Brannart sneered. "I play such charades no longer!" But it seemed that he did not relish the threat. "Death looms, yet still you dance, making mock of the few who would help you!"
Mrs. Underwood understood. She murmured: "Wheldrake knew, Professor Morphail, when he wrote in one of his last poems —
But Brannart could not respond to her knowing, sympathetic smile. He looked bemused.
"It is very good," said Jherek dutifully, recalling Captain Bastable's success. "Ah, yes … I seem to recall it now." He raised empty, insincere eyes towards the roof, as he had seen them do. "You must quote me some of Wheldrake's verses, too, some day."
The sidelong look she darted him was not unamused.
"Tcha!" said Brannart Morphail. The small floating gallery in which he stood swung wildly as he shifted his footing. He corrected it. "I'll listen to nonsense no longer. Remember, Jherek Carnelian, let your master Lord Jagged know that I'll not play his games! From henceforth I'll conduct my experiments in secret! Why should I not? Does he reveal his work to me?"
"I am not sure that he is with us at the End of Time. I meant to enquire…"
"Enough!"
Brannart Morphail wobbled away from them, stamping impatiently on the floor of his platform with his monstrous boot.
The Duke of Queens spied them. "Look, most honoured of my guests! Wakaka Nakooka has come as a Martian Pastorellan from 1898."
The tiny black man, himself a time-traveller, turned with a grin and a bow. He was giving birth to fledgeling hawks through his nose. They fluttered towards the floor, now littered with at least two hundred of their brothers and sisters. He swirled his rich cloak and became a larger than average Kopps' Owl. With a flourish, off he flew.
"Always birds," said the Duke, almost by way of apology. "And frequently owls. Some people prefer to confine themselves by such means, I know. Is the party entertaining you both?"
"Your hospitality is as handsome as ever, most glamorous of Dukes." Jherek floated beside his friend, adding softly: "Though Brannart seems distraught."
"His theories collapse. He has no other life. I hope you were kind to him, Jherek."
"He gave us little opportunity," said Amelia Underwood. Her next remark was a trifle dry. "Even my quotation from Wheldrake did not seem to console him."
"One would have thought that your discovery, Jherek, of the Nursery and the children would have stimulated him. Instead, he ignores Nurse's underground retreat, with all its machinery for the control of Time. He complains of trickery, suggests we invented it in order to deceive him. Have you seen your old school-chums, by the by?"
"A moment ago," Jherek told him. "Are they enjoying their new life?"
"I think so. I give them less discipline than did Nurse. And, of course, they begin to grow now that they are free of the influence of the Nursery."
"You have charge of them?"
The Duke seemed to swell with self-esteem. "Indeed I have — I am their father. It is a pleasant sensation. They have excellent quarters in the menagerie."
"You keep them in your menagerie, Duke?" Mrs. Underwood was shocked. "Human children?"
"They have toys there — playgrounds and so on. Where else would I keep them, Mrs. Underwood?"
"But they grow. Are not the boys separated from the girls?"
"Should they be?" The Duke of Queens was curious. "You think they will breed, eh?"
"Oh! " Mrs. Underwood turned away.
"Jherek." The Duke put a large arm around his friend's shoulders. "While on the subject of menageries, may I take you to mine, for a moment — at least until Mongrove arrives? There are several new acquisitions which I'm sure will delight you."
Jherek was feeling overwhelmed by the party, for it had been a good while since he had spent so much time in the company of so many. He accepted the Duke's suggestion with relief.
"You will come too, Mrs. Underwood?" The Duke asked from politeness, it appeared, not enthusiasm.
"I suppose I should. It is my duty to inspect the conditions under which those poor children are forced to live."
"The nineteenth century had certain religious attitudes towards children, I understand," said the Duke conversationally to her as he led them through a door in the floor. "Were they not worshipped and sacrificed at the same time?"
"You must be thinking of another culture," she told him. She had recovered something of her composure, but there was still a trace of hostility in her manner towards her flamboyant host.
They entered a classic warren of passages and halls, lined with force-bubbles of varying sizes and shapes containing examples of thousands of different species, from a few viruses and intelligent microcosmic life to the gigantic two-thousand-foot-long Python Person whose spaceship had crashed on Earth some seven hundred years before. The cages were well-kept and reproduced, as exactly as was possible, the environments of those they contained. Mrs. Underwood had, herself, experience of such cages. She looked at these with a mixture of disgust and nostalgia.
"It seemed so simple, then," she murmured, "when I thought myself merely damned to Hell."
The Duke of Queens brushed at his fine Dundrearies. "My homo-sapiens collection is somewhat sparse at present, Mrs. Underwood — the children, a few time-travellers, a space-traveller who claims to be descended from common stock (though you would not credit it!). Perhaps you would care to see it after I have shown you my latest non-human acquisitions?"
"I thank you, Duke of Queens, but I have little interest in your zoo. I merely wished to reassure myself that your children are reasonably and properly looked after; I had forgotten, however, the attitudes which predominate in your world. Therefore, I think I shall —"
"Here we are!" Proudly the scarlet duke indicated his new possessions. There were five of them, with globular bodies into which were set a row of circular eyes (like a coronet, around the entire top section of the body) and a small triangular opening, doubtless a mouth. The bodies were supported by four bandy limbs which seemed to serve as legs as well as arms. The colour of these creatures varied from individual to individual, but all were nondescript, with light greys and dark browns proliferating.
"Is it Yusharisp and some friends?" Jherek was delighted to recognize the gloomy little alien who had first brought them the news of the world's doom. "Why has not Mongrove…?"
"These are from Yusharisp's planet," explained the Duke of Queens, "but they are not him. They are five fresh ones! I believe they came to look for him. In the meantime, of course, he has been home and returned here."
"He is not aware of the presence of his friends on our planet?"
"Not yet."
"You'll tell him tonight?"
"I think so. At an appropriate moment."
"Can they communicate?"
"They refuse to accept translation pills, but they have their own mechanical translators, which are, as you know, rather erratic."
Jherek pressed his face against the force-bubble. He grinned at the inmates. He smiled. "Hello! Welcome to the End of Time!"