An Alien Heat

"Well," he said. "I'm ready. When are Lord Jagged and Mrs. Underwood arriving?"

Nobody replied. Reverend Lowndes murmured something. One of the people in the small crowd below droned a few words.

Jherek yawned and looked up at the blue sky and the rising sun. It was a beautiful morning. He had rather missed the open air of late.

Reverend Lowndes took out his black book and began to read. Jherek turned to ask if Lord Jagged and Mrs. Underwood would be long, but then the man in black placed a bag over his head and his voice was muffled and he could no longer see anyone. He shrugged. They would be along soon, he was sure.

He heard the Reverend Lowndes finish speaking. He heard a click and then the floor gave way beneath his feet. The sensation was not very different from that which he had had when travelling here in the time sphere. And then it seemed he was falling, falling, falling, and he ceased to think at all.

14. A Further Conversation with the Iron Orchid

The first thing Jherek considered as he came back to consciousness was that he had a very sore throat. He reached up to touch it, but his hands were still tied behind him. He disseminated the ropes and freed his hands and feet. His neck was chafed and raw. He opened his eyes and looked directly into the tattered multi-hued face of Bra

Bra

Jherek glanced about the laboratory. It was exactly the same as when he had left. "Perhaps it broke up?" he suggested. "It was made of wood, you know."

"Wood? Wood? Nonsense. Why are you so hoarse?"

"There was a rope involved. A very primitive machine, all in all. Still, I'm back. Did Lord Jagged come to see you after I'd set off. Did he borrow another time machine?"

"Lord Jagged?"

My Lady Charlotina drifted over. She was wearing the same lily-coloured gown she had worn when he had left. "Lord Jagged hasn't been here, Jherek, my juice. After all, you'd barely gone before you returned again."

"It proves the Morphail Effect conclusively," said Bra

Again, Jherek fingered his own throat. "It took some time to spit me out, however," he said feelingly. "I was there for some sixty days."

"Oh, come now!" Bra

"And Lord Jagged of Canaria was there, too. And Mrs. Amelia Underwood. They seemed to have no difficulty in, as it were, sticking." Jherek stood up. He was wearing the same grey suit with the broad black arrows on it. "And look at this. They gave me this suit."

"It's a beautiful suit, Jherek," said My Lady Charlotina. "But you could have made it yourself, you know."

"Power rings don't work in the past. The energy won't transmit," Jherek told her.

Bra

"Some scheme of his own, I take it, which hardly involved me. I understood that he would be returning with me." Jherek inspected the laboratory, looking in every corner. "They said Mrs. Underwood would join me."

"Well, she isn't here, yet." My Lady Charlotina's couch drifted closer. "Did you enjoy yourself in the Dawn Age?"

"It was often amusing," Jherek admitted, "though there were moments when it was quite dull. And other moments when…" And for the third time he fingered the marks on his throat. "Do you know, Lady Charlotina, that many of their pastimes are not pursued from choice at all!"

"How do you mean?" She leaned forward to peer at his neck. She reached out to touch the marks.

"Well, it is difficult to explain. Difficult enough to grasp. I didn't understand at first. They grow old — they decay, of course. They have no control over their bodies and barely any over their minds. It is as if — as if they dream perpetually, moved by impulses of which they have no objective understanding. Or, of course, that could be my subjective analysis of their culture, but I don't think so."

My Lady Charlotina laughed. "You'll never succeed in explaining it to me, Jherek. I have no brains, merely imagination. A good sense of drama, too."

"Yes…" Jherek had forgotten the part she had played in bringing about the most recent events in his life. But so much time had passed for him that he could not feel any great bitterness towards her any more. "I wonder when Mrs. Amelia Underwood will come."

"She said she would return?"

"I gathered that Lord Jagged was bringing her back."

"Are you sure you saw Jagged there?" Bra

"There must be a record of one coming," Jherek said reasonably. "For I returned, did I not?"

"It wasn't really necessary for you to use a machine — the Morphail Effect dealt with you."

"Well, I was sent in a machine." Jherek frowned. He was begi

"It is quite possible, I should think," put in My Lady Charlotina, "after all, you said yourself how difficult it was to grasp their conception of quite simple matters."

A musing look crossed Jherek's face. "But one thing is certain…" He took Mrs. Amelia Underwood's letter from his pocket, remembering the words which Mr. Griffiths had read out to him, "I love you, I miss you, I shall always remember you." He touched the crumpled paper to his lips. "She wants to come back to me."

"There is every chance that she will ," said Bra

"She will find me," said Jherek happily. "I know she will. And when she comes I will have built her a beautiful replica of her own age so that she need never pine for home." He continued, confidentially, to tell Bra

"Ah, Jherek!" cried My Lady Charlotina in delight. "You are begi

Some days later Jherek had almost completed his vast design. It stretched for several miles across a shallow valley through which ran a sparkling river he had named the Thames. Glowing white bridges arched over the water at irregular intervals and the water was a deep, blue-green, to match the roses which climbed the pillars of the bridges. On both sides of the river stood a series of copies of Jones's Kitchen, Coffee Stalls, Prisons, Courts of Law and Hotels. Row upon row, they filled streets of shining marble and gold and quartz and at every intersection was a tall statue, usually of a horse or a hansom cab. It was really very pretty. Jherek had taken the liberty of enlarging the buildings a little, to get variety. Thus a thousand-foot-high Coffee Stall loomed over a five-hundred-foot-high Hotel. Farther on, a tall Hotel dwarfed an Old Bailey, and so on.

Jherek was putting the finishing touches on his creation, which he simply called "London, 1896," when he was hailed by a familiar, languid voice.