An Alien Heat
BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK
Book One of the Dancers at the End of Time trilogy
The silver lips of lilies virginal,
The full deep bosom of the enchanted rose
Please less than flowers glass-hid from frosts and snows
For whom an alien heat makes festival.
THEODORE WRATISLAW
Hothouse Flowers
1896
Prologue
The cycle of the Earth (indeed, the universe, if the truth had been known) was nearing its end and the human race had at last ceased to take itself seriously. Having inherited millennia of scientific and technological knowledge it used this knowledge to indulge its richest fantasies to play immense imaginative games, to relax and create beautiful monstrosities. After all, there was little else left to do. An earlier age might have been horrified at what it would have judged a waste of resources, an appalling extravagance in the uses to which materials and energies were put. An earlier age would have seen the inhabitants of this world as "decadent" or "amoral," to say the least. But even if these inhabitants were not conscious of the fact that they lived at the end of time some unconscious knowledge informed their attitudes and made them lose interest in ideals, creeds, philosophies and the conflicts to which such things give rise. They found pleasure in paradox, aesthetics and baroque wit; if they had a philosophy, then it was a philosophy of taste, of sensuality. Most of the old emotions had atrophied, meant little to them. They had rivalry without jealousy, affection without lust, malice without rage, kindness without pity. Their schemes — often grandiose and perverse — were pursued without obsession and left uncompleted without regret, for death was rare and life might cease only when Earth herself died.
Yet this particular story is about an obsession which overtook one of these people, much to his own astonishment. And because he was overtaken by an obsession that is why we have a story to tell. It is probably the last story in the annals of the human race and, as it happens, it is not dissimilar to that which many believe is the first.
What follows, then, is the story of Jherek Carnelian, who did not know the meaning of morality, and Mrs. Amelia Underwood, who knew everything about it.
1. A Conversation with the Iron Orchid
Dressed in various shades of light brown, the Iron Orchid and her son sat upon a cream-coloured beach of crushed bone. Some distance off a white sea sparkled and whispered. It was the afternoon.
Between the Iron Orchid and her son, Jherek Carnelian, lay the remains of a lunch. Spread on a cloth of plain damask were ivory plates containing pale fish, potatoes, meringue, vanilla ice-cream and, glaring rather dramatically, from the centre of it all, a lemon.
The Iron Orchid smiled with her amber lips and, reaching for an oyster, asked: "How do you mean, my love, 'virtuous'?" Her perfect hand, powdered the very lightest shade of gold, hovered for a second over the oyster and then withdrew. She used the hand, instead, to cover a small yawn.
Her son stretched on his soft pillows. He, too, felt tired after the exertions of eating, but dutifully he continued with the subject. "I'm not thoroughly sure what it means. As you know, most devastating of minerals, most enchanting of flowers, I have studied the language of the time quite extensively. I must possess every tape that still exists. It provides considerable amusement. But I cannot understand every nuance. I found the word in a dictionary and the dictionary told me it meant acting with 'moral rectitude' or in conformity with 'moral laws' — 'good, just, righteous.' Bewildering!"
He did take an oyster. He slid it into his mouth. He rolled it down his throat. It had been the Iron Orchid who had discovered oysters and he had been delighted when she suggested they meet on this beach and eat them. She had made some champagne to go with them, but they had both agreed that they did not care for it and had cheerfully returned it to its component atoms.
"However," he continued, "I should like to try it for a bit. It is supposed to involve 'self-denial' " — he forestalled her question — "which means doing nothing pleasurable."
"But everything , body of velvet, bones of steel, is pleasurable!"
"True — and there lies our paradox! You see the ancients, mother, divided their sensations into different groupings — categories of sensations, some of which they did not find pleasurable, it seems. Or they did find them pleasurable and therefore were displeased! Oh, dearest Iron Orchid, I can see you are ready to dismiss the whole thing. And I despair, often, of puzzling out the answer. Why was one thing considered worth pursuing and another not? But," his handsome lips curved in a smile, "I shall settle the problem in one way or another, sooner or later." And he closed his heavy lids.
"Oh, Carnelian!"
She laughed softly and affectionately and stretched across the cloth to slip her slender hands into his loose robe and stroke his warmth and his blood.
