"Jherek," crooned Lord Jagged, hugging him, "you are the best of us!"
5. A Menagerie of Time and Space
"The very best of us," yawned Lord Jagged of Canaria, lying back upon the couch of plush and ermine as Jherek, clad in his new costume, pulled the whistle of the locomotive which took off from the corral and left the West behind, heading for gloomy Mongrove's domain.
The locomotive steered a course for the tropics, passing through a dozen different skies. Some of the skies were still being completed, while others were being dismantled as their creators wearied of them.
They puffed over the old cities which nobody used any more, but which were not destroyed because the sources of many forms of energy were still stored there — the energy in particular, which powered the rings everyone wore. Once whole star systems had been converted to store the energy banks of Earth, during the manic Engineering Millennium, when everyone, it appeared, had devoted themselves to that single purpose.
They travelled through several daytimes and a few nighttimes on their way to Mongrove's. The giant, save for his brief Hell-making fad, had always lived in the same place, where a sub-continent called Indi had once been. It was well over an hour before they sighted the grey clouds which perpetually hung over Mongrove's domain, pouring down either snow or sleet or hail or rain, depending on the giant's mood. The sun never shone through those clouds. Mongrove hated sunshine.
Lord Jagged pretended to shiver, though his garments had naturally adjusted to the change in temperature. "There are Mongrove's miserable cliffs. I can see them now." He pointed through the observation window.
Jherek looked and saw them. Mile high crags met the grey clouds. They were black, gleaming and melancholy crags, without symmetry, without a single patch of relieving colour, for even the rain which fell on them seemed to turn black as it struck them and ran in weeping black rivers down their rocky flanks. And Jherek shivered, too. It had been many years since he had visited Mongrove and he had forgotten with what uncompromising misery the giant had designed his home.
At a murmured command from Jherek, the locomotive rolled up the sky to get above the clouds. The rain and the cold would not affect the aircar, but Jherek found the mere sight too glum for his taste. But soon they had passed over the cliffs and Jherek could tell from the way in which the cloud bank seemed to dip in the middle that they were over Mongrove's valley. Now they would have to pass through the clouds. There was no choice.
The locomotive began to descend, passing through layer after grey layer of the thick, swirling mist until it emerged, finally, over Mongrove's valley. Jherek and Lord Jagged looked down upon a blighted landscape of festering marsh and leafless, stunted trees, of bleak boulders, of withered shrubs and dank moss. In the very centre of all this desolation squatted the vast, cheerless complex of buildings and enclosures which was surrounded by a great, glabrous wall and dominated by Mongrove's dark, obsidian castle. From the castle's ragged towers shone a few dim, yellowish lights.
Almost immediately a force dome appeared over the castle and its environs. It turned the falling rain to steam. Then Mongrove's voice, amplified fiftyfold, boomed from the now partially hidden castle.
"What enemy approaches to plague and threaten despondent Mongrove?"
Although Mongrove's detectors would already have identified them, Jagged answered with good humour.
"It is I, dear Mongrove. Your good friend Lord Jagged of Canaria."
"And another."
"Yes, another. Jherek Carnelian is well known to you surely?"
"Well known and well hated. He is not welcome here, Lord Jagged."
"And I? Am I not welcome?"
"None are welcome at Castle Mongrove, but you may enter, if you wish."
"And my friend Jherek?"
"If you insist upon bringing him with you — and if I have his word, Lord Jagged, that he is not here to play one of his cruel jests upon me."
"You have my word, Mongrove," said Jherek.
"Then," said Mongrove reluctantly, "enter."
The force dome vanished; the rain fell unhindered upon the basalt and the obsidian. For the sake of politeness, Jherek did not take his locomotive over the wall. Instead he brought the aircar to the swampy ground and waited until the massive iron gates groaned open just wide enough to admit the locomotive, which shuffled merrily through, giving out multicoloured smoke from its funnel and its bogies — a most incongruous sight and one which was bound to displease Mongrove. Yet Jherek could not resist it. Mongrove desired so much to be baited, he felt, and he desired so much to bait him that he let few opportunities go. Lord Jagged placed a hand on Jherek's shoulder.
"It would improve matters and make our task the easier if we were to forgo the smoke, jolly Jherek."
"Very well!" Jherek laughed and ordered the smoke to stop. "Perhaps I should have designed a more funereal carriage altogether. For the occasion. One of those black ships of the Four Year Empire would do. Oh, death meant so much to them in those days. Are we missing something, I wonder?"
"I have wondered that. Still, we have all of us died so many times and been recreated so many times that the thrill is gone. For them — especially the heavy folk of the Four Year Empire — it was an experience they could have only three or four times at most before their systems gave out. Strange."
They were nearing the main entrance of the castle itself, passing through narrow streets full of lowering, dark walls and iron fences behind which dim shapes could be seen moving occasionally. The large part of all this was Mongrove's menagerie.
"He has added a great deal to it since I was last here," said Jherek. "I hadn't realised."
"You had best follow my lead," said Lord Jagged. "I will gauge Mongrove's mood and ask, casually, if we can see the menagerie. Perhaps after lunch, if he offers us lunch."
"I remember the last lunch I had here," Jherek said with a shudder. "Raw Turyian dungwhale prepared in the style of the Zhadash primitives who hunted it, I gather, on Ganesha in the 89th century."
"You do remember it well."
"I could never forget it. I have never questioned Mongrove's artistry , Lord Jagged. Like me, he is a stickler for detail."
"And that is why this rivalry exists between you, I shouldn't wonder. You are of similar temperaments, really."
Jherek laughed. "Perhaps. Though I think I prefer the way in which I express mine!"
They went under a portcullis and entered a cobbled courtyard. The locomotive stopped.
Rain fell on the cobbles. Somewhere a sad bell tolled and tolled and tolled.
And there was Mongrove. He was dressed in dark green robes, his great chin sunk upon his huge chest, his brooding eyes regarding them from a head which seemed itself carved from rock. His monstrous, ten foot frame did not move as they dismounted from the aircar and, from politeness, allowed themselves to be soaked by the chill rain.
"Good morning, Mongrove." Lord Jagged of Canaria made one of his famous sweeping bows and then tip-toed forward to reach up and grasp the giant's bulky hands which were folded on his stomach.
"Jagged," said Mongrove. "I am feeling suspicious. Why are you and that wretch Jherek Carnelian here? What plot's hatching? What devious brew are you boiling? What new ruse are you rascals ripening to make a rift in my peace of mind?"
"Oh, come, Mongrove — peace of mind! Isn't that the last thing you desire?" Jherek could not resist the jibe. He stood before his old rival in his new grey gown with his straw boater upon his chestnut curls and his hands on his hips and he grinned up at the giant. "It is despair you seek — exquisite despair. It is agony of soul such as the ancients knew. You wish to discover the secret of what they called "the human condition" and recreate it in all its terror and its pain. And yet you have never quite discovered that secret, have you, Mongrove? Is that why you keep this vast menagerie with creatures culled from all the ages, all the places of the universe? Do you hope that, in their misery, they will show you the way from despair to utter despair, from melancholy to the deepest melancholy, from gloom to unspeakable gloom?"