"An illusion, my dear." Her voice softened in awe. "Perhaps your desires project…"
He began to move forward, tugging at her hand, through the patchwork grass, with Sweet Orb Mace, bemused, behind, to where the long table stood alone, spread with dishes, with meats and fruits, pastes and breads. "Food, mama! I can almost smell it. Oh, mama!"
He whimpered.
"Could it be real?" he entreated.
"Real or false, we cannot eat." No amount of self-control could stem the saliva gathering upon her palate. She had never seen so much food at one time. "We cannot remove our helmets, Snuffles." For a second, her visor clouded at her breath. "Oh…"
In the distance the city danced to a sudden fanfaronade, as if exulting in their wonderment.
"If you wish to begin…" murmured their guide, and he gestured at the food with his cane.
Her next word was moaned: "Temptation…" It became a synonym, on her lips, for fulfilment. To eat — to eat and be replete for the first time in her life! To sit back from that table and note that there was still more to eat — more food than the whole of the Armatuce, if they ate absolutely nothing of their rations for a month, could save between them. "Oh, such wickedness of over-production!"
"Mother?" Snuffles indicated the centre of the table.
"A pie."
They stared. As the voices of the Sirens entranced the ancient Navigators, so were they entranced by flans.
"A vewy simple meal, I thought," said Sweet Orb Mace, uncomfortable. "You do not eat so much, in yoah age?"
"We would not," she replied. "To consume it, even if we produced it, would be disgusting to us." Her knees were weak; resistance wavered. Of all the terrors she had anticipated in the future, this was one she could not possibly have visualized, so fearsome was it. She tried to avert her eyes. But she was human. She was only one woman, without the moral strength of the Armatuce to call on. The Armatuce and the world of the Armatuce lay a million or more years in the past. Her will drooped at this knowledge. A tear started.
"You cannot pwoduce it? Some disastah?"
"We could. Now, we could. But we do not. It would be the depths of decadence to do so!" She spoke through clenched teeth.
She and the boy remained transfixed, even when others arrived and spoke in reference to them.
"Time travellers. Their uniforms proclaim their calling."
"They could be from space."
"They are hungry, it seems. Let them eat. You were speaking of your son, maternal Orchid. This other self, what?"
"He lives through her. He tells me that he lives for her, Jagged! Where does he borrow these notions? I fear for his — 'health', is it?"
"You mean that you disapprove of his behaviour?"
"I suppose so. Jherek 'goes too far'."
"I relish the sound of your words, Iron Orchid. I never thought to hear them here."
"In Djer?"
"In any part of our world. My theories are confirmed. One small change in the accepted manners of a society and the result is hugely rich."
"I cannot follow you, allusive lord. Neither shall I try … The strangers do not eat! They only stare!"
"The twanslatahs," cautioned Mace. "They opahwate even now."
"I fear our visitors find us rude."
Dafnish Armatuce felt a soft touch upon her shoulder and turned, almost with relief, from the food to look up into the patrician features of a very tall man, clothed in voluminious lemon-coloured lace which rose to his strong chin and framed his face. The grey eyes were friendly, but she would not respond (daughter to father) as her emotions dictated. She drew away. "You, too, are real?"
"Ah. Call me so."
"You are not one of the illusions of that city?"
"I suspect that I am at least as real as Sweet Orb Mace. He convinces you?"
She was mute.
"The city is old," said the newcomer. "Its whimsicalities proliferate. Yet, once, it had the finest of minds. During those agitated centuries, when beings rushed willy-nilly about the universe, all manner of visitors came to learn from it. It deserves respect, my dear time traveller, if anything deserves it. Its memory is uncertain, of course, and it lacks a good sense of its identity, its function, but it continues to serve what remains of our species. Without it, I suspect that we should be extinct."
"Perhaps you are," she said quietly.
His shoulders moved in a lazy shrug and he smiled. "Oh, perhaps, but there is better evidence supporting more entertaining theories." His companion came closer, a woman. "This is my friend the Iron Orchid. We await other friends. For lunch and so on. It is our lunch that you are admiring."
"The food is real, then? So much?"
"You are obsessed with the question. Are you from one of the religious periods?"
She trusted that the child had not heard and continued hastily. "The profusion."
"We thought it simple."
"Mama!" Tugging, Snuffles whispered, "The lady's hand."
The Iron Orchid, long-faced with huge brown eyes, hair that might have been silver filigree, peacock quills sprouting from shoulder blades and waist, had one hand of the conventional, five-fingered sort, but the other (which she flourished) was a white-petalled, murmuring goldimar poppy, having at the centre scarlet lips like welts of blood.
"And I am called here Lord Jagged of Canaria," said the man in yellow.
"Mama!" An urgent hiss. But no, she would not allow the lapse, though it was with difficulty she redirected her own gaze away from the goldimar. "Your manners, lad," she said, and then, to the pair, "This is my boy, Snuffles."
The Iron Orchid was rapturous. "A boy! What a shame you could not have arrived earlier. He would have been a playmate for my own son, Jherek."
"He is not with you?"
"He wanders Time. The womb, these days, cannot make claims. He is off about his own affairs and will listen to no-one, his mother least of all!"
"How old is your son?"
"Two hundred — three hundred — years old? Little more. Your own boy?"
"He is but sixty. My name is Dafnish Armatuce. Of the Armatuce. We…"
"And you have travelled through Time to lunch with us." Smiling, the Orchid bent her head towards the child. Stroking him with the hand that was a goldimar, she cooed. He scarcely flinched.
"We cannot lunch." Dafnish Armatuce was determined to set an example, if only to herself. "I thank you, however."
"You are not hungry?"
"We dare not breathe your atmosphere, let alone taste your food. We wish merely to find our machine and depart."
"If the atmosphere does not suit you, madam," said Lord Jagged kindly, and with gentleness, "it can be adapted."
"And the food, too. The food, too!" eagerly declared the Iron Orchid, adding, sotto voce , "though I thought it reproduced perfectly. You eat such things? In your own Age?"
"Such things are eaten, yes."
"The selection is not to your satisfaction?"
"Not at all." Dafnish Armatuce permitted her curiosity a little rein. "But how did you gather so much? How long did it take?"
The Iron Orchid was bewildered by the question. "Gather? How long? It was made a few moments before we arrived."
"Wustically wavishing!" carolled Sweet Orb Mace. "A wondahfully wipping wuwal wepast!" He giggled.
"Two or three other time travellers join us soon," explained Lord Jagged. "The choice of feast is primarily to please them."
"Others?"
"They are inclined to accumulate here, you know, at the End of Time. From what Age have you come?"
"The year was 1922."
"Aha. Then Ming will be ideal." He hesitated, looking deep into her face. "You do not find us — sinister?"
"I had not expected to encounter people at all." The perfection of his manners threw her into confusion. She was bent on defying his charm, yet the concern in his tone, the acuteness of his understanding, threatened to melt resolve. These characteristics were in conflict with the childish decadence of his costume, the corrupt grotesquerie of his surroundings, the idle insouciance of his conversation; she could not judge him, she could not sum him up. "I had expected, at most, sterility…"