Constant Fire

5. In which certain denizens at the End of Time indulge themselves in Speculation as to the Nature of the Visitor from Space

It was a spaceship from some mythical antiquity, all fins and flutes and glittering bubbles, tapering at the nose, bulbous at the base, where its rockets roared. It slowed as they watched, falling with a peculiar swaying motion, as if its engines malfunctioned, the vents first on one side and then on the other sputtering, gouting, sputtering again until, just before the ship reached the ground, the rockets flared in unison, bouncing the machine like a ball on a water jet, gradually subsiding until it had settled to earth.

Miss Ming, observing it from her nest of chocolate worms, tightened her lips.

Even after the ship had landed flame still rolled around its hull, sensuous flame caressed the scarlet metal.

The surrounding terrain sent up heavy black smoke, crackling as if to protest; the smoke curled close to the ground, moving towards the ship: eels attracted to wreckage.

Miss Ming was in no temper to admire the machine; she glared at it.

"It has a certain authority, the ship," murmured Argonheart Po.

"A fine sense of timing, I must say! A little love-making would have improved my spirits no end and taken away the nasty taste of Doctor Volospion's tantrum. It isn't as if I get the chance every day and I haven't had a man for ages. I don't even know if one can still give me what I need! Even you, Argonheart…"

She pouted, brushing at the nasty sticky stuff clinging to her petticoats. "I'm too furious to speak!"

Argonheart Po helped her from the pile and, perhaps moved by unconscious chivalry, pecked her upon the cheek. The smell of burning filled the air.

"Ugh," she said. "What a stink, too!"

"It is the least attractive of odours," Argonheart said.

"It's horrible. Surely it can't just be coming from that ship?"

The heat from the vessel was heavy on their skins. Argonheart Po, had his body been so fashioned, would have been sweating quite as much as Miss Ming. His sensitive nose twitched.

"There is something familiar about it," he agreed, "which I would not normally identify with hot metal." He perused the landscape. His cry of horror echoed over it.

"Ah! Look what it has done! Look! Oh, it is too bad!"

Miss Ming looked and saw nothing. "What?"

Argonheart was in anguish. His hands clenched, his eyes blazed.

"It has melted half my dinosaurs. That is what is making the smoke!"

Argonheart Po began to roll rapidly in the direction of the ship, Mavis Ming forgotten.

"Hey!" she cried. "What if there's danger?"

He had not heard her.

With a whimper, she followed him.

"Murderer!" cried the distressed chef. "Philistine!" He shook his fist at the ship. He danced about it, forced back by its heat. He attempted to kick it and failed.

"Locust!" he raved. "Ravager! Insensitive despoiler!"

His energy dissipated, he fell to his knees in the glutinous mess. He wept. "Oh, my monsters! My jellies!"

Mavis Ming hovered a short distance away. She wore the pout of someone who considered herself abandoned in her hour of need.

"Argonheart!" she called.

"Burned! All burned!"

"Argonheart, we don't know what sort of creatures are in that spaceship. They could mean us harm!"

"Ruin, ruin, ruin…"

"Argonheart. I think we should go and warn someone, don't you?" She discovered that her lovely shoes were stuck. As she lifted her feet, long strands of toffeelike stuff came with them. She waded back to a patch of dust still free of melted dinosaur.

Her attention focused upon the ship as curiosity conquered caution. "I've seen alien spacecraft before," she said. "Lots of them. But this doesn't look alien at all. It's got a distinctly human look to it, in fact."

Argonheart Po raised his mighty body to its feet and, with shoulders bowed, mourned his dead creations.

"Argonheart, don't you think it's got a rather romantic appearance, really?"

Argonheart Po turned his back on the source of his anger and folded his arms across his chest. He wore a martyred air, yet his dignity increased.

Mavis Ming continued to inspect the spaceship. A strange smile had replaced the expression of anxiety she had worn earlier. "Come to think of it, it's just the sort of ship I used to read about when I was a little girl. All the space-heroes had ships like that." She became fey. "Perhaps at long last my prayers have been answered, Argonheart."

The Master Chef grunted. He was lost in profundity.

Miss Ming uttered her trilling laugh. "Has my handsome space-knight arrived to carry me off, do you think? To the wonderful planet of Paradise V?"

From Argonheart there issued a deep, violent rumbling, as of an angry volcano. "Villain! Villain!"

