The Hollow Lands

"I believe you deliberately oppose my arguments because you half-agree with them yourself." Li Pao plainly felt he had scored a good point.

"I half-agree with all arguments, my dear!" Lord Jagged's smile seemed a touch weary. "Everything is real. Or can be made real."

"With the resources at your command, certainly." Li Pao agreed.

"It is not exactly my meaning. You made your dream real, did you not? Of the Republic?"

"It was founded on reality."

"My scanty acquaintance with your period does not allow me to dispute that statement with any fire, I fear. Whose dream, I wonder, laid those foundations?"

"Well, dreams , yes…"

"Poetic inspiration?"

"Well…"

Lord Jagged drew his great robe about him. "Forgive me, Li Pao, for I realize that I have confused your argument. Please continue. I shall interrupt no further."

But Li Pao had lost impetus. He fell into a sulking silence.

"There is a rumour, magnificent Lord Jagged, that you yourself have travelled in time. Do you speak from direct experience of Li Pao's period?" Mistress Christia raised her head from its contact with Gaf's groin.

"As a great believer in the inherent possibilities of the rumour as art," said Lord Jagged gently, "it is not for me to confirm or deny any gossip you might have heard, sweet Mistress Christia."

"Oh, absolutely!" She gave her full attention back to Gaf's anatomy.

Not without difficulty, Jherek held back from taxing Lord Jagged further on that particular subject, but Jagged continued:

"There are some who would argue that Time does not really exist at all, that it is merely our primitive minds which impose a certain order upon events. I have heard it said that everything is happening, as it were, concurrently. Some of the greatest inventors of time machines have used that theory to advantage."

Jherek, desperately feigning lack of interest, poured himself a fresh tot. When he spoke, however, his tone was not entirely normal.

"Would it be possible, I wonder, to make a new time machine? If Shanalorm's or some other city's memories were reliable…"

"They are not!" The querulous voice of Bra

"Bra

"Are you bent on pestering me further, Jherek? I have not forgotten that you lost me one of my best time machines."

"No sign of it, then?"

"None. My instruments are too crude to detect it if, as I suspect, it has gone back to some pre-Dawn period."

"What of the cyclic theory?" Lord Jagged said. "Would you give any credence to that?"

"So far as it corresponds to certain physical laws, yes."

"And how would that relate to the information we were given by the Duke's little alien?"

"I had hoped to ask Yusharisp some questions — and so I might have done if Jherek had not interfered."

"I am sorry," said Jherek, "but…"

"You are living proof of the non-mutability of Time," said Bra

Pointedly, Bra

"I think you are a little hard on Jherek," said Lord Jagged. "After all, My Lady Charlotina knew, to some extent, the outcome of her joke."

"We'll speak no more of that. You wondered if Yusharisp's reference to the death of the cosmos — of the universe ending one cycle and begi

"It was a passing thought, nothing more," said Lord Jagged, looking back over his shoulder and winking at Jherek. "You should be kinder, Bra

"Nonsense! It is his interpretation of his experiences with which I disagree. They are naive."

"They are true," said Jherek in a small voice. "Mrs. Underwood said that she would join me, you know. I am sure that she will."

"Impossible — or, at very least, unlikely. Time does not permit paradoxes. The Morphail Theory specifically shows that once a time traveller has visited the future he ca

"They had primitive time machines in those days," Jherek said. "There are many references to them in the literature."

"Possibly, but we have never encountered another from her period. How she got here at all remains a mystery."

"Some other time traveller brought her, perhaps?" Jherek was tentative, glad, at last, to have Bra

"Yet," said Morphail agitatedly, "I have told you repeatedly that I have no record of a time machine materializing during the phase in which you claim she arrived. Since I last spoke with you, Jherek, I checked carefully. You are in error — or she lied to you…"

"She ca

"Yes, yes! Play whatever games amuse you, Jherek. Carnelian, but not at the expense of Bra

"Ah, my wrinkled wonder-worker can you not bring yourself to display a little more generosity towards our venturesome Jherek? Who else among us would dare the descent into Dawn Age emotions?"

"I would," said Werther de Goethe, no longer in the distance. "And with a better understanding of what I was doing, I would hope."

"But your moods are dark moods, Werther," said Lord Jagged kindly. "They do not entertain as much as Jherek's!"

"I do not care what the majority thinks," Werther told him. "A more select group of people, I am told, think rather more of my explorations. Jherek has hardly touched on 'sin' at all!"

"I could not understand it, vainglorious Werther, even when you explained it," Jherek apologized. "I have tried, particularly since it is an idea which my Mrs. Underwood shared with you."

"Tried," said Werther contemptuously, "and failed. I have not. Ask Mistress Christia."

"She told me. I was very admiring. She will confirm —"

"Did you envy me?" A light of hope brightened Werther's doomy eye.