortunately, I realized my mistake. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here, though. I joined an all-woman team — know what I mean? — anyway we got the first big breakthrough and made those dogs look sick when they saw what the bitches could do. And this Age suits me now. Anything goes, if you know what I mean — I mean, really! Wow! What kind of guys do you like, honey?"

  She did not want Miss Ming's attentions. Again she cast about for Jagged and, as a rent appeared for a second in the ranks, saw him talking to a small, serious-faced yellow man, clad in discreet denim (the first sensible costume she had observed thus far). Hampered both by reluctant, sleepy son and clinging Ming, she pushed her way through posturing gallants and sparkling frillocks, to home slowly on Jagged, who saw her and smiled, bending to murmur a word or two to his companion. Then, as she closed: "Li Pao, this is Dafnish Armatuce of the Armatuce. Dafnish, I introduce Li Pao from the 27th century."

  "She won't know what you're talking about!" crowed the unshakeable Miss Ming. "Her dates go from something she calls the First Birth. 1922. I was baffled myself."

  Lord Jagged's eyes became hooded.

  Li Pao bowed a neat bow. "I gather you find this Age disturbing, Comrade Armatuce?"

  Her expression confirmed his assumption.

  Li Pao's small mouth moved with soft, sardonic deliberation. "I, too, found it so, upon arrival. But there is little need to feel a
fraid, for, as you will discover, the rich are never malevolent, unless their security is threatened, and here there is no such threat. If they seem to waste their days, do not judge them too harshly; they know no better. They are without hungers or frustrations. Nature has long since been conquered by Art. Their resources are limitless, for they feed upon the whole universe (what remains of it). These cities suck power from any available part of the galaxy and transfer it to them so that they may play. Stars die so that on old Earth someone might change the colour of his robe." There was irony in his tone, but he spoke without censure.

  Snuffles cried out as something vast and metallic appeared to drop upon the throng, but it stopped a few feet up, hovered, then drifted away, and the crowd became noisy again.

  "The First Birth period?" Lord Jagged made a calculation. "That would place you in the year 9,478 A.D. We find the Dawn Age reckoning most convenient here. I understand your dismay. You are reconstituting your entire planet, are you not? From the core, virtually, outward, eh?"

  She was grateful for his erudition. Now he and Li Pao seemed allies in this fearful world. She was able to steady her heart and recover something of her self-possession. "It has been hard work, Lord Jagged. The Armatuce have been fortunate in winning respect for their several sacrifices."

  "Sacrifice!" Li Pao was nostalgic. "A joy impossible to experience here, where the gift of the self to the common cause would go unremarked. They would not know."

  "Then they are, indeed, unfortunate," she said. "There is a price they pay for their pleasure, after all."

  "You find our conceits shallow, then?" Lord Jagged wished to know.

  "I do. I grieve. Everywhere is waste and decay — the last stages of the Romantic disease whose symptoms are a wild, mindless seeking after superficial sensation for its own sake, effect piled upon effect, until mind and body disintegrate completely, whose cure is nothing else but death. Here, all is display — your fantasies appear the harmless play of children, but they disguise the emptiness of your lives. You colour corpses and think yourselves creative. But I am not deceived."