"Oh, my dear! How swift you are! How ripe and rich you are today!"
And he drew himself to his feet and he stepped over the cloth and he laid his tall body down upon her and he kissed her slowly.
And the sea sighed.
When they awoke, still in each other's arms, it was morning, though no night had passed. For their own pleasure someone had doubtless been engaged in rearranging time. It was not important.
Jherek noticed that the sea had turned a deep pink, almost a cerise, and was clashing dreadfully with the beach, while on the horizon behind him he saw that two palms and a cliff had disappeared altogether. In their place stood a silver pagoda, about twelve storeys high and glittering in the morning sun.
Jherek looked to his left and was pleased to see that his aircar (resembling a steam locomotive of the early 20th century, but of about half the size, in gold, ebony and rubies) was still where they had left it.
He looked again at the pagoda, craning his neck, for his mother still relaxed with her head against his shoulder. His mother, too, turned to look as a winged figure left the roof of the pagoda and flew crazily away towards the east, swerving and dipping, circling back, narrowly missing the sharp edge of the pagoda's crest, and at last disappearing.
"Oh," said the Iron Orchid getting to her feet. "It is the Duke of Queens and his wings. Why will he insist that they are successful?" She waved a vague hand at the departed duke. "Goodbye. Playing one of his solitary games, again, I suppose." She looked down at the remains of the lunch and made a face. "I must clear this away." With a wave of the ring on her left hand she disseminated the lunch and watched the dust drift away on the air. "Will you be going there, this evening? To his party?" She moved her slender arm, heavy with brown brocade, and touched her forehead with her fingertips.
"I think so." He disseminated his own pillows. "I have a great liking for the Duke of Queens."
His lips pursed a trifle, Jherek Carnelian pondered the pink sea. "Even if I do not always appreciate his colour sense."
He turned and walked over the crushed bone beach to his aircar. He clambered into the cabin.
"All aboard, my strong, my sweet, Iron Orchid!"
She chuckled and reached up to him.
From the footplate he reached down, seized her waist and swung her aboard.
"Off to Pasadena!"
He sounded his whistle.
"Shuffle off to Buffalo!"
Responding to the sonic signal, the little locomotive took magnificently to the air, shunting up the sky, with lovely, lime-coloured steam puffing from its smokestack and from beneath its wheels.
"Oh, they gave him his augurs at Racine-Virginia," sang Jherek Carnelian, donning a scarlet and cloth-of-gold engineer's cap, "saying steam-up, you're way behind time! It ain't '98, it's old '97. You got to get on down that old Nantucket line!"
The Iron Orchid settled back in her seat of plush and ermine (an exact reproduction, she understood, of the original) and watched her son with amusement as he opened the firedoor and shovelled in the huge black diamonds which he had made specially to go with the train and which, though of no particular use in fuelling the aircar, added aesthetic texture to the recreation.
"Where do you find all these old songs, Carnelian, my own?"
"I came across a cache of 'platters,' " he told her, wiping honest sweat from his face with a silk rag. The train swept rapidly over a sea and a range of mountains. "A form of sound-storage of the same period as the original of this aircar. A million years old, at least, though there's some evidence that they, themselves, are reproductions of other originals. Kept in perfect condition by a succession of owners."
He slammed the firedoor shut and discarded the platinum shovel, joining her upon the couch and staring down at the quaintly moulded countryside which Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, had begun to build a while ago and then abandoned.
It was not elegant. In fact it was something of a mess. Two-thirds of a hill, in the fashion of the 91st century post-Aryan landscapers, supported a snake-tree done after the Saturnian manner but left uncoloured; part of an 11th century Gothic ruin stood beside a strip of river of the Bengali Empire period. You could see why she had decided not to finish it, but it seemed to Jherek that it was a pity she had not bothered to disseminate it. Someone else would, of course, sooner or later.
"Carrie Joan," he sang, "she kept her boiler going. Carrie Joan, she filled it full of wine. Carrie Joan didn't stop her rowing. She had to get to Brooklyn by a quarter-past nine!"
He turned to the Iron Orchid.
"Do you like it? The quality of the platters isn't all it could be, but I think I've worked out all the words now."
"Is that what you were doing last year?"
