The jade air-car reached the ranch and hovered. "You see," said Jherek, "it is almost exactly as you last saw it, before you were torn away from me and tumbled back through Time. It retains all the features you proposed, familiar comforts of your own dear Dawn Age. You will be happy, Amelia. And anything else you wish, it shall be yours. Remember — my knowledge of your needs, your age, is much more sophisticated now. You will not find me the naive who courted you so long, it seems, ago!"
      "It is the same," she said, and her voice was wistful, "but we are not."
      "I am more mature," he agreed, "a better mate."
      "Ah!" She smiled.
      He sensed ambiguity. "You do not love another? Captain Bastable…"
      She became wicked. "He is a gentleman of excellent manners. And his bearing — so soldierly…" But her eyes laughed at her words. "A match any mother would approve. Were I not already married, I should be the envy of Bromley — but I am married, of course, to Mr. Underwood."
      Jherek made the car spiral down towards the rose-gardens and the rockeries he had created for her, and he said with some nervousness: "He said he would — what? — 'divest' you!"
      "Divorce. I should have to appear in court — millions of years from here. It seems," (turning so that he should not see her face), "that I shall never be free."
      "Free? Free? No woman was ever more free. Here is humanity triumphant — Nature conquered — all desires may be fulfilled — of enemies, none. You can live as you please. I shall serve you. Your whims shall be mine, dearest Amelia!"
      "But my conscience," she said. "Can I be free from that?"
      His face fell. "Oh, yes, of course, your conscience. I was forgetting it." The car sank to the lawn. "You did not leave it, then, behind? In Eden?"
      "There? I had greater need of it, did I not?"
      "I thought you suggested otherwise."
      "Then condemn me as fickle. All women are so."
      "You contradict yourself, but apparently without relish."
      "Ha!" She was the first to leave the craft. "You refuse to accuse me, Mr. Carnelian? You will not play the game? The old game?"
      "I did not know there was a game, Amelia. You are disturbed? The set of your shoulders reveals it. I am confused."
      She rounded on him, but her face was softening. Her eyes held disbelief, fast fading. "You do not try me for my femininity? I am not accused of womanliness?"
      "All this is meaningless."
      "Then perhaps there is a degree of freedom here, at the End of Time, mixed with all your cruelties."
      "Cruelties?"
      "You keep slaves. Casually, you destroy anything which bores you. Have you no consideration for these time-travellers you capture? Was I not captured so — and put in a menagerie? And Yusharisp — bartered for me. Even in my age such barbarities are banished!"
      He accepted her admonishment. He bowed his head. "Then you must teach me what is best," he said. "Is this 'morality'?"
      She was overwhelmed, suddenly, by the enormity of her responsibility. Was it salvation she brought to Paradise, or was it merely guilt? She hesitated. "We shall discuss it, in the fullness of time," she told him.
      They set foot upon the crazy paving of the path, between low yew-hedges. The ranch — Gothic red brick reproduction of her ideal Bromley villa — awaited them. A parrot or two perched on chimneys and gables; they seemed to flute a welcome.
      "It is as you left it," he said. He was proud. "But, elsewhere, I have built for you a 'London', so that you shall not be homesick. It still pleases you, the ranch?"
      "It is as I remember it."
      He understood that he read disappointment in her tone.
      "You compare it now with the original, I suppose."
      "It has the essentials of the original."
      "But remains a 'mere copy', eh? Show me…"
      She had reached the porch, ran a hand over the painted timber, fondled a still-blooming rose (for none had faded since she had vanished), touched the flower to her nose. "It has been so long," she murmured. "I needed familiarity, then."
      "You do not need it now?"
      "Ah, yes. I am human. I am a woman. But perhaps there are other things which come to mean more. I felt, in those days, that I was in hell — tormented, mocked, abused — in the company of the mad. I had no perspective."
      He opened the door, with its stained-glass panels. Potted plants, pictures, carpets of Persian design, dark paint, were revealed in the gloom of the entrance hall.
      "If there are additions…" he began.
      "Additions!" She was half amused. She inspected the what-nots and the aspidistras with a disdainful eye. "No more, I think."
