He lifted his feet alternately, reclaiming them from the darkness.
He twisted his neck, but the distant mountains could no longer be
seen. The wind was cold on his cheek. Fingers flexed, he touched
contact pads on the chair arm, blinked as he was inserted into an
elsewhere where the light was bright. His ears popped.
Before him, Clouis stood for a megachronon like a statue, mouth
open, one hip dropped, knee bent, one arm half raised. Then he
came to life and said, ‘Hi, Bern-EE, hi hi!’
‘Hello.’ Bernheddin looked down as he thrust himself from the
chair to stand erect on the metal disc where it now rested.
‘Bernie, I was so anxious about you.’
Looked up. ‘I wish you wouldn’t always wait here for me.’
Through a round white arch a dazzling white terrace was visible,
a corner of balustrade, the spikes of an agave, and sunlight entered.
‘But Bernie, I was lonely.’ From a suggestion of pout he
chameleoned a smile, and, posing: ‘Do you like this gorgeous garment? I found it.’
It draped from his small shoulders in ivory folds, leaving bare his
arms and his legs from above the knees. There was a thin em broidered border. With this Clouis wore sandals; he had touched his eyelids with lilac.
Bernheddin ran thumb and curled forefinger along Clouis’s
sharp jawbone. ‘It’s very nice. You know, I do believe you’re growing a beard.’
‘Ber-NEE! T hat’s a revolting joke. And you’ve said it before.’
He wished to avoid any quarrel, but whatever he might have said
was too slow in coming.
‘Anyway, my new garment isn’t just very nice, it’s lovely.’
‘It’s a chiton.’
‘W hat?’
‘Your new garment — it’s a chiton.’
Clouis put an arm round him playfully. ‘You know everything.’
His own arm seemed wooden. ‘They were wearing them when I
was young, I had one.’
Tim e andflowers
31
‘You talk as if you were old, Bernie. You’re not old. Do you love
me?’
‘O f course I love you.’ He kissed him dutifully. The boy’s soft lips
and the scent of his face stirred him. Lust was an undeniable force;
it had driven evolution through the megayears. Kissed him again,
longer.
Clouis broke away, ‘Would you like some tea?’
They sat on the terrace in the brilliant light. As well as agaves
there were small palms, hibiscus with sensual pink flowers, and
bougainvillea climbing the white walls, breaking on the tiled roof
in a spray of lilac. The rim of the thousand-foot cliff on which they
perched was covered with white terraces and houses, all empty save
for themselves, all clean. Below, the sea was a brilliant crystalline
blue, and there were islands.
Clouis’s sunglasses matched the bougainvillea flowers. A single
shield deeply notched over the nose, glinting and opaqueing as he
turned, it gave him an incongruously aggressive look. Perhaps it
was the glasses hindering the meeting of eyes, but the conciliatory
mood was lost. Clouis was saying, ‘Why do you have to ride that
thing?’
Bernheddin sipped from the amber glass. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’
‘It’s not safe. You said — it can come back without you.’
‘Only if the line of the journey intersects a chronal distortion.
And then it will only return empty if the rider leaves the chair.’
‘W hat would happen then?’
‘I never leave the chair.’
‘But what do you do? You’re riding it all the time. It’s as if you
can’t stand me anymore — you always want to be away.’
‘No, Clouis. You know that’s not true. I am rarely gone more
than an hour or two. You should take a ride yourself, sec what it’s
like.’
Clouis shook his shoulders in a theatrical shiver. ‘Uff! You won’t
catch me in that decadent thing.’ He stood, poured Bernheddin
more tea from the glass jug in which floated ice and slices of lemon.
Like Ganymede, thought Bernheddin, with his tight golden
curls. He found it within himself to grin, for he felt not at all like
Zeus.
‘But Bernie, what would happen if it came back without you?’
‘Sweetheart, it won’t.’
‘But if it did?’
‘Well, nothing would happen, I guess.’
32
Anthony Peacey
‘You couldn’t get back without it, could you?’
‘It would be a little difficult.’
‘Could I find you?’
‘Well, no . . .’
‘I know. I read in that decadent book.’
The Charting and Navigation of Chronal Dichotomies. The wave with
which Clouis dismissed this text conjured for Bernheddin the thin
foreclaw of Tyrannosaurus rex, a wonder of the vast past he had so far
neglected to seek out.
Clouis went on, ‘Well, where do you go all the time?
