"Ah! What a splendid woman!"
He moved still further down the ramp and he was sighing with pleasure.
"Oh, Madonna of Lust. Ah, my Tigress, my Temptation. Mm! Never have I seen such beauty! But this is Ultimate Femininity!"
"I've had enough," said Miss Ming severely, and she began to edge away.
He did not follow, but his eyes enchained her. His high, singsong voice became ecstatic.
"Enough? You have known nothing until now! What Beauty! Ah — I will bring great wings to beat upon your breast." His hands clenched at air. "Tearing talons your talents shall grasp! Claws of blood and sinew shall catch the silver strings of your cool harp! Ha! I'll have you, madam, never fear! Ho! I'll bring your blood to the surface of your skin! Hei! It shall pulse there — in service to my sin!"
"I'm not hanging around," she said, but she did not move.
The other two watched, forgotten by both, as the strange, mad figure pranced upon his ramp, paying court to the fat, bewildered lady in blue and yellow below.
"You shall be mine, madam. You shall be mine! This is worth all those many millennia when I was denied any form of consolation, any sort of human company. I have crossed galaxies and dimensions to find my reward! Now I know my twofold mission. To save this world and to win this woman!"
"No chance," she breathed. "Ugh!" She panted but could not flee.
He ignored her, or else had not heard her, his attention drawn back to Doctor Volospion. "You asked my name. Now do you recognize me?"
"Not specifically." Even Doctor Volospion was impressed by the intensity of the newcomer's speech. "Um — perhaps another clue?"
Bang! A stream of flame had shot from the man's hand and destroyed one of Werther's unfinished mountains.
Boom! The sky darkened and thunder shook the landscape while lightning struck all about them. Chaos swirled around the ship and out of it stared the newcomer's face shouting:
"There! Is that enough to tell you?"
Abu Thaleb demurred. "That was one of a set of mountains manufactured by someone who was hoping…"
"Manufactured?"
The thunder stopped. The lightning ceased. The sky became clear again.
"Manufactured? You make these pathetic landscapes? From choice? Pah!"
"There are other things we make…"
"And what puny conceits! Paint! I use all that is real for my canvases. Fire, water, earth and air — and human souls!"
"We can sometimes achieve quite interesting effects," continued Abu Thaleb manfully, "by…"
"Nonsense! Know you this — that I am the Controller of your Destinies! Re-born, I come among you to give you New Life! I offer the Universe!"
"We have had the universe," said Doctor Volospion. "That is partly why we are in our current predicament. It is all used up."
"Bah! Well, well, well. So I must take it upon myself again to rescue the race. Yes, well I shall not betray you — as you have betrayed me in the past. Again I give you the opportunity. Follow me!"
The Commissar of Bengal passed a hand over the gleaming corkscrew curls of his blue-black beard; he tugged at the red Star of India decorating his left ear-lobe; he fingered a feather of his turban.
"Follow you? By Allah, sir, I'm confounded! Follow you? Not a word, I fear. Not a syllable."
"That is not what I meant."
"I think," interposed Doctor Volospion, "that our visitor regards himself as a prophet — a chosen spokesman for some religion or other. The phrase he uses is more than familiar to me. Doubtless he wishes to convert us to the worship of his god."
"God? God! God! I am no servant of a Higher Power!" The visitor's neck flashed back in shock. "Unless, as can fairly be said, I serve myself — and Mankind, of course…"
Doctor Volospion casually changed the colour of his robes to dark green and silver, then to crimson and black. He sighed. He became all black.
The visitor watched this process with some contempt. "What have we here? A jester to my clown?"
Doctor Volospion glanced up. "Forgive me if I seem unmannerly. I was seeking an appropriate colour for my mood."
Abu Thaleb was dogged. "Sir, if you could introduce yourself, perhaps a little more formally…?"
The stranger regarded him through a milder eye, as if giving the commissar's remark weighty consideration.
"A name? Just one," coaxed the Lord of All Elephants. "It might jog our memories, d'you see?"
"I am your Messiah."
"There!" cried Doctor Volospion, pleased with his earlier interpretation.
The Messiah raised inflexible arms towards the skies. "I am the Prophet of the Sun! Flamebringer, call me!"
Still more animated, even amused, Doctor Volospion turned his attention away from his cuffs (now of purple lace) to remark: "The name is not familiar, sir. Where are you from?"
"Earth! I am from Earth!" The prophet gripped the lapels of his velvet coat. "You must know me. I have given you every hint."
"But when did you leave Earth?" Abu Thaleb put in, intending help. "Perhaps we are further in your future than you realize. This planet, you see, is millions, billions, of years old. Why, there is every evidence that it would have perished a long time ago — so far as supporting human life was concerned, at any rate — if we had not, with the aid of our great, old cities, maintained it. You could be from a past so distant that no memory remains of you. The cities, of course, do remember a great deal, and it is possible that one of them might know you. Or there are time travellers here, like Miss Ming, with better memories of earlier times than even the cities possess. What I am trying to say, sir, is that we are not being deliberately obtuse. We should be only too willing to show you proper respect if we knew who you were and how we should show it. It is on you, the onus, I regret."
The head jerked from side to side; a curious cockatoo. "Eh?"
"Name, rank and serial number!" Miss Ming guffawed.
"Eh?"
"We are an ancient and ignorant people," Abu Thaleb apologized. "Well, at least, I speak for myself. I am very ancient and extremely ignorant. Except, I should explain, in the matter of elephants, where I am something of an expert."
"Elephants?"
The stranger's blue eyes glittered. "So this is what you have become? Dilettantes! Fops! Dandies! Cynics! Quasi-realists!"
"We have become all things at the End of Time," said Doctor Volospion. "Variety flourishes, if originality does not."
"Pah! I call you lifeless bones. But fear not. I am returned to resurrect you. I am Power. I am the forgotten Spirit of Mankind. I am Possibility."
"Quite so," said Doctor Volospion agreeably. "But I think, sir, that you underestimate the degree of our sophistication."
"We have really considered the matter quite closely, some of us," Abu Thaleb wished the stranger to know. "We are definitely, it seems, doomed."
"Not now! Not now!" The little man jerked his hand and fire began to roar upon Argonheart Po's cola lake. It was a bright, unlikely red. There was heat.
"Delightful," murmured Doctor Volospion. "But if I may demonstrate…" He turned a sapphire ring on his right finger. Pale blue clouds formed over the lake. A light rain fell. The fire guttered. It died. "You will see," added Doctor Volospion quickly, noting the stranger's expression, "that we enjoy a certain amount of control over the elements." He turned another ring. The fire returned.
"I am not here to match conjuring tricks with you, my jackal-eyed friend!" The stranger gestured and a halo of bright flame appeared around his head. He swept his arms about and black clouds filled the sky once more and thunder boomed again; lightning crashed. "I use my mastery merely to demonstrate my moral purpose."