      "Too cluttered, now?" He closed the door and caused light to blossom.
      "The house could be bigger. More windows, perhaps. More sun. More air."
      He smiled. "I could remove the roof."
      "You could, indeed!" She sniffed. "Yet it is not as musty as I supposed it would be. How long is it since you departed it?"
      "That's difficult. We can only find out by conferring with our friends. They will know. My range of scents has much improved since I visited 1896. I agree that it was an area in which I was weak. But my palette is altogether enriched."
      "Oh, this will do, Mr. Carnelian. For the present, at any rate."
      "You cannot voice your disquiet?"
      She turned kind eyes on him. "You possess a sensitivity often denied by your behaviour."
      "I love you," he said simply. "I live for you."
      She coloured. "My rooms are as I left them? My wardrobe remains intact?"
      "Everything is there."
      "Then I will rejoin you for lunch." She began to mount the stairs.
      "It will be ready for you," he promised. He went into the front parlour, staring around him at this Collins Avenue of the mind, peering through the windows at the gentle green hills, the mechanical cows and sheep with their mechanical cow-boys and shepherds, all perfectly reproduced to make her feel at home. He admitted to himself that her response had bewildered him. It was almost as if she had lost her taste for her own preferred environment. He sighed. It had seemed so much easier, when her ideas were definite. Now that she herself found them difficult to define, he was at a loss. Antimacassars, horsehair furniture, red, black and yellow carpets of geometrical pattern, framed photographs, thick-leaved plants, the harmonium with which she had eased her heart, all now (because she seemed to have disapproved) accused him as a brute who could never please any woman, let alone the finest woman who had ever breathed. Still in the stained rags of his nineteenth-century suit, he slumped into an armchair, head on hand, and considered the irony of his situation. Not long since, he had sat in this house with Mrs. Underwood and made tentative suggestions for its improvement. She had forbidden any change. Then she had gone and all that he had left of her was the house itself. As a substitute, he had come to love it. Now it was she who suggested improvements (of almost exactly the kind he had proposed) and he felt a deep reluctance to alter a single potted palm, a solitary sideboard. Nostalgia for those times when he had courted her and she had tried to teach him the meaning of virtue, when they had sung hymns together in the evenings (it had been she, again, who had insisted upon a daily time-scale similar to that which she had known in Bromley), filled him — and with nostalgia came trepidation, that his hopes were doomed. At every stage, when she had been close to declaring her love for him, to giving herself to him, she had been thwarted. It was almost as if Jagged watched them, deliberately manipulating every detail of their lives. Easier to think that, perhaps, than to accept an arbitrary universe.
      He rose from the chair and, with an expression of defiance (she had always insisted that he follow her conventions) created a hole in the ceiling through which he might pass and enter his own room, a haven of glittering white, gold and silver. He restored the floor to completeness and his ruby ring cleansed his body of Palaeozoic grime, placed wafting robes of white spider-fur about him, brought ease to his mind as it dawned on him that his old powers (and therefore his old innocence) were restored to him. He stretched himself and laughed. There was certainly much to be said for being at the mercy of the primeval elements, to be swept along by circumstances one could not in any way control, but it was good to return, to feel one's identity expand again, unchecked. Creatively, he knew that he would be capable of the best entertainments he had yet given his world. He felt the need for company, for old friends to whom he could retail his adventures. Had his mother, the magnificent Iron Orchid, yet returned to the End of Time? Was the Duke of Queens as vulgar as ever, or had his experiences taught him taste? Jherek became eager for news.
      In undulating white, he left his room and began to cross the landing, crammed with nooks which in turn were crammed with little china figurines, china vases, china flowers, china animals, to the stairs. His emerald power-ring brought him delicate scents, of Lower Devonian ferns, of nineteenth-century streets, of oceans and of meadows. His step grew lighter as he descended to the dining room. "All things bright and beautiful," he sang, "all creatures great and small…"
      A turn of his amber ring and an ethereal orchestra accompanied him. The amethyst — and peacocks stepped behind him, his train in their prim beaks, their feathers at full flourish. He passed an embroidered motto — he still could not read it, but she had told him its sense (if sense it were!): "What Mean These Stones?" he carolled. "What Mean These — tra-la-la — Stones?"
