Constant Fire

13. In which Doctor Volospion asks Mavis Ming to make a Sacrifice

She awoke from another nightmare.

Mavis Ming was filled with a sense of desolation worse than any she had experienced in the past.

"Oh, dear," she murmured through her night-mask.

An impression of her dream was all that was left to her, but she seemed to recall that it involved Mr Bloom.

"What a wicked little creature! He's frightened me more than anything's ever frightened me before. Even Donny's tantrums weren't as bad. He deserves to be locked up. He deserves it. In any other world it would be his just punishment for doing what he had done. If Doctor Volospion hadn't stopped him, he would have raped me, for sure. Oh, why can't I stop thinking about what he said to me? It's all nonsense. I wish I was braver. I can't believe he's safely out of the way. I wish I had the nerve to go and see for myself. It would make me feel so much better."

She sank into her many pillows, pulling the sheets over her eyes. "I know what those energy cages are like. It's the same sort I was in when I first arrived. He'll never get out. And I can't go to see him. That ridiculous flattery. And Doctor Volospion doesn't help by telling me all the time that he thinks Bloom's love is 'genuine,' whatever that means. Oh, it's worse now. It is. Why couldn't Doctor Volospion have made him go away? Keeping him here is torture!"

Doctor Volospion had even suggested, earlier, that it would be charitable if she went to his cage to "comfort" him.

"Repulsive little runt!" She pushed back her pink silky sheets and turned up the lamp (already fairly bright) whose stand was in the shape of a flesh-coloured nymph rising naked from the powder-blue petals of an open rose. "I do wish Doctor Volospion would let me have a power ring of my own. It would make everything much easier. Everyone else has them. Lots of time travellers do." She crossed the soft pale yellow carpet to her gilded Empire-style dressing-table to look at her face in the mirror.

"Oh, I look awful! That dreadful creature."

She sighed. She often had trouble sleeping, for she was very highly strung, but this was much worse. For all their extravagant entertainments, their parties where the world was moulded to their whims, what they really needed, thought Mavis, was a decent TV network. TV would be just the answer to her problems right now.

"Perhaps Doctor Volospion could find something for me in one of those old cities," she mused. "I'll ask him. Not that he seems to be doing me many favours, these days. How long's he had the Fireclown now? A couple of weeks? And spending all his time down there. Maybe he loves Bloom and that's what it's all about." She laughed, but immediately became miserable again.

"Oh, Mavis. Why is it always you? The world just isn't on your side." She gave one of her funny little crooked smiles, very similar to those she had seen Barbara Stanwyck giving in those beautiful old movies.

"If only I could have gone back in time, to the 20th century, even, where the sort of clothes and lifestyle they had were so graceful. They had simpler lives, then. Oh, I know they must have had their problems, but how I wish I could be there now! It's what I was looking forward to, when they elected me to be the first person to try out the time machine. Of course, it was proof of how popular I was with the other guys at the department. Everyone agreed unanimously that I should be the first to go. It was a great honour."

Apparently this thought did not succeed in lifting her spirits. She raised a hand to her head.

"Oh, oh — here comes the headache! Poor old Mavis!"

She began to pad back towards the big circular bed. But the thought of a continuance of those dreams, even though she had pushed them right out of her mind, stopped her. It had been Doctor Volospion's suggestion that she continue to lead the sort of life she had been used to — with regular periods of darkness and daylight and a corresponding need to sleep and eat, even though he could easily have changed all that for her.

To be fair to him, she thought, he tended to follow a similar routine himself, ever since he had heard that Lord Jagged of Canaria had adopted this ancient affectation. If she had had a power ring or an air car at her disposal (again she was completely reliant on Volospion's good graces) she would have left the palace and gone to find some fun, something to take her mind off things. She looked at her Winnie-the-Pooh clock — another three hours before the palace would be properly activated. Until then she would not even be able to get a snack with which to console herself.

"I'm not much better off than that little creep down there," she said. "Oh, Mavis, what sort of a state have they got you into!"

A tap, now, at the door.

Grateful for the interruption, Mavis pulled on her fluffy blue dressing-robe. "Come in!"

Doctor Volospion, a satanic Hamlet in black and white doublet and hose, entered her room. "You are not sleeping, Miss Ming? I heard your voice as I passed…"

Hope revealed itself in her eyes. "I've got a bit of a headache, Doctor." He could normally cure her headaches. Her mood improved. She became eager, anxious to win his approval. "Silly little Mavis is having nightmares again."

"You are unhappy?"

