"Oh, I don't know." Lord Jagged waved in reply. "A pleasant journey to you."
"Thanks most awfully, again."
"Captain Bastable!"
"— because of the drawbacks you mentioned," shouted Bastable breathlessly, and ran to join his co-chrononaut.
When they had gone, Amelia Underwood looked almost suspiciously at the man Jherek one day hoped to make her father-in-law. "The world is definitely saved, is it, Lord Jagged?"
"Oh, definitely. The cities have ample energy. The time-loop, when it is made, will re-cycle that energy. Jherek has told you of his adventures in the Nursery. You understand the principle."
"Sufficiently, I hope. But Captain Bastable spoke of drawbacks."
"I see." Lord Jagged pulled his cloak about him. Now Mongrove and the Duke of Queens, the time-traveller and the Iron Orchid, Jherek and Amelia were all that remained of his audience. He spoke more naturally. "Not for all, Amelia, those drawbacks. After a short period of readjustment, say a month, in which Nurse and I will test our equipment until we are satisfied with its functioning, the world will be in a perpetually closed circuit, with both past and future abolished. A single planet turning about a single sun will be all that remains of this universe. It will mean, therefore, that both time-travel and space-travel will be impossible. The drawback will be (for many of us) that there is no longer any intercourse between our world of the End of Time and other worlds."
"That is all?"
"It will mean much to some."
"To me!" groaned the Duke of Queens. "I do wish you had told me, Jagged. I'd hoped to re-stock my menagerie." He looked speculatively at the Pweelian spaceship. He fingered a power-ring.
"A few time-travellers may yet arrive, before the loop is made," comforted Jagged. "Besides, doleful Duke, your creative instincts will be fulfilled for a while, I am sure, by helping in the resurrection of all our old friends. There are dozens. Argonheart Po…"
"Bishop Castle. My Lady Charlotina. Mistress Christia. Sweet Orb Mace. O'Kala Incarnadine.
Doctor Volospion." The Duke brightened.
"The long-established time-travellers, like Li Pao, may also still he here — or will re-appear, thanks to the Morphail Effect."
"I thought you had proved that a fallacy, Lord Jagged." Mongrove spoke with interest.
"I have proved it a Law — but not the only Law — of Time."
"We shall resurrect Brannart and tell him!" said the Iron Orchid.
Amelia was frowning. "So the planet will be completely isolated, for eternity, in time and space."
"Exactly," said Jagged.
"Life will continue as it has always done," said the Duke of Queens. "Who shall you resurrect first, Mongrove?"
"Werther de Goethe, I suppose. He is no real fellow spirit, but he will do for the moment." The giant cast a glance back at the Pweelian spaceship as he began to move his great bulk forward. "Though it will be a travesty, of course."
"What do you mean, melancholy Mongrove?" The Duke of Queens turned a power-ring to rid himself of his uniform and replace it with brilliant multicoloured feathers from head to foot, a coxcomb in place of his hair.
"A travesty of life. This will be a stagnant planet, forever cycling a stagnant sun. A stagnant society, without progress or past. Can you not see it, Duke of Queens? Shall we have been spared death only to become the living dead, dancing forever to the same stale measures?"
The Duke of Queens was amused. "I congratulate you, Lord Mongrove. You have found an image with which to distress yourself. I admire your alacrity!"
Lord Mongrove licked his large lips and wrinkled his great nose. "Ah, mock me, as you always mock me — as you all mock me. And why not? I am a fool! I should have stayed out there, in space, while suns flickered and faded and whole planets exploded and became dust. Why remain here, after all, a maggot amongst maggots?"
"Oh, Mongrove, your gloom is of the finest!" Lord Jagged congratulated him. "Come — you must all be my guests at Castle Canaria!"
"Your castle survives, Jagged?" Jherek asked, putting his arm round his Amelia's waist.
"As a memory, swiftly restored to reality — as shall be the entire society at the End of Time. That is what I meant, Amelia, when I told you that memories would suffice."
She smiled a little bleakly. She had been listening intently to Mongrove's forebodings. It took some little while before she could rid herself of her thoughts and laugh with the others as they said farewell to the time-traveller, who intended, now that he had certain information from Mrs. Persson, to make repairs to his craft and return to his own world if he could.
