Dancers at the End of Time (43 page)

"A few will do. You say you are familiar with the early Devonian."

"As familiar as one can be."

"Your advice, then, would be welcome. The edibility of the molluscs, for instance?"

"I think you'll find the 
myalina subquadrata
 the least offensive, and very few are actually poisonous, though a certain amount of indigestion is bound to result. I, myself, am a slave to indigestion."

"And what do these 
myalina
 look like?" Jherek asked.

"Oh, like mussels, really. You have to dig for them."

Mrs. Underwood took five matches from the box and handed it back.

"Your time-craft, sir, is functioning properly?" Jherek said.

"Oh, yes, perfectly."

"And you are returning to the nineteenth century?"

"To 1895, I hope."

"Then you could take us with you?"

The stranger shook his head. "It's a single-seater. The saddle barely accommodates me, since I began to put on weight. Come, I'll show you." He turned and began to plod through the sand in the direction from which he had come. They followed.

"Also," added the stranger, "it would be unwise for me to try to take people from 1896 to 1895.

You would meet yourselves. Considerable confusion would result. One can tamper just a little with the Logic of Time, but I hesitate to think what would happen if one went in for such blatant paradoxes. It would seem to me that if you have been treating the Logic so cavalierly it is no wonder — I do not moralize, you understand — that you find yourselves in this position."

"Then you verify the Morphail Theory," Jherek said, trudging beside the time-traveller. "Time resists paradox, adjusting accordingly — refusing, you might say, to admit a foreign body to a period to which it is not indigenous?"

"If a paradox is likely to occur. Yes. I suspect that it is all to do with consciousness, and with our 
group
 understanding of what constitutes Past, Present and Future. That is, Time, as such, does not exist…"

Mrs. Underwood uttered a soft exclamation as the stranger's craft came in sight. It consisted of an open frame of tubular lengths of brass and ebony. There was ivory here and there, as well as a touch or two of silver, copper coils set into the top of the frame, immediately above a heavily sprung leather saddle of the sort normally seen on bicycles. Before this was a small board of instruments and a brass semi-circle where a lever might normally fit. Much of the rest of the machine was of nickel and crystal and it showed signs of wear, was much battered, dented and cracked in places. Behind the saddle was strapped a large chest and it was to this that the stranger made at once, undoing the brass buckles and pushing back the lid. The first object he drew out of the trunk was a double-barrelled shot-gun which he leaned against the saddle; next he removed a bale of muslin and a solar topee, and finally, using both hands, he hauled up a large wickerwork basket and dumped it in the sand at their feet.

"This might be useful to you," he said, replacing the other objects in the trunk and securing the straps. "It's the best I can offer, short of passage home. And I've explained why that's impossible. You wouldn't want to come face to face with yourselves in the middle of Waterloo Circus, would you?" He laughed.

"Don't you mean Piccadilly Circus, sir?" enquired Mrs. Underwood with a frown.

"Never heard of it," said the time-traveller.

"I've never heard of Waterloo Circus," she told him. "Are you sure you're from 1894?"

The stranger fingered the stubble on his chin. He seemed a little disturbed. "I thought I'd merely gone full circle," he murmured. "Hm — perhaps this universe is not quite the same as the one I left. Is it possible that for every new time-traveller a new chronology develops? Could there be an infinite number of universes?" He brightened. "This is a fine adventure, I must say. Aren't you hungry?"

Mrs. Amelia Underwood raised her beautiful brows.

The stranger pointed at the basket. "My provisions," he said. "Make what use of them you like. I'll risk finding some food at my next stop — hopefully 1895. Well, I must be on my way."

He bowed, brandishing his quartz rod significantly. He climbed onto his saddle and placed the rod in the brass groove, making some adjustments to his other controls.

Mrs. Underwood was already lifting the lid of the hamper. Her face was obscured, but Jherek thought he could hear her crooning to herself.