"Oh, no! In this lovely room? In your lovely palace? It's everything a little girl dreams about. It's just that awful Mr Bloom. Ever since…"

"I see." The saturnine features showed enlightenment. "You are still afraid. He can never escape, Miss Ming. He has tried, but I assure you my powers are far greater than his. He becomes tiresome, but he is no threat."

"You'll let him go, then?"

"If I could be sure that he would leave the planet, for he fails to be as entertaining as I had hoped. And if he would give me that Grail of his, from which his power, I am now certain, derives. But he refuses."

"You could take it now, couldn't you?"

"Not from him. Not from his ship. The screen is still impenetrable. No, you are our only hope."

"Me?"

"He would not have allowed himself to be trapped at all, if it had not been for you." Doctor Volospion sighed deeply. "Well, I have just returned from visiting him again. I have offered him his liberty in return for that one piece of property, but he fobs me off with arguments that are typically specious, with vague talk of Faith and Trust — you have heard his babble."

Mavis murmured sympathetically. "I've never seen you so cast down, Doctor Volospion. You never know with some people, do you? He's best locked up for his own good. He's a sort of cripple, isn't he? You know what some cripples are like. You can't blame them. It's the frustration. It's all bottled up in them. It turns them into sex maniacs."

"To do him justice, Miss Ming, his interest seems only in you. I have offered him many women, both real and artificial, from the menageries. Many of them are very beautiful, but he insists that none of them has your 'soul,' your — um — true beauty."

"Really?" She was sceptical, still. "He's insane. A lot of men are like that. That's one of the reasons I gave them up. At least with a lady you know where you are on that score. And Mr Bloom has got about as much sex-appeal as a seagull — less! Did you ever hear of a really sweet old book called Jonathan…"

"Your headache is better, Miss Ming?"

"Why, yes." She touched her hair. "It's almost gone. Did you…?"

Doctor Volospion drew his own brows together and traced beringed fingers across the creases. "You do not give yourself enough credit, Miss Ming…"

She smiled. "That's what Betty was always telling me when I used to feel low. But poor old Mavis…"

"He demands that you see him. He speaks of nothing else."

"Oh!" She paused. She shook her head. "No, I couldn't, really. As it is, I haven't had a good night's sleep since the day he arrived."

"Of course, I understand."

Miss Ming was touched by Doctor Volospion's unusual sadness. He seemed to have none of his usual confidence. She moved closer to him.

"Don't worry, Doctor Volospion. Maybe it would be best if you tried to forget about him."

"I need the Grail. I am obsessed with it. And I cannot rid myself of the notion that, somehow, he is tricking me."

"Impossible. You're far too clever. Why is this Grail so important to you?"

Doctor Volospion withdrew from her.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to pry."

"Only you can help me, Miss Ming."

The apparent pleading in his voice moved her to heights of sympathy. "Oh…"

"You could convince him, I think, where I could not."

She was relenting, against all her instincts. "Well, if I saw him for a few moments … And it might help me, too — to lay the ghost, if you know what I mean."

His voice was low. "I should be very grateful to you, Miss Ming. Perhaps we should go immediately."

She hesitated. Then she patted his arm. "Oh, all right. Give me a few minutes to get dressed."

With a deep bow, Doctor Volospion left the room.

Miss Ming began to consider her clothes. On the one hand, she thought, some sort of sexless boiler suit would be best, to dampen Mr Bloom's ardour as much as possible. Another impulse was to put on her very sexiest clothes, to feed her vanity. In the end she compromised, donning a flowery mou-mou which, she thought, disguised her plumpness. Courageously she went to join Doctor Volospion, who awaited her in the corridor. Together they made their way to the menagerie.

As they descended flights of stone stairs she observed: "Surprisingly I'm feeling quite light-headed. Almost gay!"

They passed through the tiered rows of his many devotional trophies, past the bones and the sticks and the bits of cloth, the cauldrons, idols, masks and weapons, the crowns and the boxes, the scrolls, tablets and books, the prayer-wheels and crystals and ju-jus, until they reached the door of the first section of the menagerie, the Jewish House.

"I had thought of putting him in here," Doctor Volospion told her as they passed by the inmates, who ranted, wailed, chanted, tore their clothing or merely turned aside as they passed, "but finally I decided on the Non-Sectarian Prophet House."

"I hadn't realized your collection was so big. I've never seen it all, as you know." Miss Ming made conversation as best she could. Evidently the place still disturbed her.

"It grows almost without one realizing it," said Doctor Volospion. "I suppose, because so many people of a messianic disposition take an interest in the future, we are bound to get more than our fair share of prophets, anxious to discover if their particular version of the millennium has come about. Because they are frequently disappointed, many are glad of the refuge I offer."