She put a hand to her mouth. "You could be right. It could easily carry a villain. Some pirate captain and his cut-throat crew." She became reminiscent. "My two favourite authors, you know, when I was young — well, I'd still read them now, if I could — were J.R.R. Tolkien and A.A. Milne. Well, this is more like the movie versions, of course, but still … Oooh! Could they be rapists and slavers, Argonheart?"

She took his silence for disapproval. "Not that I really want anything nasty to happen to us. Not really. But it's thrilling, isn't it, wondering?"

"I —" said Argonheart Po. "I —"

Miss Ming, as she anticipated the occupants of the ship, seemed torn between poles represented in her fantasies by the evil, fascinating Sauron and the soft, jolly Winnie-the-Pooh.

"Will they be fierce, do you think, Argonheart? Or cuddly?" She bit her lower lip. "Better still, they might be fierce and cuddly!"

"Aaaaaah," breathed Argonheart.

She looked at him in surprise. She appeared to make an effort to retrieve herself from sentiment which, she had doubtless learned, was not always socially acceptable in this world. She achieved the retrieval by a return to her previous alternative, her vein of heavy cynicism. "I was only joking," she said.

"Sadist," hissed Argonheart. "This might have been deliberately engineered."

"Well," she said, having determined her new attitude, "at least it might be someone to relieve the awful boredom of this bloody planet!"

Still bowed, her baffled and grieving escort turned from the blackened fragments of his culinary dreams to stare wistfully after his surviving stegosauri and tyrannosauri which, startled by the ship, were in rapid and uncertain flight in all directions.

His self-control returned. He became a fatalist. His little shrug went virtually unnoticed by her.

"It is fate," declared the Master Chef. "At least I am no longer in a dilemma. The decision has been taken from me."

He began to wade, as best the sticky glue would allow him, towards her.

"Couldn't you round them up?" she asked. "The ones who survived?"

"And make only a partial contribution? No. I shall find Abu Thaleb and tell him he must create something for himself. A few turns of a power ring, of course, and he will have a feast of sorts, though it will lack the inspiration of anything I could have prepared for him." A certain guilt, it seemed, inspired him to resent the object of his guilt and therefore made him feel somewhat aggressive towards Abu Thaleb.

He reached Miss Ming's side. "Shall we return to the party together?"

"But what of the ship?"

"It has done its terrible work."

"But the people who came in it?"

"I forgive them," said Argonheart with grandiose magnanimity.

"I mean — don't you want to see what they look like?"

"I bear them no ill-will. They were not aware of the horror they brought. It is ever thus."

"They might be interesting."

"Interesting?" Argonheart Po was incredulous.

"They might have some news, or something."

Argonheart Po looked again upon the spaceship. "They are scarcely likely to be anything but crude, ill-mannered rogues, Miss Ming. Surely, they must have seen, by means of their instruments, my herds?"

"It could be a crash-landing."

"Perhaps." Argonheart Po was a fair-minded chef. He did his best to see her point. "Perhaps."

"They might need help."

He cast one final glance about the smoking detritus and said, with not a little violence, "Well, I hope that they find it."

"Shouldn't we…?"

"I return to find Abu Thaleb and tell him of the disaster."

"Oh, very well, I suppose I shall have to come with you. But, really, Argonheart, you're looking at this in a rather selfish way, aren't you? This could be a great event. Remember those other aliens who turned up recently? They were trying to help us, too, weren't they? It would be lovely to have some nice news for a change…"

She reached for his arm, so that he might escort her through the glutinous pools.

At that moment there came a grinding noise from the vessel. Both looked back.

A circular section in the hull was turning.

"The airlock," she gasped. "It's opening."

The door of the airlock swung back, apparently on old-fashioned hinges, to reveal a dark hole from which, for a few seconds, flames poured.

"They can't be human," she said. "Not if they live in fire."

No further flames issued from within the ship but from the darkness of the interior there came tiny flashes of light from time to time.

"Like fireflies," whispered Mavis Ming.

"Or eyes," said Argonheart, his attention held for the moment.

"The feral eyes of wild invaders." Miss Ming seemed to be quoting from one of her girlhood texts.

An engine murmured and the ship shivered. Then, from somewhere inside the airlock, a wide band of metal began to emerge.

"A ramp," said Mavis Ming. "They're letting down a ramp."

The ramp slid slowly to the ground, making a bridge between airlock and Earth, but still no occupant emerged.

