"Wemahkable."

Amiably, Sweet Orb Mace strolled in harness while Mavis whispered further secrets. She told him of the polka-dot elephant she had had when she was seven. She had kept it for years, she said, until it had been run over by a truck, when Donny Stevens had thrown it through the apartment window into the street, during one of their rows.

"I could have taken almost anything else," she said.

Sweet Orb Mace nodded and murmured little exclamations, but he scarcely seemed to have heard the anecdote. If he had a drawback as a companion it was his vagueness; his attention wavered so.

"He accused me of being childish," exclaimed Mavis putting, as it were, twice the energy into the conversation, to make up for his failings. "Ha! He had the mental age of a dirty-minded eleven-year-old! But there you go. I got more love from that elephant than I ever got from Donny Stevens. It's always the people who try to be nice who come in for the nasty treatment, isn't it?"

"Wather!"

"He blamed me for everything. Little Mavis always gets the blame! Ever since I was a kid. Everybody's whipping boy, that's Miss Mavis Ming! My father…"

"Weally?"

She abandoned this line, thinking better of it, and remained with her original sentiment. "If you don't stand up for yourself, someone'll always step on you. The things I've done for people in the past. And you know what almost always happens?"

"Natuwally…"

"They turn round and say the cruellest things to you. They always blame you when they should really be blaming themselves. That woman — Dafnish Armatuce — well…"

"Twagic."

"Doctor Volospion said I'd been too easy-going with her. I looked after that kid of hers as if it had been my own! It makes you want to give up sometimes, Sweet Orb. But you've got to keep on trying, haven't you? Some of us are fated to suffer…"

Sweet Orb Mace paused beside a towering mass of ill-smelling hairy flesh which moved rhythmically and shook the surrounding ground so that little fissures appeared. It was the gently tapping toe of one of Abu Thaleb's singing gargantua. Sweet Orb Mace stared gravely up, unable to see the head of the beast. "Oh, cehtainly," he agreed. "Pwetty tune, don't you think?"

She lifted an ear, but shrugged. "No, I don't."

He was mildly surprised.

"Too much like a dirge for my taste," she said. "I like something catchy." She sighed, her mood returning to its former state. "Oh, dear! This is a very boring party."

He became astonished.

"This pwofusion of pachyderms bohwing? Oh, no! I find it fascinating, Miss Ming. An extwavagance of elephants, a genewosity of giants!"

She could not agree. Her eye, perhaps, was jaundiced.

Sweet Orb Mace, sensing her displeasure, became anxious. "Still," he added, "evewyone knows how easily impwessed I am. Such a poah imagination of my own, you know."

She sighed. "I expected more."

"Monsters?" He glanced about, as if to find her some. "Awgonheaht Po has yet to make his contwibution! He is wumouhed to be supplying the main feast."

"I didn't know." She sighed again. "It's not that. I was hoping to meet some nice person. Someone — you know — I could have a real relationship with. I guess I expected too much from that Dafnish and her kid — but it's, well, turned me on to the idea. I'm unfulfilled as a woman, Sweet Orb Mace, if you want the raw truth of it."

She looked expectantly at her elegantly poised escort.

"Tut," said Sweet Orb Mace abstractedly. "Tut, tut." He still stared skywards.

She raised her voice. "You're not, I guess, in the mood yourself. I'm going to go home if things don't perk up. If you feel like coming back now — or dropping round later…? I'm still staying at Doctor Volospion's."

"Weally?"

She laughed at herself. "I should try to sound more positive, shouldn't I? Nobody's going to respond well to a faltering approach like that. Well, Sweet Orb Mace, what about it?"

"It?"

She was actually depressed now.

"I meant…"

"I pwomised to meet O'Kala Incarnadine heah," said Sweet Orb Mace. "I was suah — ah — and theah he is!" carolled her companion. "If you will excuse me, Miss Ming…" Another elaborate bending of the body, a sweep of the hand.

"Oh, sure," she murmured.

Sweet Orb Mace rose a few feet into the air and drifted towards O'Kala Incarnadine, who had come as a rhinoceros.

"The way I'm beginning to feel," said Miss Ming to herself, "even O'Kala Incarnadine's looking attractive. Bye, bye, Sweet Orb. No sweat. Oh, Christ! This boredom is killing!"

And then she had seen her protector, her host, her mentor, her guardian angel and, with a grateful "Hi!", she flew.

Doctor Volospion was sighted at last! He seemed at times like this her only stability. He it was who had first found her when, in her time machine, dazed and frightened, she had arrived at the End of Time. Doctor Volospion had claimed her for his menagerie, thinking from her conversation that she belonged to some religious order (she had been delirious) and had discovered only later that she was a simple historian who believed that she had returned to the past, to the Middle Ages. He had been disappointed but had treated her courteously and now allowed her the full run of his house. She did not fit into his menagerie, which was religious in emphasis, consisting of nuns, prophets, gods, demons, and so forth, and could have founded her own establishment, had she wished, but she preferred the security of his sometimes dolorous domicile.

She slowed her pace. Doctor Volospion was hailing the Commissar of Bengal, whose howdah-shaped golden air car was drifting back to the ground (apparently Abu Thaleb had been feeding his gigantic pets).

"Coo-ee!" cried Miss Ming as she approached.

But Doctor Volospion had not heard her.

"Coo-ee."

He joined in conversation with Abu Thaleb.

"Coo-ee, Doctor!"

Now the sardonic, saturnine features turned to regard her. The sleek black head moved in a kind of bow and the corners of the thin, red mouth lifted.

She was panting as she reached them. "It's only little me!"

Abu Thaleb was avuncular. "Miss Ming, again we meet. Scheherazade come among us." The dusky commissar was one of the few regular visitors to Doctor Volospion's, perhaps the only friend of the Doctor's to treat her kindly. "You enjoy the entertainment, I hope?"

"It's a great party if you like elephants," she said. But the joke had misfired; Abu Thaleb was frowning. So she added with some eagerness: "I personally love elephants."

"I did not know we had that in common."

"Oh, yes. When I was a little girl I used to go for rides at the zoo whenever I could. At least once a year, on my birthday. My daddy would try to take me, no matter what else was happening…"

"I must join in the compliments." Doctor Volospion cast a glinting eye from her toes to her bow. "You outshine us all, Miss Ming. Such taste! Such elegance! We, in our poor garb, are mere flickering candles to your supernova!"

Her giggle of response was hesitant, as if she suspected him of satire, but then an expression almost of tranquillity passed across her features. His flattery appeared to have a euphoric effect upon her. She became a fondled cat.

"Oh, you always do it to me, Doctor Volospion. Here I am trying to be brittle and witty, cool and dignified, and you make me grin and blush like a schoolgirl."

"Forgive me."

She frowned, finger to lips. "I'm trying to think of a witticism to please you."

"Your presence is uniquely pleasing, Miss Ming."

Doctor Volospion moved his thin arms which were hardly able to bear the weight of the sleeves of his black and gold brocade gown.

"But…"

Doctor Volospion turned to Abu Thaleb. "You bring us a world of gentle monsters, exquisite commissar. Gross of frame, mild of manner, delicate of spirit, your paradoxical pachyderms!"