Dancers - A Messiah At The End Of Time Part 10

'I am, I am." Miss Ming's small eyes were shining. "Doctor Volospion. I never knew..."

Doctor Volospion strode for the air car. "Let as leave this wretched place."

Miss Ming tripped behind him. It was as if she had found her True Knight at last.

Chapter Nine

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 colors 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 turretted, there were gaps where halls had been, there were whole patchs of s.p.a.ce respresenting 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 toward 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 scarecely apologize for something so calculating. You ask me to lie? I am the Fireclown. Why should I lie?"

She was speechless. Mr. Bloom began ts 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 toward 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 Ms 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 half-way. 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 Savior. 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 Savior 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."

'Then perhaps you could find another world..."

'No, this is the last. I left it long ago, promising that I would return and save it, as my final action."

'Well, you are too late."

'Really, madam, I cannot take your word for it. I am the greatest authority on such matters in the universe, to say the least. I am the Champion Eternal, Hero of a million legends. When Law battles Chaos, I am always called. When civilizations are threatened with total extermination, it is to me that they turn for rescue. And when decadence and despair rule an otherwise secure and prosperous world, it is for Emmanuel Bloom, the Fireclown, Time's Jester, that they yearn. And I come."

'But we did not call you, we require no rescuing. We are not yearning, I a.s.sure you, even a fraction."

'Miss Ming is yearning."

'Miss Ming's yearning is hardly spiritual."

'So you think. I know better."

'Well, then, I'll grant you that Miss Ming is yearning. But I am not yearning. Doctor Volospion is incapable, I am sure, of yearning. Yearning, all in all, Mr. Bloom, is extinct in this Age."

'Forgotten, hidden, unheeded, but I know it is there. I know. A deep, unadmitted sadness. A demand for Romance. A pining for Ideals."

'We take up Romance from time to time, and we have an interest, on occasion, in Ideals but these are pa.s.sing enthusiasms, Mr. Bloom. Even those of us most obsessed with such things show no particular misery when circ.u.mstance or changing fashion requires that they be dropped."

'How shallow are those who dwell here now. All, that is, save Mavis Ming."

'Some think her the shallowest of us all." My Lady Chartotina regretted her spite, for she did not wish to seem malicious in Mr. Bloom's eyes.

'It is often the case," he said. "With those who cannot see beyond flesh and into the soul."

'I doubt if there are many souls remaining among us," said My Lady Charlotina. "Since we are almost every one of us self-made creatures. There is even some speculation that we are not human at all, but sophisticated androids."

'It could be the explanation," he mused.

'I hope you will not be wholly frustrated," she said sympathetically, watching him climb down his ladder. "I can imagine what it is like to possess only One role."

She settled, like a b.u.t.terfly, upon the vacated plinth.

He reached the ground and peered up at her, arms held stiffly, as usual, by his side, red hair flaring. "I a.s.sure you, madam," he piped, "that I am not in the least impressed by what you have told me."

'But I speak the truth."

'Unlike Volospion, who lies, lies, lies. I agree that you believe, like Miss Ming, that you speak the truth. But I see decadence. And where there is decadence there is misery. And where there is misery then must come the Fireclown, to bring laughter, joy, terror, to banish all anxieties."

'Your logic is, I fear, obsolete, Mr. Bloom. There is no misery here, to speak of. And," she added, "there is no joy. Instead, we have a comfortable balance. It enables us to contemplate our own end with a certain grace."

'Hum."

'Surely this equilibrium is what all human morality and philosophy has striven for over the millennia?" she said, seating herself on the edge of the plinth and arranging her gold gauze about her legs. "Would you set the seesaw swinging again?"

He frowned. "No heights or depths here, eh?"

'For most of us, no."

'No Heaven and h.e.l.l."

'Only those we create for our own amus.e.m.e.nt."

'No Terror and no Ecstacy?"

'Scarcely a sc.r.a.p."

'How can you bear it?"

'It is the ultimate achievement of our race. We enjoy it."

'Are there none who-?"

'Those time travelers, s.p.a.ce travelers, a few who have induced special anachronistic tendencies in themselves. Yes, there are some who might respond to you. A good few of them are not with us at present, however. The Iron Orchid's little son, Jherek Carnelian, his great love, Amelia Underwood, his mentor, Lord Jagged of Canaria, and perhaps a few others, one loses track. Doctor Volospion? Perhaps, for it is rumored that he is not of this Age at all. Li Pao and various aliens who have visited us and stayed... Yes, from these you could derive a certain satisfaction. Some would undoubtably welcome you, for one reason or another..."

'It is usually for one reason or another," said the Fireclown frankly. "Men see me as many things. It is because I am many things."

'And all of them excellent, I am sure."

'But I must do what I must do," he said. "It is all I know. For I am Bloom the Destroyer, Bloom the Builder, Bloom the Bringer of Brightness, Bloom who Blooms Forever! And my mission is to save you all."