Mavis cupped her hands around her mouth. "Greetings!" she cried. "The peaceful people of Earth welcome you!"

There was still no acknowledgement from the ship. Grainy dust drifted past. There was silence.

"They might be afraid of us," suggested Mavis.

"Most probably they are ashamed," said Argonheart Po. "Too abashed to display themselves."

"Oh, Argonheart! They probably didn't even see your dinosaurs!"

"Is that an excuse?"

"Well…"

Now a muffled, querulous voice sounded from within the airlock, but the language it used was unintelligible.

"We have no translators." Argonheart Po consulted his power rings. "I have no means of making him speak any sort of tongue I'll understand. Neither have I the means to understand him. We must go. Lord Jagged of Canaria usually has a translation ring. Or the Duke of Queens. Or Doctor Volospion. Anyone who keeps a menagerie will…"

"Sssh," she said. "The odd thing is, Argonheart, that while I can't actually understand the words, the language does seem familiar. It's like — well it's like English — the language I used to speak before I came here."

"You cannot speak it now?"

"Obviously not. I'm speaking this one, whatever it is, aren't I?"

The voice came again. It was high-pitched. It tended to trill, like birdsong, and yet it was distinctly human.

"It's not unpleasant," she said, "but it's not what I would have called manly." She was kind: "Still, the pitch might be affected by a change in the atmosphere, mightn't it?"

"Possibly." Argonheart peered. "Hm. One of them seems to be coming out."

At last a space traveller emerged at the top of the ramp.

"Oh, dear," murmured Miss Ming, "what a disappointment! I hope they're not all like him."

Although undoubtedly humanoid, the stranger had a distinctly birdlike air to him. There was a wild crest of bright auburn hair, which rose all around his head and created a kind of ruff about his neck; there was a sharp pointed nose; there were vivid blue eyes which bulged and blinked in the light; there was a head which craned forward on an elongated neck and which would sometimes jerk back a little, like a chicken's as it searched for grain amid the farmyard's dust; there was a tiny body which also moved in rapid, poorly coordinated jerks and twitches; there were two arms, held stiffly at the sides of the body like clipped wings. And then there was the plaintive, questioning cry, like a puzzled gull's:

"Eh? Eh? Eh?"

The eyes darted this way and that and then fixed suddenly upon Mavis Ming and Argonheart Po. They received the creature's whole attention.

"Eh?"

He blinked imperiously at them. He trilled a few words.

Argonheart Po waited until the newcomer had finished before announcing gravely:

"You have ruined the Commissar of Bengal's dinner, sir."

"Eh?"

"You have reduced a carefully planned feast to a rabble of side-dishes!"

"Fallerunnerstanja," said the visitor from space. He reached back into the airlock and produced a black frock coat dating from a period at least 150 years before Mavis Ming's own. He drew the coat over his shirt and buttoned it all the way down. "Eh?"

"It's not very clean," said Mavis, "that coat. Is it?"

Argonheart had not noticed the stranger's clothes. He was regretting his outburst and trying to recover his composure, his normal amiability.

"Welcome," he said, "to the End of Time."

"Eh?"

The space traveller frowned and consulted a bulky instrument in his right hand. He tapped it, shook it and held it up to his ear.

"Well," said Mavis with a sniff, "he isn't much, is he? I wonder if they're all like him."

"He could be the only one," suggested Argonheart Po.

"Like that?"

"The only one at all."

"I hope not!"

As if in response to her criticism, the creature waved both his arms in a sort of windmilling motion. It seemed for a moment as if he were trying to fly. Then, with stiff movements, reminiscent of a poorly controlled marionette, it retreated back into its ship.

"Did we frighten him, do you think?" asked Argonheart Po in some concern.

"Quite likely. What a weedy little creep!"

"Mm?"

"What a rotten specimen! He doesn't go with the ship at all. I was expecting someone tanned, brawny, handsome…"

"Why so? You know these ships? You have met those who normally use them?"

"Only in my dreams," she said.

Argonheart made no further effort to follow her. "He is humanoid, at least. It makes a change, don't you think, Miss Ming, from all those others?"

"Not much of one though." She shifted a gluey foot. "Ah, well! Shall we return, as you suggested?"

"You don't think we should remain?"

"There's no point, is there? Let someone else deal with him. Someone who wants a curiosity for their menagerie."

Argonheart Po offered his arm again. They began to wade towards the dusty shore.

