An Alien Heat

10. The Granting of Her Heart's Desire

My Lady Charlotina would have hidden Mrs. Amelia Underwood very well. As he recovered a little of his composure Jherek began to wonder how he might rescue his love. There would be no point in going to My Lady Charlotina's (his first impulse) and simply demanding the return of Mrs. Underwood. My Lady Charlotina would only laugh at him the more. No, he must visit Lord Jagged of Canaria and seek his advice. He wondered now, why Lord Jagged had not come to visit him since he had taken up with Mrs. Amelia Underwood. Perhaps Jagged had stayed away out of a rather overdeveloped sense of tact?

With a heavy heart Jherek Carnelian went to the outbuilding where, at Mrs. Underwood's suggestion he had stored his locomotive.

The door of the outbuilding was opened with a key, but he could not find the key. Mrs. Underwood had always kept it.

He was reluctant to disseminate the outbuilding now (she had been a stickler about observing certain proprieties of her own day and the business of keys and locks was one of the chief ones, it seemed), for all that it was frightfully ugly. But, with her disappearance, everything of Mrs. Underwood's had become sacred to him. If he never found her again this little Gothic house would stand in the same spot forever.

At length, however, he was forced to disseminate the door, order the locomotive out, and remake the door behind him. Then he set off.

As he flew towards Lord Jagged's the thought kept recurring to him that My Lady Charlotina would have seen nothing particularly wrong in disseminating Mrs. Amelia Underwood completely and irrevocably. It was unlikely that My Lady Charlotina would have gone that far — but it was possible. In that case Mrs. Underwood might be gone forever. She could not be resurrected if every single atom of her being had been broken down and spread across the face of the Earth. Jherek kept this sort of thought back as best he could. If he brooded on it there was every chance, he feared, of his falling into a depressive trance from which he would never wake.

The locomotive at last reached Lord Jagged's castle — all bright yellow, in the shape of an ornamental bird cage and a modest seventy-five feet tall — and began to circle while Jherek sent a message to his friend.

"Lord Jagged? Can you receive a visitor? It is I, Jherek Carnelian, and my business is of the gravest importance."

There was no reply. The locomotive circled lower. There were various "boxes" suspended on antigravity beams in the birdcage. Each box was a room used by Lord Jagged. He might be in any one of them. But, no matter which room he occupied, he would be bound to hear Jherek's request.

"Lord Jagged?"

It was plain that Lord Jagged was not at home. There was a sense of desertion about his castle as if it had not been used for several months. Had something happened to the Lord of Canaria?

Had My Lady Charlotina taken vengeance on him, too, for his part in the theft of the alien?

Oh, this was savage!

Jherek turned his locomotive toward the North and Werther de Goethe's tomb, expecting to find that his mother, the Iron Orchid, had also vanished.

But Werther's tomb — a vast statue of himself lying serenely dead with a gigantic Angel of Death hovering over his body and several sorrowing women kneeling beside him — was still occupied by the black pair. They were, in fact, on the roof near the feet of the reclining statue but Jherek did not see them at first, for both they and the statue were completely black.

"Jherek, my sorrow!" His mother sounded almost animated. Werther merely glowered and gnawed his fingernails in the background as the locomotive landed on the flat parapet, bringing a startling dash of colour to the scene. "Jherek, what ill tidings bring you here?" His mother produced a black handkerchief and wiped black tears from her black cheeks.

"Ill tidings, indeed," he said. He felt offended by what at the present moment seemed to him to be a mockery of his real anguish. "Mrs. Amelia Underwood has been abducted — perhaps destroyed — and My Lady Charlotina is almost certainly the cause of it."

"Her vengeance , of course!" breathed the Iron Orchid, her black eyes widening and a certain kind of amusement glinting in them. "Oh! Oh! Woe! Thus is great Jherek brought low! Thus is the House of Carnelian ruined! Oi moi! Oi moi!" And she added, conversationally, "What do you think of that last touch?"

"This is serious, mother, who brought me precious life…"

"Only so that you might suffer its torments! I know! I know! Oh, woe!"

"Mother!" Jherek was screaming. "What shall I do?"

"What can you do?" Werther de Goethe broke in. "You are doomed, Jherek. You are damned! Fate has singled you out, as it has singled me out, for an eternity of anguish." He uttered his bitter laugh. "Accept this dreadful knowledge. There is no solution. No escape. You were granted a few short moments of bliss so that you might suffer all the more exquisitely when the object of your bliss was snatched from you."

