Constant Fire

6. In which Mr Emmanuel Bloom lays claim to his Kingdom

Once more he stood before them, his head bent forwards, his bright blue eyes glittering, his stiff arms at his sides, his red hair flaring to frame his face. He remained for some while at the top of the ramp. He watched them, not with caution but with dispassionate curiosity.

He had changed his clothes.

Now he had on a suit of crumpled black velvet, a shirt whose stiff, high collar rose as if to support his chin, whose cuffs covered his clenched hands to the knuckles. His feet were small and there were tiny, shining pumps on them. He leaned so far over the ramp that he threatened to topple straight down it.

"What an altogether ridiculous figure," hissed Miss Ming to Doctor Volospion. "Don't you think?"

She would have said more but, for the moment, she evidently felt the compelling authority of those bulging blue eyes.

"Not from space at all," complained the Commissar of Bengal. "He's a time traveller. His clothes…"

"Oh, no," Miss Ming was adamant. "We saw him arrive. The ship came from space."

"From the sky, perhaps, but not from space." Abu Thaleb pushed pearls away from his mouth. "Now —"

But the newcomer had struck a strange pose, arms stiffly extended before him, little mouth smiling, head held up. He spoke in fluting, musical tones that were this time completely comprehensible to them all.

"I welcome you, people of Earth, to my presence. I cannot say how moved I am to be among you again and I appreciate your own feelings on this wonderful day. For the Hero of your greatest legends returns to you. Ah, but how you must have yearned for me. How you must have prayed for me to come back to you! To bring you Life. To bring you Reassurance. To bring you that Tranquillity that can only be achieved by Pain! Well, dear people of Earth, I am back. At long last I am back!"

"Back…?" grunted Abu Thaleb.

"Oh, the journey has demented him," suggested Mavis Ming.

Abu Thaleb cleared his throat. "I believe you have the advantage, sir…"

"We missed the name," explained Doctor Volospion, his voice a fraction animated.

A sweet smile appeared upon the creature's ruby lips. "But you must recognize me!"

"Not a stirring of memory, for my part," said Doctor Volospion.

"A picture, perhaps, in the old cities. But no…" said Abu Thaleb.

"You do look like someone. Some old writer or other," said Miss Ming. "I never did literature."

He frowned. He turned his palms inwards. He looked down at his own strange body. His voice trilled on. "Yes. Yes. I suppose it is possible that you do not recognize this particular manifestation."

"Perhaps you could offer a clue." Doctor Volospion sat up in his cushions for the first time.

He was ignored. The newcomer was patting at his chest. "I have changed my physical appearance so many times that I have forgotten how I looked at first. The body has probably diminished quite a lot. The hands are certainly of a different shape. Once, as I recall, I was fat. As fat as your friend — ah, he's gone! — the one who was here when I first emerged and whose language I couldn't understand — the translator is working fine now, eh? Good, good. Oh, yes! Quite as fat as him. Fatter. And tall, I think, too. Much taller than any of you. But I leant towards economy. I had the opportunity to change. To be more comfortable in the confines of my ship. I caused my physique to be altered. Irreversibly. This form was modelled after a hero of my own whose name and achievements I forget." He drew a deep breath. "Still, the form is immaterial. I am here, as I say, to bring you Fulfilment."

"I am sure that we are all grateful," said Doctor Volospion.

"But your name, sir?" Abu Thaleb reminded him.

"Name? Names! Names! Names! I have so many!" He flung back his head and gave forth a warbling laugh. "Names!"

"Just one would help…" said Abu Thaleb without irony.

"Names?" His blue eyes fixed them. He gestured. "Names? How would you have me called? For I am the Phoenix! I am the Sun's Eagle! I am the Sun's Revenge!" He strutted to the very edge of the ramp but still did not descend. He leaned against the airlock opening. "You shall know me. You shall! For I am the claws, come to take back the heart you stole from the centre of that great furnace that is my Lord and my Slave. Eh? Do you recall me now, as I remind you of your crimes?"

"Quite mad," said Miss Ming in a low, tense voice. "I think we'd better…" But her companions were fascinated.

"Here I am!" He spread his legs and arms, to fill the airlock: X. "Magus, clown and prophet, I — Master of the World! Witness!"

Mavis Ming gasped as flames shot from his fingertips. Flames danced in his hair. Flames flickered from his nostrils. "Clownly, kingly, priestly eater and disgorger of fire! Ha!"

He laughed and gestured and balls of flame surrounded him.

