Dancers at the End of Time Read online

  "Yes, they're comparatively recent," Mongrove agreed. "Do you like them?"

  "They are prime! "

  "Not excessive? You don't think they are excessive?" Mongrove asked anxiously.

  "Not a bit. They are just right. The touch of a true artist."

  "I'm so glad, Lord Jagged, that two men of such understanding taste have visited me. You must forgive me if earlier I seemed surly."

  "Surly? No, no. Naturally cautious, yes. But not surly."

  "We must eat," said Mongrove and Jherek's heart sank.

  "Lunch — and then I'll show you round my menagerie."

  Mongrove clapped his hands and food appeared on the table.

  "Splendid!" said Lord Jagged, surveying the discoloured meats and the watery vegetables, the withered salads and lumpy dressings. "And what are these delicacies?"

  "It is a banquet of the time of the Kalean Plague Century," said Mongrove proudly. "You've heard of the plague? It swept the Solar System in I think, the 1000th century. It infected everyone and everything."

  "Wonderful," said Lord Jagged with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm. Jherek, struggling to restrain an expression of nausea, was amazed at his friend's self-control.

  "And what," said Lord Jagged, picking up a dish on which sat a piece of quivering, bloody flesh, "would this be?"

  "Well, it's my own reproduction, of course, but I think it's authentic." Mongrove half-rose to peer at the dish, looming over the pair. "Ah, yes — that's Snort — or is it Snout? It's confusing. I've studied all I could of the period. One of my favourites. If it's Snort, they had to change their entire religious attitude in order to justify eating it. If it's Snout, I'm not sure it would be wise for you to eat it. Although, if you've never died from food-poisoning, it's an interesting experience."

  "I never have," said Lord Jagged. "But on the other hand, it would take a while, I suppose, and I was rather keen to see your menagerie this afternoon."

  "Perhaps another time, then," said Mongrove politely, though it seemed he was a trifle disappointed.

  "Snout is one of my favourites. Or is it Snort? But I had better resist the temptation, too. Jherek?"

  Jherek reached for the nearest dish. "This looks tasty."

  "Well, tasty is not the word I'd choose." Mongrove uttered a strange, humourless laugh. "Very little Plague Century food was that. Indeed, taste is not the criterion I apply in planning my meals…"

  "No, no," nodded Jherek. "I meant it looked — um…"

  "Diseased?" suggested Lord Jagged, munching his new choice (very little different in appearance from the Snout or Snort he had rejected) with every apparent relish.

  Jherek looked at Mongrove, who nodded his approval of Lord Jagged's description.

  "Yes," said Jherek in a small, strangled voice. "Diseased."

  "It was. But it will do you no great harm. They had slightly different metabolisms, as you can imagine." Mongrove pushed the dish towards Jherek. In it was some kind of greenish vegetable in a brown, murky sauce. "Help yourself."

  Jherek ladled the smallest possible amount on to his plate.

  "More," said Mongrove, munching. "Have more. There's plenty."

  "More," whispered Jherek, and heaped another spoonful or two from the dish to his plate.

  He had never had much of an appetite for crude food at the best of times, preferring more direct (and invisible) means of sustaining himself. And this was the most ghastly crude food he had ever seen in his entire life.

  He began to wish that he had suggested they have the Turyian dungwhale, after all.

  At last the ordeal ended and Mongrove got up, wiping his lips.

  Jherek, who had been concentrating on controlling his spasms as he forced the food down his throat, noticed that while Lord Jagged had eaten with every sign of heartiness he had actually consumed very little. He must get Jagged to teach him that trick.

  "And now," said Mongrove, "my menagerie awaits us." He looked with despondent kindness upon Jherek, who had not yet risen. "Are you unwell? Perhaps the food was more diseased than it should have been?"

  "Perhaps," said Jherek, pressing his palms on the wood of the table and pushing his body upright.

  "Do you feel dizzy?" asked Mongrove, grasping Jherek's elbow to support him.

  "A little."

  "Are there pains in the stomach? Have you a stomach?"

  "I think I have. There are a few small pains."

