The End of All Songs

10. In Which The Iron Orchid is not Quite Herself

Jherek still sought for Jagged. Leaving Amelia to spin a yarn untangled by his interruptions, he drifted a good distance roofward, until his love and the circle surrounding her were a pattern of dots below.

Jagged alone could help him now, thought Jherek. He had returned expecting revelation. If Jagged had been playing a joke on them, then the joke should be made clear; if he manipulated a story for the world's entertainment — then the world, as My Lady Charlotina had said, was entitled to a resolution. The play continued, it seemed, though the author had been unable to write the final scenes. He recalled, with a trace of rancour, that Jagged had encouraged him to begin this melodrama (or was it a farce and he a sad fool in the eyes of all the world? Or tragedy, perhaps?) and Jagged therefore should provide help. Yet if Jagged were vanished forever, what then?

"Why," said Jherek to himself, "I shall have to complete the play as best I can. I shall prove that I am no mere actor, following a road laid by another. I shall show I am a playwright, too!"

Li Pao, from the twenty-seventh century, had overheard him. Insistently clad in blue overalls, the ex-member of the People's Governing Committee, touched Jherek to make him turn.

"You consider yourself an actor in a play, Jherek Carnelian?"

"Hello, Li Pao. I spoke confused thoughts aloud, that is all."

But Li Pao was greedy for a discussion and would not be guided away from the subject. "I thought you controlled your own fate. This whole love-story business, which so excites the woman, did it not begin as an affectation?"

"I forget." He spoke the truth. Emotions jostled within him, each in conflict with the other, each eager for a voice. He let none speak.

"Surely," Li Pao smiled, "you have not come to believe in your role, as the ancient actors were said to do, and think your character's feelings are your own? That would be most droll." Li Pao leaned against the rail of his drifting gallery. It tilted slightly and began to sink. He brought it back until he was again level with Jherek.

"However, it seems likely," Jherek told him.

"Beware, Jherek Carnelian. Life becomes serious for you. That would never do. You are a member of a perfectly amoral society: whimsical, all but thoughtless, utterly powerful. Your actions threaten your way of life. Do I see a ramshackle vessel called Self-Destruction heaving its battered bulwarks over the horizon? What's this, Jherek? Is your love genuine, after all?"

"It is, Li Pao. Mock me, if you choose, but I'll not deny there's truth in what you say. You think I conspire against my own peace of mind?"

"You conspire against your entire society. What your fellows could see as your morbid interest in morality actually threatens the status quo — a status quo that has existed for at least a million years, in this form alone! Would you have all your friends as miserably self-conscious as me?" Li Pao was laughing. His lovely yellow face shone like a small sun. "You know my disapproval of your world and its pleasures."

"You have bored me often enough…" Jherek was amiable.

"I admit that I should be sad to see it destroyed. It is reminiscent of that Nursery you discovered, before you disappeared. I should hate to see these children face to face with reality."

"All this —" the sweep of an arm — "is not 'reality'?"

"Illusion, every scrap. What would happen to you all if your cities were to close down in an instant, if your heat and your light — the simplest of animal needs — were taken from you? What would you do?"

Jherek could see little point in the question. "Shiver and stumble," he said, "until death came. Why do you ask?"

"You are not frightened by the prospect?"

"It is no more real than anything else I experience or expect to experience. I would not say that it is the most agreeable fate. I should try to avoid it, of course. But if it became inevitable, I hope I should perish with good grace."

Li Pao shook his head, amused. "You are incorrigible. I hoped to convince you, now that you, of all here, have rediscovered your humanity. Yet perhaps fear is no good thing. Perhaps it is only we, the fearful, who attempt to instil our own sense of urgency into others, who avoid reality, who deceive others into believing that only conflict and unhappiness lead us to the truth."

"It is a view expressed even at the End of Time, Li Pao." The Iron Orchid joined them, sporting an oddly wrought garment, stiff and metallic and giving off a glow; it framed her face and her body, which was naked and of a conventional, female shape. "You hear it from Werther de Goethe. From Lord Shark. And, of course, from Mongrove himself."

