In astonishment he now realized that the boat was occupied by a slight figure, clad in filmy white, whose face was pale and terrified. It could only be one of his friends, altering his appearance for some whimsical adventure. But which? Then he caught, through the rain, a better glimpse and he heard himself saying:
"A child? A child? Are you a child?"
She could not hear him; perhaps she could not even see him, having eyes only for the watery walls which threatened to engulf her little boat and carry her down to the land of Davy Jones. How could it be a child? He rubbed his eyes. He must be projecting his hopes — but there, that movement, that whimper! It was a child! Without doubt!
He watched, open-mouthed, as she was flung this way and that by the elements — his elements. She was powerless: actually powerless! He relished her terror; he envied her her fear. Where had she come from? Save for himself and Jherek Carnelian there had not been a child on the planet for thousands upon thousands of years.
He leaned further out, studying her smooth skin, her lovely rounded limbs. Her eyes were tight shut now as the waves crashed upon her fragile craft; her delicate fingers, unstrong, courageous, clung hard to the side; her white dress was wet, outlining her new-formed breasts; water poured from her long, auburn hair. She panted in delicious impotence.
"It is a child!" Werther exclaimed. "A sweet, frightened child!"
And in his excitement he toppled from his parachute with an astonished yell, and landed with a crash, which winded him, in the sea-shell boat beside the girl. She opened her eyes as he turned his head to apologize. Plainly she had not been aware of his presence overhead. For a moment he could not speak, though his lips moved. But she screamed.
"My dear…" The words were thin and high and they faded into the wind. He struggled to raise himself on his elbows. "I apologize…"
She screamed again. She crept as far away from him as possible. Still she clung to her flimsy boat's side as the waves played with it: a thoughtless giant with too delicate a toy; inevitably, it must shatter. He waved his hand to indicate his parachute, but it had already been borne away. His cloak was caught by the wind and wrapped itself around his arm; he struggled to free himself and became further entangled; he heard a new scream and then some demoralized whimpering.
"I will save you!" he shouted, by way of reassurance, but his voice was muffled even in his own ears. It was answered by a further pathetic shriek. As the cloak was saturated it became increasingly difficult for him to escape its folds. He lost his temper and was deeper enmeshed. He tore at the thing. He freed his head.
"I am not your enemy, tender one, but your saviour," he said. It was obvious that she could not hear him. With an impatient gesture he flung off his cloak at last and twisted a power ring. The volume of noise was immediately reduced. Another twist and the waves became calmer. She stared at him in wonder.
"Did you do that?" she asked.
"Of course. It is my scene, you see. But how you came to enter it, I do not know!"
"You are a wizard, then?" she said.
"Not at all. I have no interest in sport." He clapped his hands and his parachute re-appeared, perhaps a trifle reluctantly as if it had enjoyed its brief independence, and drifted down until it was level with the boat. Werther lightened the sky. He could not bring himself, however, to dismiss the rain, but he let a little sun shine through it.
"There," he said. "The storm has passed, eh? Did you like your experience?"
"It was horrifying! I was so afraid. I thought I would drown."
"Yes? And did you like it?"
She was puzzled, unable to answer as he helped her aboard the nacelle and ordered the parachute home.
"You are a wizard!" she said. She did not seem disappointed. He did not quiz her as to her meaning. For the moment, if not for always, he was prepared to let her identify him however she wished.
"You are actually a child?" he asked hesitantly. "I do not mean to be insulting. A time traveller, perhaps? Or from another planet?"
"Oh, no. I am an orphan. My father and mother are now dead. I was born on Earth some fourteen years ago." She looked in faint dismay over the side of the craft as they were whisked swiftly upward. " They were time travellers. We made our home in a forgotten menagerie — underground, but it was pleasant. My parents feared recapture, you see. Food still grew in the menagerie. There were books, too, and they taught me to read — and there were other records through which they were able to present me with a reasonable education. I am not illiterate. I know the world. I was taught to fear wizards."
"Ah," he crooned, "the world! But you are not a part of it, just as I am not a part."
The parachute reached the window and, at his indication, she stepped gingerly from it to the tower. The parachute folded itself and placed itself upon the wall. Werther said: "You will want food, then? I will create whatever you wish!"
"Fairy food will not fill mortal stomachs, sir," she told him.
"You are beautiful," he said. "Regard me as your mentor, as your new father. I will teach you what this world is really like. Will you oblige me, at least, by trying the food?"
"I will." She looked about her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. "You lead a Spartan life." She noticed a cabinet. "Books? You read, then?"
"In transcription," he admitted. "I listen. My enthusiasm is for Ivan Turgiditi, who created the Novel of Discomfort and remained its greatest practitioner. In, I believe, the 900th (though they could be spurious, invented, I have heard)…"
"Oh, no, no! I have read Turgiditi." She blushed. "In the original. Wet Socks — four hours of discomfort, every second brought to life and in less than a thousand pages!"
"My favourite," he told her, his expression softening still more into besotted wonderment. "I can scarcely believe — in this Age — one such as you! Innocent of device. Uncorrupted! Pure!"
She frowned. "My parents taught me well, sir. I am not…"
"You cannot know! And dead, you say? Dead! If only I could have witnessed — but no, I am insensitive. Forgive me. I mentioned food."
"I am not really hungry."
"Later, then. That I should have so recently mourned such things as lacking in this world. I was blind. I did not look. Tell me everything. Whose was the menagerie?"
"It belonged to one of the lords of this planet. My mother was from a period she called the October Century, but recently recovered from a series of interplanetary wars and fresh and optimistic in its rediscoveries of ancestral technologies. She was chosen to be the first into the future. She was captured upon her arrival and imprisoned by a wizard like yourself."
"The word means little. But continue."
"She said that she used the word because it had meaning for her and she had no other short description. My father came from a time known as the Preliminary Structure, where human kind was rare and machines proliferated. He never mentioned the nature of the transgression he made from the social code of his day, but as a result of it he was banished to this world. He, too, was captured for the same menagerie and there he met my mother. They lived originally, of course, in separate cages, where their normal environments were re-created for them. But the owner of the menagerie became bored, I think, and abandoned interest in his collection…"