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.
"I hope to see her soon. I hold her in great esteem and affection. She re-united me with Amelia."
"So she did."
The swan had settled; they disembarked onto a pale yellow beach that was lapped by white foam, a blue sea. Forming a kind of miniature cove was a semi-circle of white rocks, most of them just a little taller than Jherek, apparently worn almost to spikes by the elements. The smell of brine was strong. White gulls flapped here and there in the sky, occasionally swooping to catch black and grey fish. The pale yellow beach, of fine sand, with a few white pebbles, was spread with a dark brown cloth. On pale yellow plates was a variety of brown food — buns, biscuits, beef, bacon, bread, baked potatoes, pork pies, pickles, pemmican, peppercorns, pattercakes and much more — and there was brown beer or sarsaparilla or tea or coffee to drink.
As they stretched out, one at each station of the cloth, Amelia sighed, evidently glad to relax, as was Jherek.
"Now, Lord Jagged," Amelia began, ignoring the food, "you said there was an alternative…"
"Let us eat quietly for a moment," he said. "You will admit the common sense of becoming as calm as possible after today's events, I know."
"Very well." She selected a prune from a nearby dish. He chose a chestnut.
Conscious that the encounter was between Jagged and Amelia, Jherek and the Iron Orchid said little. Instead they munched and watched the seabirds wheeling while listening to the whisper of the waves on the shore.
Of the four, the Iron Orchid, in her orchids, supplied the only brilliant colour to the scene; Jherek, Amelia and Lord Jagged were still in grey. Jherek thought that his father had chosen an ideal location for the picnic and smiled drowsily when his mother remarked that it was like old times. It was as if the world had never been threatened, as if his adventures had never taken place, yet now he had gained an entire family. It would be pleasant, he thought, to make a regular habit of these picnics; surely even Amelia must be enjoying the simplicity, the sunshine, the relative solitude. He glanced at her. She was thoughtful and did not notice him. As always, he was warmed by feelings of the utmost tenderness as he contemplated her grave beauty, a beauty which showed itself at its best when she was unaware of attention, as now, or when she slept. He smiled, wondering if she would agree to a ceremony, not public or grandiose as the ones they had recently witnessed but private and plain, in which they should be properly married. He was sure that she yearned for it.
She looked up and met his eyes. She smiled briefly before speaking to his father: "And now, Lord Jagged — the alternative."
"It is within my power," said Jagged, responding to her briskness, "to send you into the future."
She became instantly guarded again. "Future? There is none."
"Not for this world — and there will be none at all, when this week has passed. But we are still capable of moving back and forth in the conventional time-cycle — just for the next seven days. When I say 'the future' I mean, of course, 'the past' — I can send you forward to the Palaeozoic, as I originally hoped. You would go forward and therefore not be at all subject to Morphail's Law. There is a slight danger, though I would not say much. Once in the Palaeozoic you would not be able to return to this world and, moreover, you would become mortal."
"As Olympians sent to Earth," she said.
"And denied your god-like powers," he added. "The rings will not work in the Palaeozoic, as you already know. You would have to build your own shelters, grow and hunt your own food. There are no material advantages at all, though you would have the advice and help of the Time Centre, doubtless, if it remains. That, I must remind you, is subject to the Morphail Effect. If you intended to bear children…"
"It would be unthinkable that I should not," she told him firmly.
"…you would not have the facilities you have known in 1896. There would be a risk, though probably slight, of disease."
"We should be able to take tools, medicines and so forth?"
"Of course. But you would have to learn to use them."
"Writing materials?"
"An excellent idea. There would be no problem, I think I have an Enquire Within and a How Things Work somewhere."
"Seeds?"
"You would be able to grow most things — and think how they would proliferate, with so little competition. In a few hundred years' time, before your death almost certainly, what a peculiar ecology would develop upon the Earth! Millions of years of evolution would be bypassed. There is time-travel for you, if you like!"
"Time to create a race almost entirely lacking in primitive instincts — and without need of them!"
"Hopefully."
She addressed Jherek, who was having difficulty coming to grips with the point of the conversation. "It would be our trust. Remember what we discussed, Jherek, dear? A combination of my sense of duty and your sense of freedom?"
"Oh, yes!" He spoke brightly, breathlessly, as he did his best to assimilate it all.
"What splendid children they could be!"
"Oh, indeed!"
"It will be a trial for you, too," said Jagged gently.
"Compared with the trials we have already experienced, Lord Jagged, the ones to come will be as nothing."
The familiar smile touched his lips. "You are optimistic."
"Given a grain of hope," she said. "And you offer much more." Her grey eyes fixed on him. "Was this always part of your plan?"
"Plan? Call it my own small exercise in optimism."
"Everything that has happened recently — it might have been designed to have led up to this."
"Yes, I suppose that's true." He looked at his son. "I could be envious of you, my boy."
"Of me? For what, Father?"
Jagged was contemplating Amelia again. His voice was distant, perhaps a touch sad. "Oh, for many things…"
The Iron Orchid put down an unfinished walnut. "They have no time-machine," she said tartly. "And they have not the training to travel without one."
"I have Brannart's abandoned machine. It is an excellent one — the best he has ever produced. It is already stocked. You can set off as soon as you wish."
"I am not sure that life in the Palaeozoic is entirely to my taste," said Jherek. "I would leave so many friends behind, you see."
"And you would age, dear," added the Orchid. "You would grow infirm. I cannot imagine…"
"You said that we should have several hundred years, Lord Jagged?" Amelia began to rise.
"You would have a life-span about the same as Methusalah's, at a guess. Your genes are already affected, and then there would be the prevailing conditions. I think you would have time to grow old quite gracefully — and see several generations follow you."
"That is worthwhile immortality, Jherek," she said to him. "To become immortal through one's children."
"I suppose so…"
"And those children would become your friends," added his father. "As we are friends, Jherek."
"You would not come with us?" He had so recently gained this father, he could not lose him so soon.
"There is another alternative. I intend to take that."
"Could not we…?"
"It would be impossible. I am an inveterate time-traveller, my boy. I cannot give it up. There is still so much to learn."
"You gave us the impression there was nothing left to explore," said Amelia.
"But if one goes beyond the End of Time, one might experience the beginning of a whole new cycle in the existence of what Mrs. Persson terms 'the multiverse'. Having learned to dispense with time-machines — and it is a trick impossible to teach — I intend to fling myself completely outside the present cycle. I intend to explore infinity."
"I was not aware…" began the Orchid.