The End of All Songs

6. Discussions and Decisions

Captain Mubbers and his men were sitting in a line on a kind of padded bench; they were cross-legged and tried to hide their knees and elbows, exposed since they had destroyed their pyjamas; all were blushing a peculiar plum colour and averted their eyes when the party containing Mrs. Persson and Mrs. Underwood entered the room. Inspector Springer sat by himself in a sort of globular chair which brought his knees close to his face; he tried to sip from a paper cup, tried to rise when the ladies came in, succeeded in spilling the coffee on his serge trousers; his grumble was half-protest, half-apology; he subsided again. Captain Bastable approached a black machine, marked with letters of the alphabet. "Milk and sugar?" he asked Mrs. Underwood.

"Thank you, Captain Bastable."

"Mr. Carnelian?" Captain Bastable pressed some of the letters. "For you?"

"I'll have the same, please." Jherek looked around the small relaxation room. "It's not like the stalls they have in London, is it, Captain Bastable?"

"Stalls?"

"Mr. Carnelian means coffee stalls," explained Mrs. Underwood. "I think it's his only experience of drinking coffee, you see."

"It is drunk elsewhere?"

"As is tea," she said.

"How crude it is, my understanding of your subtle age." He accepted a paper cup from Captain Bastable, who had already handed Mrs. Underwood her own. He sipped conscientiously, expectantly.

Perhaps they noticed his expression of disappointment. "Would you prefer tea, Mr. Carnelian?" asked Mrs. Persson. "Or lemonade? Or soup?"

He shook his head, but the smile was weak. "I'll forgo fresh experience for the moment. There are so many new impressions to assimilate. Of course, I know that this must seem familiar and dull to you — but to me it is marvellous. The chase! The scorpions! And now these huts!" He glanced towards the Lat. "The other three are not, then, back yet?"

"The others…?" Captain Bastable was puzzled.

"He means the ones the scorpions devoured," Mrs. Underwood began. "He believes…"

"That they will be reconstituted!" Mrs. Persson brightened. "Of course. There is no death, as such, at the End of Time." She said apologetically to Jherek: "I am afraid we lack the necessary technology to restore the Lat to life, Mr. Carnelian. Besides, we do not possess the skills. If Miss Brunner or one of her people were on duty during this term — but, no, even then it would not be possible. You must regard your Lat as lost forever, I fear. As it is, you can take consolation that they have probably poisoned a few scorpions. Happily, there being so many scorpions, the balance of nature is not noticeably changed, and thus we retain our roots in the Lower Devonian."

"Poor Captain Mubbers," said Jherek. "He tries so hard and is forever failing in his schemes. Perhaps we could arrange some charade or other — in which he is monumentally successful. It would do his morale so much good. Is there something he could steal, Captain Bastable? Or someone he could rape?"

"Not here, I'm afraid." But Captain Bastable blushed as he controlled his voice, causing Mrs. Persson to smile and say, "We are not very well equipped for the amusement of space-travellers, I regret, Mr. Carnelian. But we shall try to get them back to their original age — your age — as near to their ship as possible. They'll soon be pillaging and raping again with gusto!"

Captain Bastable cleared his throat. Mrs. Underwood studied a cushion.

Mrs. Persson said: "I forgot myself. Captain Bastable, by the way, Mrs. Underwood, is almost a contemporary of yours. He is from 1901. It is 1901, isn't it, Oswald?"

He nodded, fingering his cuff. "Thereabouts."

"What puzzles me, more than anything," continued Mrs. Persson, "is how so many people arrived here at the same time. The heaviest traffic in my experience. And two parties without machines of any kind. What a shame we can't speak to the Lat."

"We could, if we wished," said Jherek.

"You know their language?"

"Simpler. I have a translation pill, still. I offered them before, but no one seemed interested. At the Cafe Royal. Do you remember, Inspector?"

Inspector Springer was as sullen as Captain Mubbers. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. Occasionally a peculiar, self-pitying grunt would escape his throat.

"I know the pills," said Mrs. Persson. "Are they independent of your cities?"

"Oh, quite. I've used them everywhere. They undertake a specific kind of engineering, I gather, on those parts of the brain dealing with language. The pill itself contains all sorts of ingredients — but entirely biological, I'm sure. See how well I speak your language!"

Mrs. Persson turned her eyes upon the Lat. "Could they give us any more information than Inspector Springer?"

"Probably not," said Jherek. "They were all ejected at about the same time."

"I think we'll keep the pill, therefore, for emergencies."

"Forgive me," said Mrs. Underwood, "if I seem insistent, but I should like to know our chances of returning to our own periods of history."

"Very poor, in your own case, Mrs. Underwood," said Captain Bastable. "I speak from experience. You have a choice — inhabit some period of your future, or 'return' to a present which could be radically changed, virtually unrecognizable. Our instruments have been picking up all kinds of disruptions, fluctuations, random eddies on the megaflow which suggest that heavier than usual distortions and re-creations are occurring. The multiversal planes are moving into some sort of conjunction —"

"It's the Conjunction of the Million Spheres," said Mrs. Persson. "You've heard of it?"

Jherek and Mrs. Underwood shook their heads.

"There's a theory that the conjunction comes when too much random activity occurs in the multiverse. It suggests that the multiverse is, in fact, finite — that it can only sustain so many continua — and when the maximum number of continua is attained, a complete re-organization takes place. The multiverse puts its house in order, as it were." Mrs. Persson began to leave the room. "Would you care to see some of our operations?"