'I thought we had at least removed ourselves from generalities, Mr. Bloom," she said a little chidingly.

He turned away, desconsolately so My Lady Charlotina thought. "Generalities, madam, are all I deal in. They are my stock in trade. It is the gift I bring to remove petty anxieties, momentary considerations, and to replace them with grandeur, with huge, simple, glorious Ideals."

'It is not a simple problem," she said. "I can see that."

'It must be a simple problem!" he complained. "All problems are simple. All!"

He disappeared into the soft trees surrounding the plinth. She heard his voice muttering for some while, but he made no formal farewell, for he was too much lost in his own concerns. A short time later she saw a distant tree burst into flame and subside almost at once. She saw a rather feeble bolt of lighting crash and split a trunk. Then he was gone away.

My Lady Charlotina remained on the plinth, for she was enjoying a rare sense of melancholy and was reluctant to let the mood pa.s.s.

Chapter Ten

In which the Fireclown attempts to deny any suggestion made that he is an Anachronism

My Lady Charlotina's words had failed, as was soon to be shown, to convince Mr. Bloom. Yet there was something pathetic to his acts of destruction, something almost sad about the way he demolished the Duke of Queens' City of Tulips (each dwelling a separate flower) or laid waste Florence Fawkes' delightful little Sodom with all its inhabitants, including Florence Fawkes who was never, by an oversight, resurrected. It was in a half-abstracted mood that he brought a rain of molten lava to disrupt the party which Bishop Castle was giving for moody Werther de Goethe (and which, as it happened, was received with approval by all concerned, since Werthe was one of the few to appreciate the Fireclown's point of view and died screaming of repentance and the like though when he was resurrected almost immediately he did complain that the consistency of the lava was not all that it might have been too lumpy, he thought). The Fireclown rarely appeared personally on any of these occasions. He seemed to have lost the will to enjoy intercourse with his fellows. Moreover there was scarcely anyone who found him very entertaining after the first demolition or two, largely because his wrath always took exactly the same form. Werthe de Goethe sought him out and enthused. He found, he said, Mr. Bloom deeply refreshing, and he offered himself as an acolyte. Mr. Bloom had informed him that he would let Werthe know when acolytes were needed, if at all. Lord Mongrove also visited the Fireclown, hoping for conversation, but the Fireclown told him frankly that his talk was depressing. My Lady Charlotina visited him, too, and came away refusing to tell anyone what had pa.s.sed between herself and Mr. Bloorn, though she seemed upset. And when Mistress Christia followed close in the footsteps of her friend and was also rebuffed, Mr. Bloom told her somberly that he waited for one woman and one alone, the beautiful Mavis Ming.

Upon hearing this, Miss Ming shuddered and suggested that someone destroy the Fireclown before he did any more damage to the world.

If it had not been for the immense and unshakeable force field around the Fireclown's ship there is no doubt that some of the denizens at the End of Time would have at least made an attempt to halt the Fireclown's inconveniencing activities. It was a type unfamiliar even to the rotting cities, who did their best to a.n.a.lyze it and produce a formula for coping with it, but failed, forgetting the purpose of half their experiments before they were completed and drawing no conclusions from those they did complete, for the same reason. In most cases they took a childish delight in the more spectacular ef fects of their experiments and would play with the energies they had created until growing tired and pettish and refusing to help any further.

If the Fireclown had been unable to bring quite the holocaust he had promised, for things were rebuilt as soon as he had destroyed them, he had at least become a large flea upon the flank of society, wrecking carefully planned picnics, entertainments, artistic creations and games, so that precautions had to taken against him which spoiled the general effect intended. Force fields had to be produced to protect property for the first time in untold thousands of years and even the Duke of Queens, that most charitable of immortals, agreed that his ordinary enjoyment of life was being detrimentally influenced by Mr. Bloom, particularly since the destruction of his menagerie, the resurrection of which had greatly discommoded him.

There came such a twittering of protest as had never been heard at the End of Time and plans were discussed interminably for the ridding of the world of the pest, deputations were sent to his ship and were ignored, polite notes left at his airlock's entrance were either burned on the spot or allowed to drift away on the wind.

'It is quite ridiculous," said My Lady Charlotina, "that this puny prophet should be allowed to figure so largely in our lives. If only Lord Jagged were here, he would surely find a solution."

She spoke spitefully, for she knew that Doctor Volospion was in earshot. They were both attending the same reception, given on Sweet Orb Mace's new lawns which surrounded his mansion, modeled on one of the baroque juvenile slaughter houses of the late 200,006 century. From within sounded the most authentic screams, causing all to compliment Sweet Orb Mace on an unprecedented, for her, effort of imagination.

'Lord Jagged has undoubtably found that his interests are not best served by remaining at the End of Time," said Doctor Volospion from behind her.

She pretended surprise. "How do you do, Doctor Volospion?" She inspected his costume another long-sleeved robe, this one of maroon and white. "Hm."

'I am well, My Lady Charlotina."