As they reached the higher ground they heard a familiar voice from overhead. They looked up.

Abu Thaleb's howdah hovered there.

"Aha!" said the Commissar of Bengal. His face, with its beard carefully curled and divided into two parts, set with pearls and rubies, after the original, peered over the edge of the air car. "I thought so." He addressed another occupant, invisible to their eyes. "You see, Volospion, I was right."

"Oh, dear." Mavis tried to rearrange her disordered dress. "Doctor Volospion, too…"

Volospion's tired tones issued from the howdah. "Yes, indeed. You were quite right, Abu Thaleb. I apologize. It is a spaceship. Well, if you feel you would like to descend, I shall not object."

The howdah came down to earth beside Argonheart Po and Miss Ming. Within, it was lined with dark green and blue plush.

Doctor Volospion lay among cushions, still in black and gold, his tight hood covering his skull and framing his pale face. He made no attempt to move. He scarcely acknowledged Miss Ming's presence as he addressed Argonheart Po:

"Forgive this intrusion, great Prince of Pies. The Commissar of Bengal is bent on satisfying his curiosity."

Argonheart Po made to speak but Abu Thaleb had already begun again:

"What a peculiar odour it has — sweet, yet bitter…"

"My creations…" said Argonheart.

"Like death," pronounced Doctor Volospion.

"The smell is all that is left," insisted Argonheart now, "of the dinner I was preparing for your party, Abu Thaleb. The ship's landing destroyed almost all of it."

Climbing from his howdah the slender commissar clapped the chef upon his broad back. "Dear Argonheart, how sad! But another time, I hope, you will be able to re-create all that you have lost today."

"It is true that there were imperfections," Argonheart told him, "and I would relish the opportunity to begin afresh."

"Soon, soon, soon. What a lovely little ship it is!" Abu Thaleb's plumes bounced upon his turban. "I had yearnings, you see, to embellish my menagerie, but I fear the ship is too small to accommodate the kind of prize I seek."

Mavis Ming said: "You'd be even more disappointed than me, Abu Thaleb. You should see the little squirt we saw just before you turned up. He —"

Doctor Volospion, so it seemed, had not heard her begin to speak. He called from his cushions:

"Your menagerie is already a marvel, Belle of Bengal. The most refined collection in the world. Splendid, specialized, so much more sophisticated than the scrambled skelter of species scraped together by certain so-called connoisseurs whose zoos surpass yours only in size but never in superiority of sensitive selection!"

Mavis Ming displayed confusion. Although Doctor Volospion appeared to address Abu Thaleb he seemed to be speaking for her benefit. She looked from one to the other, wondering if she should form a smile.

Doctor Volospion winked at her.

Mavis grinned. She had been forgiven for her outburst. The joke was at Abu Thaleb's expense.

She began to giggle.

"Go on, Doctor Volospion. I'm sure Abu Thaleb enjoys your flattery," she said.

"In taste, salutory commissar, you are assured of supremacy, until our planet passes at last into that limbo of silence and non-existence which must soon, we are told, be its fate."

Abu Thaleb's back was to Miss Ming and she seemed glad of this. She held her breath. She went deep red. She made a muted, spluttering noise.

But now the Commissar of Bengal was looking back at Doctor Volospion. "Oh, really, my friend!" He was good-natured. "You are capable of subtler mockery than this!"

"But I am a true showman, Abu Thaleb. I relate properly to my audience."

"Can that be true?" Abu Thaleb turned to Mavis. "You have seen the visitors, then, Miss Ming?"

"Briefly," she said. "Actually, there only seems to be one."

Abu Thaleb stroked his beard, his pearls and rubies. "He is not in any way, I suppose, um — elephantoid?"

She was prepared to allow herself a giggle now. She looked towards the lounging Volospion.

"Not a trace of a trunk, I'm afraid." She looked for approval from her protector. "Not even a touch of a tusk. He couldn't be less like a jumbo, although his nose is long enough, I suppose. He's more like one of those little birds, Abu Thaleb, who pick stuff out of elephant's teeth."

"Excellent!" applauded Doctor Volospion. "Ha, ha, ha!"

Abu Thaleb turned and regarded her with mysterious gravity. "Teeth?"

She giggled again. "Don't they have teeth, then, any more?"