"Good luck to you both," said the stranger cheerfully. "I'm sure you won't be stuck here forever. It's unlikely, isn't it? I mean, what a find for the archaeologists, ha, ha! Your bones, that is!"

There came a sharp click as the stranger moved his lever a notch or two and almost immediately the time machine began to grow indistinct. Copper glowed and crystal shimmered; something seemed to be whirling very rapidly above the stranger's head and already both man and machine were semi-transparent. Jherek was struck in the face by a sudden gust of wind which came from nowhere and then the time-traveller had gone.

"Oh, look, Mr. Carnelian!" cried Mrs. Amelia Underwood, brandishing her trophy. "Chicken!"

For the following two days and nights a certain tension, dissipating before the advent of the time-traveller but since restored, existed between the lovers (for they 
were
 lovers — only her upbringing denied it) and they slept fitfully, the pair of them, on either side of a frond-fondled limestone rock, having to fear nothing but the inquisitive attentions of the little molluscs and trilobites whose own lives now were free from danger, thanks to the hamper, crammed with cans and bottles enough to sustain a good-sized expedition for a month. No large beasts, no unexpected turn of the weather, threatened our Adam and our Eve; Eve, alone, knew inner conflict: Adam, simple bewilderment; but then he was used to bewilderment, and sudden moods or twists of fate had been the stuff of his existence until only recently — yet his spirits were not what they had been.

They rose somewhat, those spirits, at dawn this morning — for the beauty, in its subtlety, excelled any creation of 
fin de cosmos
 artifice. A huge half-sun filled the horizon line so that the sky surrounding it shone a thousand shades of copper, while its rays, spread upon the sea, seemed individually coloured — blues, ochres, greys, pinks — until they reached the beach and merged again, as if at apex, to make the yellow sand glare rainbow white, turn the limestone to shimmering silver and make individual leaves and stems of the fronds a green that seemed near-sentient, it was so alive; and there was a human figure at the core of this vision, outlined against the pulsing semi-circle of dark scarlet, the velvet dress murky red amber, the auburn hair a-flame, the white hands and neck reflecting the hues, delicate hint of the palest of poppies. And there was music, sonorous — it was her voice; she declaimed a favourite verse, its subject a trifle at odds with the ambience.

Where the red worm woman wailed for wild revenge,

While the surf surged sullen 'neath moon-silver'd sky,

Where her harsh voice, once a sweet voice, sang,

Now was I.

And did her ghost on that grey, cold morn,

Did her ghost slide by?

Rapt, Jherek straightened his back and pushed aside the frock-coat which had covered him through the night; to see his love thus, in a setting to match the perfection of her beauty, sent all other considerations helter-skelter from his head; his own eyes shone: his face shone. He waited for more, but she was silent, tossing back her locks, shaking sand from her hem, pursing those loveliest of lips.

"Well?" he said.

Slowly, through iridescence, the face looked up, from shadow into light. Her mouth was a question.

"Amelia?" He dared the name. Her lids fell.

"What is it?" she murmured.

"Did it? Was it her ghost? I await the resolution."

The lips curved now, perhaps a touch self-consciously, but the eyes continued to study the sand which she stirred with the sharp toe of her partly unbuttoned boot. "Wheldrake doesn't say. It's a rhetorical question…"

"A very sober poem, is it not?"

A sense of superiority mingled with her modesty, causing the lashes to rise and fall rapidly for a moment. "Most good poems are sober, Mr. Carnelian, if they are to convey — significance. It speaks of death, of course. Wheldrake wrote much of death — and died, himself, prematurely. My cousin gave me the 
Posthumous Poems
 for my twentieth birthday. Shortly afterwards, she was taken from us, also, by consumption."

"Is all good literature, then, about death?"

"Serious literature."

"Death is serious?"

"It is final, at any rate." But she shocked herself, judging this cynical, and recovered with: "Although really, it is only the beginning — of our real life, our eternal life…"

She turned to regard the sun, already higher and less splendid.

"You mean, at the End of Time? In our own little home?"