She raised her fine eyebrows. "I heard the noises coming from your Hi-Rise." She laughed. "And I thought it was to do with sex." She frowned. "Or animals." She smiled. "Or both."
The locomotive began to spiral down, hooting, towards Jherek's ranch. The ranch had taken the place of the Hi-Rise. A typical building of the 19th century, done in fibafome and thatch, each corner of its veranda roof was supported by a wooden Indian, some forty feet high. Each Indian had a magnificent pearl, twelve inches in diameter, in his turban, and a beard of real hair. The Indians were the only extravagant detail in the otherwise simple building.
The locomotive landed in the corral and Jherek, whose interest in the ancient world had, off and on, sustained itself for nearly two years, held out his hand to help the Iron Orchid disembark. For a moment she hesitated as she attempted to remember what she must do. Then she grasped his hand and jumped to the ground crying:
"Geronimo!"
Together they made for the house.
The surrounding landscape had been designed to fit in with the ranch. The sky contained a sunset, which silhouetted the purple hills, and the black pines, which topped them. On the other side was a range containing a herd of bison. Every few days there would emerge from a cunningly hidden opening in the ground a group of mechanical 7th cavalrymen who would whoop and shout and ride round and round the bison shooting their arrows into the air before roping and branding the beasts. The bison had been specially grown from Jherek's own extensive gene-bank and didn't seem to care for the operation although it should have been instinctive to them. The 7th cavalry, on the other hand, had been manufactured in his machine shop because he had a distaste for growing people (who were inclined to be bad-mannered when the time came for their dissemination).
"What a beautiful sunset," said his mother, who had not visited him since the Hi-Rise days. "Was the sun really as huge as that in those days?"
"Bigger," he said, "by all accounts. I toned it down rather, for this."
She touched his arm. "You were always inclined to be restrained. I like it."
"Thank you."
They went up the white winding staircase to the veranda, breathing in the delicious scent of magnolia which grew on the ground beside the basement section of the house. They crossed the veranda and Jherek manipulated a lever which, depressed, allowed the door to open so that they could enter the parlour — a single room occupying the whole of this floor. The remaining eight floors were given over to kitchens, bedrooms, cupboards and the like.
The parlour was a treasure house of 19th century reproductions, including a magnificent pot-bellied stove carved from a single oak and a flowering aspidistra which grew from the centre of the grass carpet and spread its rubbery branches over the best part of the room.
The Iron Orchid hovered beside the intricate lattice-work shape which Jherek had seen in an old holograph and reproduced in steel and chrome. It was like a huge egg standing on its end and it rose as high as the ceiling.
"And what is this, my life force?" she asked him.
"A spaceship," he explained. "They were constantly attempting to fly to the moon or striving to repel invasions from Mars. I'm not sure if they were successful, though of course there are no Martians these days. Some of their writers were inclined to tell rather tall tales, you know, doubtless with a view to entertaining their companions."
"Whatever possessed them to try ! Into space !"
She shuddered. People had lost the inclination to leave the Earth centuries ago.
Naturally, space-travellers called on the planet from time to time, but they were, as often as not, boring fellows with not much to offer. They were usually encouraged to leave as soon as possible or, if one should catch somebody's fancy, he would be retained in a collection.
Even Jherek had no impulse to time-travel, though time-travellers would arrive occasionally in his era. He could have travelled through time himself, if he had wished, and very briefly visited his beloved 19th century. But, like most people, he found that the real places were rather disappointing. It was much better to indulge in imaginative recreation of the periods or places. Nothing, therefore, would spoil the full indulgence of one's fancies, or the thrill of discovery as one unearthed some new piece of information and added it to the texture of one's reproduction.
A servo entered and bowed. The Iron Orchid handed it her clothes (as she had been instructed to do by Jherek — another custom of the time) and went to stretch her wonderful body under the aspidistra tree.
Jherek was pleased to note she was wearing breasts again and thus did not clash with her surroundings. Everything was in period. Even the servo wore a derby, an ulster, chaps and stout brogues and carried several meerschaum pipes in its steel teeth. At a sign from its master it rolled away.
Jherek went to sit with his back against the bole of the aspidistra. "And now, lovely Iron Orchid, tell me what you have been doing."
