W. B. Yeats

"The Rose of Battle"

If these fragments of tales from the End of Time appear to have certain themes in common, then it is the auditor and his informants who must be held responsible for the selection they have made from available information. A fashion for philosophical and sociological rediscovery certainly prevailed during this period but there must have been other incidents which did not reflect the fashion as strongly, and we promise the reader that if we should hear of some such story we shall not hesitate to present it. Yet legends — whether they come to us from past or future — have a habit of appealing to certain ages in certain interpretations, and that factor, too, must be considered, we suppose.

This story, said to involve among others the Iron Orchid, Bishop Castle and Lord Shark, is amended, interpreted, embellished by your auditor, but in its essentials is the same as he heard it from his most familiar source, the temporal excursionist, Mrs Una Persson.

"We were all puzzled by him," agreed the Duke of Queens as he stepped carefully over an elephant, "but we put it down to an idiosyncratic sense of humour." He removed his feathered hat and wiped his brow. The redder plumes clashed horribly with his cerise skin.

"Some of his jokes," said the Iron Orchid with a glance of distaste at the crocodile clinging by its teeth to her left foot, "were rather difficult to see. However, he seems at one with himself now. Wouldn't you say?" She shook the reptile loose.

"Oh, yes! But then I'm notorious for my lack of insight." They strolled away from Southern Africa into the delicate knee-high forests of the Congo. The Iron Orchid smiled with delight at the brightly coloured little birds which flitted about her legs, sometimes clinging to the hem of her parchment skirt before flashing away again. Of all the expressions of the duke's obsession with the ancient nation called by him "Afrique", this seemed to her to be the sweetest.

They were discussing Lord Jagged of Canaria (who had vanished at about the same time as the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek). Offering no explanation as to how his friends might have found themselves, albeit for a very short while, in 19th-century London, together with himself, Jherek, some cyclopean aliens and an assortment of natives of the period, Jagged had returned, only to hide himself away underground.

"Well," said the duke, dismissing the matter, "it was rewarding, even if it does suggest, as Brannart Morphail somewhat emphatically pointed out, that Time itself is becoming unstable. It must be because of all these other disruptions in the universe we are hearing about."

"It is very confusing," said the Iron Orchid with disapproval. "I do hope the end of the world, when it comes, will be a little better organized." She turned. "Duke?" He had disappeared.

With a smile of apology he clambered back to land. "Lake Tanganyika," he explained. "I knew I'd misplaced it." He used one of his power rings to dissipate the water in his clothing.

"It is the trees," she said. "They are too tall." She was having difficulty in pressing on through the waist-high palms. "I do believe I've squashed one of your villages, Duke."

"Please don't concern yourself, lovely Iron Orchid. I've crowded too much in. You know how I respond to a challenge!" He looked vaguely about him, seeking a way through the jungle. "It is uncomfortably hot."

"Is not your sun rather close?" she suggested.

"That must be it." He made an adjustment to a ruby power ring and the miniature sun rose, then moved to the left, sinking again behind a hillock he had called Kilimanjaro, offering them a pleasant twilight.

"That's much better."

He took her hand and led her towards Kenya, where the trees were sparser. A cloud of tiny flamingoes fluttered around her, like midges, for a moment and then were gone on their way back to their nesting places.

"I do love this part of the evening, don't you?" he said. "I would have it all the time, were I not afraid it would begin to pall."

"One must orchestrate," she murmured, glad that his taste seemed, at long last, to be improving.

"One must moderate."

"Indeed." He helped her across the bridge over the Indian Ocean. He looked back on Afrique, his stance melancholy and romantic. "Farewell Cape City," he proclaimed, "farewell Byzantium, Dodge and Limoges; farewell the verdant plains of Chad and the hot springs of Egypt. Farewell!"

The Duke of Queens and the Iron Orchid climbed into his monoplane, parked nearby. Overhead now a bronze and distant sun brightened a hazy, yellow sky; on the horizon were old, worn mountains which, judging by their peculiar brown colouring, might even have been an original part of the Earth's topography, for hardly anyone visited this area.

As the duke pondered the controls, the Iron Orchid put her head to one side, thinking she had heard something. "Do you detect," she asked, "a sort of clashing sound?"

"I have not yet got the engine started."

"Over there, I mean." She pointed. "Are those people?"

He peered in the direction she indicated. "Some dust rising, certainly. And, yes, perhaps two figures. Who could it be?"

"Shall we see?"

"If you wish, we can —" He had depressed a button and the rest of his remark was drowned by the noise of his engine. The propeller began to spin and whine and then fell from the nose, bouncing over the barren ground and into the Indian Ocean. He pressed the button again and the engine stopped. "We can walk there," he concluded. They descended from the monoplane.

The ground they crossed was parched and cracked like old leather which had not been properly cared for.

"This needs a thorough restoration," said the Iron Orchid somewhat primly. "Who usually occupies this territory?"

"You see him," murmured the Duke of Queens, for now it was possible to recognize one of the figures.

"Aha!" She was not surprised. It had been two or three centuries since she had last seen the man who, with a bright strip of metal clutched in one gauntleted hand, capered back and forth in the dust, while a second individual, also clasping an identical strip, performed similar steps. From time to time they would bring their strips forcefully together, resulting in the clashing sound the Iron Orchid had heard originally.

"Lord Shark the Unknown," said the Duke of Queens. He called out, "Greetings to you, my mysterious Lord Shark!"

The man half-turned. The other figure leapt forward and touched his body with his metal strip. Lord Shark gasped and fell to one knee. Through the fishy mask he always wore, his red eyes glared at them.