They went through another door.

"Martyrdom, it would seem, is the next best thing to affirmation," he said.

They passed through a score of different Houses until, finally, they came to the Fireclown's habitat. It was designed to resemble a desert, scorched by a permanently blazing sun.

"He refused," whispered Doctor Volospion, as they approached, "to tell me what sort of environment he favoured, so I chose this one. It is the most popular with my prophets, as you'll have noted."

Emmanuel Bloom, in his clown's costume, sat on a rock in the centre of his energy cage. His greasepaint seemed to have run a little, as if he had been weeping, but he did not seem in particularly low spirits now. He had not, it appeared, noticed them. He was reciting poetry to himself.

He had seen her. His great blue eyes blinked. His stiff little body began to rise. His birdlike, fluting voice took on a different tone.

"And yet like none of these…" He put an awkward finger to his small mouth. He put his painted head on one side.

Mavis Ming cleared her throat. Doctor Volospion's hand forced her further towards the cage.

The Fireclown spoke first. "So Guinevere comes at last to her Lancelot — or is it Kundry, come to call me Parsifal? Sorceress, you have incarcerated me. Tell your servant to release me so that, in turn, I may free you from the evil that holds you with stronger bonds than any that chain me!"

Miss Ming's smile was insincere. "Why don't you talk properly, Mr Bloom? This is childish. Anyway, you know he's not my servant." She was very pale.

Mr Bloom crossed the stretch of sand until he was as close to her as the cage permitted. "He is not your master, you may be sure of that, this imitation Klingsor!"

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about." Her voice was shaking.

He pressed his tiny body against the energy screen. "I must be free," he said. "There is no mission for me here, now, at the End of Time. I must continue my quest, perhaps into another universe where Faith may yet flourish."

Doctor Volospion came forward. "I have brought Miss Ming, as you have so constantly demanded. You have talked to her. Now, if you will give up the Grail to me…"

Mr Bloom's manner became agitated. "I have explained to you, demi-demon, that you could not keep it, even if, by some means, I could transfer it to you. Only the pure in spirit are entitled to its trust. If I agreed to your bargain I should lose the Grail myself, for ever. Neither would gain!"

"I find your objections without foundation." Doctor Volospion was unruffled by the Fireclown's anger. "What you believe, Mr Bloom, is one thing. The truth, however, is quite another! Faith dies, but the objects of faith do not, as you saw in my museum."

"These things have no value without Faith!"

"They are valuable to me. That is why I collect them. I desire this Grail of yours so that I may, at least, compare it with my own."

"You know yours to be false," said the Fireclown. "I can tell."

"I shall decide which is false and which is not when I have both in my possession. I know it is on your ship, for all that you deny it."

"It is not. It manifests itself at certain times."

Doctor Volospion allowed his own ill-temper to show. "Miss Ming…"

"Please let him have it, Mr Bloom," said Mavis Ming in her best wheedling voice. "He'll let you go if you do."

The Fireclown was amused. "I can leave whenever I please. But I gave my word on two matters. I said that I would not take you by force and that I would take you with me when I left."

"Your boasts are shown to be empty, sir," said Doctor Volospion. He laid the flat of his hand against the energy screen. "There."

Mr Bloom ran his hand through his auburn mop, continuing to speak to Miss Ming. "You demean yourself, woman, when you aid this wretch, when you adopt that idiotic tone of voice."

"Well!" It was possible to observe that Miss Ming's legs were shaking. "I'm not staying here, not even for you, Doctor Volospion! It's too much. I can stand a lot of things, but not this."

"Be silent!" The Fireclown's voice was low and firm. "Listen to your soul. It will tell you what I tell you."

"Miss Ming!" Seeing that she prepared to flee Doctor Volospion seized her arm. "For my sake do not give up. If I have that Grail…"

"You may see the Grail, beautiful Mavis, when I have redeemed you," murmured the Fireclown, "but it shall always be denied to such as he! Come with me and I shall let you witness more than Mystery."

She panicked. "Oh, Christ!" She was unable to control herself as she sensed the terrible pressure coming from both sides. She tried to free herself from Doctor Volospion's restraining hand. "I can't take any more. I can't!"

"Miss Ming!" fiercely croaked a desperate Volospion. "You promised to help."

"Come with me!" cried the Fireclown.

She still struggled, trying to prise his grip away from the sleeve of her mou-mou. "You can both do what you like. I don't want any part of it."

Hysteria ruled now. She scratched Doctor Volospion's hand so that at last he released her. She ran away from them. She ran crazily between the cages of roaring, screaming, moaning prophets. "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

And then, just before a door shut her from their view:

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"