      His spider-fur robes began to brush ornaments from the shelves at the side of the stairs. With scarcely any feelings of guilt at all, he widened the steps a little, so that he could pass more freely.
      The dining room, dark, with heavy curtains and brown, gloomy furniture, dampened his spirits for only a second. He knew what she had once demanded — partially burned animal flesh, near-tasteless vegetables — and he ignored it. If she no longer dictated her pleasures, then he would offer his own again.
      The table bloomed exotic. A reminder of their recent adventures — a spun-sugar water-scorpion glittering as a centre-piece — two translucent scarlet jellies, two feet high, in the image, to the life, of Inspector Springer. A couple of herds of animated marzipan cows and sheep (to satisfy her relish for fauna) grazing, in miniature, at the bases of the jellies. Everywhere: fronds of yellow, blue, pink, white, lilac and purple, of savoury, brittle pastry. Not a typical table, for Jherek usually chose for colour and preferred to limit himself to two, with one predominating — perhaps not a tasteful table, even — but a jolly one, that he hoped she would appreciate. Great green pools of gravy; golden mounds of mustards; brown, steaming custards, and pies in a dozen pastel shades; bowls of crystals — cocaine in the blue, heroin in the silver, sugar in the black —and tottering pyramids of porridge — a dish for any mood, to satisfy every appetite. He stood back, grinning his pleasure. It was unplanned, it was crowded, but it had a certain zest, he felt, that she would appreciate.
      He struck the nearby gong. Her feet were already upon the stairs.
      She entered the room. "Oh!"
      "Lunch, my lovely Amelia. Flung together, I fear, but all quite edible."
      She eyed the little marzipan ruminants.
      He beamed. "I knew you'd like those. And Inspector Springer? Does he not amuse you?"
      Fingers flew to lips; a sound escaped her nostrils. The bosom rose and then was slow to fall; she was almost as red as the jelly.
      "You are distressed."
      Eruption. She doubled, gasping.
      "Fumes?" He stared wildly. "Something poisonous?"
      "Oh, ho, ho…" She straightened, hand at back of hip. "Oh, ho, ho!"
      He relaxed. "You are amused." He pulled back her chair, as she had trained him to do. She slumped down, still shaking, picking up a spoon. "Oh, ho, ho…"
      He joined in. "Oh, ho, ho."
      It was thus, before they had put a morsel to their mouths, that the Iron Orchid found them. They saw her in the doorway, after some time. She was smiling. She was resplendent.
      "Dear Jherek, wonder of my womb! Astonishing Amelia, ancestress without compare! Do you hide from us all? Or are you just returned? If so, you are the last. All travellers are back — even Mongrove, you know. He has returned from space — gloomier, if anything, than before. We speculated. We expected your return. Jagged was here — he said that he sent you on, but that only the machine arrived, bereft of passengers. Some would have it — Brannart Morphail in particular — that you were lost forever in some primitive age — destroyed. I disbelieved, naturally. There was talk, earlier, of an expedition, but nothing came of it. Today, at My Lady Charlotina's, there was a rumour of a fluctuation — a time-machine had been sensed for a second or two on one of Brannart's instruments. I knew it must be you!"
      She had chosen red for her chief colour. Her crimson eyes glittered with maternal joy at her son restored to her. Her scarlet hair curled itself here and there about her face, as if in ecstasy, and her poppy-coloured flesh seemed to vibrate with pleasure. As she moved, her perspex gown, almost the colour of clementines, creaked a little.
      "You know there is to be a celebration?" she said. A party so that we may all hear Mongrove's news. He has consented to appear, to speak. And the Duke of Queens, Bishop Castle, My Lady Charlotina — we shall be there to give our tales. And now you and Mrs. Underwood? Where have you been, you rogues? Hiding here, or adventuring through History?"
