White Stars

2. A Stroll Across the Dark Continent

"We were all puzzled by him," agreed the Duke of Queens as he stepped carefully over an elephant, "but we put it down to an idiosyncratic sense of humour." He removed his feathered hat and wiped his brow. The redder plumes clashed horribly with his cerise skin.

"Some of his jokes," said the Iron Orchid with a glance of distaste at the crocodile clinging by its teeth to her left foot, "were rather difficult to see. However, he seems at one with himself now. Wouldn't you say?" She shook the reptile loose.

"Oh, yes! But then I'm notorious for my lack of insight." They strolled away from Southern Africa into the delicate knee-high forests of the Congo. The Iron Orchid smiled with delight at the brightly coloured little birds which flitted about her legs, sometimes clinging to the hem of her parchment skirt before flashing away again. Of all the expressions of the duke's obsession with the ancient nation called by him "Afrique", this seemed to her to be the sweetest.

They were discussing Lord Jagged of Canaria (who had vanished at about the same time as the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek). Offering no explanation as to how his friends might have found themselves, albeit for a very short while, in 19th-century London, together with himself, Jherek, some cyclopean aliens and an assortment of natives of the period, Jagged had returned, only to hide himself away underground.

"Well," said the duke, dismissing the matter, "it was rewarding, even if it does suggest, as Brannart Morphail somewhat emphatically pointed out, that Time itself is becoming unstable. It must be because of all these other disruptions in the universe we are hearing about."

"It is very confusing," said the Iron Orchid with disapproval. "I do hope the end of the world, when it comes, will be a little better organized." She turned. "Duke?" He had disappeared.

With a smile of apology he clambered back to land. "Lake Tanganyika," he explained. "I knew I'd misplaced it." He used one of his power rings to dissipate the water in his clothing.

"It is the trees," she said. "They are too tall." She was having difficulty in pressing on through the waist-high palms. "I do believe I've squashed one of your villages, Duke."

"Please don't concern yourself, lovely Iron Orchid. I've crowded too much in. You know how I respond to a challenge!" He looked vaguely about him, seeking a way through the jungle. "It is uncomfortably hot."

"Is not your sun rather close?" she suggested.

"That must be it." He made an adjustment to a ruby power ring and the miniature sun rose, then moved to the left, sinking again behind a hillock he had called Kilimanjaro, offering them a pleasant twilight.

"That's much better."

He took her hand and led her towards Kenya, where the trees were sparser. A cloud of tiny flamingoes fluttered around her, like midges, for a moment and then were gone on their way back to their nesting places.

"I do love this part of the evening, don't you?" he said. "I would have it all the time, were I not afraid it would begin to pall."

"One must orchestrate," she murmured, glad that his taste seemed, at long last, to be improving.

"One must moderate."

"Indeed." He helped her across the bridge over the Indian Ocean. He looked back on Afrique, his stance melancholy and romantic. "Farewell Cape City," he proclaimed, "farewell Byzantium, Dodge and Limoges; farewell the verdant plains of Chad and the hot springs of Egypt. Farewell!"

The Duke of Queens and the Iron Orchid climbed into his monoplane, parked nearby. Overhead now a bronze and distant sun brightened a hazy, yellow sky; on the horizon were old, worn mountains which, judging by their peculiar brown colouring, might even have been an original part of the Earth's topography, for hardly anyone visited this area.

As the duke pondered the controls, the Iron Orchid put her head to one side, thinking she had heard something. "Do you detect," she asked, "a sort of clashing sound?"

"I have not yet got the engine started."

"Over there, I mean." She pointed. "Are those people?"

He peered in the direction she indicated. "Some dust rising, certainly. And, yes, perhaps two figures. Who could it be?"

"Shall we see?"

"If you wish, we can —" He had depressed a button and the rest of his remark was drowned by the noise of his engine. The propeller began to spin and whine and then fell from the nose, bouncing over the barren ground and into the Indian Ocean. He pressed the button again and the engine stopped. "We can walk there," he concluded. They descended from the monoplane.

The ground they crossed was parched and cracked like old leather which had not been properly cared for.

"This needs a thorough restoration," said the Iron Orchid somewhat primly. "Who usually occupies this territory?"

"You see him," murmured the Duke of Queens, for now it was possible to recognize one of the figures.

"Aha!" She was not surprised. It had been two or three centuries since she had last seen the man who, with a bright strip of metal clutched in one gauntleted hand, capered back and forth in the dust, while a second individual, also clasping an identical strip, performed similar steps. From time to time they would bring their strips forcefully together, resulting in the clashing sound the Iron Orchid had heard originally.

"Lord Shark the Unknown," said the Duke of Queens. He called out, "Greetings to you, my mysterious Lord Shark!"

