"The lunatic incendiary!" she cried, and she flung herself into the sky, not to go to her crackling palace (which was beyond salvaging) but to look down upon the world and discover the whereabouts of the Fireclown.
He was not a mile from the conflagration, standing on top of a great plinth meant to support a statue of himself which the Duke of Queens had never bothered to complete. He wore his black velvet, his bow tie, his shirt with its ruffles. He stood upon the plinth like a parrot upon its pedestal, shifting from side to side and flapping his arms at his sides as he studied his handiwork. He did not see My Lady Charlotina as, in golden gauze, she fluttered down towards him.
She paused, to hover a few feet above his head, she waited, watching him, until he became aware of her presence. She listened to him as he spoke to himself.
"Quite good. A fitting symbol. It will look well in any legends, I think. It is best for the first few miracles to be spectacular and not directed at individuals. I should not leave it too late, however, before rescuing the remains of any residents and resurrecting them."
She could not contain herself.
"I, sir, might have been the only resident of that castle in the clouds. Happily I had not arrived at it before you began your fire-raising!"
His little head jerked here and there. At last he looked up. "So!"
"The palace was to be my new home, Mr Bloom. It was impolite of you to destroy it."
"There were no inhabitants?"
"Not yet."
"Well, then, I shall be on my way."
"You make no attempt to apologize?"
Mr Bloom was amused. "I can scarcely apologize for something so calculating. You ask me to lie? I am the Fireclown. Why should I lie?"
She was speechless. Mr Bloom began to climb down a ladder he placed against the plinth. "I bid you good morning, madam."
"Good morning?"
"Or good afternoon — you keep no proper hours on this planet at all. It is hard to know. That will be changed," he smiled, "in Time."
"Mr Bloom, your purposes here are quite without point. Are we to be impressed by such displays?" She waved her hand towards the blazing palace. Her clouds had turned brown at the edges. "Time, Mr Bloom, is not what it was. Times, Mr Bloom, have changed since those primitive Dawn Ages when such 'miracles' might have provoked interest, even surprise, in the inhabitants of this world. Watch!" She turned a power ring. The fire vanished. An entire, if uninspired, fairy palace glittered again in the pristine clouds.
"Hum," said Mr Bloom, still on his ladder. He began to climb back to the top of the plinth. "I see. So Volospion is not the only conjurer here."
"We all have that power. Or most of us. It is our birthright."
"Birthright? What of my birthright?"
"You have one?"
"It is the world. I explained to Doctor Volospion, madam…" He was aggrieved. "Did he speak to no-one of my mission here?"
"He told us what you had said, yes."
"And you are not yet spiritually prepared, it seems. I left you plenty of time for contemplation of your fate. It is the accepted method, where Salvation is to be achieved."
"We have no need of Salvation, Mr Bloom. We are immortal, we control the universe — what's left of it — we are, most of us, without fear (if I understand the term properly)." My Lady Charlotina was making an untypical effort to meet Emmanuel Bloom halfway. It was probably because she had no strong wish to be at odds with him, since she was curious to know better the man who courted Miss Ming with such determination. "Really, Mr Bloom, you have arrived too late. Even a few hundred years ago, before we heard of the dissolution of the universe, there might have been some enjoyment for all, but not now. Not now, Mr Bloom."
"Hum." He frowned. He lifted a hand to his face and appeared to peck at his cuff. "But I have no other role, you see. I am a Saviour. It is all I can do."
"Must you save a whole world? Aren't there a few individuals you could concentrate on?"
"It hardly seems worthwhile. I am, to be more specific, a World Saviour — a Saver of Worlds. I have ranged the multiverse saving them. From all sorts of things, physical and spiritual. And I always leave the places I have saved spiritually regenerated. Ask any of them. They will all tell you the same. I am loved throughout the teeming dimensions."
"Then perhaps you could find another world…"
"No, this is the last. I left it long ago, promising that I would return and save it, as my final action."
"Well, you are too late."
"Really, madam, I cannot take your word for it. I am the greatest authority on such matters in the universe, to say the least. I am the Champion Eternal, Hero of a million legends. When Law battles Chaos, I am always called. When civilizations are threatened with total extermination, it is to me that they turn for rescue. And when decadence and despair rule an otherwise secure and prosperous world, it is for Emmanuel Bloom, the Fireclown, Time's Jester, that they yearn. And I come."
"But we did not call you, we require no rescuing. We are not yearning, I assure you, even a fraction."
"Miss Ming is yearning."
"Miss Ming's yearning is hardly spiritual."
"So you think. I know better."
"Well, then, I'll grant you that Miss Ming is yearning. But I am not yearning. Doctor Volospion is incapable, I am sure, of yearning. Yearning, all in all, Mr Bloom, is extinct in this Age."
"Forgotten, hidden, unheeded, but I know it is there. I know. A deep, unadmitted sadness. A demand for Romance. A pining for Ideals."
"We take up Romance from time to time, and we have an interest, on occasion, in Ideals — but these are passing enthusiasms, Mr Bloom. Even those of us most obsessed with such things show no particular misery when circumstances or changing fashion require that they be dropped."
"How shallow are those who dwell here now! All, that is, save Mavis Ming."
"Some think her the shallowest of us all." My Lady Charlotina regretted her spite, for she did not wish to seem malicious in Mr Bloom's eyes.
"It is often the case," he said, "with those who cannot see beyond flesh and into the soul."
"I doubt if there are many souls remaining among us," said My Lady Charlotina. "Since we are almost every one of us self-made creatures. There is even some speculation that we are not human at all, but sophisticated androids."
"It could be the explanation," he mused.
"I hope you will not be wholly frustrated," she said sympathetically, watching him climb down his ladder. "I can imagine what it is like to possess only one role."
She settled, like a butterfly, upon the vacated plinth.
He reached the ground and peered up at her, arms held stiffly, as usual, by his side, red hair flaring. "I assure you, madam," he piped, "that I am not in the least impressed by what you have told me."
"But I speak the truth."
"Unlike Volospion, who lies, lies, lies. I agree that you believe, like Miss Ming, that you speak the truth. But I see decadence. And where there is decadence there is misery. And where there is misery then must come the Fireclown, to bring laughter, joy, terror, to banish all anxieties."
"Your logic is, I fear, obsolete, Mr Bloom. There is no misery here, to speak of. And," she added, "there is no joy. Instead, we have a comfortable balance. It enables us to contemplate our own end with a certain grace."
"Hum."
"Surely this equilibrium is what all human morality and philosophy has striven for over the millennia?" she said, seating herself on the edge of the plinth and arranging her gold gauze about her legs. "Would you set the see-saw swinging again?"
He frowned. "No heights or depths here, eh?"
"For most of us, no."
"No Heaven and Hell?"
"Only those we create for our own amusement."
"No Terror and no Ecstasy?"
"Scarcely a scrap."
"How can you bear it?"