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"Never!" Jherek was eager.
Mrs. Persson pursed her lips. "Perhaps you would care for some coffee," she said.
Jherek turned to Mrs. Underwood. He knew she would be pleased. "Isn't that splendid, dear Mrs. Underwood. They have a stall here. Now you must really feel at home!"
6. Discussions and Decisions
Captain Mubbers and his men were sitting in a line on a kind of padded bench; they were cross-legged and tried to hide their knees and elbows, exposed since they had destroyed their pyjamas; all were blushing a peculiar plum colour and averted their eyes when the party containing Mrs. Persson and Mrs. Underwood entered the room. Inspector Springer sat by himself in a sort of globular chair which brought his knees close to his face; he tried to sip from a paper cup, tried to rise when the ladies came in, succeeded in spilling the coffee on his serge trousers; his grumble was half-protest, half-apology; he subsided again. Captain Bastable approached a black machine, marked with letters of the alphabet. "Milk and sugar?" he asked Mrs. Underwood.
"Thank you, Captain Bastable."
"Mr. Carnelian?" Captain Bastable pressed some of the letters. "For you?"
"I'll have the same, please." Jherek looked around the small relaxation room. "It's not like the stalls they have in London, is it, Captain Bastable?"
"Stalls?"
"Mr. Carnelian means coffee stalls," explained Mrs. Underwood. "I think it's his only experience of drinking coffee, you see."
"It is drunk elsewhere?"
"As is tea," she said.
"How crude it is, my understanding of your subtle age." He accepted a paper cup from Captain Bastable, who had already handed Mrs. Underwood her own. He sipped conscientiously, expectantly.
Perhaps they noticed his expression of disappointment. "Would you prefer tea, Mr. Carnelian?" asked Mrs. Persson. "Or lemonade? Or soup?"
He shook his head, but the smile was weak. "I'll forgo fresh experience for the moment. There are so many new impressions to assimilate. Of course, I know that this must seem familiar and dull to you — but to me it is marvellous. The chase! The scorpions! And now these huts!" He glanced towards the Lat. "The other three are not, then, back yet?"
"The others…?" Captain Bastable was puzzled.
"He means the ones the scorpions devoured," Mrs. Underwood began. "He believes…"
"That they will be reconstituted!" Mrs. Persson brightened. "Of course. There is no death, as such, at the End of Time." She said apologetically to Jherek: "I am afraid we lack the necessary technology to restore the Lat to life, Mr. Carnelian. Besides, we do not possess the skills. If Miss Bru
"Poor Captain Mubbers," said Jherek. "He tries so hard and is forever failing in his schemes. Perhaps we could arrange some charade or other — in which he is monumentally successful. It would do his morale so much good. Is there something he could steal, Captain Bastable? Or someone he could rape?"
"Not here, I'm afraid." But Captain Bastable blushed as he controlled his voice, causing Mrs. Persson to smile and say, "We are not very well equipped for the amusement of space-travellers, I regret, Mr. Carnelian. But we shall try to get them back to their original age — your age — as near to their ship as possible. They'll soon be pillaging and raping again with gusto!"
Captain Bastable cleared his throat. Mrs. Underwood studied a cushion.
Mrs. Persson said: "I forgot myself. Captain Bastable, by the way, Mrs. Underwood, is almost a contemporary of yours. He is from 1901. It is 1901, isn't it, Oswald?"
He nodded, fingering his cuff. "Thereabouts."
"What puzzles me, more than anything," continued Mrs. Persson, "is how so many people arrived here at the same time. The heaviest traffic in my experience. And two parties without machines of any kind. What a shame we can't speak to the Lat."
"We could, if we wished," said Jherek.
"You know their language?"
"Simpler. I have a translation pill, still. I offered them before, but no one seemed interested. At the Cafe Royal. Do you remember, Inspector?"
Inspector Springer was as sullen as Captain Mubbers. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. Occasionally a peculiar, self-pitying grunt would escape his throat.
"I know the pills," said Mrs. Persson. "Are they independent of your cities?"
"Oh, quite. I've used them everywhere. They undertake a specific kind of engineering, I gather, on those parts of the brain dealing with language. The pill itself contains all sorts of ingredients — but entirely biological, I'm sure. See how well I speak your language!"
Mrs. Persson turned her eyes upon the Lat. "Could they give us any more information than Inspector Springer?"
"Probably not," said Jherek. "They were all ejected at about the same time."
"I think we'll keep the pill, therefore, for emergencies."
"Forgive me," said Mrs. Underwood, "if I seem insistent, but I should like to know our chances of returning to our own periods of history."
"Very poor, in your own case, Mrs. Underwood," said Captain Bastable. "I speak from experience. You have a choice — inhabit some period of your future, or 'return' to a present which could be radically changed, virtually unrecognizable. Our instruments have been picking up all kinds of disruptions, fluctuations, random eddies on the megaflow which suggest that heavier than usual distortions and re-creations are occurring. The multiversal planes are moving into some sort of conjunction —"
"It's the Conjunction of the Million Spheres," said Mrs. Persson. "You've heard of it?"
Jherek and Mrs. Underwood shook their heads.
"There's a theory that the conjunction comes when too much random activity occurs in the multiverse. It suggests that the multiverse is, in fact, finite — that it can only sustain so many continua — and when the maximum number of continua is attained, a complete re-organization takes place. The multiverse puts its house in order, as it were." Mrs. Persson began to leave the room. "Would you care to see some of our operations?"
Inspector Springer continued to sulk and the Lat were still far too embarrassed to move, so Amelia Underwood and Jherek Carnelian followed their hosts down a short co
"Good evening, Sergeant Glogauer." Captain Bastable bent over the bearded man's shoulder and stared at the instruments. "Any changes?"
"Chronoflows three, four and six are showing considerable abnormal activity," said the sergeant. "It corresponds with Faustaff's information, but it contradicts his automatic reconstitution theory. Look at number five prong!" he pointed to the screen. "And that's only measuring crude. We can't plot the paradox factors on this machine — not that there would be any point in trying at the rate they're multiplying. That kind of proliferation is going on everywhere. It's a wonder we're not affected by it. Elsewhere, things are fairly quiescent at present, but there's a lot more activity than I'd like. I'd propose a general warning call — get every Guild member back to sphere, place and century of origin. That might help stabilization. Unless it's got nothing at all to do with us."