  "Hmm." Mongrove frowned. "Maybe we should make the tour another day."

  "No, no," said Jagged. "Jherek will appreciate things all the more if he is feeling a little low. He enjoys feeling low. It brings him closer to a true understanding of the essential pain of human existence.

  Doesn't it, Jherek?"

  Jherek moved his head up and down in assent. He could not quite bring himself to speak to Lord Jagged at that moment.

  "Very good," said Mongrove, propelling Jherek forward. "Very good. I wish that we had settled our differences much earlier, gentle Jherek. I can see now how much I have misunderstood you."

  And Jherek, while Mongrove's attention was diverted, darted a look of pure hatred at his friend Lord Jagged.

  He had recovered a little by the time they left the courtyard and plodded through the rain to the first menagerie building. Here Mongrove kept his collection of bacteria; his viruses, his cancers — all magnified by screens, some of which measured nearly an eighth of a mile across. Mongrove seemed to have an affinity with plagues.

  "Some of these illnesses are more than a million years old," he said proudly. "Brought by time-travellers, mostly. Others come from all over the universe. We have missed a lot, you know, my friends, by not having diseases of our own."

  He paused before one of the larger screens. Here were examples of how the bacteria infected the creatures from which they had originally been taken.

  A bearlike alien writhed in agony as his flesh bubbled and burst.

  A reptilian space-traveller sat and watched with bleary eyes as his webbed hands and feet grew small tentacles which gradually wrapped themselves around the rest of his body and strangled him.

  "I sometimes wonder if we, the most imaginative of creatures, lack a certain kind of imagination,"

  murmured Lord Jagged to Jherek as they paused to look at the poor reptile.

  Elsewhere a floral intelligence was attacked by a fungus which gradually ate at its beautiful blossoms and turned its stems to dry twigs.

  There were hundreds of them. They were all so interesting that Jherek began to forget his own qualms and left Jagged behind as he strode beside Mongrove, asking questions and, often, giving close attention to the answers.

  Lord Jagged was inclined to linger, examining this specimen, exclaiming about that one, and was late in following them when they left the Bacteria House and entered the Fluctuant House.

  Here was a wide variety of creatures which could change shape or colour at will. Each creature was allowed a large space of its own in which its environment had been recreated in absolute detail. The environments were not separated by walls but by unseen force fields, each environment phasing tastefully into another. Most of the fluctuants were not indigenous to Earth at any period in her history (save for a few primitive chameleons, offapeckers and the like) but were drawn from many distant planets beyond the Solar System. Virtually all were intelligent, especially the mimics.

  As the three people walked through the various environments, protected from attack by their own force shields, creature after creature encountered them and changed shape, mimicking crudely or perfectly either Jherek, or Jagged, or Mongrove. Some changed shape so swiftly (from Jagged, say, to Mongrove, to Jherek) that Jherek himself began to feel quite strange.

  The Human House was next and it was in this that Jherek hoped to find the woman he intended to love.

  The Human House was the largest in the menagerie and whereas many of the other houses were stocked from different areas of space, this was stocked from different ages in Earth's h
istory. The house stretched for several square miles and, like the Fluctuant House, its environments were phased into each other (in chronological order), recreating different habitats from many periods. In the broader categories were represented Neanderthal Man, Piltdown Man, Religious Man and Scientific Man and there were, of course, many sub-divisions.

  "I have here," said Mongrove, almost animatedly, "men and women from virtually every major period in our history."

  He paused. "Have you, my friends, any particular interest? The Phradracean Tyrannies, possibly?"

  He indicated the environment in which they now stood. The houses were square, sandy blocks, standing on a sand-coloured concrete. The representative of this age was wearing a garment (if it was a garment) of similar material and colour, also square. His head and limbs projected rather incongruously from it and he looked a comical sight as he walked about shouting at the three men in his own language and waving his fists. He nonetheless kept a safe distance.

  "He seems angry," said Lord Jagged, watching him with quizzical amusement.

  "It was an angry age," said Mongrove. "Like so many."

  They passed through that environment and through several more before Mongrove stopped again.