She looked up at him, her eyes shining. "I've been making babies, dearest. Hundreds of them!" She giggled. "I couldn't stop. Cherubs, mainly. I built a little aviary for them, too. And I made them trumpets to blow and harps to pluck and I composed the sweetest music you ever heard. And they played it!"
"I should like to hear it."
"What a shame." She was genuinely upset that she had not thought of him, her favourite, her only real son. "I'm making microscopes now. And gardens, of course, to go with them. And tiny beasts. But perhaps I'll do the cherubs again some day. And you shall hear them, then."
"If I am not being 'virtuous,' " he said archly.
"Ah, now I begin to understand the meaning. If you have an impulse to do something — you do the opposite. You want to be a man, so you become a woman. You wish to fly somewhere, so you go underground. You wish to drink, but instead you emit fluid. And so on. Yes, that's splendid. You'll set a fashion, mark my words. In a month, blood of my blood, everyone will be virtuous. And what shall we do then? Is there anything else? Tell me!"
"Yes. We could be 'evil' — or 'modest' — or 'lazy' — or 'poor' — or, oh, I don't know — 'worthy.' There's hundreds."
"And you would tell us how to be it?"
"Well…" He frowned. "I still have to work out exactly what's involved. But by that time I should know a little more."
"We'll all be grateful to you. I remember when you taught us Lunar Cannibals. And Swimming. And — what was it — Flags?"
"I enjoyed Flags," he said. "Particularly when My Lady Charlotina made that delicious one which covered the whole of the western hemisphere. In metal cloth the thickness of an ant's web. Do you remember how we laughed when it fell on us?"
"Oh, yes!" She clapped her hands. "Then Lord Jagged built a Flag Pole on which to fly it and the pole melted so we each made a Niagara to see who could do the biggest and used up every drop of water and had to make a whole new batch and you went round and round in a cloud raining on everyone, even on Mongrove. And Mongrove dug himself an underground Hell, with devils and everything, out of that book the time-traveller brought us, and he set fire to Bulio Himmler's 'Bunkerworld 2' which he didn't know was right next door to him and Bulio was so upset he kept dropping atom bombs on Mongrove's Hell, not knowing that he was supplying Mongrove with all the heat he needed!"
They laughed heartily.
"Was it really three hundred years ago?" said Jherek nostalgically.
He plucked a leaf from the aspidistra and reflectively began to chew it. A little blue juice ran down his beige chin.
"I sometimes think," he continued, "that I haven't known a better sequence of events. It seemed to go on and on, one thing leading neatly to another. Mongrove's Hell, you know, also ruined my menagerie, except for one creature that escaped and broke most of his devils. Everything went up, in my menagerie, otherwise. Because of Himmler, really. Or because of Lady Charlotina. Who's to say?"
He discarded the leaf.
"It's strange," he said. "I haven't kept a menagerie since. I mean, almost everyone has some sort of menagerie, even you, Iron Orchid."
"Mine is so small . Compare it with the Everlasting Concubine's, even."
"You've three Napoleons. She has none."
"True. But I'm honestly not sure whether any one of them is genuine."
"It is hard to tell," he agreed.
"And she does have an absolutely genuine Attila the Hun. The trouble she went to, too, to make that particular trade. But he's such a bore."
"I think that's why I stopped collecting," he said. "The genuine items are often less interesting than the fakes."
"It's usually the case, fruit of my loins." She sank into the grass again. This last reference was not to the literal truth. In fact, as Jherek remembered, his mother had been some sort of male anthropoid at the actual moment of his birth and had forgotten all about him until, by accident, six months later she came upon the incubator in the jungle she had built. He had still been nursed as a new-born baby by the incubator. But she had kept him. He was glad of that. So few human beings, as such, were born these days.
Perhaps that was why, being a natural born baby, as it were, he felt such an affinity with the past, thought Jherek. Many of the time-travellers — even some of the space-travellers — had been children, too.
He did get on well with some of the people who had chosen to live outside the menageries and adopt the ways of this society.
Pereg Tralo, for instance, who had ruled the world in the 30th century simply because he had been the last person to be born out of an actual womb! A splendid, witty companion. And Clare Cyrato, the singer from the 500th — a peculiar freak, due to some experiment of her mother's, she too had entered life as a baby. Babies, children, adolescents — everything!
