An Alien Heat

"Be silent!" groaned Mongrove. "You did come here to plague me. You ca

"I apologise for Jherek, Mongrove," said Lord Jagged softly. "He only hopes to please you."

Mongrove's reply was in the form of a vast, shuddering moan. He began to turn to go back into his castle.

"Please, Mongrove," said Jherek. "I do apologise. I really do. I wish there was some release for you from this terror, this gloom, this unbearable depression."

Mongrove turned back again, brightening just a trifle. "You understand?"

"Of course. Though I have felt only a fraction of what you must feel — I understand." Jherek placed his hand on his bosom. "The aching sorrow of it all."

"Yes," whispered Mongrove. A tear fell from his huge right eye. "That is very true, Jherek." A tear fell from his left eye. "Nobody understands, as a rule. I am a joke. A laughing-stock. They know that in this great frame is a tiny, frightened, pathetic creature incapable of any generosity, without creative talent, with a capacity only to weep, to mourn, to sigh and to watch the tragedy that is human life play itself to its awful conclusion."

"Yes," said Jherek. "Yes, Mongrove."

Lord Jagged, who now stood behind Mongrove, sheltering in the doorway of the castle and leaning against the obsidian wall, gave Jherek a look of pure admiration and added to this look one of absolute approval. He nodded his pale head. He smiled. He winked his encouragement, the white lid falling over his almost colourless eye.

Jherek did admire Mongrove for the pains he took to make his role complete. When he, Jherek, became a lover, he would pursue his role with the same dedication.

"You see," said Lord Jagged. "You see, Mongrove. Jherek understands and sympathises better than anyone. In the past he has played the odd practical joke upon you, it is true, but that was because he was trying to cheer you up. Before he realised that nothing can hope to ease the misery in your bleak soul and so on."

"Yes," said Mongrove. "I do see, Lord Jagged." He threw a huge arm around Jherek's shoulders and almost flung Jherek to the cobbled ground, muddying his skirts. Jherek feared for his set. It was already getting wet and yet politeness forbade him to use any form of force protection. He felt his straw hat begin to sag a little. He looked down at his blouse and saw that the lace was looking a bit straggly.

"Come," Mongrove went on. "You shall lunch with me. My honoured guests. I never realised before, Jherek, how sensitive you were. And you tried to hide your sensitivity with rough humour, with coarse badinage and crude japes."

Jherek thought many of his jokes had been rather subtle, but it was not politic to say so at the moment. He nodded, instead, and smiled.

Mongrove led them at last into the castle. For all the winds whistling through the passages and howling along stairwells; for all that the only light was from guttering brands and that the walls ran with damp or were festooned with mildew; for all the rats glimpsed from time to time; for all the bloodless faces of Mongrove's living-dead retainers, the thick cobwebs, the chilly odours, the peculiar little sounds, Jherek was pleased to be inside and walked quite merrily with Mongrove as they made their way up several flights of unclad stone stairs, through a profusion of twisting corridors until at last they arrived in Mongrove's banqueting hall.

"And where is Werther," asked Lord Jagged, "de Goethe, I mean? I was sure he left with you last night. At the Duke of Queens?"

"The Duke of Queens." Mongrove's massive brow frowned. "Aye. Aye. The Duke of Queens. Yes, Werther was here for a while. But he left. Some new nightmare or other he promised to show me when he'd completed it."

"Nightmare?"

"A play. Something. I'm not sure. He said I would like it."

"Excellent."

"Ah," sighed Mongrove. "That space-traveller. How I would love to converse longer with him. Did you hear him? Doom, he said. We are doomed! "

"Doom, doom," echoed Lord Jagged, signing for Jherek to join in.

"Doom," said Jherek a little uncertainly. "Doom, doom."

"Yes, dark damnation. Dejection. Doom. Doom. Doom." Mongrove stared into the middle distance.

Jherek thought that Mongrove seemed to have picked up Lord Jagged's predilection for words begi

"You covet, then, the alien?" he said.

"Covet him?"

"You want him in your menagerie?" explained Lord Jagged. "That's the question."

"Of course I would like him here. He is very morbid , isn't he? He would make an excellent companion."

"Oh, he would!" said Lord Jagged, staring significantly at Jherek as the three men seated themselves at Mongrove's chipped and stained dining table. But Jherek couldn't quite work out why Jagged stared at him significantly. "He would! What a shame he is in My Lady Charlotina's collection."

"Is that where he is? I wondered."

"Lady Charlotina wouldn't give you the little alien, I suppose," said Lord Jagged. "Since his companionship would mean so much to you."

"Lady Charlotina hates me," said Mongrove simply. "Surely not!"

"Oh, yes she does. She would give me nothing. She is jealous of my collection, I suppose." Mongrove went on, with gloomy pride: "My collection is large. Possibly the largest there is."

"I have heard that it is magnificent," Jherek told him.

"Thank you, Jherek," said the giant gratefully.

Mongrove's attitude had changed completely. Evidently all he asked for was that his misery should be taken seriously. Then he could forget every past slight, every joke at his expense, that Jherek had ever made. In a few minutes they had changed, in Mongrove's eyes, from being bitter enemies to the closest of friends.

It was plain to Jherek that Lord Jagged understood Mongrove very well — as well as he knew Jherek, if not better. He was constantly astonished at the insight of the Lord of Canaria. Sometimes Lord Jagged could appear almost sinister!

"I would very much like to see your menagerie," said Lord Jagged. "Would that be possible, my miserable Mongrove?"

"Of course, of course," said Mongrove. "There is little to see, really. I expect it lacks the glamour of My Lady Charlotina's, the colour of the Duke of Queens', even the variety of your mother's, Jherek, the Iron Orchid's."

"I am sure that is not the case," said Jherek diplomatically.

"And would you like to see my menagerie also?" asked Mongrove.

"Very much," said Jherek. "Very much. I hear you have —"

"Those cracks," said Lord Jagged suddenly and deliberately interrupting his friend, "they are new, are they not, dear Mongrove?"

He gestured towards several large fissures in the far wall of the hall.

"Yes, they're comparatively recent," Mongrove agreed. "Do you like them?"

"They are prime! "

"Not excessive? You don't think they are excessive?" Mongrove asked anxiously.

"Not a bit. They are just right. The touch of a true artist."

"I'm so glad, Lord Jagged, that two men of such understanding taste have visited me. You must forgive me if earlier I seemed surly."

"Surly? No, no. Naturally cautious, yes. But not surly."

"We must eat," said Mongrove and Jherek's heart sank.

"Lunch — and then I'll show you round my menagerie."

Mongrove clapped his hands and food appeared on the table.

"Splendid!" said Lord Jagged, surveying the discoloured meats and the watery vegetables, the withered salads and lumpy dressings. "And what are these delicacies?"

"It is a banquet of the time of the Kalean Plague Century," said Mongrove proudly. "You've heard of the plague? It swept the Solar System in I think, the 1000th century. It infected everyone and everything."