"They are perverse. They adopt such attitudes merely to provide contrast."

"And you, Li Pao?" asked Jherek. "Why do you adopt them?"

"They were instilled into me as a child. I am conditioned, if you like, to make the associations you describe."

"No instincts guide you, then?" asked the Iron Orchid. She laid a languid arm across her son's shoulders. Apparently absent-minded, she stroked his cheek.

"You speak of instincts? You have none, save the seeking of pleasure." The little Chinese shrugged. "You have need of none, it could be said."

"You do not answer her question." Jherek Carnelian found himself a fraction discomfited by his mother's attentions. His eyes sought for Amelia, but she was not in sight.

"I argue that the question is meaningless, without understanding of its import."

"Yet…?" murmured the Iron Orchid, and her finger tickled Jherek's ear.

"My instincts and my reason are at one," said Li Pao. "Both tell me that a race which struggles is a race which survives."

"We struggle mightily against boredom," she said. "Are we not inventive enough for you, Li Pao?"

"I am unconvinced. The prisoners in your menageries — the time-travellers and the space-travellers — they condemn you. You exploit them. You exploit the universe. This planet and perhaps the star around which it circles draws its energy from a galaxy which, itself, is dying. It leeches on its fellows. Is that just?"

Jherek had been listening closely. "My Amelia said something not dissimilar. I could understand her little better, Li Pao. Your world and hers seem similar in some respects and, from what I know of them, menageries are kept."

"Prisons, you mean? This is mere sophistry, Jherek Carnelian, as you must realize. We have prisons for those who transgress against society. Those who occupy them are there because they gambled — normally they staked their personal freedom against some form of personal gain."

"The time-travellers often believe they stake their lives, as do the space-travellers. We do not punish them. We look after them."

"You show them no respect," said Li Pao.

The Iron Orchid pursed her lips in a kind of smile. "Some are too puzzled, poor things, to understand their fate, but those who are not soon settle. Are you not thoroughly settled, Li Pao? You are rarely missed at parties. I know many other time-travellers and space-travellers who mingle with us, scarcely ever taking up their places in the menageries. Do we use force to keep them there, my dear? Do we deceive them?"

"Sometimes."

"Only as we deceive one another, for the pleasure of it."

Once more, Li Pao preferred to change ground. He pointed a chubby finger at Jherek. "And what of 'your Amelia'? Was she pleased to be manipulated in your games? Did she take pleasure in being made a pawn?"

Jherek was surprised. "Come now, Li Pao. She was never altered physically — and certainly into nothing fishy."

Li Pao put his finger to a tooth and sighed.

The Iron Orchid pulled Jherek away, still with her arm about his shoulders. "Come, fruit of my loins. You will excuse us, Li Pao?"

Li Pao's bow was brief.

"I have seen Mrs. Underwood," the Iron Orchid said to Jherek, as they flew higher to where only a few people drifted. "She looks more beautiful than ever. She was good enough to compliment me on my costume. You recognize the character?"

"I think not."

"Mrs. Underwood did, when I reminded her of the legend. A beautiful little story I had one of the cities tell me. I did not hear all the story, for the city had forgotten much, but enough was gained to make the costume. It is the tale of Old Florence and the Night of Gales and of the Lady in the Lamp, who tended to the needs of five hundred soldiers in a single day! Imagine! Five hundred!" She licked purple lips and grinned. "Those ancients! I have it in mind to re-enact the whole story. There are soldiers here, too, you know. They arrived fairly recently and are in the menagerie of the Duke of Queens. But there are only twenty or so."

"You could make some of your own."

"I know, flesh of my flesh, but it would not be quite the same. It is your fault."

"How, maternal, eternal flower?"

"Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Reproductions, where originals can be discovered, are an absolute anathema. And they become scarcer, they vanish so quickly."

"Time-travellers?"

"Naturally. The space-travellers remain. But of what use are they?"

"Morphail has spoken to you, headiest of blooms?"

"Oh, a little, my seed. But all is Warning. All is Prophecy. He rants. You cannot hear him; not the words. I suppose Mrs. Underwood shall be gone soon. Perhaps then things will return to a more acceptable pattern."