"You know what happened?" Jherek asked suspiciously.

Werther looked embarrassed. "Well, My Lady Charlotina did take me into her confidence a week or two ago…"

"Devil!" cried Jherek. "You did not try to warn me?"

"Of the inevitable? What good would it have done? And," said Werther sardonically, "we all know how prophets are treated these days! People do not like to hear the truth!"

"Wretch!" Jherek turned to confront the Iron Orchid. "And you, mother, did you know what Charlotina planned?"

"Not exactly, my misery. She merely said something about granting Mrs. Underwood her heart's desire."

"And what is that? What can it be but a life with me?"

"She did not explain." The Iron Orchid dabbed at her eyes. "She feared, not doubt, that I would betray her plan to you. After all, we are of the same fickle flesh, my egg."

Jherek said grimly: "I see there is nothing for me to do but confront My Lady Charlotina herself."

"Is this not what you wanted?" said Werther, sitting on a ledge above their heads, leaning his black back against his statue's marble knee and moodily swinging his legs. "Did you not court disaster when you courted Mrs. Underwood? I seem to recall some plan…"

"Be silent! I love Mrs. Underwood more than I love myself!"

"Jherek," said his mother reasonably, "you can take these things too far, you know."

"There it is! I am thoroughly in love. I am totally in love. My passion rules me. It is no longer a game!"

"No longer a game!" Even Werther de Goethe sounded shocked.

"Farewell, black, black betrayers. Traitors in jet — farewell!"

And Jherek swept back to his locomotive, pulled the whistle and hurled his aircar high into the dark and cheerless sky.

"Do not struggle against your destiny, Jherek!" he heard Werther cry. "Shake not your fist against uncompromising Fate! Plead not for mercy from the Norns, for they are deaf and blind!"

Jherek did not reply. Instead he let a great sob escape his lips and he murmured her name and the sound of her name brought all the aching anguish back to his soul so that at last he was silent.

And he came to Lake Billy the Kid, all serene and dancing in the sunlight, and he had a mind to destroy the Lake and Under-the-Lake and My Lady Charlotina and her menagerie and her caverns — to destroy the whole globe if need be. But he contained his rage, for Mrs. Amelia Underwood might even now be a prisoner in one of those caverns.

He left his locomotive drifting a few inches above the surface of the lake and he went through the Gateway in the Water and came to the cave with the walls of gold and the roof and floor of mirrored silver and My Lady Charlotina was waiting for him, knowing that he would come.

"I knew that you would come, my victim," she purred.

She was dressed in a gown of lily-coloured stuff through which her soft, pink body might be observed. And her pale hair was piled upon her head and secured by a coronet of platinum and pearls. And her face was serene and stern and proud and her eyes were narrowed and pleased and she smiled at him. She smiled at him. And she lay upon a couch covered in white samite over which white roses had been strewn. All the roses were white save one and that one she fingered. It was a rose of a peculiar bluish-green colour. Even as he approached her she opened her mouth and, with sharp ivory teeth, plucked a petal from the rose and tore that petal into tiny pieces which flecked her red lips and her chin and fell upon her bodice.

"I knew you would come."

He stretched out his arms and his hands became claws and he walked on stiff legs with his eyes on her long throat and would have seized her had not a force barrier stopped him, a force barrier of her own recipe which he could not neutralise.

He paused then.

"You are without wit, or charm, or beauty, or grace," he said sharply.

She was taken aback. "Jherek! Isn't that a little strong?"

"I mean it!"

"Jherek! Your humour! Where is it? Where? I thought you'd be amused at this turn of events. I planned it so carefully." She had the air of disappointed hostess, of someone who had given a party like that of the Duke of Queens (which nobody, of course, had forgotten or would forget until the Duke of Queens, who was still upset by it, managed to conceive some really out of the ordinary entertainment).

"Yes! And all knew of the plan, save myself and Mrs. Amelia Underwood."

"But that, naturally, was an important part of the jest!"

"My Lady Charlotina, you have gone too far! Where is Mrs. Amelia Underwood? Return her to me at once!"

"I shall not!"

"And, for that matter, what have you done with Lord Jagged of Canaria? He is not in his castle."