"I have no ambiguities, no ambitions — I am all things! Man and woman, god and beast, child and ancient — all are compatible and all co-exist in me."

A huge sheet of fire seemed to engulf the whole ship and then vanish, leaving the newcomer standing there at the airlock, his high voice piping, his blue eyes full of pride.

"I am Mankind! I am the Multiverse! I am Life and Death and Limbo, too. I am Peace, Strife and Equilibrium. I am Damnation and Salvation. I am all that exists. And I am you!"

He threw back his little head and began to laugh while the three people stared at him in silent astonishment. For the first time he walked a little way down the ramp, balancing on the balls of his feet, extending his arms at his sides. And he began to sing:

"For I am GOD — and SATAN, too!

"PHOENIX, FAUST and FOOL!

"My MADNESS is DIVINE, and COOL my SENSE!

"I am your DOOM, your PROVIDENCE!"

"We are still, I fear, at a loss…" murmured Doctor Volospion, but he could not be heard by the singing creature whose attention was suddenly, as if for the first time, on Mavis Ming.

Miss Ming retreated a step or two. "Oo! What do you think you're looking at, chum!"

He stopped his singing. His features became eager. He bent to regard her.

"Ah! What a splendid woman!"

He moved still further down the ramp and he was sighing with pleasure.

"Oh, Madonna of Lust. Ah, my Tigress, my Temptation. Mm! Never have I seen such beauty! But this is Ultimate Femininity!"

"I've had enough," said Miss Ming severely, and she began to edge away.

He did not follow, but his eyes enchained her. His high, singsong voice became ecstatic.

"Enough? You have known nothing until now! What Beauty! Ah — I will bring great wings to beat upon your breast." His hands clenched at air. "Tearing talons your talents shall grasp! Claws of blood and sinew shall catch the silver strings of your cool harp! Ha! I'll have you, madam, never fear! Ho! I'll bring your blood to the surface of your skin! Hei! It shall pulse there — in service to my sin!"

"I'm not hanging around," she said, but she did not move.

The other two watched, forgotten by both, as the strange, mad figure pranced upon his ramp, paying court to the fat, bewildered lady in blue and yellow below.

"You shall be mine, madam. You shall be mine! This is worth all those many millennia when I was denied any form of consolation, any sort of human company. I have crossed galaxies and dimensions to find my reward! Now I know my twofold mission. To save this world and to win this woman!"

"No chance," she breathed. "Ugh!" She panted but could not flee.

He ignored her, or else had not heard her, his attention drawn back to Doctor Volospion. "You asked my name. Now do you recognize me?"

"Not specifically." Even Doctor Volospion was impressed by the intensity of the newcomer's speech. "Um — perhaps another clue?"

Bang! A stream of flame had shot from the man's hand and destroyed one of Werther's unfinished mountains.

Boom! The sky darkened and thunder shook the landscape while lightning struck all about them. Chaos swirled around the ship and out of it stared the newcomer's face shouting:

"There! Is that enough to tell you?"

Abu Thaleb demurred. "That was one of a set of mountains manufactured by someone who was hoping…"

"Manufactured?"

The thunder stopped. The lightning ceased. The sky became clear again.

"Manufactured? You make these pathetic landscapes? From choice? Pah!"

"There are other things we make…"

"And what puny conceits! Paint! I use all that is real for my canvases. Fire, water, earth and air — and human souls!"

"We can sometimes achieve quite interesting effects," continued Abu Thaleb manfully, "by…"

"Nonsense! Know you this — that I am the Controller of your Destinies! Re-born, I come among you to give you New Life! I offer the Universe!"

"We have had the universe," said Doctor Volospion. "That is partly why we are in our current predicament. It is all used up."

"Bah! Well, well, well. So I must take it upon myself again to rescue the race. Yes, well I shall not betray you — as you have betrayed me in the past. Again I give you the opportunity. Follow me!"

The Commissar of Bengal passed a hand over the gleaming corkscrew curls of his blue-black beard; he tugged at the red Star of India decorating his left ear-lobe; he fingered a feather of his turban.

"Follow you? By Allah, sir, I'm confounded! Follow you? Not a word, I fear. Not a syllable."

"That is not what I meant."

"I think," interposed Doctor Volospion, "that our visitor regards himself as a prophet — a chosen spokesman for some religion or other. The phrase he uses is more than familiar to me. Doubtless he wishes to convert us to the worship of his god."

"God? God! God! I am no servant of a Higher Power!" The visitor's neck flashed back in shock. "Unless, as can fairly be said, I serve myself — and Mankind, of course…"

Doctor Volospion casually changed the colour of his robes to dark green and silver, then to crimson and black. He sighed. He became all black.