"Never mind." She faltered, speaking in a higher, less natural tone. "It is my punishment, I suppose, to be denied, in my final hours, the company of a fellow Christian." But there was some insincerity to all this. The food she had consumed during the past two days had mellowed her. She had almost welcomed the simpler terrors of starvation to the more complex dangers of giving herself up to this clown, this innocent (oh, yes, and perhaps this noble, manly being, for his courage, his kindness went without question). She strove, with decreasing success, to recreate that earlier, much more suitable, mood of resigned despondency.

"I interrupted you." He leaned back against his rock. "Forgive me. It was so delicious, to wake to the sound of your voice. Won't you go on?"

She cleared her throat and faced the sea again.

What will you say to me, child of the moon,

When by the bright river we stand?

When forest leaves breathe harmonies to the night wind's croon.

Will you give me your hand, child of the moon?

Will you give me your hand?

But her performance lacked the appropriate resonance, certainly to her own ears, and she delivered the next verse with even less conviction.

Will you present your pyre to me, spawn of the sun,

While the sky is in full flame?

While the day's heat the brain deceives, and the drugged bees hum.

Will you grant me your name, spawn of the sun?

Will you grant me your name?

Jherek blinked. "You have lost me entirely, I fear…" The sun was fully risen, the scene fled, though pale gold light touched sky and sea still, and the day was calm and sultry. "Oh, what things I could create with such inspiration, if only my power rings were active. Vision upon vision, and all for you, Amelia!"

"Have you no literature, at the End of Time?" she asked. "Are your arts only visual?"

"We converse," he said. "You have heard us."

"Conversation has been called an art, yet…"

"We do not write it down," he said, "if that is what you mean. Why should we? Similar conversations often arise — similar observations are made afresh. Does one discover more through the act of making the marks I have seen you make? If so, perhaps I should…"

"It will pass the time," she said, "if I teach you to write and read."

"Certainly," he agreed.

She knew the questions he had asked had been innocent, but they struck her as just. She laughed.

"Oh, dear, Mr. Carnelian. Oh, dear!"

He was content not to judge her mood to but to share it. He laughed with her, springing up. He advanced. She awaited him. He stopped, when a few steps separated them. He was serious now, and smiling.

She fingered her neck. "There is more to literature than conversation, however. There are stories."

"We make our own lives into stories, at the End of Time. We have the means. Would you not do the same, if you could?"

"Society demands that we do not."

"Why so?"

"Perhaps because the stories would conflict, one with the other. There are so many of us — there."

"Here," he said, "there are but two."

"Our tenancy in this — this Eden — is tentative. Who knows when…?"

"Logically, if we are torn away, then we shall be borne to the End of Time, not to 1896. And what is there, waiting, but Eden, too?"

"No, I should not call it that."

They stared, now, eye to eye. The sea whispered. It was louder than their words.

He could not move, though he sought to go forward. Her stance held him off; it was the set of her chin, the slight lift of one shoulder.

"We could be alone, if we wished it."

"There should be no choice, in Eden."

"Then, here, at least…" His look was charged, it demanded; it implored.

"And take sin with us, out of Eden?"

"No sin, if by that you mean that which give your fellows pain. What of me?"

"We suffer. Both." The sea seemed very loud, the voice faint as a wind through ferns. "Love is cruel."

"No!" His shout broke the silence. He laughed. "That is nonsense! Fear is cruel! Fear alone!"

"Oh, I have so much of that!" She called out, lifting her face to the sky, and she began to laugh, even as he seized her, taking her hands in his, bending to kiss that cheek.

Tears striped her; she wiped them clear with her sleeve, and the kiss was forestalled. Instead she began to hum a tune, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, leaving her other hand in his. She dipped and led him in a step or two. "Perhaps my fate is sealed," she said. She smiled at him, a conspiracy of love and pain and some self-pity. "Oh, come, Mr. Carnelian, I shall teach you to dance. If this is Eden, let us enjoy it while we may!"

Brightening considerably, Jherek allowed her to lead him in the steps.