  "Or the glorious Irish Empire," he said. "Five hundred years of the most marvellous Celtic Twilight, covering forty planets. This is the guinness, or ruler, himself."

  They were in an environment of lush green grass and soft light in which stood a two-storey building in wood and stone with a sign hanging from it. Outside the building, on a wooden bench, sat a handsome, red-faced individual dressed in a rather strange dun-coloured garment which was belted tightly at the waist and had a collar turned up to shade the face. On the head was a soft brown hat with a brim turned down over the eyes. In one hand was a pot of dark liquid on which floated a thick, white scum. The man raised this pot frequently to his lips and drained it, whereupon it instantly filled again, to the man's constant, smiling delight. He sang all the time, too, a lugubrious dirge-like melody, which seemed to please him, though sometimes he would lower his head and weep.

  "He can be so sad," said Mongrove admiringly. "He laughs, he sings, but the sadness fills him. He is one of my favourites."

  They moved on, through examples of the prehistoric Greek Golden Age, the British Renaissance, the Corinian Republican era, the Imperial American Confederation, the Mexican Overlordship, the Yulinish Emperors, the Twelve Planet Union, the Thirty Planet Union, the Anarchic States, the Cool Theocracy, the Dark Green Council, the Farajite Warlord period, the Herodian Empire, the Gienic Empire, the Sugar Dictatorship, the Sonic Assassination period, the time of the Invisible Mark (most peculiar of many similar periods), the Rope Girl age, the First, Second and Third Paternalisms, the Ship Cultures, the Engineering Millennium, the age of the Planet Builders and hundreds more.

  And all the time Jherek looked about him for a sign of the grey time-traveller while, mechanically, he praised Mongrove's collection, leaving most of the expressions of awe and delight to Lord Jagged, who deliberately drew attention away from Jherek.

  And yet it was Mongrove who pointed her out first as they entered an environment somewhat barer than the rest.

  "And here is the latest addition to my collection. I'm very proud to have acquired her, but as yet she will not tell me what to build so that she may be happy in a habitat which suits her best."

  Jherek turned and looked full into the face of the grey time-traveller.

  She was glaring. She was red with rage. At first Jherek did not realise that he was the object of that rage. He thought that when she recognised him, when she saw what he was wearing, her expression would soften.

  But it grew harder.

  "Has she had a translation pill yet?" he asked of Mongrove. But Mongrove was staring at him with a tinge of suspicion.

  "Your costumes are very similar, Jherek."

  "Yes," said Jherek. "I have already met the time-traveller. Last night. At the Duke of Queens'. I was so impressed by the costume that I made one for myself."

  "I see." Mongrove's brow cleared a little.

  "But what a coincidence," said Lord Jagged briskly. "We had no idea she was in your collection, Lord Mongrove. How extraordinary."

  "Yes," said Mongrove quietly.

  Jherek cleared his throat.

  "I wonder…" began Mongrove.

  Jherek turned to address the lady, making a low bow and saying courteously: "I trust you are well, madam, and that you can now understand me better."

  "Understand! Understand!" The lady's voice was hysterical. She did not seem at all flattered. "I understand you to be a depraved, disgusting, corrupt and abominable thing, sir!"

  Some of the words still meant nothing to Jherek. He smiled politely. "Perhaps another translation pill would…"

  "You are the foulest creature I have ever encountered in my entire life," said the lady. "And now I am convinced that I have died and am in a more horrible Hell than any that Man could imagine. Oh, my sins must have been terrible when I lived."

  "Hell?" said Mongrove, his interest awakened. "Are you from Hell?"

  "Is that another name for the 19th century?" asked Lord Jagged. He seemed amused.

  "There is much I can learn from you," said Mongrove, eagerly. "How glad I am that it was I who claimed you."

  "What is your name?" said Jherek wildly, completely taken aback by her reaction.

  She drew herself up, her lip curling in disdain as she eyed him from head to toe.

  "My name, sir, is Mrs. Amelia Underwood and, if this is not Hell, but some dreadful foreign land, I demand that I be allowed to speak to the British Consul at once!"

  Jherek looked up at Mongrove and Mongrove looked down in astonishment at Jherek.

