Dancers at the End of Time

by Michael Moorcock

  The locomotive steamed into the sky, black, silver and gold now. He noticed how strange the two nearby scenes looked — the thatched house and its gardens, the lake of blood. They clashed rather than contrasted with each other. He wondered if she would mind if he disseminated the lake, but decided not to interfere.

  He flew over transparent purple palaces and towering, quivering pink and puce mounds of unremarkable workmanship and imprecise invention, over a collection of gigantic prone figures, apparently entirely made of chalk, over a half-finished forest, and under a black thunderstorm whose lightning, in his opinion, was thoroughly overdone, but he refused to let the locomotive bear him back towards the city, to which his thoughts constantly went these days, perhaps because it was the city of his conception, perhaps because Lord Jagged and Nurse worked there (if they did), perhaps because he might study the man who remained his rival, at least until the next morning. He had no inclination to visit any of the friends whose company would normally give him pleasure; he considered going to Mongrove's rainy crags, but Mongrove would be of no help to him. Perhaps, he thought, he should choose a site and make something, to exercise his imagination in some ordinary pursuit, rather than let it continue to create impossible emotional dilemmas for him. He had just decided that he would try to build a reproduction of the Palaeozoic seashore and had found a suitable location when he heard the voice of Bishop Castle above him.

  The bishop rode in a chariot whose wheels rotated, red and flaming, but which was otherwise of ordinary bronze, gold and platinum. His hat, one of his old crenellated kind, was immediately visible over the side of the chariot, but it was a moment before Jherek noticed his friend's face.

  "I am so glad to see you, Jherek. I wished to congratulate you — well, Amelia, really — on yesterday's party."

  "I will tell her, ebullient Bishop."

  "She is not with you?"

  "She remains at home."

  "A shame. But you must come and see this, Jherek. I don't know what Brannart has been trying, but I would say it had gone badly wrong for him. Would you be amused for a few minutes?"

  "I can think of nothing I should want more."

  "Then follow me!"

  The chariot banked away, flying north, and obediently Jherek set a course behind it.

  In a moment Bishop Castle was laughing and shouting, pointing at the ground. "Look! Look!"

  Jherek saw nothing but a patch of parched, unused earth. Then dust swirled and a conical object appeared, its outer casing whirling counter to another within. The whirling stopped and a man emerged from the cone. For all that he wore breathing equipment and carried a large bag, the man was recognizable as Brannart Morphail by his hump and his club foot. He turned, as if to tell the other occupants of the cone not to leave, but already a number of small figures had tumbled out and stood there, hands on hips, looking around them, glaring through their goggles. It was Captain Mubbers and the remnants of his crew. He gesticulated at Brannart, tapping his elbow several times. Wet, smacking noises could be heard, even from where Jherek and Bishop Castle hovered watching.

  At length, after an argument, they all crowded back into the cone. The two shells whirled again and the cone vanished. Bishop Castle was beside himself with laughter, but Jherek could not see why he was so amused.

  "They have been doing that for the past four hours, to my knowledge!" roared Bishop Castle. "The machine appears. It stops. They disembark, argue, and get back in again. All exactly the same. Wait…"

  Jherek waited and, sure enough, the dust swirled, the cone reappeared, Brannart and then Captain Mubbers and his men got out, they argued and returned to the ship. Each movement had been the same.

  "What is happening, Bishop?" Jherek asked, as soon as the next wave of laughter had subsided.

  "Some sort of time-loop, evidently. I wondered what Brannart was up to. He schemed, I gather, with the Lat — offering to take them back to a period when their space-ship — and space — still existed — if they would help him. He swore me to secrecy, but it cannot matter now."

  "What did he plan?" In the confusion Jherek realized he had forgotten to warn Jagged of what he had seen.

  "Oh, he was not too clear. Wished to thwart Jagged in some way, of course. Go back in time and change events."

  "Then what has happened to him now?"

  "Isn't it obvious? Ho, ho, ho!"

