The End of All Songs
- Автор: Муркок Майкл
- Серия: Dancers at the End of Time #3
- Год: 1976
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The End of All Songs». Краткое содержание книги:
But as the pandemonium progresses, some delicious and long-held mysteries are revealed and some distressing omens appear on the horizon. Due to circumstances beyond their control, immortality - at least as far as the immortals know it - will never be the same again.
"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."