The Hollow Lands BY MICHAEL MOORCOCK Book Two of the Dancers at the End of Time trilogy
A Last Word
1899
1. In Which Jherek Carnelian Continues to be in Love
"I am so proud of you. What mother would not be? You are a talented and tasty son!"
Jherek sighed from where he lay on the far side of the bed, his face all but hidden in the huge downy pile of pillows. He was pale. He was pensive.
"Thank you, brightest of blossoms, most revered of metals."
His voice was small.
"But you still pine," she said sympathetically, "for your Mrs. Underwood."
"Indeed."
"Few could sustain such a passion so well. The world still awaits, eagerly, expectantly, the outcome. Will you go to her? Will she come to you?"
"She said that she would come to me," Jherek Carnelian murmured. "Or so I understood. You know how difficult it is sometimes to make sense of a time traveller's conversation, and I must say that it was particularly confusing in 1896." He smiled. "It was wonderful, however. I wish you could have seen it, Iron Orchid. The Coffee Stalls, the Gin Palaces, the Prisons and all the other monuments. And so many people! One might doubt a sufficiency of air to give life to them!"
"Yes, dear." Her response was not as lively as it might have been, for she had heard all this more than once. "But your recreation is there, for all of us to enjoy. And others now follow where you led."
Realizing that he was in danger of boring her, he sat up in his pillows, stretching his fingers out before him and contemplating the shimmering power rings which adorned them. Pursing his perfect lips he made an adjustment to the ring on the index finger of his right hand. A window appeared on the far side of the room and through the window sunshine came leaping, warm and bright.
"What a beautiful morning!" exclaimed the Iron Orchid, complimenting him. "How do you plan to spend it?"
He shrugged. "I had not considered the problem. Have you a suggestion?"
"Well, Jherek, since you are the one who has set the fashion for nostalgia, I thought you might like to come with me to one of the old rotted cities."
"You are most certainly in a nostalgic mood, Queen of imaginative mothers." He kissed her softly upon the lids of her ebony eyes. "We are last there together when I was a child you are thinking of Shanalorm, of course?"
"Shanalorm, or whatever it's called. You were conceived there, too, as I remember." She yawned. "The rotted cities are the only permanency in this world of ours."
"Some would say they were the world." Jherek smiled. "But they do not have the charm of the Dawn Age metropoli, ancient as they are."
"I find them romantic," she said reminiscently. She threw jet arms around him, kissing him upon the lips with her mouth of midnight blue, her dress (living purple poppies) undulating and sighing. "What shall you wear, to go adventuring? Are you still in a mood for those arrowed suits?"
"I think not." (Privately, he was disappointed
as long as Time itself (which was not that long, if Yusharisp, the little alien who had gone into space with Lord Mongrove, was to be believed).
Beneath its canopy of violet light, which did not seem to penetrate to the city itself, Shanalorm lay dreaming. Some of its bizarre buildings had melted and remained in a semi-liquid state, their outlines still discernible; other buildings were festering machine mould and energy-moss undulated across their shells, bright yellow-green, bile-blue and reddish-brown, groaning and whispering as it sought fresh seepages from the power-reservoirs; peculiar little animals, indigenous to the cities, scuttled in and out of openings which might have been doors and windows, through shadows of pale blue, scarlet and mauve, cast by nothing visible; they swam through pools of glittering gold and turquoise, feasting off half-metallic plants which in turn were nurtured by queer radiations and cryptically structured crystals. And all the while Shanalorm sang to itself, a thousand interweaving songs, hypnotic harmonies. Once, it was said, the whole city had been sentient, the most intelligent being in the universe, but now it was senile and even its memories were fragmented. Images flickered here and there among the rotting jewel-metal of the buildings; scenes of Shanalorm's glories, of its inhabitants, of its history. It had had many names before it was called Shanalorm.
"Isn't it pretty, Jherek!" cried the Iron Orchid. "Where shall we have our picnic?"