  "Not to me."

  "He's hoist by his own petard — caught in a particularly unpleasant version of the Morphail Effect.

  He arrives in the past, certainly, but only to be flung back to the present immediately. As a result he's stuck. He could go round and round for ever, I suppose…"

  "Should we not try to rescue him?"

  "Jagged is the only one qualified to do that, Jherek, I'd say. If we tried to help we might find ourselves caught in the loop, too."

  Jherek watched as the cone appeared for the third time and the figures went through their set ritual.

  He tried to laugh, but he could not find it as amusing as did his friend.

  "I wonder if Jagged knew of this," continued Bishop Castle, "and trapped Brannart into the situation. What a fine revenge, eh?"

  Everyone, it seemed, suspected his father of a scheme. However, Jherek was not in a mood to defend Lord Jagged again today.

  Bishop Castle brought his chariot closer to Jherek's locomotive. "By the by, Jherek, have you seen Doctor Volospion's latest? It's called 'The History of the World in Miniature' — the entire history of mankind from start to finish, all done with tiny reproductions at incredible speed — it can be slowed down to observe details of any particular millennium — it lasts a full week!"

  "It is reminiscent, is it not, of something of Jagged's?"

  "Is it? Well, Volospion always saw himself as a rival to Jagged, and perhaps hopes to fill his shoes, now that he is occupied with other things. O'Kala Incarnadine has been safely resurrected, by the by, and has lost interest in being a goat. He has become some kind of leviathan, with his own lake. Now that is a copy — of Amelia's creation. Well, if you'll forgive me, I'll be on my way. Others will want to see this."

  For the fourth time, the whirling cone appeared, Brannart and the Lat emerged. As Bishop Castle flew off Jherek dropped closer. He was still unable to understand them.

  "Hrunt!" cried Captain Mubbers.

  "Ferkit!" declared Brannart Morphail.

  Blows were exchanged. They returned to the craft.

  Jherek wondered if he should not continue on to Castle Canaria and tell Lord Jagged what was happening, but the sight had distressed him too much and he did not relish a further encounter with his father and mother today. He decided to return with the news to Amelia.

  It was almost twilight as he directed the locomotive home. The darkness seemed to come quicker than usual and it was beneath a starless, moonless sky that he eventually located the house where only one light burned at a single window.

  He was surprised, as he landed, to note that the window was not Amelia's but his own. He did not recall leaving a light there. He felt alarm as he entered the house and ran upstairs. He knocked at her door. "Amelia! Amelia!" There was no reply. Puzzled, he opened his door and went in. The lamp burned low, but there was sufficient light to see that his Amelia occupied the bed, her face turned away from him, the great sable sheet drawn tightly around her body so that only her head was visible.

  "Amelia?"

  She did not turn, though he could see that she was not asleep. He could do nothing but wait.

  Eventually, she spoke in a small, unsteady voice. "As a woman, I shall always be yours."

  "Are we —? Is this marriage?"

  She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes; her expression was serious. Her lips parted.

  He kneeled upon the bed; he took her head in his hands. He kissed her eyes. She moved convulsively and he thought he alarmed her until he realized that she was struggling free of the sheet, to open her arms to him, to hold him, as if she feared to fa
ll. He took her naked shoulders in his arm, he stroked her cheek, experiencing a sensation at once violent and tender — a sensation he had never left before. The smell of her body was warm and sweet.

  "I love you," he said.

  "I shall love you for ever, my dear," she replied. "Believe me."

  "I do."

  Her words seemed subtly inappropriate and the old sense of foreboding came and went. He kissed her. She gasped and her hands went beneath his blouse; he felt her nails in his flesh. He kissed her shoulder. She drew him to her.

  "It is all I can give you…" She seemed to be weeping.

  "It is everything."

  She groaned. With a touch of a power-ring he disrobed, stroking the tears on her cheek, kissing her trembling shoulder, until at last he drew back the sheet and pressed himself upon her.