      Mrs. Underwood began: "We have had a tiring experience, Mrs. Carnelian, and I think…"
      "Tiring? Mrs. What? Tiring? I'm not certain of the meaning. But Mrs. Carnelian — that is excellent. I never thought — yes, excellent. I must tell the Duke of Queens." She cruised for the door. "But I'll interrupt your meal no longer. The theme for the celebration is of course 1896 —" a gesture to Mrs. Underwood — "and I know you will both surpass yourselves! Farewell!"
      Mrs. Underwood implored him: "We are not going?"
      "We must!"
      "It is expected?"
      He knew secret glee in his own cunning. "Oh, indeed it is," he said.
      "Then, of course, I shall go with you."
      He eyed her crisp cream dress, her pinned auburn hair. "And the beauty of it is," he said, "that if you go as you are, the purity of your conception will outshine all others!"
      She snapped a branch from a savoury frond.

      First there came a broad plane, a vast, level carpet of pale green; the jade power-boat sped low over this — then avenues approached — spaced to have their entrances arranged around the perimeter of a semi-circle; each avenue leading inwards to a hub. The air-car selected one. Cypresses, palms, yews, elders, redwoods, pines, shoe and plane trees, sped by on either side — their variety proclaiming that the Duke of Queens had not lost his vulgar touch (Jherek wondered, now, if he would have it otherwise). The focus became visible, ahead, but they heard the music before they recognized details of the Duke's display.
      "A waltz!" cried Mrs. Underwood (she had renounced the sensible day dress for fine blue silk, white lace, a flounce or two, even the suggestion of a bustle, and the hat she wore was two feet across at the brim; on her hands, lace gloves, and in them a blue and white parasol). "Is it Strauss, Mr. Carnelian?"
      In the tweeds she had helped him make, he leaned back against the side of the car, his face half-shaded by his cap. One hand fingered his watch-chain, the other steadied the briar-wood pipe she had considered fitting ("a manlier, more mature air, altogether," she had murmured with satisfaction, after the brogues were on his feet and the cravat adjusted, "your figure would be envied anywhere" and then she had become a fraction confused). He shook his head. "Or Starkey, or Stockhausen. I was never as familiar as I should have been with the early primitives. Lord Jagged would know. I hope he is there."
      "He became almost garrulous at our departure," she said. "I wonder if he regrets that now, as people sometimes do. I remember once that the brother of a girl I knew at school kept us company for an entire vacation. I thought he disliked me. He seemed disdainful. At the end of the holiday he drove me to the station, was taciturn, even surly. I felt sorry for him, that he should be burdened. I entered the train. He remained on the platform. As the train left, he began to run beside it. He knew that I should probably never see him again. He was red as a raspberry as he shouted his parting remark." She inspected the silver top of her parasol.
      He could see that there was a small, soft smile on her lips, which was all that was visible to him of her face, beneath the brim of the hat.
      "His remark?"
      "Oh!" She looked up and, for an instant, the eye which met his was merry. "He said 'I love you, Miss Ormont', that was all. He could only declare himself when he knew I should not be able to confront him again."
      Jherek laughed. "And, of course, the joke was that you were not this Miss Ormont. He confused you with another."
      He wondered why both tone and expression changed so suddenly, though she remained, it seemed, amused. She gave her attention back to the parasol. "My maiden name was Ormont," she said. "When we marry, you see, we take the name of our betrothed."
      "Excellent! Then I may expect, one day, to be Jherek Underwood?"
      "You are devious in your methods of clinging to your points, Mr. Carnelian. But I shall not be trapped so simply. No, you would not become Jherek Underwood."
      "Ormont?"
      "The idea is amusing, even pleasant." She checked herself. "Even the hottest of radicals has never suggested, to my knowledge, such a reversal." Smiling, she chewed her underlip. "Oh, dear! What dangerous thoughts you encourage, in your innocence!"
      "I have not offended?"
      "Once, you might have done so. I am shocked at myself, for not feeling shocked. What a bad woman I should seem in Bromley now!"
