Lord Jagged of Canaria turned a handsome head to contemplate the source of this interruption. "Ah, my dear chap. I was looking for you. You need help, I gather."
"To get off this damned island."
"And to leave this damned era, too, do you not?"
"If you are in a position…"
"You must forgive me for my tardiness. Urgent problems. Now solved." The swan began to glide towards the time-traveller, settling on the rocky shore so that he could climb aboard. They heard the time-traveller say: "This is a great relief, Lord Jagged. One of the quartz rods requires attention, also two or three of the instruments need adjusting…"
"Quite so," came Jagged's voice. "I head now for Castle Canaria where we shall discuss the matter in full."
The swan rose high into the air and disappeared above one of the cliffs, leaving Jherek and Amelia staring after it.
"Was that Jagged?" It was the Iron Orchid, at the entrance to the tent. "He said he might come. Amelia, everyone is remarking on your absence."
Amelia went to her. "Dearest Orchid, be hostess for a little while. I am still inexperienced. I tire. Jherek and I would rest from the excitement."
The Iron Orchid was sympathetic. "I will give them your apologies. Return soon, for our sakes."
"I will."
Jherek had already summoned the locomotive. It awaited them, blue and white steam drifting from its funnel, emeralds and sapphires winking.
As they climbed into the air they looked down on the scene of Amelia's first social creation. Against the surrounding landscape it resembled some vast and terrible wound; as if the Earth were living flesh and a gigantic spear had been driven into its side.
Shortly, the city appeared upon the horizon, its oddly shaped, corroded towers, its varicoloured halo, its drifting streamers and clouds of chemical vapour, its little grumblings and murmurings, its peculiar half-organic, half-metallic odour, filling them both with a peculiar sense of nostalgia, as if for happier, simpler days.
They had not spoken since they had left; neither, it seemed, was capable of beginning a conversation; neither could come to terms with feelings which were, to Jherek at least, completely unfamiliar. He thought that for all her gaudy new finery he had never known her so despairing. She hinted at this despair, yet denied it when questioned. Used to paradox, believing it the stuff of existence, he found this particular paradox decidedly unwelcome.
"You will look for Mr. Underwood?" he asked, as they approached the city.
"And you?"
He knew foreboding. He wished to volunteer to accompany her, but was overwhelmed by unusual and probably unnecessary tact.
"Oh, I'll seek the haunts of my boyhood."
"Isn't that Brannart?"
"Where?" He peered.
She was pointing into a tangle of ancient, rotten machinery. "I thought in there. But he has gone. I even glimpsed one of those Lat, too."
"What would Brannart want with the Lat?"
"Nothing, of course."
They had flown past, but though he looked back, he saw no sign either of Brannart Morphail or the Lat. "It would explain why he did not attend the party."
"I assumed that was pique, only."
"He could never resist an opportunity in the past to air his portentous opinions," said Jherek. "I am of the belief that he still works to thwart our Lord Jagged, but that he cannot be successful. The time-traveller was explaining to me, as I recall, why Brannart's methods fail."
"So Brannart is out of favour," said she. "He did much to help you at first." She chided him.
"By sending you back to Bromley? He forgets, when he berates us for our meddling with Time, that a great deal of what happened was because of his connivance with My Lady Charlotina. Waste no sympathy on Brannart, Amelia."
"Sympathy? Oh, I have little of that now." She had returned to her frigid, sardonic manner.
This fresh ambiguity caused further retreat into his own thoughts. He had surprised himself with his criticisms, having half a notion that he did not really intend to attack Brannart Morphail at all. He was inexpert in this business of accusation and self-immolation: a novice in the expression of emotional pain, whereas she, it now seemed, was a veteran. He floundered, he who had known only extrovert joy, innocent love; he floundered in a swamp which she in her ambivalence created for them both. Perhaps it would have been better if she had never announced her love and retained her stern reliance upon Bromley and its mores, left him to play the gallant, the suitor, with all the extravagance of his world. Were his accusations really directed at her, or even at himself? And did she not actually rack her own psyche, all aggression turned upon herself and only incidentally upon him, so that he could not react as one who is threatened, must thresh about for an object, another person, upon whom to vent his building wrath, as a beaten dog snaps at a neutral hand, unable to contemplate the possibility that it is its master's victim?
All this was too much for Jherek Carnelian. He sought relief in the outer world; they flew across a lake whose surface was a rainbow swirl, bubbling and misty, then across a field of lapis lazuli dotted with carved stone columns, the remnants of some peculiar two hundred thousandth-century technology. He saw, ahead, the mile-wide pit where not long since they had awaited the end of the world. He made the locomotive circle and land in the middle of a group of ruins wreathed in bright orange fire, each flame an almost familiar shape. He helped her from the footplate and they stood in frozen attitudes for a second before he looked deliberately into her kohl-circled eyes to see if she guessed his thoughts, for he had no words — to express them; the vocabulary of the End of Time was rich only in hyperbole. He reflected then that it had been his original impulse to expand his own vocabulary, and consequently his experience, that had led him to this present pass. He smiled.
"Something amuses you?" she said.
"Ah, no, Amelia. It is only that I cannot say what I wish to say —"
"Do not he constrained by good manners. You are disappointed in me. You love me no longer."
"You wish me to say so?"
"It is true, is it not? You have found me out for what I am."
"Oh, Amelia, I love you still. But to see you in such misery — it makes me dumb. The Amelia I now see is not what you are!"
"I am learning to enjoy the pleasures of the End of Time. You must allow me an apprenticeship."
"You do not enjoy them. You use them to destroy yourself."
"To destroy my old-fashioned notions. Not myself."
Perhaps those notions are essential. Perhaps they are the Amelia Underwood I love, or at least part of her…" He subsided; words again failed him.
"I think you are mistaken." Did she deliberately put this distance between them? Was it possible that she regretted her declaration of love, felt bound by it?
"You love me, still…?"
She laughed. "All love all at the End of Time."
With an air of resolve, she broke the ensuing silence. "Well, I will look for Harold."
He pointed out a yellow-brown metal pathway. "That will lead you to the place where you left him."
"Thank you." She set off. The dress and the boots gave her a hobbling motion; her normal grace was almost entirely gone. His heart went to her, but his throat remained incapable of speech, his body incapable of movement. She turned a corner, where a tall machine, its casing damaged to expose complicated circuits, whispered vague promises to her as she passed but became inaudible, a hopeless whore, quickly rebuffed by her lack of interest.
For a moment Jherek's attention was diverted by the sight of three little egg-shaped robots on caterpillar tracks trundling across a nearby area of rubble deep in a conversation held in a polysyllabic, utterly incomprehensible language; he looked back to the road. She was gone.