It was an experience he had not regretted. What experience could be regretted? And he had been the darling of all his mother's friends. His novelty lasted well into his teens. With delight they had watched him grow ! Everyone envied him. Everyone envied the Iron Orchid, though for a while she had distinctly tired of him and gone away to live in the middle of a mountain. Everyone envied him, that is, except Mongrove (who would certainly not have admitted it, anyway) and Werther de Goethe, who had also been born a baby. Werther, of course, had been a trial and had not enjoyed himself nearly so much. Even though he no longer had six arms, he still felt a certain amount of resentment about the way he had been altered, never having the same limbs or the same head, even, from one day to the next.
Jherek noticed that his mother had fallen asleep again. She only had to lie down for a moment and she was dreaming. It was a habit she had always encouraged in herself, for she thought up many of her best new ideas in dreams.
Jherek hardly dreamed at all.
If he had, he supposed he would not have to seek out old tapes and platters to read, watch or hear.
Still, he was acknowledged as being one of the very best recreators, even if his originality would not equal either his mother's or that of the Duke of Queens. Privately Jherek felt that the Duke of Queens lost on aesthetic sensibility what he made up for in invention.
Jherek remembered that both he and the Iron Orchid were invited to the Duke's that evening. He had not been to a party for some time and was determined to wear something stunning.
He considered what to put on. He would stick to the 19th century, of course, for he believed very much in consistency of style. And it must be nothing fanciful. It must be spare. It must be a clean, quiet image, striking and absolutely without a personal touch. A personal touch would, again, mar the effect. The choice became obvious.
He would wear full evening dress, an opera hat and an opera cloak.
And, he thought with a self-satisfied smile, he would have the whole thing in a low-keyed combination of russet orange and midnight blue. With a carnation, naturally, at the throat.
2. A Soiree at the Duke of Queens
A few million years ago, perhaps less (for time was terribly difficult to keep track of), there had flourished as a province of legendary New York City a magnificent district known as the Queen's. It was here that some New York king's escort had established her summer residence, building a vast palace and gardens and inviting from all over the world the most talented and the most amusing people to share the summer months with her. To the Queen's court flocked great painters, writers, composers, sculptors, craftsmen and wits, to display their new creations, to perform plays, dances and operas, to gossip, to entertain their queen (who had probably been the mythical Queen Eleanor of the Red Veldt), their patron.
Although in the meantime a few continents had drowned and others emerged, while various land masses had joined together and some had divided, there had been little doubt in the mind of Liam Ty Pam Caesar Lloyd George Zatopek Finsbury Ronnie Michelangelo Yurio Iopu 4578 Rew United that he had found the site of the original court and established his own residence there and was thus able to style himself, reasonably enough, the Duke of Queens. One of the few permanent landmarks of the world was his statue of the Queen of the Red Veldt herself, stretching half a mile into the sky and covering an area of some six miles, showing the heroic queen in her cadillac (or chariot) drawn by six dragons, with her oddly curved spear in one hand, her square shield on her other arm and with her bizarre helmet upon her head, looking splendidly heroic as she must have done when she led her victorious armies against the might of the United Nations, that grandiose and ambitious alliance which had, in the legends, once sought to dominate the entire planet. So long had the statue stood in the grounds of the Duke's residence that few really ever noticed it, for the residence itself changed frequently and the Duke of Queens often managed to astonish everyone with the originality and scope of his invention.
As Jherek Carnelian and his mother, the Iron Orchid, approached, the first thing they saw was the statue, but almost immediately they took note of the house which the Duke must have erected especially for this evening's party.
"Oh!" breathed the Iron Orchid, peering out from the cabin of the locomotive and shielding her eyes against the light, "How clever he is! How delightful!"
Jherek pretended to be unimpressed as he joined her on the footplate, his opera cloak swirling.
"It's pretty," he said, "and striking, of course. The Duke of Queens is always striking."
Clad in poppies, marigolds and cornflowers from throat to ankle, the Iron Orchid turned with a smile and wagged a finger at him. "Come now, my dear. Admit that it is magnificent."