Argonheart Po seemed much embarrassed. His glance at Doctor Volospion was almost disapproving. "I must away to my thoughts," he said. "I shall leave this sad scene. There is nothing I can save. Not now. So I'll wish you all farewell."

"Are we to be denied even a taste of your palatable treasure, Argonheart?" Doctor Volospion used much the same voice as the one he had used to speak to Abu Thaleb. "Hm?"

Argonheart Po cleared his throat. He shook his head. He glanced at the ground. "I think so."

"Oh, but Argonheart, you still have a few dinosaurs left. Can't I see one now? On the horizon." Miss Ming clutched at his hand but failed to engage.

"No more, no more," said the Master Chef.

Doctor Volospion spoke again. "Ah, mighty Lord of the Larder, how haughty you can sometimes be! Just a morsel of mastodon, perhaps, to whet our appetites?"

"I made no mastodons!" bellowed Argonheart Po, and now he was striding away. "Goodbye to you!"

Doctor Volospion stirred in his cushions. "Well, well. Obsessive people can be very boorish sometimes, I think."

Mavis Ming said: "He was more interested in his confectionery than any opportunity for contact with another intelligence. Still, he was upset."

"Then you are the only one of us to have tasted his preparations." Abu Thaleb looked doubtfully at the congealing lake between him and the spaceship.

"How were his dishes, by the by, Miss Ming?" Doctor Volospion wished to know. "You sampled them, eh?"

Miss Ming adopted something of a worldly air for Doctor Volospion's approval. She uttered a light, amused laugh. "Oh, a bit over-flavoured, really, if the truth be told."

His thin tongue ran the line of his lips. "Too strong, the taste?"

"He's not as good as they say he is, if you ask me. All this —" she rotated a wrist — "all these big ideas."

Abu Thaleb would not allow such malice. "Argonheart Po is the greatest culinary genius in the history of the world!"

"Perhaps our world has not been well favoured with cooks…" suggested Doctor Volospion slyly.

"And he is the most good-hearted of fellows! The time he must have spent preparing the feast for today!"

"Time?" inquired Volospion in some disbelief. "Time? Time?"

"His presents are famous. Not long since, he made me a savoury mammoth that was the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. An arrangement of flavours defeating description, and yet possessing a unity of taste that was inevitable!" Abu Thaleb was displaying unusual vivacity.

Doctor Volospion was incapable of diplomacy now. He was as one who has hooked his shark and refuses to cut the line, no matter what damage may ensue to both boat and man.

"Perhaps you confuse the subject-matter with the art, admirable Abu?"

Mavis Ming would also take hold of the rod, secure in the approval of her protector, inspired by his wit. "One man's elephant steak, after all, is another man's bicarbonate of soda!"

And now it was as if rod and line snapped over the side to be borne to the depths.

Abu Thaleb stared at her in frank bewilderment.

Doctor Volospion turned from his prey, his grey face controlled. There was a pause. His expression changed. A secretive smile, for himself more than for her.

The Commissar of Bengal had been saved from conflict and as a result became bewildered. "Well," he said weakly, "I for one am always astonished by his invention."

Miss Ming became aware of the atmosphere. Such an atmosphere often followed her funniest observations. "I'm being too subtle and obscure. I'm sorry. No — Argonheart can be very clever. Very clever indeed. He's very nice. He's always made me feel very much at home. Oh, dear! Do I always manage to spoil things? It can't be me, can it?"

Doctor Volospion, for reasons of his own, had cast a fresh line. "My dear Miss Ming, you are being too kind again!"

He raised a long hand, the fingers curled forwards to form a claw. "Do not let this clever commissar confuse you into compromising your opinions. Be true to your own convictions. If you find Argonheart's work unsatisfactory, not up to the demands of your palate, then say so."

Abu Thaleb this time ignored the bait. "Volospion you mock us both too much," he protested. "Leave Miss Ming, at least, alone!"

"Oh, he's not mocking me," Miss Ming observed.

"I?" Doctor Volospion moved his brows in apparent astonishment. "Mock?"

"Yes. Mock." Abu Thaleb studied the spaceship.

"You do me too much credit, my friend."

"Hum," said Abu Thaleb.

Mavis Ming laughed amiably. "You never know when he's being serious or when he's joking, do you, commissar?"

Abu Thaleb was brief. "Well, Miss Ming, if you are not discomforted, then —"

He was interrupted by Doctor Volospion, who pointed to the ship.

"Ha! Our guest emerges!"