"I know nothing of Lord Jagged. I haven't seen him for months. Jherek! What is the matter with you? I was expecting some counter-jest. Is this it? If so, it is a poor return for mine…"

"The Iron Orchid said that you granted Mrs. Underwood her heart's desire. What did you mean by that?"

"Jherek! You're becoming dull. This is extraordinary. Come and make love to me, Jherek, if nothing else!"

"I loathe you."

"Loathe? How interesting! Come and make —"

"What did you mean?"

"What I said. I gave her the thing she desired most."

"How could you know what she desired most?"

"Well, I took the liberty of sending a little eavesdropper, a mechanical flea, to listen to some of your conversations. It soon became evident what she wanted most. And so I waited for the right moment, today — and then I did it!"

"Did what? Did what?"

"Jherek you have lost all your wit. Can't you guess?"

He frowned. "Death? She did at one point say that she would prefer death to…"

"No, no!"

"Then what?"

"Oh, what a bore you have become! Let me make love to you and then…"

"Jealousy! Now I understand. You love me yourself. You have destroyed Mrs. Underwood because you think that then I will love you. Well, madam, let me tell you —"

"Jealousy? Destroyed? Love? Jherek you have thrown yourself thoroughly into your part, I can see. You are most convincing. But I fear, something is missing — some hint of irony which would give the role a little more substance."

"You must tell me, My Lady Charlotina, what you have done with Mrs. Amelia Underwood."

She yawned.

"Tell me!"

"Mad, darling Jherek, I granted her…"

"What did you do?"

"Oh, very well! Brannart!"

"Brannart?"

The hunchbacked scientist limped from one of the tunnel mouths and began to cross the mirrored floor, looking down appreciatively at his appearance.

"What has Brannart Morphail to do with this?" Jherek demanded.

"I had to employ his help. And he was eager to experiment."

"Experiment?" said Jherek in a horrible whisper.

"Hello, Jherek. Well, she'll be there now. I only hope it's successful. If so, then it will open up new roads of inquiry for me. I am still interested in the fact that she did not come here in a time-machine…"

"What have you done, Brannart?"

"What? Well, I sent her back to her own time, of course. In one of the machines in my collection. If all went well she should be there by now. April 4, 1896, 3 a .m. Bromley, Kent, England. Temporal co-ordinates should offer no real trouble, but there might be a slight variance on the spatial. So unless something happened on the way back — you know, a chronostorm or something — she will…"

"You mean — you sent her back to … Oh!" Jherek sank to his knees in despair.

"Her heart's desire," said My Lady Charlotina. "Now do you appreciate the succulent irony of it, my tragic Jherek? See how I have produced your reversal? Isn't it a charming revenge? Surely you are amused?"

Jherek did his best to rally himself. Shaking, he raised himself to his feet and he looked past the smiling Lady Charlotina at Brannart Morphail, who, as usual, had missed all the nuances.

"Brannart. You must send me there, too. I must follow her. She loves me. She was on the point of declaring that love…"

"I know! I know!" My Lady Charlotina clapped her hands.

"Of declaring that love, when she was snatched from me. I must pursue her — across a million years if need be — and bring her back. You must help me, Brannart."

"Ah!" My Lady Charlotina giggled with delight. "Now I understand you, Jherek. How daring! How clever! Of course — it has to be! Brannart, you must help him."

"But the Morphail Effect…" Brannart Morphail stretched his hands imploringly out to her. "It is highly unlikely that the past will accept Mrs. Underwood back. It might propel her into her own near future — in fact that's the most likely thing — but it will send Jherek anywhere, back here, further forward, to oblivion possibly. Visitors from the future cannot exist in the past. The traffic, is, effectively, one-way. That is the Morphail Effect."

"You will do as I ask, Brannart," said Jherek. "You will send me back to 1896."

"You may have only a few seconds in that time — I cannot guarantee how long — before it — it spits you out." Brannart Morphail spoke slowly, as if to an idiot. "To make the attempt is dangerous enough. You could be destroyed in any one of a dozen different ways, Jherek. Take my advice…"

"You will do as he asks, Brannart," said My Lady Charlotina, tossing aside the rose of a peculiar bluish-green. "Can you not appreciate a properly realised drama when it is presented to you? What else can Jherek do? It is inevitable."

Again Brannart objected, growling to himself. But My Lady Charlotina drifted over to him and whispered something in his ear and the growling ceased and he nodded. "I will do what you want, Jherek, though it is, in all senses, a waste of time."