The Duke of Queens stood on the grey, cracked plain and admired his handiwork. It was a great squared-off monster of a vehicle and it bobbed gently in the light wind which stirred the dust at their feet.
"The bulk of it is the gas-container — the large rear-section," he explained to Jherek. "The front is called, I believe, the cab."
"And the whole?"
"From the twentieth century. An articulated truck."
The Iron Orchid sighed as she tripped towards it, gathering up the folds of her wedding dress. "It looks most uncomfortable."
"Not as bad as you'd think," the Duke reassured her. "There is breathing equipment inside the gas-bag."
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Inventions and Resurrections
Soon all would be as it had always been, before the winds of limbo had come to blow their world away. Flesh, blood and bone, grass and trees and stone would flourish beneath the fresh-born sun, and beauty of every sort, simple or bizarre, would bloom upon the face of that arid, ancient planet. It would be as if the universe had never died; and for that the world must thank its half-senile cities and the arrogant persistence of that obsessive temporal investigator from the twenty-first century, from the Dawn Age, who named himself for a small pet singing bird fashionable two hundred years before his birth, who displayed himself like an actor, yet disguised himself and his motives with all the consummate cunning of a Medici courtier; this fantastico in yellow, this languid meddler in destinies, Lord Jagged of Canaria.
They had already witnessed the rebuilding of Castle Canaria, at first a glowing mist, opaque and coruscating, modelled upon a wickerwork cage, some seventy-five feet high; and then its bars had become pale gold and within could be seen the floating compartments, each a room, where Jagged chose to live in certain moods (though he had had other moods, other castles). They had watched while Lord Jagged had spread the sky with tints of pink-tinged amber and cornflower blue, so that the orb of the sun burned a dull, rich red and cast shadows through the bars of that great cage so that it seemed the surrounding dust was criss-crossed by lattice: but then the dust itself was banished and turf replaced it, sparkling as it might after a shower, and there were hedges, too, and trees, and a pool of clear water, all standing in contrast to the surrounding landscape, thousands and thousands of miles of featureless desert.
And they had been fired by this experience to begin their own creations at once and Mongrove went off to build his black mountains, his cold, cloud-cloaked halls, his gloomy heights; and the Duke of Queens went in another direction to erect first mosaic pyramids, then flower-hung ziggurats, then golden moondomes and etoliated Towers of Mercury, then an ocean, as large as the Mediterranean, on which floated monstrous, baroque fish, each fish an apartment. Meanwhile the Iron Orchid, content for the moment to share her husband's quarters, caused forests of slightly metallic blossoms to spring up from fields of silver snow, where cold birds, bright as steel, but electric green and engine red, clashed beaks and wings and sang human songs in the voices of machines, where robot foxes lurked and automata in scarlet, mounted on mechanical horses, hunted them — acre upon acre of ingenious animated gadgetry.
Jherek Carnelian and Amelia Underwood were more modest in their creations; first they chose an area and surrounded it with great breaks of poplars, cypresses and willows, so that the wasteland beyond could not be seen. Her fanciful palace was forgotten; she
wished for a low Tudor house, with thatch and beams, whitewashed. A few of the windows she allowed for stained-glass, but the majority were as large as possible and leaded. Flower-beds surrounded the house and in these she put roses, holly-hocks and a variety of old, half-wild English flowers. There was a paved area, a pathway, a vegetable garden, shaded arbours of yew and climbing roses, a pond with a fountain in the centre, and goldfish, and everywhere high hedges, as if she would shield her house from the rest of the world. He admired it, but had little to do with its creation. Within were oak tables and chairs, bookcases (though the books themselves defeated her powers of creation, just as her attempts to recreate paintings failed badly — Jherek consoled her: no one could make such things, at the End of Time); there were comfortable armchairs, carpets, polished boards, vases of flowers, tapestries, figurines, candlesticks, lamps; there was a large kitchen, with tapped water, and every modern utensil, including knife-polishers, a gas-copper and a gas-stove, though she knew she would have little use for them. The kitchen looked out onto the vegetable garden where her runner-beans and cabbages already flourished. On the top floor of the house she created two sets of apartments for them, with a bedroom, dressing room, study and sitting room each. And when she had finished she looked to her Jherek for his approval and, ever enthusiastic, he gave it.