The visitor watched this process with some contempt. "What have we here? A jester to my clown?"

Doctor Volospion glanced up. "Forgive me if I seem unmannerly. I was seeking an appropriate colour for my mood."

Abu Thaleb was dogged. "Sir, if you could introduce yourself, perhaps a little more formally…?"

The stranger regarded him through a milder eye, as if giving the commissar's remark weighty consideration.

"A name? Just one," coaxed the Lord of All Elephants. "It might jog our memories, d'you see?"

"I am your Messiah."

"There!" cried Doctor Volospion, pleased with his earlier interpretation.

The Messiah raised inflexible arms towards the skies. "I am the Prophet of the Sun! Flamebringer, call me!"

Still more animated, even amused, Doctor Volospion turned his attention away from his cuffs (now of purple lace) to remark: "The name is not familiar, sir. Where are you from?"

"Earth! I am from Earth!" The prophet gripped the lapels of his velvet coat. "You must know me. I have given you every hint."

"But when did you leave Earth?" Abu Thaleb put in, intending help. "Perhaps we are further in your future than you realize. This planet, you see, is millions, billions, of years old. Why, there is every evidence that it would have perished a long time ago — so far as supporting human life was concerned, at any rate — if we had not, with the aid of our great, old cities, maintained it. You could be from a past so distant that no memory remains of you. The cities, of course, do remember a great deal, and it is possible that one of them might know you. Or there are time travellers here, like Miss Ming, with better memories of earlier times than even the cities possess. What I am trying to say, sir, is that we are not being deliberately obtuse. We should be only too willing to show you proper respect if we knew who you were and how we should show it. It is on you, the onus, I regret."

The head jerked from side to side; a curious cockatoo. "Eh?"

"Name, rank and serial number!" Miss Ming guffawed.

"Eh?"

"We are an ancient and ignorant people," Abu Thaleb apologized. "Well, at least, I speak for myself. I am very ancient and extremely ignorant. Except, I should explain, in the matter of elephants, where I am something of an expert."

"Elephants?"

The stranger's blue eyes glittered. "So this is what you have become? Dilettantes! Fops! Dandies! Cynics! Quasi-realists!"

"We have become all things at the End of Time," said Doctor Volospion. "Variety flourishes, if originality does not."

"Pah! I call you lifeless bones. But fear not. I am returned to resurrect you. I am Power. I am the forgotten Spirit of Mankind. I am Possibility."

"Quite so," said Doctor Volospion agreeably. "But I think, sir, that you underestimate the degree of our sophistication."

"We have really considered the matter quite closely, some of us," Abu Thaleb wished the stranger to know. "We are definitely, it seems, doomed."

"Not now! Not now!" The little man jerked his hand and fire began to roar upon Argonheart Po's cola lake. It was a bright, unlikely red. There was heat.

"Delightful," murmured Doctor Volospion. "But if I may demonstrate…" He turned a sapphire ring on his right finger. Pale blue clouds formed over the lake. A light rain fell. The fire guttered. It died. "You will see," added Doctor Volospion quickly, noting the stranger's expression, "that we enjoy a certain amount of control over the elements." He turned another ring. The fire returned.

"I am not here to match conjuring tricks with you, my jackal-eyed friend!" The stranger gestured and a halo of bright flame appeared around his head. He swept his arms about and black clouds filled the sky once more and thunder boomed again; lightning crashed. "I use my mastery merely to demonstrate my moral purpose."

Doctor Volospion raised a delighted hand to his mouth. "I did not realize…"

"Well, you shall! You shall know me! I shall awaken the memory dreaming in the forgotten places of your minds. Then, how gladly you will welcome me! For I am Salvation." He struck a pose and his high, musical voice very nearly sang his next speech:

"Oh, call me Satan, for I am cast down from Heaven! The teeming worlds of the multiverse have been my domicile till now; but here I am, come back to you, at long last. You do not know me now — but you shall know me soon. I am He for whom you have been waiting. I am the Sun Eagle. Ah, now shall this old world blossom with my fire. For I shall be triumphant, the terrible, intolerant Master of your Globe."

He paused only for a second to review his audience, his head on one side. Then he filled his lungs and continued with his litany:

"This is my birthright, my duty, my desire. I claim the World. I claim all its denizens as my subjects. I shall instruct you in the glories of the Spirit. You sleep now. You have forgotten how to fly on the wild winds that blow from Heaven and from Hell, for now you cower beneath a mere breeze that is the cold Wind of Limbo. It flattens you, deadens you, and you abase yourselves passively before it, because you know no other wind."

