"Oh, but you do. So badly do you need it that you dare not tell yourself!"
My Lady Charlotina cried: "Excuse me, sir, for intruding, but we were wondering if your plans for the destruction of the world were completely formulated. I, for one, would appreciate a little notice."
"My meditations are not yet completed," he told her. He still stared at Miss Ming. "Will you come to me now?"
"Never!"
"Remember my oath."
Doctor Volospion stepped forward. "I would remind you, sir, that this lady is under my protection. Should you make any further attempt to annoy her I must warn you that I shall defend her to the death!"
Miss Ming was taken aback by this sudden about-face. "Oh, Doctor Volospion! How noble!"
"What's this?" said Bloom, blinking rapidly. "More posturing?"
"I give fair warning, that is all."
Doctor Volospion folded his arms across his chest and stared full into the eyes of Emmanuel Bloom.
Bloom remained unimpressed. "So you do keep her prisoner, as I suspected. She believes she has her liberty, but you know better!"
"I shall accept no more insults." Doctor Volospion lifted his chin in defiance.
"This is not mere braggadocio, I can tell. It is calculated. But what do you plan?"
"Any more of this, sir," said Doctor Volospion in ringing tones, "and I shall have to demand satisfaction of you."
The Fireclown laughed. "I shall free the woman soon."
The airlock shut with a click.
"How extraordinary!" murmured My Lady Charlotina. "How exceptional of you, Doctor Volospion! Miss Ming must feel quite moved by your defence of her."
"I am, I am." Miss Ming's small eyes were shining. "Doctor Volospion. I never knew…"
Doctor Volospion strode for the air car. "Let us leave this wretched place."
Miss Ming tripped behind him. It was as if she had found her True Knight at last.
9. In which the Fireclown brings some small Salvation to the End of Time
It was, as it happened, My Lady Charlotina who first experienced the fiery wrath of Emmanuel Bloom.
Tiring (for reasons described elsewhere) of her apartments under Lake Billy the Kid, she had begun a new palace which was to be constructed in an arrangement of clouds above the site of the lake, so that it hovered over the water, reflecting both this and the sun. It was to be primarily white but with some other pale colours here and there, perhaps for flanking towers. She had spent considerable thought upon the palace and it was still by no means complete, for My Lady Charlotina was not one of those who can create a conception whole with the mere twist of a power ring; she must consider, she must alter, she must build piece by piece. Thus, in the clouds over Lake Billy the Kid, there were half-raised towers, towers without tops, domes with spires and domes that were turreted, there were gaps where halls had been, there were whole patches of space representing apartments which, at a whim, she had returned to their original particles.
Emerging from Lake Billy the Kid, after resting, My Lady Charlotina stood upon the shore, surrounded by comfortable oaks and cypresses, and arranged the mist upon the water into more satisfactory configurations, making it drift so high that it mingled with the clouds on which her new palace was settled, and she was about to eradicate a tower, which offended, now, her sense of symmetry, when there came a loud roaring sound and the whole edifice burst into flame.
My Lady Charlotina gasped with indignation. Her first thought was that one of her friends had misjudged an experiment and accidentally set fire to her palace, but she soon guessed the true cause of the blaze.
"The lunatic incendiary!" she cried, and she flung herself into the sky, not to go to her crackling palace (which was beyond salvaging) but to look down upon the world and discover the whereabouts of the Fireclown.
He was not a mile from the conflagration, standing on top of a great plinth meant to support a statue of himself which the Duke of Queens had never bothered to complete. He wore his black velvet, his bow tie, his shirt with its ruffles. He stood upon the plinth like a parrot upon its pedestal, shifting from side to side and flapping his arms at his sides as he studied his handiwork. He did not see My Lady Charlotina as, in golden gauze, she fluttered down towards him.
She paused, to hover a few feet above his head, she waited, watching him, until he became aware of her presence. She listened to him as he spoke to himself.
"Quite good. A fitting symbol. It will look well in any legends, I think. It is best for the first few miracles to be spectacular and not directed at individuals. I should not leave it too late, however, before rescuing the remains of any residents and resurrecting them."
She could not contain herself.
"I, sir, might have been the only resident of that castle in the clouds. Happily I had not arrived at it before you began your fire-raising!"
His little head jerked here and there. At last he looked up. "So!"
"The palace was to be my new home, Mr Bloom. It was impolite of you to destroy it."
"There were no inhabitants?"
"Not yet."
"Well, then, I shall be on my way."
"You make no attempt to apologize?"
Mr Bloom was amused. "I can scarcely apologize for something so calculating. You ask me to lie? I am the Fireclown. Why should I lie?"
She was speechless. Mr Bloom began to climb down a ladder he placed against the plinth. "I bid you good morning, madam."
"Good morning?"
"Or good afternoon — you keep no proper hours on this planet at all. It is hard to know. That will be changed," he smiled, "in Time."
"Mr Bloom, your purposes here are quite without point. Are we to be impressed by such displays?" She waved her hand towards the blazing palace. Her clouds had turned brown at the edges. "Time, Mr Bloom, is not what it was. Times, Mr Bloom, have changed since those primitive Dawn Ages when such 'miracles' might have provoked interest, even surprise, in the inhabitants of this world. Watch!" She turned a power ring. The fire vanished. An entire, if uninspired, fairy palace glittered again in the pristine clouds.
"Hum," said Mr Bloom, still on his ladder. He began to climb back to the top of the plinth. "I see. So Volospion is not the only conjurer here."
"We all have that power. Or most of us. It is our birthright."
"Birthright? What of my birthright?"
"You have one?"
"It is the world. I explained to Doctor Volospion, madam…" He was aggrieved. "Did he speak to no-one of my mission here?"
"He told us what you had said, yes."
"And you are not yet spiritually prepared, it seems. I left you plenty of time for contemplation of your fate. It is the accepted method, where Salvation is to be achieved."
"We have no need of Salvation, Mr Bloom. We are immortal, we control the universe — what's left of it — we are, most of us, without fear (if I understand the term properly)." My Lady Charlotina was making an untypical effort to meet Emmanuel Bloom halfway. It was probably because she had no strong wish to be at odds with him, since she was curious to know better the man who courted Miss Ming with such determination. "Really, Mr Bloom, you have arrived too late. Even a few hundred years ago, before we heard of the dissolution of the universe, there might have been some enjoyment for all, but not now. Not now, Mr Bloom."
"Hum." He frowned. He lifted a hand to his face and appeared to peck at his cuff. "But I have no other role, you see. I am a Saviour. It is all I can do."
"Must you save a whole world? Aren't there a few individuals you could concentrate on?"
"It hardly seems worthwhile. I am, to be more specific, a World Saviour — a Saver of Worlds. I have ranged the multiverse saving them. From all sorts of things, physical and spiritual. And I always leave the places I have saved spiritually regenerated. Ask any of them. They will all tell you the same. I am loved throughout the teeming dimensions."