Elsewhere the creation continued: a superabundance of inventiveness. A summoning of certain particles by the Iron Orchid, and Bishop Castle, complete with crook and mitre, was born again, joining her to recreate first My Lady Charlotina of Below-the-Lake, a little bemused and her memory not what it was, and then Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, Doctor Volospion, O'Kala Incarnadine, Argonheart Po, Sweet Orb Mace, all restored to life and ready to add their own themes to the reconstructed world, to resurrect their particular friends. And Mongrove, in his rainy, thunder-haunted crags, let gloomy, romantic Werther de Goethe look on the world again and mourn, while Lord Shark the Unknown, resentful, unbelieving, contemptuous, stayed in Mongrove's domain for only a few moments before flinging himself from a cliff, to be restored by a solicitous Mongrove, who had assumed that he was not yet quite himself, and fussed over until, in a pet, he summoned his plain grey air-car and sailed away, to build again his square living quarters with their square rooms, each one of exactly the same proportions, and to populate them with his automata, each one exactly in his image (not to satisfy his ego but because Lord Shark was a being devoid of any sort of imagination). Lord Shark, once his residence and his servants were re-established, created nothing further, allowed the grey, cracked ground to be his only view, while in all other quarters of the planet whole ranges of mountains were flung up, great rivers rolled across lush plains, seas heaved, woods proliferated; hills and valleys, meadows and forests were filled with life of every description.
Argonheart Po made perhaps his most magnificent contribution to his world, a detailed copy of one of the ancient cities, each ruined tower and whispering dome subtly delicious to taste and smell, each chemical lake a soup of transporting exquisiteness, each jewel a bon-bon of mouth-watering delicacy, each streamer a noodle of previously undreamed of savouriness. The Duke of Queens built a fleet of flying trucks, causing them to perform complex aerobatics in the skies above his home, while below he prepared for a party on the theme of Death and Destruction, searching the memory-banks of the cities for fifty of the most famous ruins in history: Pompeii existed again on the slopes of Krakatoa, Alexandria, built all of books, burned afresh, while every few minutes a new mushroom cloud blossomed over Hiroshima, showering mushrooms almost fit to match Argonheart's culinary marvels. The grave-pits of Brighton, reduced to miniatures because of the huge amount of space needed to contain them, were heaped with tiny bodies, some of which still moved, mewling and touchingly pathetic; but perhaps his most effective creation was his liquidized Minneapolis, frozen, viscous, still recognizable, with its inhabitants turning to semi-transparent jelly even as they tried to flee the Swiss holocaust.
It was, as Bishop Castle proposed, a Renaissance. Lord Jagged of Canaria was a hero; his exploits were celebrated. Only Brannart Morphail saw Jagged's interference as unwelcome; indeed Brannart remained sceptical of the whole theory behind the method of salvation. He looked with a jaundiced eye upon the carolling sculptures surrounding the green feather palace of My Lady Charlotina (she had renounced the underworld since the flood which had swept her from her halls), upon the pink pagodas of Mistress Christia and the ebony fortress of Werther de Goethe, warning all that the destruction had merely been averted for a little while, but none of them chose to listen to him. Doctor Volospion, a scarecrow in flaring, tattered black, his body black, his eyes red flames, made a Martian sarcophagus some thousand feet high, with a reproduction on its lid of the famous Revels of Cha'ar in which four thousand boys and girls died of exhaustion and seven thousand men and women flogged one another to death. Doctor Volospion found his home "pretty" and filled it inside with lunatic manikins given to biting him or laying little vicious traps for him whenever they could, and this he found "amusing". Bishop Castle's own laser-beam cathedral, whose twin steeples disappeared in the sky, was unpretentious in comparison, though the music which the beams produced was ethereal and moving: even Werther de Goethe, impressed by but disapproving of Doctor Volospion's dwelling, congratulated Bishop Castle on his sonorous melodies, and Sweet Orb Mace actually copied the idea for (she was feminine again) her blue quartz Old New Old Old New New Old New Old New New New Old New New Versailles, which had flourished in her favourite period (the Integral Seventh Worship) on Sork, a planet of some Centauri or Beta, vanished long-since, the whole structure based on certain favourite primitive musical forms from the fiftieth century. O'Kala Incarnadine simply became a goat and trotted about in what remained of the wastelands bleating to anyone who would give him an ear that he preferred the planet unspoiled; the idea seemed to give him considerable pleasure, but he set no fashion. Indeed the only positive response he received at all was from Li Pao (who had not enjoyed, it emerged, his brief return to 2648) who judged his rôle a subtle metaphor, and from Gaf the Horse in Tears who derived much mindless glee from bleating back at him, hovering overhead in his aerial sampan and occasionally pelting him with the fruit he won from one of the thirty or so machines dotted about on the boat's fifth tier.