      He scarcely followed, but he was not disturbed. He sank back again and made the pipe come alight for the umpteenth time (she had not been able to tell him how to keep it fuming). He enjoyed the Duke's golden sunshine, the sky which matched, fortuitously, his loved one's dress. Other air-carriages could be seen in other avenues, speeding for the hub — red and gold, plush and gilt, a fanciful reproduction of the Duke's only prolonged experience with the nineteenth century.
      Jherek touched her hand. "Do you recognize it, Amelia?"
      "It is overpoweringly huge." The brim of the hat went up and up, a lace glove touched her chin. "It disappears, look, in clouds."
      She had not seen. He hinted: "But if the proportions were reduced…"
      She tilted her head, still craning. "Some sort of American Building?"
      "You have been there!"
      "I?"
      "The original is in London."
      "Not the Cafe Royal?"
      "Don't you see — he has taken the decor of the Cafe Royal and added it to your Scotland Yard."
      "Police headquarters — with red plush walls!"
      "The Duke comes near, for once, to simplicity. You do not think it too spare?"
      "A thousand feet high! It is the tallest piece of plush, Mr. Carnelian, I may ever hope to see. And what is that at the roof — now the clouds part — a darker mass?"
      "Black?"
      "Blue, I think."
      "A dome. Yes, a hat, such as your policemen wear."
      She seemed out of breath. "Of course."
      The music grew louder. He waved his pipe in time. But she was puzzled. "Isn't it a little slow — a little drawn out — for a waltz. It's as if it were played on those Indian instruments — or were they Arabic? More than a flavour of the Oriental, at any rate. High-pitched, too, in a way."
      "The tapes are from one of the cities, doubtless," said Jherek. "They are old — possibly faulty. This is not authentic, then?"
      "Not to my time."
      "We had best not tell the Duke of Queens. It would disappoint him, don't you think?"
      She shrugged compliance. "Yet it has a rather grating effect. I hope it does not continue throughout the entire reception. You do not know the instruments used?"
      "Electronics or some such early method of music-making. You would know better…"
      "I think not."
      "Ah."
      A degree of awkwardness touched the atmosphere and, for a moment, both strove to find a new subject and restore the mood of relaxation they had been enjoying till now. Ahead, at the base of the building, was a wide, shadowy archway, and into this other air-cars were speeding — fanciful vehicles of every description, and most based on Dawn Age technology or mythology: Jherek saw a hobby-horse, its mechanical copper legs making galloping motions in the air, a Model T, its owner seated on the section where the long vertical bar joined the short horizontal one, and he heard the distinctive sound of a clipper ship, but it had disappeared before he could see it properly. Some of the vessels moved with considerable speed, others made more stately progress, like the large, grey and white car — it could be nothing else but a London Pigeon — Immediately in front of them as the archway loomed.
      "It seems the whole world attends," said Jherek.
      She fingered the complicated lace on her bodice. She smoothed a pleat. The music changed; the sound of slow explosions and of something being dragged through sand surrounded them as their car entered a great hall, its ceiling supported by fluted arches, in which, evidently, they were to park. Elaborately dressed figures floated from their own air-cars towards a doorway into the hall above; voices echoed.
      "It dwarfs King's Cross!" exclaimed Mrs. Underwood. She admired the mosaics, finely detailed, multicoloured, on walls and arches. "It is hard to believe that it has not existed for centuries."
      "In a sense it has," said Jherek, aware that she made an effort to converse. "In the memories of the cities."
      "This was made by one of your cities?"
      "No, but the advice of the cities is sought on such matters. For all that they grow senile, they still remember a great deal of our race's history. Is the interior familiar to you?"
      "It resembles nothing so much as the vault of a Gothic cathedral, much magnified. I do not think I know the original, if one exists. You must not forget, Mr. Carnelian, that I am no expert. Most aspects of my own world, most areas of it, are unknown to me. My experiences of London were not so varied, I would gather, as yours have been. I led a quiet life in Bromley, where the world is small." She sighed as they left the car. "Very small," she said, almost under her breath. She adjusted her hat and tossed her head in a manner he found delightful. At that moment she seemed at once more full of life and of melancholy than he had ever seen her. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before offering her his arm, but she took it readily, smiling, the sadness melting, and together they ascended to the doorway above.
