"Never that, lushest of orchids."
Jherek was amused. It was the first time he had heard Mrs. Underwood use such language. He began to enjoy the encounter, but the Iron Orchid refused further sport. She leaned forward. Her son was blessed with an ostentatious kiss; Amelia Underwood was pecked. "Brannart has arrived. I promised him an account of 1896. Surly he might be, but rarely dull. For the moment, then, dear children."
She began to pirouette downwards. Jherek wondered where she had seen Brannart Morphail, for the hunchbacked, club-footed scientist was not in evidence.
Amelia Underwood settled on his arm again. "Your mother seems distraught. Not as self-contained as usual."
"It is because she divides herself too much. The substance of each facsimile is a little thin." He explained.
"Yet it is clear that she regards me as an enemy."
"Hardly that. She is not, you see, herself…"
"I am complimented, Mr. Carnelian. It is a pleasure to be taken seriously."
"But I am concerned for her. She has never been serious in her life before."
"And you would say that I am to blame."
"I think she is perturbed, sensing a loss of control in her own destiny, such as we experienced at the Beginning of Time. It is an odd sensation."
"Familiar enough to me, Mr. Carnelian."
"Perhaps she will come to enjoy it. It is unlike her to resist experience."
"I should be glad to advise her on how best to cope."
He sensed irony, at last. He darted a glance of enquiry. Her eyes laughed. He checked a desire to hug her, but he touched her hand, very delicately, and was thrilled.
"You have been entertaining them all," he said, "down there?"
"I hope so. Language, thanks to your pills, is no problem. I feel I speak my own. But ideas can sometimes be difficult to communicate. Your assumptions are so foreign."
"Yet you no longer condemn them."
"Make no mistake — I continue to disapprove. But nothing is gained by blunt denials and denunciations."
"You triumph, as you know. It is that which the Iron Orchid finds uncomfortable."
"I appear to be enjoying some small social success. That, in turn, brings embarrassment."
"Embarrassment?" He bowed to O'Kala Incarnadine, as Queen Britannia, who saluted him.
"They ask me my opinion. Of the authenticity of their costumes."
"The quality of imagination is poor."
"Not at all. But none is authentic, though most are fanciful and many beautiful. Your people's knowledge of my age is sketchy, to say the least."
By degrees, they were drifting towards the bottom of the hall.
"Yet it is the age we know most about," he said. "Mainly because I have studied it and set the fashion for it, of course. What is wrong with the costumes?"
"As costumes, nothing. But few come close to the theme of '1896'. There is a span, say, of a thousand years between one disguise and another. A man dressed in lilac ducks and wearing a crusty (and I must say delicious looking) pork pie upon his head announced that he was Harald Hardrede."
"The prime minister, yes?"
"No, Mr. Carnelian. The costume was impossible, at any rate."
"Could he have been this Harald Hardrede, do you think? We have a number of distinguished temporal adventurers in the menageries."
"It is unlikely."
"Several million years have passed, after all, and so much now relies on hearsay. We are entirely dependent upon the rotting cities for our information. When the cities were younger, they were more reliable. A million years ago, there would have been far fewer anachronisms at a party of this kind. I have heard of parties given by our ancestors (your descendants, that is) which drew on all the resources of the cities in their prime. This masque must be feeble in comparison. There again, it is pleasant to use one's own imagination to invent an idea of the past."
"I find it wonderful. I do not deny that I am stimulated by it, as well as confused. You must consider me narrow-minded…"
"You praise us too much. I am overjoyed that you should find my world at last acceptable, for it leads me to hope that you will soon agree to be my —"
"Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, and she pointed. "There is Brannart Morphail. We must give him our news."
11. A Few Quiet Moments in the Menagerie
"…And thus it was, mightiest of minds, that we returned," concluded Jherek, reaching for a partridge tree which drifted past — he picked two fruits, one for himself and one for Mrs. Underwood, at his side. "Is the information enough to recompense for my loss of your machine?"
"Scarcely!" Brannart had added another foot or two to his hump since they had last met. Now it towered, taller than his body, tending to overbalance him. Perhaps to compensate, he had increased the size of his club foot. "A fabrication. Your tale defies logic. Everywhere you display ignorance of the real nature of Time."
"I thought we brought fresh knowledge, um, Professor," said she, half-distracted as she watched a crocodile of some twenty boys and girls, in identical dungarees, float past, following yet another Iron Orchid, a piping harlequin, towards the roof. Argonheart Po, huge and jolly, in a tall white chef's hat (he had come as Captain Cook), rolled in their wake, distributing edible revolvers. "It would suggest, for instance, that it is now possible for me to return to the nineteenth century, without danger."
"You still wish to return, Amelia?" What was the lurch in the region of his navel? He dissipated the remainder of his partridge.
"Should I not?"
"I assumed you were content."
"I accept the inevitable with good grace, Mr. Carnelian — that is not necessarily contentment."
"I suppose it is not."
Brannart Morphail snorted. His hump quivered. He began to tilt, righted himself. "Why have you two set out to destroy the work of centuries? Jagged has always envied me my discoveries. Has he connived with you, Jherek Carnelian, to confuse me?"
"But we do not deny the truth of your discoveries, dear Brannart. We merely reveal that they are partial, that there is not one Law of Time, but many!"
"But you bring no proof."
"You are blind to it, Brannart. We are the proof. Here we stand, immune to your undeniably exquisite but not infallible Effect. It is a fine Effect, most brilliant of brains, and applies in billions, at least, of cases — but occasionally…"
A large green tear rolled down the scientist's cheek. "For millennia I have tried to keep the torch of true research alight, single-handed. While the rest of you have devoted your energies to phantasies and whimsicalities, I have toiled. While you have merely exploited the benefits built up for you by our ancestors, I have striven to carry their work further, to understand that greatest mystery of all…"
"But it was already fairly understood, Brannart, most dedicated of investigators, by members of this Guild I mentioned…"
"…but you would thwart me even in that endeavour, with these fanciful tales, these sensational anecdotes, these evidently concocted stories of zones free from the influence of my beloved Effect, of groups of individuals who prove that Time has not a single nature but several … Ah Jherek! Is such cruelty deserved, by one who has sought to be only a servant of learning, who has never interfered — criticized a little, perhaps, but never interfered — in the pursuits of his fellows?"
"I sought merely to enlighten…"
My Lady Charlotina went by in a great basket of lavender, only her head visible in the midst of the mound. She called out as she passed. "Jherek! Amelia! Luck for sale! Luck for sale!" She had made the most, it was plain, of her short spell of temporal tourism. "Do not bore them too badly, Brannart. I am thinking of withdrawing my patronage."