  "The lamp," she said. He caused it to vanish and they were in complete darkness.

  "Always, Jherek."

  "Oh, my dearest."

  She hugged him. He touched her waist. "Is this what you do?" he asked. "Or is it this?"

  Then they made love; and in the fullness of time they slept.

  The sun had risen. He felt it upon his eyelids and he smiled At last the future, with its confusion and its fears, was banished; nothing divided them. He turned, so that his first sight of the morning would be of her; but even as he turned the foreboding came back to him. She was not there. There was a trace of her warmth, little more. She was not in the room. He knew that she was not in the house.

  "Amelia!"

  This was what she had decided. He recalled her anecdote of the young man who had only dared declare his love when he knew he would never see her again. All his instincts had told him, from that moment by the fountain, that it was her intention to answer her Victorian conscience, to go back with Harold Underwood to 1896, to accept her responsibilities. It was why she had said what she said to him last night. As a woman, she would always be his, but as a wife she was committed to her husband.

  He plunged from his bed, opening the window, and, naked, flung himself into the dawn sky, flying as rapidly as his power-rings could carry him, rushing towards the city, her name still on his lips, like the mad cry of a desolate seabird.

  "Amelia!"

  Once before he had followed her thus, coming too late to stop her return to her own time. Every sensation, every thought was repeated now, as the air burned his body with the speed of his flight.

  Already he planned how he might pursue her back to Bromley.

  He reached the city. It seemed to sleep, it was so still.

  And near the brink of the pit he saw the great open structure of the time-machine, the chronomnibus. Aboard he could see the time-traveller at the controls, and the policemen, all in white robes, with their helmets upon their heads, and Inspector Springer, also in white, wearing his bowler, and Harold Underwood with his hay-coloured hair and his pince-nez twinkling in the early sun. And he glimpsed Amelia, in her grey suit, seemingly struggling with her husband. Then the outlines of the machine grew faint, even as he descended. There was a shrill sound, like a scream, and the machine faded away and was gone.

  He reached the ground, staggering.

  "Amelia." He could barely see for his tears; he stood hopeless and trembling, his heart pounding, gasping for air.

  He heard sobbing and it was not his own sobbing. He lifted his head.

  She lay there, in the black dust of the city, her face upon her arm. She wept.

  Half-sure that this was a terrible illusion, merely a recollection from the city's memory, he approached her. He fell on his knees beside her. He touched her grey sleeve.

  She looked up at him. "Oh, Jherek! He told me that I was no longer his wife…"

  "He has said as much before."

  "He called me 'impure'. He said that my presence would taint the high purpose of his mission, that even now I tempted him … Oh, he said so many things. He threw me from the machine. He hates me."

  "He hates sanity, Amelia. I think it is true of all such men. He hates truth. It is why he accepts the comforting lie. You would have been of no use to him."

  "I was so full of my resolve. I loved you so much. I fought so hard against my impulse to stay with you."

  "You would martyr yourself in response to the voice of Bromley? To a cause you know to be at best foolish?" He was surprised by his words and it was plain that he surprised her, also.

  " This world has no cause at all," she told him, as he held her against him. "It has no use for one such as me!"

  "Yet you love me. You trust me?"

  "I trust you, Jherek. But I do not trust your background, your society — all this…" She stared bleakly at the city. "It prizes individuality and yet it is impossible to feel oneself an individual in it. Do you understand?"

  He did not, but he continued to comfort her.

  He helped her to her feet.

  "I can see no future for us here," she told him. She was exhausted. He summoned his locomotive.

  "There is no future," he agreed, "only the present. Surely it is what lovers have always wished for."

  "If they are nothing but lovers, Jherek, my dear." She sighed deeply. "Well, there is scarcely any point to my complaints." Her smile was brave. "This is my world and I must make the best of it."

  "You shall, Amelia."

  The locomotive appeared, puffing between high, ragged towers.

  "My sense of duty —" she began.

  "To yourself, as I said. My world esteems you as Bromley never could. Accept that esteem without reserve; it is given without reserve."