Inspector Springer continued to sulk and the Lat were still far too embarrassed to move, so Amelia Underwood and Jherek Carnelian followed their hosts down a short connecting tunnel and into a room filled with particularly large screens on which brilliantly coloured display models shifted through three dimensions. The most remarkable was an eight-arrowed wheel, constantly altering its size and shape. A short, swarthy, bearded man sat at the console below this screen; occasionally he would extend a moody finger and make an adjustment.

"Good evening, Sergeant Glogauer." Captain Bastable bent over the bearded man's shoulder and stared at the instruments. "Any changes?"

"Chronoflows three, four and six are showing considerable abnormal activity," said the sergeant. "It corresponds with Faustaff's information, but it contradicts his automatic reconstitution theory. Look at number five prong!" he pointed to the screen. "And that's only measuring crude. We can't plot the paradox factors on this machine — not that there would be any point in trying at the rate they're multiplying. That kind of proliferation is going on everywhere. It's a wonder we're not affected by it. Elsewhere, things are fairly quiescent at present, but there's a lot more activity than I'd like. I'd propose a general warning call — get every Guild member back to sphere, place and century of origin. That might help stabilization. Unless it's got nothing at all to do with us."

"It's too late to know," said Mrs. Persson. "I still hold with the reaction theory on the Conjunction, but where it leaves us — how we'll be affected — is anyone's guess." She shrugged and was cheerful. "I suppose it helps to believe in reincarnation."

"It's the sense of insecurity that I mind," said Glogauer.

Jherek made a contribution. "They're very pretty. It reminds me of some of the things the rotting cities still do."

Mrs. Persson turned back from where she was inspecting a screen. "Your cities, Mr. Carnelian, are almost as bewildering as Time itself."

Jherek agreed. "They are almost as old, I suppose."

Captain Bastable was amused. "It suggests that Time approaches senility. It's an attractive metaphor."

"We can do without metaphors, I should have thought," Sergeant Glogauer told him severely.

"It's all we have." Captain Bastable permitted himself a small yawn. "What would be the chances of getting Mrs. Underwood and Mr. Carnelian here back to the nineteenth century?"

"Standard line?"

Captain Bastable nodded.

"Almost zero, at present. If they didn't mind waiting…"

"We are anxious to leave." Mrs. Underwood spoke for them both.

"What about the End of Time?" Captain Bastable asked Glogauer.

"Indigenous? Point of departure?"

"More or less."

The sergeant frowned, studying surrounding screens. "Pretty good."

"Would that suit you?" Captain Bastable turned to his guests.

"It was where we were heading for, originally," Jherek said.

"Then we'll try to do that."

"And Inspector Springer?" Mrs. Underwood's conscience made her speak. "And the Lat?"

"I think we'll try to deal with them separately — they arrived separately, after all."

Una Persson rubbed her eyes. "If there were any means of contacting Jagged, Oswald. We could confer."

"There is every chance he has returned to the End of Time," Jherek told her. "I would willingly bear a message."

"Yes," she said. "Perhaps we will do that. Very well. I suggest you sleep now, after you've had something to eat. We'll make the preparations. If everything goes properly, you should be able to leave by morning. I'll see what the power situation is like. We're a bit limited, of course. Essentially this is only an observation post and a liaison point for Guild members. We've very little spare equipment or energy. But we'll do what we can."

Leaving the charting room, Captain Bastable offered Mrs. Underwood his arm. She took it.

"I suppose this all seems a bit prosaic to you," he said. "After the wonders of the End of Time, I mean."

"Scarcely that," she murmured. "But I do find it rather confusing. My life seemed so settled in Bromley, just a few months ago. The strain…"

"You are looking drawn, dear Amelia," said Jherek from behind them. He was disturbed by Captain Bastable's attentions.

She ignored him. "All this moving about in Time cannot be healthy," she said. "I admire anyone who can appear as phlegmatic as you, Captain."

"One becomes used to it, you know." He patted the hand which enfolded his arm. "But you are bearing up absolutely wonderfully, Mrs. Underwood, if this is your first trip to the Palaeozoic."

She was flattered. "I have my consolations," she said. "My prayers and so on. And my Wheldrake. Are you familiar with the poems of Wheldrake, Captain Bastable?"

"When a boy, they were all I read. He can be very apt. I follow you."

She lifted her head and, as they moved along that black, yielding corridor, she began to speak in slow, rounded tones:

For once I looked on worlds sublime,

And knew pure Beauty, free from Time,

Knew unchained Joy, untempered Hope;

And coward, then, I fled!

Captain Bastable had been speaking the same words beneath his breath. "Exactly!" he said, adding:

Detected now beneath the organ's note,

The organ's groan, the bellows' whine;

And what the Sun made splendid,

Bereft of Sun is merely fine!

Listening, Jherek Carnelian felt a peculiar and unusual sensation. He had the impulse to separate them, to interrupt, to seize her and to carry her away from this handsome Victorian officer, this contemporary who knew so much better than did Jherek how to please her, to comfort her. He was baffled.

He heard Mrs. Persson say: "I do hope our arrangements suit you, Mr. Carnelian. Is your mind more at ease?"

He spoke vaguely. "No," he said, "it is not. I believe I must be 'unhappy'."