"Amelia remains with me," said Jherek, detecting, he thought, a wistful note in his mother's voice.

"You keep her company exclusively," said the Iron Orchid. "You are obsessed. Why so?"

"Love," he told her.

"But, as I understand it, she makes no expression of love. You scarcely touch!"

"Her customs are not as ours."

"They are crude, then, her customs!"

"Different."

"Ah!" His mother was dismissive. "She inhabits your whole mind. She affects your taste. Let her steer her own course, and you yours. Who knows, later those courses might again cross. I heard something of your adventures. They have been furious and stunning. Both of you need to drift, to recuperate, to enjoy lighter company. Is it you, bloom of my womb, keeping her by your side, when she would run free?"

"She is free. She loves me."

"I say again — there are no signs."

"I know the signs."

"You cannot describe them?"

"They lie in gesture, tone of voice, expression in the eyes."

"Ho, ho! This is too subtle for me, this telepathy! Love is flesh touched against flesh, the whispered word, the fingernail drawn delicately down the spine, the grasped thigh. There is no throb, Jherek, to this love of yours. It is pale — it is mean, eh?"

"No, giver of life. You feign obtuseness, I can tell. But why?"

Her glance was intense, for her, but cryptic.

"Mother? Strongest of orchids?"

But she had twisted a power-ring and was falling like a stone, with no word of reply. He saw her drop and disappear into a large crowd which swarmed at about the halfway point, below.

He found his mother's behaviour peculiar. She exhibited moods he had never encountered before. She appeared to have lost some of her wit and substituted malice (for which she had always had a delicious penchant, but the malice needed the wit to make it entertaining); she appeared to show a dislike for Amelia Underwood which she had not shown earlier. He shook his head and fingered his chin. How was it, that she could not, as she had always done in the past, delight in his delight? With a shrug, he aimed himself for a lower level.

A stranger sped to greet him from a nearby gallery. The stranger was clad in sombrero, fancy vest, chaps, boots and bandoliers, all in blinding red.

"Jherek, my pod, my blood! Why fly so fast?"

Only the eyes revealed identity, and even this confused him for a second before he realized the truth.

"Iron Orchid. How you proliferate!"

"You have met the others, already?"

"One of them. Which is the original?"

"We could all claim that, but there is a programme. At a certain time several vanish, one remains. It matters not which, does it? This method allows one to circulate better."

"You have not yet met Amelia Underwood?"

"Not since I visited you at your ranch, my love. She is still with you?"

He decided to avoid repetition. "Your disguise is very striking."

"I represent a great hero of Mrs. Underwood's time. A bandit king — a rogue loved by all — who came to rule a nation and was killed in his prime. It is a cycle of legend with which you must be familiar."

"The name?"

"Ruby Jack Kennedy. Somewhere…" she cast about … "you should find me as the treacherous woman who, in the end, betrayed him. Her name was Rosie Lee." The Iron Orchid dropped her voice. "She fell in love, you know, with an Italian called 'The Mouser', because of the clever way he trapped his victims…"

He found this conversation more palatable and was content to lend an ear, while she continued her delighted rendering of the old legend with its theme of blood, murder and revenge and the curse which fell upon the clan because of the false pride of its patriarch. He scarcely listened until there came a familiar phrase (revealing her taste for it, for she was not to know that one of her alter egos had already made it): "Great stock is placed on authenticity, these days. Do you not feel, Jherek, that invention is being thwarted by experience? Remember how we used to stop Li Pao from giving us details of the ages we sought to recreate? Were we not wiser to do so?"

She had only half his attention. "I'll admit that our entertainments lack something in savour for me, since I journeyed through Time. And, of course, I myself could be said to be the cause of the fashion you find distressing."

She, in her own turn, had given his statements no close attention. She glared discontentedly about the hall. "I believe they call it 'social realism'," she muttered.

"My 'London' began a specific trend towards the recreation of observed reality…" he continued, but she was waving a hand at him, not because she disagreed, but because he interrupted a monologue.