The time-traveller had become frustrated, for it had materialized that he still needed someone who could help him with the repairs he must make to his machine before he would risk a cross-dimension time-leap. He had found Lord Jagged too concerned with his own experiments to be helpful and Brannart Morphail now refused to speak to anyone, having been snubbed so badly in the first few days of the resurrection. For a short time he fell in with another time-traveller, returned, like Li Pao, by the Morphail Effect, calling himself Rat Oosapric, but it turned out that the man was an escaped criminal from the thirty-sixth century Stilt Cities and knew nothing at all about the principles of time-travel; he merely tried to steal the time-traveller's machine and was restrained from so doing by the fortunate arrival of My Lady Charlotina who froze him with a power-ring and sent him drifting into the upper atmosphere for a while. My Lady Charlotina, deprived of Brannart Morphail, was trying to convince the time-traveller that she should he his patron, that he should become her new Scientist. The time-traveller considered the idea but found her terms too restricting. It was My Lady Charlotina who returned from the old city, leaving the time-traveller to his brooding, with the news that Harold Underwood, Inspector Springer, Sergeant Sherwood, the twelve constables, and the Lat all seemed healthy and relatively cheerful, but that the Pweelian spacecraft had vanished. This caused the Duke of Queens to reveal his secret a little earlier than he had planned. He had re-started his menagerie and the Pweelians were his prize, though they did not know it. He had allowed them to build their own environment — the closed one they had planned to escape the End of Time — and they now believed that they were the only living creatures in the entire universe. Anyon
e who wished to do so could visit the Duke's menagerie and watch them moving about in their great sphere, completely unaware that they were observed, involved in their curious activities. Even Amelia Underwood went to see them and agreed with the Duke of Queens that they seemed completely at ease and if anything rather happier than they had originally been.
This visit to the Duke was the first time Jherek and Amelia had emerged into society since they had built their new house. Amelia was astonished by the rapid changes: there were only a few small areas no longer altered, and there was a certain freshness to everything which made even the most bizarre inventions almost charming. The air itself, she said, had the sweet sharpness of a spring morn. On the way home they saw Lord Jagged of Canaria in his great flying swan, a yellowish white, with another tall figure beside him. Jherek brought his locomotive alongside and hailed him, at once recognizing the other occupant of the swan.
"My dear Nurse! What a pleasure to meet you again! How are your children?"
Nurse was considerably more coherent than she had been when Jherek had last seen her. She shook her old steel head and sighed. "Gone, I fear. Back to an earlier point in Time — where I still operate the time-loop, where they still play as, doubtless, they will always play."
"You sent them back?"
"I did. I judged this world too dangerous for my little ones, young Jerry. Well, I must say, you're looking well. Quite a grown man now, eh? And this must be Amelia, whom you are to marry. Ah, I am filled with pride. You have proved yourself a fine boy, Jerry." It seemed that she still had the vague idea that Jherek had been one of her original charges. "I expect 'daddy' is proud of you, too!" She turned her head a full ninety degrees to look fondly at Lord Jagged, who pursed his lips in what might have been an embarrassed smile.
"Oh, very proud," he said. "Good morning Amelia. Jherek."
"Good morning, Sir Machiavelli." Amelia relished his discomfort. "How go your schemes?"
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