The man half-turned. The other figure leapt forward and touched his body with his metal strip. Lord Shark gasped and fell to one knee. Through the fishy mask he always wore, his red eyes glared at them.

They came up to him. He did not rise. Instead he presented his gauntleted palm. "Look!" Crimson liquid glistened.

The Iron Orchid inspected it. "Is it unusual?"

"It is blood, madam!" Lord Shark rose painfully to his feet. "My blood."

"Then you must repair yourself at once."

"It is against my principles."

Lord Shark's companion stood some distance away, wiping Lord Shark's blood from his weapon.

"That, I take it, is a sword," said the Iron Orchid. "I had always imagined them larger, and more ornate."

"I know such swords." Lord Shark the Unknown loosened the long white scarf he wore around his dark grey neck and applied it to the wound in his shoulder. "They are decadent. These," he held up his own, "are finely tempered, perfectly balanced epees. We were duelling," he explained, "my automaton and I."

Looking across at the machine, the Iron Orchid saw that it was a reproduction of Lord Shark himself, complete with fierce shark-mask.

"It could kill you, could it not?" she asked. "Is it programmed to resurrect you, Lord Shark?"

He dismissed her question with a wave of his blood-stained scarf.

"And strange, that you should be killed, as it were, by yourself," she added.

"When we fight, is it not always with ourselves, madam?"

"I really don't know, sir, for I have never fought and I know no-one who does."

"That is why I must make automata. You know my name, madam, but I fear you have the advantage of me."

"It has been so long. I looked quite different when we last met. At Mongrove's Black Ball, you'll recall. I am the Iron Orchid."

"Ah, yes." He bowed.

"And I am the Duke of Queens," said the duke kindly.

"I know you, Duke of Queens. But you had another name then, did you not?"

"Liam Ty Pam Caesar Lloyd George Zatopek Finsbury Ronnie Michelangelo Yurio Iopu 4578 Rew United," supplied the duke. "Would that be it?"

"As I remember, yes." A sigh escaped the gash which was the shark's mouth. "So there have been some few small changes in the outside world, in society. But I suppose you still while away your days with pretty conceits?"

"Oh, yes!" said the Iron Orchid enthusiastically. "They have been at their best this season. Have you seen the duke's 'Afrique'? All in miniature. Over there."

"Is that what it is called? I wondered. I had been growing lichen, but no matter."

"I spoiled a project of yours?" The duke was mortified.

Lord Shark shrugged.

"But, my lonely lord, I must make amends."

The eyes behind the mask became interested for a moment. "You would fight with me. A duel? Is that what you mean?"

"Well…" the Duke of Queens fingered his chin, "if that would placate you, certainly. Though I've had no practise at it."

The light in the eyes dimmed. "True. It would be no fight at all."

"But," said the duke, "lend me one of your machines to teach me, and I will return at an agreed hour. What say you?"

"No, no, sir. I took no umbrage. I should not have suggested it. Let us part, for I weary very swiftly of human company." Lord Shark sheathed his sword and snapped his fingers at his automaton, which copied the gesture. "Good day to you, Iron Orchid. And to you, Duke of Queens." He bowed again.

Ignoring the Iron Orchid's restraining hand upon his sleeve, the duke stepped forward as Lord Shark turned away. "I insist upon it, sir."

His dark grey, leathery cloak rustling, the masked recluse faced them again. "It would certainly fulfil an ambition. But it would have to be done properly, and only when you had thoroughly learned the art. And there would have to be an understanding as to the rules."

"Anything." The duke made an elaborate bow. "Send me, at your convenience, an instructor."

"Very well." Lord Shark the Unknown signed to his automaton and together they began to walk across the plain, towards the brown mountains. "You will hear from me soon, sir."

"I thank you, sir."

They strolled in the direction of the useless monoplane. The duke seemed very pleased. "What a wonderful new fashion," he remarked, "duelling. And this time, with the exception of Lord Shark, of course, I shall be the first."

The Iron Orchid was amused. "Shall we all, soon, be drawing one another's blood with those thin sticks of steel, extravagant duke?"

He laughed and kissed her cheek. "Why not? I tire of 'Cities', and even 'Continents' pall. How long is it since we have had a primitive sport?"

"Nothing since the ballhead craze," she confirmed.

"I shall learn all I can, and then I can teach others. When Jherek returns, we shall have something fresh for him to enjoy."

"It will, at least, be in keeping with his current obsessions, as I understand them."

Privately the Iron Orchid wondered if the duke would, at last, be responsible for an entirely new fashion. She hoped, for his sake, that he would, but it was hard, at the moment, to see the creative possibilities of the medium. She was afraid that it would not catch on.