  "Blindly, however, as children give. One would wish to be respected for — for noble deeds."

  He saw clarity, at last. "Your going to Harold — that was 'noble'?"

  "I suppose so. The self-sacrifice…"

  " 'Self-sacrifice' — another. And is that 'virtuous'?"

  "It is thought so, yes."

  "And 'modest'?"

  "Modesty is often involved."

  "Your opinion of your own actions is 'modest'?"

  "I hope so."

  "And if you do nothing save what your own spirit tells you to do — that is 'lazy', eh? Even 'evil'?"

  "Scarcely evil, really, but certainly unworthy…"

  The locomotive came to a rest beside them, where the chronomnibus had lately been.

  "I am enlightened at last!" he said. "And to be 'poor', is that frowned upon by Bromley."

  She began to smile. "Indeed, it is. But I do not approve of such notions. In my charity work, I tried to help the poor as much as I could. We had a missionary society, and we collected money so that we could purchase certain basic comforts…"

  "And these 'poor' ones, they exist so that you might exercise your own impulses towards 'nobility'

  and 'self-sacrifice'. I understand!"

  "Not so, Jherek. The poor — well, they just exist. I, and others like me, tried to ease their conditions, tried to find work for the unemployed, medicine for their sick."

  "And if they did not exist? How, then, would you express yourself?"

  "Oh, there are many other causes, all over the world. Heathen to be converted, tyrants to be taught justice, and so on. Of course, poverty is the chief source of all the other problems…"

  "I could perhaps create some 'poor' for you."

  "That would be terrible. No, no! I disapproved of your world before I understood it. Now I do not disapprove — it would be irrational of me. I would not change it. It is I who must change." She began to weep again. "I who must try to understand that things will remain as they are throughout eternity, that the same dance will be danced over and over again and that only the partners will differ…"

  "We have our love, Amelia."

  Her expression was anguished. "But can't you see, Jherek, that it is what I fear most! What is love without time, without death?"

  "It is love without sadness, surely."

  "Could it be love without purpose?"

  "Love
is love."

  "Then you must teach me to believe that, my dear."

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Wedding Bells at the End of Time

  She was to be Amelia Carnelian; she insisted upon it. They found seeds and bulbs, preserved by the cities, and they planted them in her gardens. They began a new life, as man and wife. She was teaching him to read again, and to write, and if Jherek felt contentment she, at least, felt a degree more secure; his assurances of fidelity became credible to her. But though the sun shone and the days and nights came and went with a regularity unusual at the End of Time, they were without seasons. She feared for her crops.

  Though she watered them carefully, no shoots appeared, and one day she decided to turn a piece of ground to see how her potatoes fared. She found that they had gone rotten. Elsewhere not a single seed had put out even the feeblest root. He came upon her as she dug frantically through her vegetable garden, searching for one sign of life. She pointed to the ruined tubers.

  "Imperfectly preserved, I suppose," he suggested.

  "No. We tasted them. These are the same. It is the earth that ruins them. It is not true soil at all. It is without goodness. It is barren, Jherek, as everything is fundamentally barren in this world." She threw down the spade; she entered the house. With Jherek at her heels, she went to sit at a window looking out towards her rose-garden.

  He joined her, feeling her pain but unable to find any means of banishing it.

  "Illusion," she said.

  "We can experiment, Amelia, to make earth which will allow your crops to grow."

  "Oh, perhaps…" She made an effort to free herself from her mood, then her brow clouded again.

  "Here is your father, like an Angel of Death come to preside at the funeral of my hopes."

  It was Lord Jagged, stepping with jaunty tread along the crazy paving, waving to her.

  Jherek admitted him. He was all bustle and high humour. "The time comes. The circuit is complete. I let the world run through one more full week, to establish the period of the loop, then we're saved forever! My news displeases you?"

  Jherek spoke for Amelia. "We do not care to be reminded of the manner in which the world is maintained, Father!"