"It's the spirit, my pup, not the expression. Something has changed. We seem to have lost our lightness of touch. Where is our relish for contrast? Are we all to become antiquarians and nothing more? What is happening to us, Jherek. It is — darkening…"

This particular Iron Orchid's mood was very different from that of the other mother, already encountered. If she merely desired an audience while she rambled, he was happy to remain one, though he found her argument narrow.

Perhaps the argument was the only one held by this facsimile, he thought. After all, the great advantage of self-reproduction was that it was possible to hold as many different opinions as one wished, at the same time.

As a boy, Jherek remembered, he had witnessed some dozen Iron Orchids in heated debate. She had enjoyed a phase where she found it easier to divide herself and argue, as it were, face to face, than to attempt to arrange her thoughts in the conventional manner. This facsimile, however, was proving something of a bore (always the danger, if only one opinion were held and rigorously maintained), though it had that quality which saves the bore from snubs or ostracism — and, unfortunately, encourages it to retain the idea that it is an interesting conversationalist — it had a quality of pathos.

Pathos, thought Jherek, was not normally evident in his mother's character. Had he detected it in the facsimile he had previously encountered? Possibly…

"I worship surprises, of course," she continued. "I embrace variety. It is the pepper of existence, as the ancients said. Therefore, I should be celebrating all these new events. These 'time-warps' of Brannart's, these disappearances, all these comings and goings. I wonder why I should feel — what is it? — 'disturbed'? — by them. Disturbed? Have you ever known me 'disturbed', my egg?"

He murmured: "Never…"

"Yes, I am disturbed. But what is the cause? I cannot identify it. Should I blame myself, Jherek?"

"Of course not…"

"Why? Why? Joy departs; Zest deserts me — and is this replacement called Anxiety? Ha! A disease of time-travellers, of space-voyagers to which we, at the End of Time, have always been immune. Until now, Jherek…"

"Softest of skins, strongest of wills, I do not quite…"

"If it has become fashionable to rediscover and become infected by ancient psychoses, then I'll defy fashion. The craze will pass. What can sustain it? This news of Mongrove's? Some machination of Jagged's? Brannart's experiments?"

"Symptoms both, the latter two," he suggested. "If the universe is dying…"

But she had been steering towards a new subject, and again she revealed the obsession of her original. Her tone became lighter, but he was not deceived by it. "One may also, of course, look to your Mrs. Underwood as an instigator…"

The statement was given significant emphasis. There was the briefest of pauses before the name and after it. She goaded him to defend her or deny her, but he would not be lured.

Blandly he replied. "Magnificent blossom, Li Pao would have it that the cause of our confusion lay within our own minds. He believes that we hold Truth at bay whilst embracing Illusion. The illusion, he hints, begins to reveal itself for what it is. That is why, says Li Pao, we know concern."

She had become an implacable facsimile. "And you, Jherek. Once the gayest of children! The wittiest of men! The most inventive of artists! Joyful boy, it seems to me that you turn dullard. And why? And when? Because Jagged encouraged you to play Lover! To that primitive…"

"Mother! Where is your wit? But to answer, well, I am sure that we shall soon be wed. I detect a difference in her regard for me."

"A conclusion? I exult!"

Her lack of good humour astonished him. "Firmest of metals, do not, I pray, make a petitioner of me. Must I placate a virago when once I was assured of the good graces of a friend?"

"I am more than that, I hope, blood of my blood."

It occurred to him that if he had rediscovered Love, then she had rediscovered Jealousy. Could the one never exist without the presence of the other?

"Mother, I beg you to recollect…"

A sniff from beneath the sombrero. "She ascends, I see. She has her own rings, then?"

"Of course."

"You think it wise, to indulge a savage —?"

Amelia hovered close to, in earshot now. A false smile curved the lips of the shade, this imperfect doppelganger. "Aha! Mrs. Underwood. What beautiful simplicity of taste, the blue and white!"

Amelia Underwood took time to recognize the Iron Orchid. Her nod was courteous, when she did so, but she refused to ignore the challenge. "Overwhelmed entirely by the brilliant exoticism of your scarlet, Mrs. Carnelian."