"I have admitted that it is striking. It is striking."
"It is magnificent!"
His disdain melted before her enthusiasm. He laughed. "Very well, lushest of blooms, it is magnificent ! Without parallel! Gorgeous! Breathtaking! A work of genius!"
"And you will tell him so, my ghost?" Her eyes were sardonic. "Will you tell him?"
He bowed. "I will."
"Splendid. And then, you see, we shall enjoy the party so much more."
Of course, there was no doubting the Duke's ingenuity but as usual, thought Jherek, he had overdone everything. The sky had been coloured a lurid purple as a background and in it swirled the remaining planets of the Solar System — Mars as a great ruby, Venus as an emerald, Herod as a diamond, and so on — thirty in all.
The residence itself was a reproduction of the Great Fire of Africa. There were a number of separate buildings, each in the shape of some famous city of the time, blazing merrily away. Durban, Kilwa-Kivinje, Yola, Timbuctoo and others all burned, yet each detailed building, which was certain to be in perfect scale, was sculpted from water and the water was brightly (garishly, in Jherek's opinion) coloured, as were the flames. There were flames of every conceivable, flickering shade. And among the flames and the water wandered the guests who had already arrived. Naturally there was no heat to the fire — or barely any — for the Duke of Queens had no intention of burning his guests to death. In a way, Jherek thought, that was why the residence seemed to him to lack any real creative force. But then he was inclined to take such matters too seriously — everyone told him of that.
The locomotive landed just outside Smithsmith, whose towers and terraces would crumble as if in a blaze and then swiftly reform themselves before the water fell on anybody. People shouted with delight and giggled in surprise. Smithsmith seemed at present the most popular attraction in the residence. Food and beverages, mainly 28th century African, were laid about everywhere and people wandered from table to table sampling them.
Dismounting from the footplate and absently offering his hand to his mother (whose "Geronimo" was sotto voce because she was becoming bored with the ritual) Jherek noticed many people he knew and a few whom he did not. Some of those he did not know were plainly from menageries, probably all time-travellers. He could tell by the awkward way in which they stood, either conversing or keeping to themselves, either amused or unhappy. Jherek saw a time-traveller he did recognise. Li Pao, clad in his usual blue overalls, was casting a disapproving eye over Smithsmith.
Jherek and the Iron Orchid approached him.
"Good evening, Li Pao," said the Iron Orchid. She kissed him on his lovely, round yellow face. "You're evidently critical of Smithsmith. Is it the usual? Lack of authenticity? You're from the 28th century, aren't you?"
"27th," said Li Pao, "but I don't imagine things would have changed that much. Ah, you bourgeois individualists — you're so bad at it. That's always been my main contention."
"You could be a better 'bourgeois individualist' if you wanted to be, eh?" Another menagerie member approached. He was dressed in the long, silver skirts of the 32nd century whipperman. "You're always quibbling over details, Li Pao."
Li Pao sighed. "I know. I'm boring. But there it is."
"It's why we love you," said the Iron Orchid, kissing him again and then waving her hand to her dear friend Gaf the Horse in Tears who had looked up from her conversation with Sweet Orb Mace (whom some thought might be Jherek's father) and smiled at the Iron Orchid, motioning her to join them. The Iron Orchid drifted away.
"And it's why we won't listen to you time-travellers," said Jherek. "You can be so dreadfully pedantic. This detail isn't right — that one's out of period — and so on. It spoils everyone's pleasure. You must admit, Li Pao, that you are a trifle literal minded."
"That was the strength of our Republic," said Li Pao, sipping his wine. "That was why it lasted fifty thousand years."
"Off and on," said the 32nd century whipperman.
"More on than off," said Li Pao.
"Well, it depends what you call a republic," said the whipperman.
They were at it again. Jherek Carnelian smoothed himself off and saw Mongrove, the bitter giant, all overblown and unloved, who stood moping in the very centre of blazing Smithsmith as if he wished the buildings would really fall down on him and consume him. Jherek knew that Mongrove's whole persona was an affectation, but he had kept it so long that it was almost possible Mongrove had become the thing itself. But Mongrove was not really unloved. He was a favourite at parties — when he deigned to attend them. This must be his first in twenty years.