      "You are glad, now, that you have come?" he murmured.
      "I am determined to enjoy myself," she told him.
      Then she gasped, for she had not expected the scene they entered. The entire building was filled not by separated floors, but by floating platforms and galleries, rising higher and higher into the distance, and in these galleries and upon these platforms stood groups of people, conversing, eating, dancing, while other groups, or individuals, drifted through the air, from one platform to another, as, in her own world, people might cross the floor of a ball-room. High, high above, the furthest figures were tiny, virtually invisible. The light was subtle, supplying brilliance and shade, and shifting almost imperceptibly the whole time; the colours were vibrant, of every possible shade or tone, complementing the costumes of the guests, which ranged from the simplest to the most grotesque. Perhaps by some clever manipulation of the acoustics of the hall, the voices rose and fell in waves, but were never loud enough to drown any particular conversation, and, to Mrs. Underwood, seemed orchestrated, harmonized into a single yet infinitely variegated chorus. Here and there, along the walls, people stood casually, their bodies at right angles to those of the majority, as they used power-rings to adjust their gravity, enabling them to convert the dimensions of the hall (or at least their experience of those dimensions) to an impression of length rather than height.
      "It reminds one of a medieval painting," she said. "Italian, are they? Of heaven? My father's house … Though the perspective is better…" Aware that she babbled, she subsided with a sigh, looking at him with an expression showing amusement at her own confusion.
      "It pleases you, though?" He was solicitous, yet he could see that she was not unhappy.
      "It is wonderful."
      "Your morality is not offended?"
      "For today, Mr. Carnelian, I have decided to leave a great deal of my morality at home." Again, she laughed at herself.
      "You are more beautiful than ever," he told her. "You are very fine."
      "Hush, Mr. Carnelian. You will make me self-conscious. For once, I feel in possession of myself. Let me enjoy it. I will —" she smiled — "permit the occasional compliment — but I should be grateful if you will forgo declarations of passion for this evening."
      He bowed, sharing her good humour. "Very well."
      But she had become a goddess and he could not help it if he were astonished. She had always been beautiful in his eyes, and admirable, too. He had worshipped her, in some ways, for her courage in adversity, for her resistance to the ways of his own world. But that had been bravery under siege and now, it seemed, she single-handedly gave siege to that same society which, a few months before, had threatened to engulf and destroy her identity. There was a determination in her bearing, a lightness, an air of confidence, that proclaimed to everyone what he had always sensed in her — and he was proud that his world should see her as the woman he knew, in full command of herself and of her situation. Yet there was, as well, a private knowledge, an intimate understanding between them, of the resources of character on which she drew to achieve that command. For the first time he became conscious of the depth of his love for her and, although he had always known that she had loved him, he became confident that her emotion was as strong as his own. Like her, he required no declaration; her bearing was declaration enough.
      Together, they ascended.
      "Jherek!"
      It was Mistress Christia, the Everlasting Concubine, clad in silks that were almost wholly transparent, they were so fine, and plainly influenced by the murals she had had described to her by one of those who had visited the Cafe Royal. She had let her body fill out, her limbs had rounded and she was slightly, deliciously, plump.
      "May it be Amelia?" she asked of Mrs. Underwood, and looked to both for confirmation.
      Mrs. Underwood smiled assent.
      "I have been hearing of all your adventures in the nineteenth century. I am so jealous, of course, for the age seems wonderful and just the sort of period I should like to visit. This costume is not of my own invention, as you have guessed. My Lady Charlotina was going to use it, but thought it more suitable for me. Is it, Amelia, authentic?" She whirled in the air, just above their heads.
      "Greek…?" Amelia Underwood hesitated, unwilling to contradict. Then, it seemed, she realized the influence. "It suits you perfectly. You look lovely."
      "I would be welcome in your world?"
      "Oh, certainly! In many sections of society you would be the centre of attention."
      Mistress Christia beamed and bent, with soft lips, to kiss Mrs. Underwood upon her cheek, murmuring, "You look magnificent, of course, yourself. Did you make the dress or did you bring it from the Dawn Age? It must be an original."