  "She is one of the strangest I have ever acquired," said Mongrove.

  "I will take her off your hands," said Jherek.

  "No, no," said Mongrove, "though the thought is kind. No, I think I will enjoy studying her." He turned his attention back to Mrs. Underwood, speaking politely. "How hot would you like the flames?"

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Pleasing Meeting: The Iron Orchid Devises a Scheme

  Having successfully convinced melancholy Mongrove that flames would not be the best environment for the grey time-traveller and having made one or two alternative suggestions based on his own detailed knowledge of the period, Jherek decided that it was time to offer his adieux. Mongrove was still inclined to dart at him the odd suspicious glance; Mrs. Amelia Underwood was plainly in no mood at the moment to receive his declarations of love and, it seemed to him, Lord Jagged was becoming bored and wanting to leave.

  Mongrove escorted them from the Human House and back to where the gold and ebony locomotive awaited them, its colours clashing horribly with the blacks, dark greens and muddy browns of Mongrove's lair.

  "Well," said Mongrove, "thank you for your advice, Jherek, I think my new specimen should settle down soon. Of course, some creatures are inclined to pine, no matter how much care you take of them.

  Some die and have to be resurrected and sent back to where they came from."

  "If there's any further help I can give…" murmured Jherek anxiously, horrified at the idea.

  "I shall ask for it of course." There was perhaps a trace of coolness in Mongrove's tone.

  "Or if I can spend some time with…"

  "You have been," said Lord Jagged of Canaria, posing above them on the footplate, "a gracious host, and gigantic, Mongrove, in your generosity. I'll remember how much you would like to add that gloomy space-traveller to your collection. I'll try to acquire him for you in some way. Would you, incidentally, be interested in making a trade?"

  "A trade?" Mongrove shrugged. "Yes, why not? But what for? What have I worth offering?"

  "Oh, I thought I'd take the 19th century specimen off your hands," Jagged said airily. "I honestly don't think you'll have much joy from it. Also, there is someone to whom it would make a suitable gift."

 
"Jherek?" Mongrove was alert. "Is that whom you mean?" He turned his huge head to look soulfully at Jherek, who was pretending that he hadn't been listening to the conversation.

  "Ah, now," said Lord Jagged, "that would not be tactful, would it, Mongrove, to reveal?"

  "I suppose it wouldn't." Mongrove gave a great sniff. The rain ran down his face and soaked his dull, shapeless garments. "But you would never get My Lady Charlotina to give up her alien. So there is no point to this discussion."

  "It might be possible," said Lord Jagged. The lizard circlet on his head hissed its complaint at the soaking it was receiving. He ducked back into the cabin of the locomotive. "Are you coming, Jherek?"

  Jherek bowed to Mongrove. "You have been very kind, Mongrove. I am glad we understand each other better now."

  Mongrove's eyes narrowed as he watched Jherek drift up to the footplate. "Yes," said the giant, "I am glad of that, too, Jherek."

  "And you will be pleased to make the trade?" said Jagged. "If I can bring you the alien?"

  Mongrove pursed his enormous lips. "If you can bring me the alien, you may have the time-traveller."

  "It's a bargain!" said Lord Jagged gaily. "I shall bring him to you shortly."

  And at last Mongrove found it in himself to voice his suspicions. "Lord Jagged. Did you come here with the specific desire to acquire my new specimen?"

  Lord Jagged laughed. "So that is why your manner has seemed reserved! It was bothering me, Mongrove, for I felt I had offended you in some way."

  "But is that the reason?" Mongrove continued insistently. He turned to Jherek. "Have you been deceiving me, pretending to be my friends, while all the time it was your intention to take my specimen away from me?"

  "I am shocked!"

  Lord Jagged drew himself up in a swirl of draperies.

  "Shocked, Mongrove."

  Jherek could not restrain a grin as he marvelled at Lord Jagged's histrionic powers. But then Lord Jagged turned his grim frown upon Jherek, too.

  "And why do you smile, Jherek Carnelian? Do you believe Mongrove? Do you think that I brought you with me on a mere pretence — that my intention was not to heal the rift between you?"