The Hollow Lands

"Yes," she murmured, her mind evidently on other things, "it is the Old Bailey, where they tried you."

"Look, Jagged!" called Jherek. "Remember?"

Lord Jagged, too, seemed abstracted. He nodded.

Laughing and chattering, the party passed the Old Bailey and paused to wonder at the next aspect of the period which had caught their fancy.

"St. Paul's Cathedral," said Do

"Oh, we must go in!"

It was then that Lord Jagged lifted his sensitive head and paused, like a fox catching wind of its hunters. He raised a hand, and Jherek and Mrs. Underwood hesitated, watching as the others ran up the steps.

"A remarkable —" Bishop Castle vanished. The Iron Orchid began to laugh and then she, too, vanished. My Lady Charlotina took a step backward, and vanished. And then the Duke of Queens, his expression amused and expectant, vanished.

Do

They could hear Do

"Where are we going, Jagged?"

"Time machine. The one you originally came in. Repaired. Ready to go. But the fluctuations caused by recent comings and goings could have produced serious consequences. Bra

"I am not sure," said Mrs. Underwood, "that I wish to accompany either of you. You have caused me considerable pain, you know, not to mention…"

"Mrs. Underwood," said Lord Jagged of Canaria softly, "you have no choice. The alternative is dreadful, I assure you."

Convinced by his tone, she said nothing further for the moment.

They came to an alley full of bleak, festering buildings close to the river. At the far end of the alley, a few men were begi

"I feel faint," complained Mrs. Underwood. "I ca

"We are there," he said. He took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock of a door of mouldering oak. The door creaked as he pushed it inward. Lord Jagged closed the door, reached up to take an oil lamp from a hook. He struck a match and lit the lamp.

As the light grew brighter, Jherek saw that they stood in quite a large room. The floor was stone and the whole place smelled of mildew. He saw rats ru

Jagged had crossed to a great pile of rags and debris and began to pull them to the ground. He had lost some of his composure in his haste.

"What is your part in this, Mr. Jackson?" said Mrs. Underwood, averting her eyes from the rats. "I am right, am I not, in believing that you have to an extent manipulated the destinies of myself and Mr. Carnelian?"

"Subtly, I hope, madam," said Jagged, still tugging at the heap. "For so abstract a thing, Time keeps a severe eye upon our activities. I had to be careful. It is why I adopted two main disguises in this world. I have travelled in Time a great deal, as you have probably guessed. Both to the past — and the future, such as it exists at all in my world. I knew about the 'End of Time' before ever Yusharisp brought the news to our planet. I also discovered that there are certain people who are, by virtue of a particular arrangement of genes, not so prone to the Morphail Effect as are others. I conceived a means of averting disaster for some of us…"

"Disaster, Jagged?"

"The end of all of us, dear Jherek. I could not bear to think that, having achieved such balance, we should perish. We had learned, you see, how to live. And it was for nothing. Such an irony was unbearable to me, the lover of ironies. I spent many, many years in this century — the furthest back I could go in my own machine — ru

"So you, sir, were my abductor!" she cried.

"I am afraid so. There!" He pulled the last of the coverings free, revealing the spherical time machine which Bra

"I am hoping," he continued, "that some of us will survive the End of Time. And you can help me. This time machine can be controlled. It will take you back to our own age, Jherek, where we can continue with our experiments. At least," he added, "it should. The instability of the megaflow at present is worrying. But we must hope. We must hope. Now, the two of you, enter the machine. There are breathing masks for both."

"Mr. Jackson," said Mrs. Underwood. "I will not be bullied any further." She folded her arms across her bosom. "Neither will I allow myself to be mesmerized by your quasi-scientific lecturings!"

"I think he is right, Mrs. Underwood," said Jherek hesitantly. "And the reason I came to find you was because you are prone to the Morphail Effect. At least in a time machine we stand a chance of going to an age of our choice."

"Remember how Jherek escaped hanging," said Lord Jagged. He had by now opened the circular outer door of the time machine. "That was the Morphail Effect. It would have been a paradox if he had died in that particular way in this age. I knew it. That was why I lent myself to what appeared to you, Mrs. Underwood, to be his destruction. There is proof of my good-will. He is not dead."

Reluctantly, she began to move with Jherek towards the time machine. "I shall be able to return?" she asked.

"Almost certainly. But I am hoping that you will not wish to when you have heard me out."

"You will accompany us?"

"My own machine is not a quarter of a mile from here. I must use it, for I ca

"Very well."

"You will not find the interior of the machine pleasant," Jherek told her as he helped her into the airlock. "You must hold your breath for a moment." They crouched together in the cylinder. He handed her a breathing mask. "Fit this over your head, like so…"

He smiled as he heard her muffled complaints.

"Fear not, Mrs. Underwood. Our great adventure is almost ended. Soon we shall be back in our own dear villa, with roses climbing round the door, with our pipes and our slippers and our water closets! King Darby and Queen Joan in Camelot!" The rest of his effusion was muffled, even to his own ears, by the necessity of putting on his mask as the airlock began to fill with milky fluid. Jherek wished that there had been rubber suits of the kind normally used in the machine, for the stuff felt unpleasant and was soaking rapidly through their clothes. There was a look of outraged disgust, in fact, in Mrs. Underwood's eyes.

The machine filled rapidly and they drifted into the main chamber. Here certain instruments were already flashing green and red alternately, swimming about his head. They floated, unable to control their movements, in the thick liquid. As his body turned slowly, he saw that Mrs. Underwood had shut her eyes. Blue and yellow lights began to flash. The liquid became increasingly cloudy.

Figures, which he could not read, began to register on the display panels. A white light throbbed and he knew that the machine was on the very brink of begi