The Constant Fire
BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Book 4 of the Legends from the End of Time
George Meredith
"Song of Theodolinda"
1. In which your Auditor gives credit to his Sources
The incidents involving Mr Jherek Carnelian and Mrs Amelia Underwood, their adventures in Time, the machinations of, among others, the Lord of Canaria, are already familiar to those of us who follow avidly any fragment of gossip coming back from the End of Time.
We know, too, why it is impossible to learn further details of how life progresses there since the inception of Lord Jagged's grand (and some think pointless) scheme, details of which have been published in the three volumes jointly entitled The Dancers at the End of Time and in the single volume, companion to this, called Legends from the End of Time.
Time travellers, of course, still visit the periods immediately preceding the inception of the scheme. They bring us back those scraps of scandal, speculation, probable fact and likely lies which form the bases for the admittedly fanciful reconstructions I choose to term my "legends from the future" — stories which doubtless would cause much amusement if those I write about were ever to read them (happily, there is no evidence that the tales survive our present century, let alone the next few million years).
If this particular tale seems more outrageous and less likely than any of the others, it is because I was gullible enough to believe the sketch of it I had from an acquaintance who does not normally journey so far into the future. A colleague of Mrs Una Persson in the Guild of Temporal Adventurers, he does not wish me to reveal his name and this, happily, allows me to be rather more frank about him than would have been possible.
My friend's stories are always interesting, but they are consistently highly coloured; his exploits have been bizarre and his claims incredible. If he is to be believed, he has been present at a good many of the best-known key events in history, including the crucifixion of Christ, the massacre at My Lai, the assassination of Naomi Jacobsen in Paris and so on, and has often played a major role.
From his base in West London (20th century, Sectors 3 and 4) my friend has ranged what he terms the "chronoflow", visiting periods of the past and future of this Earth as well as those of other Earths which, he would have us accept, co-exist with ours in a complex system of intersecting dimensions making up something called the "multiverse".
Of all the temporal adventurers I have known, my friend is the most ready to describe his exploits to anyone who will listen. Presumably, he is not subject to the Morphail Effect (which causes most travellers to exercise the greatest caution regarding their actions and conversations in any of the periods they visit) mainly because few but the simple-minded, and those whose logical faculties have been ruined by drink, drugs or other forms of dissipation, will take him seriously.
My friend's own explanation is that he is not affected by such details; he describes himself rather wildly as a "chronic outlaw" (a self-view which might give the reader some insight into his character). You might think he charmed me into believing the tale he told me of Miss Mavis Ming and Mr Emmanuel Bloom, and yet there is something about the essence of the story that inclined me to believe it — for all that it is, in many ways, one of the most incredible I have heard. It cannot, of course, be verified readily (certainly so far as the final chapters are concerned) but it is supported by other rumours I have heard, as well as my own previous knowledge of Mr Bloom (whose earlier incarnation appeared in a tale, told to me by one of my friend's fellow Guild members, published variously as The Fireclown and The Winds of Limbo, some years ago).
The events recorded here follow directly upon those recorded in Legends from the End of Time and in effect take up Miss Ming's story where we left it after her encounter with Dafnish Armatuce and her son Snuffles.
As usual, the basic events described are as I had them from my source. I have re-arranged certain things, to maintain narrative tensions, and added to an earlier, less complete, draft of my own which was written hastily, before all the information was known to me. The "fleshing-out" of the narrative, the interpretations where they occur, many of the details of conversations, and so on, must be blamed entirely on your auditor.
In the previous volume to this one I have already recounted something of the peculiar relationship existing between Miss Ming and Doctor Volospion: the unbearable bore and that ostentatious misanthrope.
Why Doctor Volospion continued to take perverse pleasure in the woman's miserable company, why she allowed him to insult her in the most profound of ways — she who spent the greater part of her days avoiding any sort of pain — we cannot tell. Suffice it to say that relationships of this sort exist in our own society and can be equally puzzling.
Perhaps Doctor Volospion found confirmation of all his misanthropism in her; perhaps she preferred this intense, if unpleasant, attention to no attention at all. She confirmed his view of life, while he confirmed her very existence.
But it is the purpose of a novel, not a romance, to speculate in this way and it is no part of my intention to dwell too much upon such thoughts.
Here, then, for the reader's own interpretation (if one is needed), is the tale of Miss Ming's transformation and the part which both Doctor Volospion and Emmanuel Bloom had in it.
MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Ladbroke Grove,
November, 1975
2. In which Miss Mavis Ming experiences a familiar Discomfort
The peculiar effect of one sun rising just as another set, causing shadows to waver, making objects appear to shift shape and position, went more or less entirely unobserved by the great crowd of people who stood, enjoying a party, in the foothills of a rather poorly finished range of mountains erected some little time ago by Werther de Goethe during one of his periodic phases of attempting to re-create the landscape, faithful to the last detail, of Holman Hunt, an ancient painter Werther had discovered in one of the rotting cities.
Werther, it is fair to say, had not been the first to make such an attempt. Werther, however, held to the creed that an artist should, so far as his powers allowed, put up everything exactly as he saw it in the painting. Werther was a purist. Werther volubly denied the criticisms of those who found such literal work bereft of what they regarded as true artistic inspiration. Werther's theories of Fidelity to Art had enjoyed a short-lived vogue (for a time the Duke of Queens had been an earnest acolyte) but his fellows had soon tired of such narrow disciplines.
Werther, alone, refused to renounce them.
As the party progressed one of the suns eventually vanished while the other rose rapidly, reached zenith, and stopped. The light became golden, autumnal, misty. Of the guests but three had paused to observe the phenomenon: they were Miss Mavis Ming, plump and eager in her new dress; Li Pao, bland in puritanical denim; and Abu Thaleb, their host, svelte and opulent, splendidly overdressed.
"Whose suns?" murmured Abu Thaleb appreciatively. "How pretty. And subtle. Rivals, perhaps…"
"To your own creations?" asked Li Pao.
"No, no — to one another."
"They could be Werther's," suggested Miss Ming, anxious to return to their interrupted topic. "He hasn't arrived yet. Go on, Li Pao. You were saying something about Doctor Volospion."
A fingered ear betrayed Li Pao's embarrassment. "I spoke of no-one specifically, Miss Ming." His round Chinese face became expressionless.
"By association," Abu Thaleb prompted, a somewhat sly smile manifesting itself within his pointed beard, "you spoke of Volospion."