His hands settled upon his hips. "But I am the wind. I am the air and the fire to resurrect your Spirit. You two, you bewildered men, shall be my first disciples. And you, woman, shall be my glorious consort."

Mavis Ming gave a little shudder and confided to Abu Thaleb: "I couldn't think of anything worse. What a bombastic little idiot! Isn't one of you going to put him in his place?"

"Oh, he is entertaining, you know," said Abu Thaleb tolerantly.

"Charming," agreed Doctor Volospion. "You should be flattered, Miss Ming."

"What? Because he hasn't seen another woman in a thousand years?"

Doctor Volospion smiled. "You do yourself discredit."

The stranger did not seem upset by the lack of immediate effect he had on them. He turned grave, intense eyes upon her. Mavis Ming might have blushed. He spoke with thrilling authority, for all his pre-pubescent pitch:

"Beautiful and proud you may be, woman, yet you shall bend to me when the time comes. You shall not then react with callow cynicism."

"I think you've got rather old-fashioned ideas about women, my friend," said Miss Ming staunchly.

"Your true soul is buried now. But I shall reveal it to you."

The sky began to clear. A flock of transparent pteranodons sailed unsteadily overhead, fleeing the sun. Miss Ming pretended an interest in the flying creatures. But it was plain that the stranger had her attention.

"I am Life," he said, "and you are Death."

"Well…" she began, offended.

He explained: "At this moment everything is Death that is not me."

"I'm beginning to pity you," said Mavis Ming in an artificial voice. "It's obvious that you've been so long in space, whatever your name is, that you've gone completely mad!" She made nervous tuggings and pullings at her costume. "And if you're trying to scare me, or turn my stomach, or make fun of me, I can assure you that I've dealt with much tougher customers than you in my time. All right?"

"So," he said, in tones meant only for her, "your mind resists me. Your training resists me. Your mother and your father and your society resist me. Perhaps even your body resists me. But your soul does not. Your soul listens. Your soul pines for me. How many years have you refused to listen to its promptings? How many years of discomfort, of sorrow, of depravity and degradation? How many nights have you battled against your dreams and your true desires? Soon you shall kneel before me and know your own power, your own strength."

Miss Ming took a deep breath. She looked to Doctor Volospion for help, but his expression was bland, mildly curious. Abu Thaleb seemed only embarrassed.

"Listen, you," she said, "where I come from women have had the vote for 150 years. They've had equal rights for almost 100. There are probably more women in administrative jobs than there are men and more than 50 percent of all leading politicians are women, and when I left we hadn't had a big war for ten years, and we know all about dictators, sexual chauvinists and old-fashioned seducers. I did a History of Sexism course as part of my post-graduate studies, so I know what I'm talking about."

He listened attentively enough to all this before replying. "You speak of Rights and Precedents, woman. You refer to Choice and Education. But what if these are the very chains which enslave the spirit? I offer you neither security nor responsibility — save the security of knowing your own identity and the responsibility of maintaining it. I offer you Dignity."

Miss Ming opened her mouth.

"I note that you are a romantic, sir," said Doctor Volospion with some relish.

The stranger no longer seemed aware of his presence, but continued to stare at Mavis Ming who frowned and cast about in her troubled skull for appropriate defence. She failed and instead sought the aid of her protector.

"Can we go now?" she whispered to Doctor Volospion. "He might do something dangerous."

Doctor Volospion lowered his voice only a trifle. "If my reading of our friend's character is correct, he shares a preference with all those of his type for words and dramatic but unspecific actions. I find him quite stimulating. You know my interests…"

"Do not reject my gifts, woman," warned the stranger. "Others have offered you Liberty (if that is what it is) but I offer you nothing less than yourself — your whole self."

Miss Ming tried to bridle and, unsuccessful, turned away. "Really, Doctor Volospion," she began urgently, "I've had enough…"

Abu Thaleb attempted intercession. "Sir, we have few established customs, though we have enjoyed and continue to enjoy many fashions in manners, but it would seem to me that, since you are a guest in our Age…"

"Guest!" The little man was astonished. "I am not your guest, sir, I am your Saviour."

"Be that as it may…"

"There is no more to be said. There is no question of my calling!"

"Be that as it may, you are disturbing this lady, who is not of our time and is therefore perhaps more sensitive to your remarks than if she were, um, indigenous to the Age. I think 'stress' is the word I seek, though I am not too certain of how 'stress' manifests itself. Miss Ming?" He begged for illumination.