A tilt of the brim. "And what role, my dear, do you adopt today?"

"I regret we came merely as ourselves. But did I not see you earlier, in that box-like costume, then later in a yellow gown of some description? So many excellent disguises."

"I think there is one in yellow, yes. I forget. Sometimes, I feel so full of rich ideas, I must indulge more than one. You must think me coarse, dear ancestor."

"Never that, lushest of orchids."

Jherek was amused. It was the first time he had heard Mrs. Underwood use such language. He began to enjoy the encounter, but the Iron Orchid refused further sport. She leaned forward. Her son was blessed with an ostentatious kiss; Amelia Underwood was pecked. "Brannart has arrived. I promised him an account of 1896. Surly he might be, but rarely dull. For the moment, then, dear children."

She began to pirouette downwards. Jherek wondered where she had seen Brannart Morphail, for the hunchbacked, club-footed scientist was not in evidence.

Amelia Underwood settled on his arm again. "Your mother seems distraught. Not as self-contained as usual."

"It is because she divides herself too much. The substance of each facsimile is a little thin." He explained.

"Yet it is clear that she regards me as an enemy."

"Hardly that. She is not, you see, herself…"

"I am complimented, Mr. Carnelian. It is a pleasure to be taken seriously."

"But I am concerned for her. She has never been serious in her life before."

"And you would say that I am to blame."

"I think she is perturbed, sensing a loss of control in her own destiny, such as we experienced at the Beginning of Time. It is an odd sensation."

"Familiar enough to me, Mr. Carnelian."

"Perhaps she will come to enjoy it. It is unlike her to resist experience."

"I should be glad to advise her on how best to cope."

He sensed irony, at last. He darted a glance of enquiry. Her eyes laughed. He checked a desire to hug her, but he touched her hand, very delicately, and was thrilled.

"You have been entertaining them all," he said, "down there?"

"I hope so. Language, thanks to your pills, is no problem. I feel I speak my own. But ideas can sometimes be difficult to communicate. Your assumptions are so foreign."

"Yet you no longer condemn them."

"Make no mistake — I continue to disapprove. But nothing is gained by blunt denials and denunciations."

"You triumph, as you know. It is that which the Iron Orchid finds uncomfortable."

"I appear to be enjoying some small social success. That, in turn, brings embarrassment."

"Embarrassment?" He bowed to O'Kala Incarnadine, as Queen Britannia, who saluted him.

"They ask me my opinion. Of the authenticity of their costumes."

"The quality of imagination is poor."

"Not at all. But none is authentic, though most are fanciful and many beautiful. Your people's knowledge of my age is sketchy, to say the least."

By degrees, they were drifting towards the bottom of the hall.

"Yet it is the age we know most about," he said. "Mainly because I have studied it and set the fashion for it, of course. What is wrong with the costumes?"

"As costumes, nothing. But few come close to the theme of '1896'. There is a span, say, of a thousand years between one disguise and another. A man dressed in lilac ducks and wearing a crusty (and I must say delicious looking) pork pie upon his head announced that he was Harald Hardrede."

"The prime minister, yes?"

"No, Mr. Carnelian. The costume was impossible, at any rate."

"Could he have been this Harald Hardrede, do you think? We have a number of distinguished temporal adventurers in the menageries."

"It is unlikely."

"Several million years have passed, after all, and so much now relies on hearsay. We are entirely dependent upon the rotting cities for our information. When the cities were younger, they were more reliable. A million years ago, there would have been far fewer anachronisms at a party of this kind. I have heard of parties given by our ancestors (your descendants, that is) which drew on all the resources of the cities in their prime. This masque must be feeble in comparison. There again, it is pleasant to use one's own imagination to invent an idea of the past."

"I find it wonderful. I do not deny that I am stimulated by it, as well as confused. You must consider me narrow-minded…"

"You praise us too much. I am overjoyed that you should find my world at last acceptable, for it leads me to hope that you will soon agree to be my —"

"Ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, and she pointed. "There is Brannart Morphail. We must give him our news."