Lord Shark trudged on, his grey-booted feet making the dust of his arid domain dance, giving the landscape a semblance of life, and came in a while to his rectangular domicile at the foot of those time-ground ridges, the ragged remains of the Rockies. Two guards, identical in appearance to each other and to Lord Shark, were positioned on either side of his single small door, and they remained rigid, only their eyes following him as he let himself in and marched up the long, straight, sparsely lit passage which passed through the centre of the internal grid (the house was divided into exactly equal sections, with rooms of exactly equal proportions) to the central chamber of the building, in which he spent the greater part of his days. There he sat himself down upon a chair of grey metal and began to brood.
Regretfully, he must pursue his agreement with the Duke of Queens, but he felt no demand to hurry the business through; the longer it took, the better.
4. In Which Unwilling Travellers Arrive at the End of Time
Walking slowly across the ceiling of his new palace, the Duke of Queens looked up to see that Bishop Castle had already arrived and was peering with some pleasure through a window. "Shall we join him?" asked the duke of the Iron Orchid and, at her nod of assent, turned a jewel on one of his rings. Elegantly they performed half a somersault so that they, too, were upside down and, from their new perspective, descending towards the floor. Bishop Castle hailed them. "Such a simple idea, duke, but beautiful." He waved a white-gloved hand at the view. The sky now lay like a sea, spread out below, while inverted trees and gardens and lawns were overhead.
"It is refreshing," confirmed the duke, pleased. "But I can take no credit. The idea was the Iron Orchid's."
"Nonsense, most dashing of dukes. Actually," she murmured to Bishop Castle, "I borrowed it from Sweet Orb Mace. How is she, by the by?"
"Recovered completely, though the resurrection was a little late. I believe the snow helped preserve her, for all its heat."
"We have just seen Lord Shark the Unknown," she announced. "And he challenged the Duke of Queens to, my lord bishop, a duel! "
"It was not exactly a challenge, luscious blossom. Merely an agreement to fight at some future date."
"To fight?" Bishop Castle's large eyebrows rose, almost touching the rim of his tall crown. "Would that involve 'violence'?"
"A degree of it, I believe," said the duke demurely. "Yes, blood will be spilled, if today's experience is typical. These little sticks…" He turned with a questioning frown to the Iron Orchid.
"Swords," she said.
"Yes, swords — with points, you know, to pierce the flesh. You will have seen them in the old pictures and possibly wondered at their function. We have used them for decoration, of course, in the past — many believing them to be some sort of ancient totem, some symbol of rank — but it emerges that they were meant to kill."
Bishop Castle was apologetic. "The conceptions involved are a little difficult to grasp, as with so many of these ancient pastimes, though of course I have witnessed, in visitors to our age, the phenomena. Does it not involve 'anger', however?"
"Not necessarily, from what little I know."
The conversation turned to other subjects; they discussed their recent adventures and speculated upon the whereabouts of the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek Carnelian, of Mrs Underwood, whom he loved, of Lord Jagged of Canaria, and the uncouth alien musicians who had called themselves the Lat.
"Brannart Morphail, querulous as ever, refuses to discuss any part he might have played in the affair," Bishop Castle told his friends. "He merely hints at the dangers of 'meddling with the fabric of Time', but I cannot believe he is entirely objective, for he has always affected a somewhat proprietorial attitude towards Time."
"Nonetheless, it is puzzling," said the Iron Orchid. "And I regret the disappearance of so many entertaining people. Those space travellers, the Lat, were they, do you think, 'violent'?"
"That would explain the difficulties we had in communicating with them, certainly. But we can talk further when we see My Lady Charlotina." Bishop Castle was evidently tiring of the discussion. "Shall we go?"
As they drifted, still upside down, from the house, Bishop Castle complimented the Iron Orchid on her costume. It was dark blue and derived from the clothing of some of those she had encountered at the Cafe Royal, in the 19th century. The helmet suited her particularly, but Bishop Castle was not sure he liked the moustache.
Righting themselves, they all climbed into Bishop Castle's air carriage, a reproduction of a space vehicle of the 300th Icecream Empire, all red-gold curlicues and silver body work, and set off for Lake Billy the Kid, where My Lady Charlotina's reception (to celebrate, as she put it, their safe return) had already started.
They had gone no more than a few hundred miles when they encountered Werther de Goethe, magnificently pale in black, voluminous satin robes, riding upon his monstrous tombstone, a slab of purple marble, and evidently recovered from his recent affair with Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, in such good spirits that he deigned to acknowledge their presence as they put their heads through the portholes and waved to him. The slab swung gracefully over the tops of some tall pine trees and came to rest, hovering near them.
"Do you go to My Lady Charlotina's, moody Werther?" asked the Iron Orchid.
"Doubtless to be insulted again by her, but, yes, I go," he confirmed. "I suppose you have seen the newcomers already?"
"Newcomers?" The light breeze curled the duke's feathers around his face. "From space?"
"Who knows? They are humanoid. My Lady Charlotina has endomed them, near Lake Billy the Kid. Her whole party has gone to watch. I will see you there, then?"
"You shall, sorrowing son of Nature," promised the Iron Orchid.
Werther was pleased with the appellation. He swept on. The spaceship turned to follow him.
Soon they saw the stretch of blue water which was My Lady Charlotina's home, the presence of her vast subaqueous palace marked only by a slight disturbance of the surface of the water in the middle of the lake where the energy-tube made its exit. They rose higher into the air, over the surrounding mountains, and at length saw the shimmering, green-tinted air indicating a force-dome. Descending, they saw that the dome, all but invisible, was surrounded by a large throng of people. They landed in the vicinity of a number of other air carriages of assorted designs and disembarked.
My Lady Charlotina, naked, with her skin coloured in alternate bands of black and white, saw them. She already had her arm through Werther's. "Come and see what I have netted for my menagerie," she called. "Time travellers. I have never seen so many at once." She laughed. "Brannart, of course, takes a very gloomy view, but I'm delighted! There isn't another set like it!"