"He's a pain in the neck, if that's what you mean," said Miss Ming boldly. "But you get used to that here." She drew herself up.

"As a gentleman, sir —" continued Abu Thaleb.

"Gentleman? I have never claimed to be a 'gentleman'. Unless by that you mean I am a man — a throbbing, ardent, lover of women — of one woman, now — of that woman!" His quivering finger pointed.

Miss Ming turned her back full on him and clambered into Abu Thaleb's howdah. She sat, stiff-necked, upon the cushions, her arms folded in front of her.

The stranger smiled almost tenderly. "Ah, she is so beautiful! So feminine! Ah!"

"Doctor Volospion," Miss Ming's voice was flat and cold. "I should like to go home now."

Doctor Volospion laughed.

"Nonsense, my dear Miss Ming." He bowed a fraction to the stranger, as if to apologize. "It has been an eternity since we entertained such a glorious guest. I am eager to hear his views. You know my interest in ancient religions — my collection, my menagerie, my investigations — well, here we have a genuine prophet." A deeper bow to the stranger. "A preacher who shows Li Pao up for the parsimonious hair-splitter that he is. If we are to be berated for our sins, then let it be full-bloodedly, with threats of fire and brimstone!"

"I said nothing of brimstone," said the stranger.

"Forgive me."

Miss Ming leaned from the howdah to put her lips to Doctor Volospion's ear. "You think he's genuine, then?"

He stroked his chin. "Your meaning is misty, Miss Ming."

"Oh, I give up," she said. "It's all right for everybody else, but that madman's more or less announced his firm decision to rape me at the earliest opportunity."

"Nonsense," objected Doctor Volospion. "He has been nothing but chivalrous."

"It would be like being raped by a pigeon," she added. She withdrew into herself.

Doctor Volospion's last glance in her direction was calculating but when he next addressed the stranger he was all hospitality. "Your own introduction, sir, has been perhaps a mite vague. May I be more specific in my presentation of myself and my friends. This lovely lady, whose beauty has understandably made such an impression upon you, is Miss Mavis Ming. This gentleman is Abu Thaleb, Commissar of Bengal —"

"— and Lord of All Elephants," modestly appended the commissar.

"— while I, your humble servant, am called Doctor Volospion. I think we share similar tastes, for I have long studied the religions and the faiths of the past and judge myself something of a connoisseur of Belief. You would be interested, I think, in my collection, and I would greatly value your inspection of it for, in truth, there are few fellow-spirits in this world-weary Age of ours."

The stranger's red lips formed a haughty smile. "I am no theologian, Doctor Volospion. At least, only in the sense that I am, of course, All Things…"

"Of course, of course, but —"

"And I see you for a trickster, a poseur."

"I assure you —"

"I know you for a poor ghost of a creature, seeking in bad casuistry, to give a dead mind some semblance of life. You are cold, sir, and the cruelties by means of which you attempt to warm your own blood are petty things, the products of a niggardly imagination and some small, but ill-trained, intelligence. Only the generous can be truly cruel for they know also what it is to be truly charitable."

"You object to casuistry, and yet you do not disdain the use of empty paradox, I note." Doctor Volospion remained, so it appeared, in good humour. "I am sure, sir, when we are better acquainted, you will not be so wary of me."

"Wary? I should be wary? Ha! If that is how you would misrepresent my nature, to comfort yourself, then I give you full permission. But know this — in giving that permission I am allowing you to remain in the grave when it might have been that you could have known true life again."

"I am impressed…"

"No more! I am your Master, whether you acknowledge it or no, whether I care or no, and that is unquestionable. I'll waste no more energy in debate with you, manikin."

"Manikin!" Miss Ming snorted. "That's a good one."

Doctor Volospion put a finger on his lips. "Please, Miss Ming. I would continue this conversation."

"After he's insulted you —"

"He speaks his mind, that is all. He does not know our preferences for euphemism and ornament, and so —"

"Exactly," said Abu Thaleb, relieved. "He will come to understand our ways soon."

"Be certain," fluted the stranger, "that it is you who will come to understand my ways. I have no respect for customs, manners, fashions, for I am Bloom the Eternal. I am Bloom, who has experienced All. I am Emmanuel Bloom, whom Time cannot touch, whom Space cannot suppress!"

"A name at last," said Doctor Volospion in apparent delight. "We greet you, Mr Bloom."

"That's funny," said Miss Ming, "You don't look Jewish."