"Could it be love without purpose?"
"Love is love."
"Then you must teach me to believe that, my dear."
26. Wedding Bells at the End of Time
She was to be Amelia Carnelian; she insisted upon it. They found seeds and bulbs, preserved by the cities, and they planted them in her gardens. They began a new life, as man and wife. She was teaching him to read again, and to write, and if Jherek felt contentment she, at least, felt a degree more secure; his assurances of fidelity became credible to her. But though the sun shone and the days and nights came and went with a regularity unusual at the End of Time, they were without seasons. She feared for her crops. Though she watered them carefully, no shoots appeared, and one day she decided to turn a piece of ground to see how her potatoes fared. She found that they had gone rotten. Elsewhere not a single seed had put out even the feeblest root. He came upon her as she dug frantically through her vegetable garden, searching for one sign of life. She pointed to the ruined tubers.
"Imperfectly preserved, I suppose," he suggested.
"No. We tasted them. These are the same. It is the earth that ruins them. It is not true soil at all. It is without goodness. It is barren, Jherek, as everything is fundamentally barren in this world." She threw down the spade; she entered the house. With Jherek at her heels, she went to sit at a window looking out towards her rose-garden.
He joined her, feeling her pain but unable to find any means of banishing it.
"Illusion," she said.
"We can experiment, Amelia, to make earth which will allow your crops to grow."
"Oh, perhaps…" She made an effort to free herself from her mood, then her brow clouded again. "Here is your father, like an Angel of Death come to preside at the funeral of my hopes."
It was Lord Jagged, stepping with jaunty tread along the crazy paving, waving to her.
Jherek admitted him. He was all bustle and high humour. "The time comes. The circuit is complete. I let the world run through one more full week, to establish the period of the loop, then we're saved forever! My news displeases you?"
Jherek spoke for Amelia. "We do not care to be reminded of the manner in which the world is maintained, Father!"
"You will notice no outward effects."
"We shall have the knowledge of what has happened," she murmured. "Illusions cease to satisfy, Lord Jagged."
"Call me Father, too!" He seated himself upon a chaise-longue, spreading his limbs. "I should have guessed you very happy by now. A shame."
"If one's only function is to perpetuate illusion, and one has known real life, one is inclined to fret a little," said she with ungainly irony. "My crops have perished."
"I follow you, Amelia. What do you feel, Jherek?"
"I feel for Amelia," he answered. "If she were happy, then I would be happy." He smiled. "I am a simple creature, father, as I have often been told."
"Hm," said Lord Jagged. He eased himself upward and was about to say more when, in the distance, through the open windows, they heard a sound.
They listened.
"Why," said Amelia, "it is a band."
"Of what?" asked Jherek.
"A musical band," his father told him. He swept from the house. "Come, let's see!"
They all ran through the walks and avenues until they reached the white gate in the fence Amelia had erected around the trees. The lake of blood had long since vanished and gentle green hills replaced it. They could see a column of people, far away, marching towards them. Even from here, the music was distinct.
"A brass band!" cried Amelia. "Trumpets, trombones, tubas —!"
"And a silver band!" declared Lord Jagged, with unfeigned enthusiasm. "Clarinets, flutes, saxophones!"
"Bass drums — hear!" For the moment her miseries were gone. "Snare drums, tenor drums, timpani…"
"A positive profusion of percussion!" added Jherek, wishing to include himself in the excitement. "Ta-ta-ta- ta ! Hooray!" He made a cap for himself, so that he might fling it into the air. "Hooray!"
"Oh, look!" Amelia had forgotten her distress entirely, for the moment at least. "So many! And is that the Duke of Queens?"
"It is!"
The band — or rather the massed bands, for there must have been at least a thousand mechanical musicians — came marching up the hill towards them, with flags flying, plumes nodding, boots and straps shining, scarlet and blue, silver and black, gold and crimson, green and yellow.
Father, son and wife hung over the white gate like so many children, waving to the Duke of Queens, who marched at the front, a long pole whirling in the air above him, two others whirling on either side, a baton in one hand, a swagger-cane in the other, a huge handle-bar moustache upon his face, and a monstrous bearskin tottering on his head, goose-stepping so high that he almost fell backwards with every movement of his legs. And the band had grown so loud, though it remained in perfect time, that it was utterly impracticable to try to speak, either to the Duke of Queens or to one another.
On and on it marched, with its sousaphones, its kolaphones, its brownophones, its telophones and its gramophones, performing intricate patterns, weaving in and out of itself, making outrageously difficult steps coupled with peculiar time-signatures; with its euphoniums and harmoniums, pianos and piccolos, its banjos, its bongos and its bassoons, saluting, marking time, forming fours, bagpipes skirling, bullroarers whirling, ondes Martenot keening, cellos groaning, violins wailing, Jew's harps boinging, swannee whistles, wailing, tubular bells tolling, calliopes wheezing, guitars shrieking, synthesizers sighing, ophicleides panting, gongs booming, organs grinding, sweet potatoes warbling, xylophones clattering, serpents blaring, bones rattling, glockenspiels tinkling, virginals whispering, bombardons moaning, until it had marshalled itself before the gate. And then it stopped.
"Haydn, eh?" said Lord Jagged knowledgeably as the proud Duke approached.
" Yellow Dog Charlie , according to the tape reference." The Duke of Queens was beaming from beneath his bearskin. "But you know how mixed up the cities are. Something from your period again, Mrs. Un—"
"Carnelian," she murmured.
"—derwood. We simply can't leave it alone, can we? I've seen a craze last a thousand years, unabated."
"Your enthusiasms always tend to prolong themselves beyond the capabilities of your contemporaries, ebullient bandsman, most carefree of capellmeisters, most glorious of gleemen!" congratulated Lord Jagged. "Have you marched far?"
"The parade is to celebrate my first venture into connubial harmony!"
"Music?" enquired Jherek.
"Marriage." A wink at Jherek's father. "Lord Jagged will know what I mean."
"A wedding?" laconically supplied Jagged.
"A wedding, yes! It is all the rage. Today — I think it's today — I am joined in holy matrimony (admit my grasp of the vocabulary!) to the loveliest of ladies, the beautiful Sweet Orb Mace."
"And who conducts the rites?" asked Amelia.
"Bishop Castle. Who else? Will you come, and be my best men and women?"
"Well…"
"Of course we'll come, gorgeous groom." Lord Jagged leapt the gate to embrace the Duke before he departed. "And bring gifts, too. Green for a groom and blue for a bride!"
"Another custom?"
"Oh, indeed."
Amelia pursed her lips and frowned at Lord Jagged of Canaria. "It is astonishing that so many of our old customs are remembered, sir."
His patrician head moved to meet her eyes; he wore the faintest of smiles. "Oh, didn't you know? In the general confusion, with the translation pills and so forth, it seems that we are all talking nineteenth-century English. It serves. It serves."