The White Stars

They came up to him. He did not rise. Instead he presented his gauntleted palm. "Look!" Crimson liquid glistened.

The Iron Orchid inspected it. "Is it unusual?"

"It is blood, madam!" Lord Shark rose painfully to his feet. "My blood."

"Then you must repair yourself at once."

"It is against my principles."

Lord Shark's companion stood some distance away, wiping Lord Shark's blood from his weapon.

"That, I take it, is a sword," said the Iron Orchid. "I had always imagined them larger, and more ornate."

"I know such swords." Lord Shark the Unknown loosened the long white scarf he wore around his dark grey neck and applied it to the wound in his shoulder. "They are decadent. These," he held up his own, "are finely tempered, perfectly balanced epees. We were duelling," he explained, "my automaton and I."

Looking across at the machine, the Iron Orchid saw that it was a reproduction of Lord Shark himself, complete with fierce shark-mask.

"It could kill you, could it not?" she asked. "Is it programmed to resurrect you, Lord Shark?"

He dismissed her question with a wave of his blood-stained scarf.

"And strange, that you should be killed, as it were, by yourself," she added.

"When we fight, is it not always with ourselves, madam?"

"I really don't know, sir, for I have never fought and I know no-one who does."

"That is why I must make automata. You know my name, madam, but I fear you have the advantage of me."

"It has been so long. I looked quite different when we last met. At Mongrove's Black Ball, you'll recall. I am the Iron Orchid."

"Ah, yes." He bowed.

"And I am the Duke of Queens," said the duke kindly.

"I know you, Duke of Queens. But you had another name then, did you not?"

"Liam Ty Pam Caesar Lloyd George Zatopek Finsbury Ro

"As I remember, yes." A sigh escaped the gash which was the shark's mouth. "So there have been some few small changes in the outside world, in society. But I suppose you still while away your days with pretty conceits?"

"Oh, yes!" said the Iron Orchid enthusiastically. "They have been at their best this season. Have you seen the duke's 'Afrique'? All in miniature. Over there."

"Is that what it is called? I wondered. I had been growing lichen, but no matter."

"I spoiled a project of yours?" The duke was mortified.

Lord Shark shrugged.

"But, my lonely lord, I must make amends."

The eyes behind the mask became interested for a moment. "You would fight with me. A duel? Is that what you mean?"

"Well…" the Duke of Queens fingered his chin, "if that would placate you, certainly. Though I've had no practise at it."

The light in the eyes dimmed. "True. It would be no fight at all."

"But," said the duke, "lend me one of your machines to teach me, and I will return at an agreed hour. What say you?"

"No, no, sir. I took no umbrage. I should not have suggested it. Let us part, for I weary very swiftly of human company." Lord Shark sheathed his sword and snapped his fingers at his automaton, which copied the gesture. "Good day to you, Iron Orchid. And to you, Duke of Queens." He bowed again.

Ignoring the Iron Orchid's restraining hand upon his sleeve, the duke stepped forward as Lord Shark turned away. "I insist upon it, sir."

His dark grey, leathery cloak rustling, the masked recluse faced them again. "It would certainly fulfil an ambition. But it would have to be done properly, and only when you had thoroughly learned the art. And there would have to be an understanding as to the rules."

"Anything." The duke made an elaborate bow. "Send me, at your convenience, an instructor."

"Very well." Lord Shark the Unknown signed to his automaton and together they began to walk across the plain, towards the brown mountains. "You will hear from me soon, sir."

"I thank you, sir."

They strolled in the direction of the useless monoplane. The duke seemed very pleased. "What a wonderful new fashion," he remarked, "duelling. And this time, with the exception of Lord Shark, of course, I shall be the first."

The Iron Orchid was amused. "Shall we all, soon, be drawing one another's blood with those thin sticks of steel, extravagant duke?"

He laughed and kissed her cheek. "Why not? I tire of 'Cities', and even 'Continents' pall. How long is it since we have had a primitive sport?"

"Nothing since the ballhead craze," she confirmed.

"I shall learn all I can, and then I can teach others. When Jherek returns, we shall have something fresh for him to enjoy."

"It will, at least, be in keeping with his current obsessions, as I understand them."

Privately the Iron Orchid wondered if the duke would, at last, be responsible for an entirely new fashion. She hoped, for his sake, that he would, but it was hard, at the moment, to see the creative possibilities of the medium. She was afraid that it would not catch on.

3. Something of the History of Lord Shark the Unknown

If gloomy Mongrove, now touring what was left of the galaxy with the alien Yusharisp, had affected aloofness, then Lord Shark was, without question, genuinely reclusive. Absorbed in his duel, he had not noticed the approach of the Iron Orchid and the Duke of Queens, for if he had he would have made good his escape well before they could have hailed him. In all his life he had found pleasure in the company of only one human being: a short-lived time traveller who had refused immortality and died many centuries since.

Lord Shark was not merely contemptuous of the society which presently occupied the planet, he was contemptuous of the very planet, the universe, of the whole of existence. Compared with him, Werther de Goethe was an optimist (as, indeed, secretly he was). Werther had once made overtures to Lord Shark, considering him a fellow spirit, but Lord Shark would have none of him, judging him to be as silly and as affected as all the others. Lord Shark was the last true cynic to come into being at the End of Time and found no pleasure in any pursuit save the pursuit of death, and in this he must be thought the unluckiest man in the world, for everything conspired to thwart him. Wounded, he refused to treat the wounds, and they healed. Injured, his injuries were never critical. He considered suicide, as such, to be unworthy of him, feeble, but dangers which would have brought certain death to others only seemed to bring Lord Shark at best some passing inconvenience.

As he returned home, Lord Shark could feel the pain in his shoulder already subsiding and he knew that it would not be long before there would only be a small scar to show where the sword blade had entered. He was regretting his bargain with the Duke of Queens. He was sure that the duke would never attain the skill necessary to beat him, and, if he were not beaten, and killed, he would in his opinion have wasted his time. His pride now refused to let him go back on the bargain, for to do so would be to show him as feckless a fellow as any other and would threaten his confidence in his own superiority, his only consolation. It was the pride of the profoundly unimaginative man, for it was Lord Shark's lot to be without creative talent of any kind in a world where all were artists — good or bad, but artists, still. Even his mask was not of his own invention but had been made for him by his time-travelling friend shortly before that man's death (his name had come from the same source). He had taken both mask and name without humour, on good faith. It is perhaps unkind to speculate as to whether even this stalwart friend had been unable to resist playing one good joke upon poor Lord Shark, for it is a truism that those without humour find themselves the butts of all who possess even a spark of it themselves.