"Your world recovers from disaster, then?" said Lord Jagged sympathetically.
"It has recovered, sir." She was firm. "Thanks to the ancestors of the Armatuce. Now the Armatuce holds what they achieved in trust. 'Stable Is He Who Stoic Shall Be'."
"You fear that without this morality you would reproduce the disaster?"
"We know it," she said.
"Yet —" he spread his hands — "you find a world still here when you did not expect it and no evidence that your philosophy has survived."
She scarcely heard the words, but she recognized the sly, pernicious tone. She squared her shoulders. "We would return now, if you please. The boy has eaten."
"You will have nothing?"
"Will you show me to my ship?"
"Your ship will not work."
"What? You refuse to let me leave?"
As succinctly as possible, Lord Jagged explained the Morphail Effect, concluding, "Therefore you can never really return to your own Age and, if you left this one, might well be killed or at very least stranded in a less congenial era."
"You think I lack courage? That I would not take the risk?"
He pursed his lips and let his gaze fall upon the gorging boy. She followed his meaning and put two fingers softly upon her cheek.
"Eat now," said the tall lord with a tender gesture.
Absently, she touched a morsel of mutton to her tongue.
A shadow moved across the field, cast by a beast, porcine and grey, which with lumbering grace performed a somersault or two in the sky. Overhead there were now several more objects and creatures pirouetting, diving, spiralling — a small red biplane, a monstrous mosquito, a winged black and white cat, a pale green stingray — while below the owners of these entrants jostled, laughed and talked: a motley of races (some Earthly beasts, others extraterrestrial; but mostly humanoid), clothed and decorated in all manner of fanciful array. On the edges of the blue and white field there had sprouted marquees, flagpoles, lines of bunting, crowded together and waving boisterously, so that she could no longer see beyond their confines. She let the mutton melt, took one plum and consumed it, drank an inch of water from a goblet, and her meal was done, though the effort of will involved in resisting a leaf of lettuce only by a fraction succeeded in balancing the guilt experienced at having allowed herself to eat the second half of the fruit. Meanwhile Snuffles' jaws continued to move with dedicated precision.
Several large, fiery wheels went by, a score of feet above her head, drowning with their hissing the loud babble of the crowd.
"Cwumbs!" exclaimed Sweet Orb Mace, with a knowing wink at her, as if they shared a secret. "Goah Blimey!"
The words were meaningless, but he appeared to be under the impression that she would understand them.
Deliberately, she guided her glance elsewhere. Everyone was applauding.
"Chariots of Fire!" bellowed a deep, proprietorial voice. "Chariots of Fire! Number Seventy-Eight!"
"We shan't forget, dear Duke of Queens," sang a lady whose gilded skin clashed sickeningly with her green mouth and glowing, emerald eyes.
"My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake," murmured Lord Jagged. "Would you like to meet her?"
"Can she be of help to me? Can she give me practical advice?" The rhetoric rang false, even in her own ears.
"She is the Patron of Brannart Morphail, our greatest, maddest scientist, who knows more about the Nature of Time than anyone else in history, so he tells us. He will probably want to interview you shortly."
"Why should one of your folk require a Patron?" she asked with genuine interest.
"We seek traditions wherever we can find them. We are glad to get them. They help us order our lives, I suppose. Doubtless Brannart dug his tradition up from some ancient tape and took a fancy to it. Of late, because of the enthusiasm of the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek, we have all become obsessed with morality…"
"I see little evidence of that."
"We are still having difficulty defining what it is," he told her. "My Lady Charlotina — our latest time travellers — Mother and Son — Dafnish and Snuffles Armatuce."
"How charming. How unusual. Tell me, delightful Dafnish, are you claimed yet?"
"Claimed?" Dafnish Armatuce looked back at the departing Jagged.
"We vie with one another to be hosts to new arrivals," he called. His wave was a little on the airy side. "You are 'claimed', however, as my guests. I will see you anon."
"Greedy Jagged! Does he restock his menagerie?" My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake stroked her crochet snood as her eyes swept up from Dafnish's toes and locked with Dafnish's eyes for a moment. "Your figure? Is it your own, my dear?"
"I fail to understand you."
"Then it is! Ha, ha!" Mood changed, My Lady Charlotina made a curtsey. "I will find you some friends. My talent, they say, is as a Catalyst!"
"You are modest, cherubic Charlotina! You have all the talents in the catalogue!" In doublet and hose reminiscent of pre-cataclysm decadence, extravagantly swollen, catechrestically slashed and galooned, bearing buttons the size of cabbages, the shoes with toes a yard or two long and curled to the knees, the cap peaked to jut more than a foot from the face, beruffed and bedecked with thin brass chains, a big-buckled belt somewhere below the waist so as, in whole, to make Sweet Orb Mace seem mother naked, a youth bent a calculated leg before continuing with his catechism of compliment. "Let me cast myself beneath the cataract of your thousand major virtues, your myriad minor qualities, O mistress of my soul, for though I am considered clever, I am nought but your lowliest catechumen, seeking only to absorb the smallest scraps of your wisdom so that I may, for one so small, be whole!" Whereupon he flung himself to the grass on velvet knees and raised powdered, imploring hands.
"Good afternoon, Doctor Volospion." She relished the flattery, but paused no longer, saying over her shoulder, "You smell very well
