Страница 52 из 67
She gave a sudden cry, as if physically wounded. Jherek took her in his arms, glaring back at Underwood. "She is right, you know. You are a cruel person, Harold Underwood. Tormented, you would torment us all!"
"Ha!"
"Amen," said Inspector Springer automatically. "I really" must warn you again that you're doing yourself no good if you persist in these attempts to disrupt our meeting. We are empowered, not only by the 'Ome Secretary 'imself, but by the 'Osts of 'Eaven, to deal with would-be trouble-makers as we see fit." He gave the last few words special emphasis and placed his fists on his waistcoated hips (his jacket was not in evidence, though his bowler hat was still on his head). "Get it?"
"Oh, Jherek, we must go!" Amelia was close to tears. "We must go home."
"Ha!"
As Jherek led her away the new missionaries stared after them for only a moment or two before returning to their service. They walked together up the yellow-brown metal pathway, hearing the voices raised again in song:
They came to where they had left the locomotive and, as she clambered onto the footplate, her hem in tatters, her clothes stained, she said tearfully. "Oh, Jherek, if there is a Hell, then surely I deserve to be consigned there…"
"You do not blame yourself for what has happened to your husband, Amelia?"
"Who else shall I blame?"
"You were blaming Jagged," he reminded her.
"Jagged's machinations are one thing; my culpability is another. I should never have left him. I have betrayed him. He has gone mad with grief."
"Because he loses you?"
"Oh, no — because his pride is attacked. Now he finds consolation in religious mania."
"You have offered to stay with him."
"I know. The damage is done, I suppose. Yet I have a duty to him, perhaps more so, now."
"Aha."
They began to rise up over the city. Another silence had grown between them. He tried to break it:
"You were right, Amelia. In my wanderings I found Bra
But she would not reply. Instead, she began to sob. When he went to comfort her, she shrugged him away.
"Amelia?"
She continued to sob until the scene of her party came in sight. There were still guests there, Jherek could see, but few. The Iron Orchid had not been sufficient to make them stay — they wanted Amelia.
"Shall we rejoin our guests…?"
She shook her head. He turned the locomotive and made for the thatched roof of their house, visible behind the cypresses and the poplars. He landed on the lawn and immediately she ran from the locomotive to the door. She was still sobbing as she ran up the stairs to her apartment. Jherek heard a door close. He sat at the bottom of the stairs pondering on the nature of this new, all-consuming feeling of despair which threatened to rob him of the ability to move, but he was incapable of any real thought. He was wounded, he knew self-pity, he grieved for her in her pain and he, who had always expressed himself in terms of action (her wish had ever been his command, even if he had misinterpreted her occasionally), could think of nothing, not the simplest gesture, which might please her and ease their mutual misery.
After some time he went slowly to his bed.
Outside, beyond the house, the great rivers of blood still fell with unchecked force over the black cliffs, filling the swirling lake where cryptic monsters swam and on which obsidian islands still bobbed, their dark green fleshy foliage rustling in a hot, sweet wind; but Mrs. Amelia Underwood's piece-de-resistance had been abandoned long since by her forgotten guests.
25. The Call to Duty
For the first time in his long life Jherek Carnelian, whose body could always be modified so that it did not need sleep, knew insomnia. Oblivion was his only demand, but it refused to come. Line after line of thought developed in his brain and each line led nowhere and had to be cut off. He considered seeking Jagged out, yet something stopped him. It was Amelia, only Amelia — Amelia was the only company he desired and yet (he must admit this to himself, here in the dark) presently he feared her. Thus in his mind he performed a forward step only, immediately thereafter, to take a backward — forward, backward — a horrid little dance of indecision which brought, in due course, his first taste of self-disgust. He had always followed his impulses, without a grain of self-consciousness, without the suggestion of a question, as did his peers at the End of Time. Yet now it seemed he had two impulses; he was caught like a steel ball between magnets, equidistant. His identity and his actions had hitherto been one — so now his identity came under siege. If he had two impulses, why, he must be two people. And if he were two people, then which was the worthwhile one, which should be abandoned as soon as possible? So Jherek discovered the old night-game of see-saw, in which a third Jherek, none too firm in his resolves, tried to hold judgement on two others, sliding first this way, then the other — "I shall demand from her…" and "She deserves better than I…" were two begi
And so it might have continued until morning, had not she softly opened his door with a murmured query as to his wakefulness.
"Oh, Amelia!" He sat up at once.
"I have done you an injury," she whispered, though there was none to overhear. "My self-control deserted me today."
"I am not quite sure what it is that you describe," he told her, turning on the lamp by his bed so that it shed just a fraction more light and he could see her haggard face, red with crying, "but you have done me no injury. It is I who have failed. I am useless to you."
"You are brave and splendid — and i
"I love you," he said. "I am a fool. I am unworthy of you."
"No, no, my dear. I am a slave to my upbringing and I know that upbringing to be narrow, unimaginative, even brutalizing — ah, and it is essentially cynical, though I could never have admitted it. But you, dearest, are without a grain of cynicism, though I thought at first you and your world were nothing else but cynical. And now I see I am on the verge of teaching you my own habits — cynicism, hypocrisy, fear of emotional involvement disguised as self-denial — ah, there is a monstrous range…"