The crowd seemed to close in on her. Doctor Volospion had already wandered away, but there were others — every one of whom was a living, mocking parody of all she held to be admirable in Man. Her heart beat faster, at last unchecked. She sought for the only being in that whole unnatural, fatuous farrago who might help her escape, but Lord Jagged was gone.
And My Lady Charlotina broke through the throng, Death's Harlequin grinning and triumphant, drawing another woman with her. "A contemporary, dear Dafnish. Mutual reminiscence is now possible!"
"I must go…" began the time traveller. "Snuffles wearies. We can sleep in our ship."
"No, no! The air fete is hardly begun. You shall stay and converse with Miss Ming."
Miss Ming, at first bored, brightened, giving Dafnish Armatuce a quick glance which was at once questioning and appraising, warm and calculating. Miss Ming was a heavily built young woman whose long fair hair had been carefully brushed but had acquired no more of a lustre than her pale, unwholesome skin. She wore, for this Age, a simple costume, tight dungarees of glowing orange and a shirt and short jacket of pale blue. Now Dafnish Armatuce had her whole attention, was granted Miss Ming's smile of knowing and insincere sympathy.
"Your year?" My Lady Charlotina creased her golden forehead. "You said…"
"1922."
"Miss Ming is from 2067. Until recently she lived at Doctor Volospion's menagerie. One of the few human survivors, in fact."
Miss Ming's abrupt, monotonous voice might have seemed surly had it not been for the eagerness with which she imparted meaningless (to Dafnish Armatuce) confidences, coming closer than was necessary and placing intimate fingers upon her shoulder to say: "Some of Mongrove's diseases escaped and struck down half the inhabitants of Doctor Volospion's menagerie. By the time the discovery was made, resurrection was out of the question. Mongrove refuses to apologize. Doctor Volospion shuns him. I didn't know time travel was discovered in 1922. And," a girlish pout, "they told me that I was the first woman to go into Time."
Surely, Dafnish thought, she sensed aggression here.
"An all-woman team launched the craft." Miss Ming spoke significantly. "I was the first."
And Dafnish Armatuce, her boy hard alongside, chanted at this threat: "Time travel, Miss Ming, is the creation and the copyright of the Armatuce. We built the first backward-shifting ships two years ago, in 1920. This year, in 1922, I was chosen to go forward."
Miss Ming pursed lips which became thin and down-turned at the corners, giving her a slight leonine look, but she did not seek conflict. "Can we both be deluded? I am an historian, after all! I cannot be wrong. Aha! Illumination. A.D.?"
"I regret…"
"From what event does your calendar run?"
"From the First Birth."
"Of Christ?"
"Of a child, following the catastrophe in which all became barren. A method was discovered whereby —"
"There you have the answer! We are not even from the same millennium. Nonetheless," Miss Ming linked an arm through hers before she could react, and held it tight, "it needn't stop friendship. How delicate you are. How exquisite. Almost," insinuatingly, "a child yourself."
Dafnish pulled free. "Snuffles." She began to dab at his face with her wetted glove. The little boy turned resigned eyes upward and watched the circling machines and beasts. The crowd sighed and swayed, and they were jostled.
"You are married?" implacably continued Miss Ming. "In your own Age?"
"To a cousin of the Armatuce, yes." Dafnish's manner became more distant as she tried to move on, but Miss Ming's warm hand slipped again into the crook of her elbow. The fingers pressed into her flesh. She was chilled.
Three white bats swooped by, performing acrobatics in unison, their twenty-foot wings making the air hiss. A trumpet sounded. There was applause.
"I was divorced, before my journey." Miss Ming paused, perhaps in the hope of some morbid revelation from her new friend, then continued, girl-to-girclass="underline" "His name was Donny Stevens. He was well thought of as a scientist — a popular and powerful family too — very old — in Iowa. Rich. But he was like all men. You know. They think they're doing you a favour if they can get to your cubicle once a month, and if it's once a week, they're Casanova! No thanks! Someone said — Betty Stern, I think — that he had that quality of aggressive stupidity which so many women find attractive in a man: they think it's strength of character and, once they've committed themselves to that judgement, maintain it against all the evidence. Betty said dozens of the happiest marriages are based on it. (I idolized Betty). Unfortunately, I realized my mistake. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here, though. I joined an all-woman team — know what I mean? — anyway we got the first big breakthrough and made those dogs look sick when they saw what the bitches could do. And this Age suits me now. Anything goes, if you know what I mean — I mean, really! Wow! What kind of guys do you like, honey?"
She did not want Miss Ming's attentions. Again she cast about for Jagged and, as a rent appeared for a second in the ranks, saw him talking to a small, serious-faced yellow man, clad in discreet denim (the first sensible costume she had observed thus far). Hampered both by reluctant, sleepy son and clinging Ming, she pushed her way through posturing gallants and sparkling frillocks, to home slowly on Jagged, who saw her and smiled, bending to murmur a word or two to his companion. Then, as she closed: "Li Pao, this is Dafnish Armatuce of the Armatuce. Dafnish, I introduce Li Pao from the 27th century."
"She won't know what you're talking about!" crowed the unshakeable Miss Ming. "Her dates go from something she calls the First Birth. 1922. I was baffled myself."
Lord Jagged's eyes became hooded.
Li Pao bowed a neat bow. "I gather you find this Age disturbing, Comrade Armatuce?"
Her expression confirmed his assumption.
Li Pao's small mouth moved with soft, sardonic deliberation. "I, too, found it so, upon arrival. But there is little need to feel afraid, for, as you will discover, the rich are never malevolent, unless their security is threatened, and here there is no such threat. If they seem to waste their days, do not judge them too harshly; they know no better. They are without hungers or frustrations. Nature has long since been conquered by Art. Their resources are limitless, for they feed upon the whole universe (what remains of it). These cities suck power from any available part of the galaxy and transfer it to them so that they may play. Stars die so that on old Earth someone might change the colour of his robe." There was irony in his tone, but he spoke without censure.
Snuffles cried out as something vast and metallic appeared to drop upon the throng, but it stopped a few feet up, hovered, then drifted away, and the crowd became noisy again.
"The First Birth period?" Lord Jagged made a calculation. "That would place you in the year 9,478 A.D. We find the Dawn Age reckoning most convenient here. I understand your dismay. You are reconstituting your entire planet, are you not? From the core, virtually, outward, eh?"
She was grateful for his erudition. Now he and Li Pao seemed allies in this fearful world. She was able to steady her heart and recover something of her self-possession. "It has been hard work, Lord Jagged. The Armatuce have been fortunate in winning respect for their several sacrifices."