"The Maxims, mother! The city quotes the Maxims!"
"It mocks them, you mean! Come, we had best return to our craft."
"Is the city mad, mama?"
With an effort she reduced the rate of her heart beat and increased the width of her stride, his hand firmly held.
"Perhaps," he said, "the city was not like this when Man lived here?"
"I must hope that."
"Perhaps it pines."
"The notion is ridiculous," she said sharply. As she had feared, the place was beginning to have a deteriorating influence upon her son. "Hurry."
The hulls of three great ships, one in silver filigree, one in milk-jade, one in woven ebony, suddenly surrounded them, then faltered, then faded.
She considered an idea that she had not passed through Time at all, but was being subjected by the Elders of Armatuce to a surprise Test. She had experienced four such tests since she had become an adult, but none so rigorous, so complex.
She realized that she had lost the road. The purple pathway was nowhere to be seen; there was not a landmark which had retained its form since she had entered the city; the little niggardly sun had not, apparently, changed position, so offered no clue. Panic found a chink in the armour of her self-control and poked a teasing finger through.
She stopped dead. They stood together beside a river of boiling, jigging brown and yellow gas which bounded with what seemed a desperate gaiety towards a far-off pit which roared and howled and gulped it down. There was a slim bridge across this river. She placed a foot upon the first smooth step. The bridge was a coquette; it wriggled and giggled but allowed the pressure to remain. Slowly she and the boy ascended until they were crossing. The bridge made a salacious sound. She flushed, but marched on; she caught a trace of a smile upon her boy's lips. And she shivered for a second time. In silhouette, throbbing crimson, the city swayed, its buildings undulating as if they celebrated some primitive mass. Were the buildings actually creatures, then? If so, did they enjoy her discomfort? Did she and her son represent the sacrifice in some dreadful post-human ritual? Had the last of the city's inhabitants perished, mad, as she might soon be mad? Never before had she been possessed by such over-coloured terrors. If she found them a touch attractive, nothing of her conscious mind would admit it. The bridge was crossed, a meadow entered, of gilded grass, knee-high and harsh; the sounds of the city died away and peace, of sorts, replaced them. It was as if she had passed through a storm. In relief she hesitated, still untrusting but ready to accept any pause in order to recover her morale, and found that her hand was rising and falling upon her son's shoulder, patting it. She stopped. She was about to offer an appropriate word of comfort when she noted the gleam in his eye, the parted lips. He looked up at her through his little visor.
"Isn't this jolly, though, mama?"
"J —?" Her mouth refused the word.
"What tales we'll have to tell. Who will believe us?"
"We must say nothing, save to the committee," she warned. "This is a secret you must bear for the rest of your boyhood, perhaps the rest of your life. And you must make every effort to — to expunge — to dismiss this — this…"
"Twa-la! The time twavellers, doubtless. Even now Bwannaht seeks you out. Gweetings! Gweetings! Gweetings! Welcome, welcome, welcome to the fwutah!"
Looking to her right she drew in such a sharp gasp of oxygen that the respirator on her chest missed a motion and shivered; she could scarce credit the mincing young fantastico pressing a path for himself with his over-ornamented dandy-pole through the grass, brushing at his drooping, elaborate eyebrows, which threatened to blind him, primping his thick, lank locks, patting at his pale, painted cheeks. He regarded her with mild, exaggerated eyes, fingering his pole as he paused.
"Can you undahstand me? I twust the twanslatah is doing its stuff. I'm always twisting the wong wing, y'know. I've seahched evewy one of the thiwty-six points of the compass without a hint of success. You haven't seen them, have you? A couple of lawge hunting buttahflies? So big." He extended his arms. "No? Then they've pwobably melted again." He put index finger to tip of nose. "They'd be yellah, y'know."
A collection of little bells at his throat, wrists and knees began to tinkle. He looked suddenly skyward, but he was hopeless.
"Are you real?" asked Snuffles.
"As weal as I'll evah be."
"And you live in this city?"
"Only ghosts, my deah, live in the cities. I am Sweet Ohb Mace. Cuwwently masculine!" His silks swelled, multicoloured balloons in parody of musculature.
"My name is Dafnish Armatuce. Of the Armatuce," said she in a strangled tone. "And this is Snuffles, my son."
"A child!" The dreadful being's head lifted, like a swan's, and he peered. "Why, the wohld becomes a kindehgahten! Of couwse, the otheh was actually Mistwess Chwistia. But weah! A gweat pwize foh someone!"
"I do not understand you, sir," she said.
"Ah, then it is the twanslatah." He fingered one of his many rings. "Shoroloh enafnisoo?"
"I meant that I failed to interpret your meaning," said Dafnish Armatuce wearily.
Another movement of a ring. "Is that bettah?"
She inclined her head. She was still less than certain that this was not merely another of the city's phantasms, for all that it addressed them and seemed aware that they had travelled through Time, but she decided, nonetheless, to seek the help of Sweet Orb Mace.
"We are lost," she informed him.
"In Djer?"
"That is the city's name?"
"Oah Shenalowgh, pewhaps. You wish to leave the city, at any wate?"
"If possible."
"I shall be delighted to help." Sweet Orb Mace waved his hands, made a further adjustment to a ring, and created something which shone sufficient to blind them for a moment. Of course they recognized the black, spare shape.
"Our time craft!" cried Snuffles.
"My povahty of imagination is wenowned, I feah," said Sweet Orb Mace blithely. "It's all I could come up with. Not the owiginal, of coahse, just a wepwoduction. But it will sehve us as an aih cah."
They entered, all three, to find fantasy within. Gone were the instruments and the muted lights, the padded couches, the simple purity of design, the austere dials and indicators. Instead, caged birds lined the walls, shuffling and twittering, their plumage vulgar beyond imagining; there was a carpet which swamped the legs to the calves, glowing a violent lavender, a score of huge clocks with wagging pendulums, a profusion of brass, gold and dark teak.
Noting her expression, Sweet Orb Mace said humbly: "I saw only the extewiah. I had hoped the inside would sehve foh the shoht time of ouah flight."
With a sob, she collapsed into the carpet and sat there with her visor resting upon her gauntlets while Snuffles, insensitive to his mother's mood, waggled youthful fingers and tried to get a macaw to reveal its name to him.
"A mattah of moments!" Sweet Orb Mace assured her. He tapped at a clock with his cane and they were swinging upwards into the sky. "Do not, I pway you, judge the wohld of the End of Time by yoah impwession of me. I am weckoned the most bohwing being on the planet. Soon you shall meet people much moah intewesting and intelligent than me!"
3. A Social Lunch at the End of Time
"Look, mama! Look at the food!" The boy shuddered in his passion. "Oh, look! Look!"
They descended from the reproduction time machine. They were in a long broad meadow of blue and white grass. The city lay several miles away, upon the horizon.