As the light grew brighter, Jherek saw that they stood in quite a large room. The floor was stone and the whole place smelled of mildew. He saw rats running swiftly along the beams in the roof.
Jagged had crossed to a great pile of rags and debris and began to pull them to the ground. He had lost some of his composure in his haste.
"What is your part in this, Mr. Jackson?" said Mrs. Underwood, averting her eyes from the rats. "I am right, am I not, in believing that you have to an extent manipulated the destinies of myself and Mr. Carnelian?"
"Subtly, I hope, madam," said Jagged, still tugging at the heap. "For so abstract a thing, Time keeps a severe eye upon our activities. I had to be careful. It is why I adopted two main disguises in this world. I have travelled in Time a great deal, as you have probably guessed. Both to the past — and the future, such as it exists at all in my world. I knew about the 'End of Time' before ever Yusharisp brought the news to our planet. I also discovered that there are certain people who are, by virtue of a particular arrangement of genes, not so prone to the Morphail Effect as are others. I conceived a means of averting disaster for some of us…"
"Disaster, Jagged?"
"The end of all of us, dear Jherek. I could not bear to think that, having achieved such balance, we should perish. We had learned, you see, how to live. And it was for nothing. Such an irony was unbearable to me, the lover of ironies. I spent many, many years in this century — the furthest back I could go in my own machine — running complicated checks, taking a variety of people into the future, seeing how, as it were, they 'took' when returned to their own time. None did. I regret their fate. Only Mrs. Underwood stayed, apparently virtually immune to the Morphail Effect!"
"So you, sir, were my abductor!" she cried.
"I am afraid so. There!" He pulled the last of the coverings free, revealing the spherical time machine which Brannart Morphail had loaned to Jherek on his first trip to the Dawn Age.
"I am hoping," he continued, "that some of us will survive the End of Time. And you can help me. This time machine can be controlled. It will take you back to our own age, Jherek, where we can continue with our experiments. At least," he added, "it should. The instability of the megaflow at present is worrying. But we must hope. We must hope. Now, the two of you, enter the machine. There are breathing masks for both."
"Mr. Jackson," said Mrs. Underwood. "I will not be bullied any further." She folded her arms across her bosom. "Neither will I allow myself to be mesmerized by your quasi-scientific lecturings!"
"I think he is right, Mrs. Underwood," said Jherek hesitantly. "And the reason I came to find you was because you are prone to the Morphail Effect. At least in a time machine we stand a chance of going to an age of our choice."
"Remember how Jherek escaped hanging," said Lord Jagged. He had by now opened the circular outer door of the time machine. "That was the Morphail Effect. It would have been a paradox if he had died in that particular way in this age. I knew it. That was why I lent myself to what appeared to you, Mrs. Underwood, to be his destruction. There is proof of my good-will. He is not dead."
Reluctantly, she began to move with Jherek towards the time machine. "I shall be able to return?" she asked.
"Almost certainly. But I am hoping that you will not wish to when you have heard me out."
"You will accompany us?"
"My own machine is not a quarter of a mile from here. I must use it, for I cannot afford to abandon it. It is a very sophisticated model. It does not even register on Brannart's instruments. As soon as you are on your way, I will go to it and follow you. I promise you, Mrs. Underwood, that I am not deceiving you. I will reveal all I know upon our return to the 'End of Time.' "
"Very well."
"You will not find the interior of the machine pleasant," Jherek told her as he helped her into the airlock. "You must hold your breath for a moment." They crouched together in the cylinder. He handed her a breathing mask. "Fit this over your head, like so…"
He smiled as he heard her muffled complaints.
"Fear not, Mrs. Underwood. Our great adventure is almost ended. Soon we shall be back in our own dear villa, with roses climbing round the door, with our pipes and our slippers and our water closets! King Darby and Queen Joan in Camelot!" The rest of his effusion was muffled, even to his own ears, by the necessity of putting on his mask as the airlock began to fill with milky fluid. Jherek wished that there had been rubber suits of the kind normally used in the machine, for the stuff felt unpleasant and was soaking rapidly through their clothes. There was a look of outraged disgust, in fact, in Mrs. Underwood's eyes.
The machine filled rapidly and they drifted into the main chamber. Here certain instruments were already flashing green and red alternately, swimming about his head. They floated, unable to control their movements, in the thick liquid. As his body turned slowly, he saw that Mrs. Underwood had shut her eyes. Blue and yellow lights began to flash. The liquid became increasingly cloudy.
Figures, which he could not read, began to register on the display panels. A white light throbbed and he knew that the machine was on the very brink of beginning its journey into the future. He relaxed. Happiness filled him. Soon he would be home.
The white light burned his eyes. He became dizzy. Pain began to nag at his nerves and he stopped himself from screaming, for fear that she would hear him and be troubled.
The liquid grew dark until it was the colour of blood. His senses fled him.
He woke up knowing that the journey must be over. He tried to turn himself round so that he could see if Mrs. Underwood were awake. He could feel her body resting against his leg.
But then, surprisingly, the process began again. The green lights gave way to red, to blue and to yellow. The white light shrieked. The pain increased, the liquid became dark again.
And again he fainted.
He woke up. This time he stared directly into Mrs. Underwood's pale, unconscious face. He tried to reach out to take her hand and, as if this action were enough to begin it, the process started again. The green and red alternating lights, the blue and yellow lights, the blinding whiteness, the pain, the loss of his awareness. He woke up. The machine was shuddering. From somewhere there came a grating whine.
This time he screamed, in spite of himself, and he thought that Mrs. Underwood was also screaming. The white light throbbed. Suddenly it was totally black. Then a green light flickered. It went out. A red light flickered and went out. Blue and yellow lights flashed.
And then Jherek Carnelian knew that Lord Jagged's fears had been realized. There had been too many attempts at once to manipulate Time — and Time was refusing further manipulation. They were adrift. They were shifting back and forth at random on the timeflow. They were as much victims of the Morphail Effect as if they had never entered the time machine. Time was taking its vengeance on those who had sought to conquer it.
Jherek's one consolation, as he fainted again, was that at least he and Mrs. Underwood were together.
19. In Which Jherek Carnelian and Mrs. Amelia Underwood Debate Certain Moral Problems
"Mr. Carnelian! Please, Mr. Carnelian, try to wake up!"
"I am awake," he groaned, but he did not open his eyes. His skin felt pleasantly warm. There was a delicious smell in his nostrils. There was silence.
"Then open your eyes, please, Mr. Carnelian," she demanded. "I need your advice."
He obeyed her. He blinked. "What an extraordinarily deep blue," he said of the sky. "So we are back, after all. I became a trifle pessimistic, I must admit, when the machine seemed to be malfunctioning. How did we get out?"