"We cannot lunch." Dafnish Armatuce was determined to set an example, if only to herself. "I thank you, however."

"You are not hungry?"

"We dare not breathe your atmosphere, let alone taste your food. We wish merely to find our machine and depart."

"If the atmosphere does not suit you, madam," said Lord Jagged kindly, and with gentleness, "it can be adapted."

"And the food, too. The food, too!" eagerly declared the Iron Orchid, adding, sotto voce , "though I thought it reproduced perfectly. You eat such things? In your own Age?"

"Such things are eaten, yes."

"The selection is not to your satisfaction?"

"Not at all." Dafnish Armatuce permitted her curiosity a little rein. "But how did you gather so much? How long did it take?"

The Iron Orchid was bewildered by the question. "Gather? How long? It was made a few moments before we arrived."

"Wustically wavishing!" carolled Sweet Orb Mace. "A wondahfully wipping wuwal wepast!" He giggled.

"Two or three other time travellers join us soon," explained Lord Jagged. "The choice of feast is primarily to please them."

"Others?"

"They are inclined to accumulate here, you know, at the End of Time. From what Age have you come?"

"The year was 1922."

"Aha. Then Ming will be ideal." He hesitated, looking deep into her face. "You do not find us — sinister?"

"I had not expected to encounter people at all." The perfection of his manners threw her into confusion. She was bent on defying his charm, yet the concern in his tone, the acuteness of his understanding, threatened to melt resolve. These characteristics were in conflict with the childish decadence of his costume, the corrupt grotesquerie of his surroundings, the idle insouciance of his conversation; she could not judge him, she could not sum him up. "I had expected, at most, sterility…"

He had detected the tension in her. Another touch, upon her arm, and some of that tension dissipated. But she recovered her determination almost at once. Her own hand took her son's. How could such a creature of obvious caprice impress her so strongly of his respect both for her and for himself?

Watching them without curiosity, the Iron Orchid plucked up a plum and bit into it, the fruit and her lips a perfect match. Droplets of juice fell upon the gleaming grass, and clung.

Her eyes lifted; she smiled. "This must be the first entrant."

In the sky circled four gauzy, rainbow shapes, dipping and banking.

"Mine weah the fiwst," said Sweet Orb Mace, aggrieved, "but they escaped. Or melted."

"We play flying conceits today," explained Lord Jagged. "Aha, it is undoubtably Doctor Volospion. See, he has erected his pavilion."

The large, be-flagged tent had not been on the far side of the field a moment ago, Dafnish Armatuce was sure; she would have marked its gaudy red, white and purple stripes.

"The entertainment begins." Lord Jagged drew her attention to the table. "Will you not trust us, Dafnish Armatuce? You cannot die at the End of Time, or at least cannot remain dead for very long. Try the atmosphere. You can always return to your armour." He took a backward pace.

Good manners dictated her actions, she knew. But did he seduce her? Again Snuffles eagerly made to remove his helmet, but she restrained him, for she must be the first to take the risk. She raised hesitant hands. A sidelong glance at the dancing city, distant and, she thought, expectant, and then a decision. She twisted.

A gasp as air mingled with air, and she was breathing spice, her balance at risk. Three breaths and she was convinced; from the table drifted the aroma of pie, of apricots and avocados; she failed to restrain a sob, and tingling melancholy swept from toe to tight brown curl. Such profound feeling she had experienced only once before, at the birth of her Snuffles. The lad was even now wrenching his own helmet free — even as he was drawn towards the feast.

She cried, "Caution!" and stretched a hand, but he had seized a fowl and sunk soft, juvenile teeth into the breast. How could she refuse him? Perhaps this would be the only time in his life when he would know the luxury of abundance, and he must become an adult soon enough. She relented for him, but not for herself, yet even her indulgence of the child went hard against instinct.

Chewing, Snuffles presented her with a shining face, a greasy mouth, and eyes containing fires which had no business burning in one of his years. Feral, were they?

The Orchid trilled (artificial in all things, so thought Dafnish Armatuce): "Children! Their appetites!" (Or was it irony Dafnish Armatuce detected? She dismissed any idea of challenge, placing her hands on her boy's shoulders, restraining her own lust): "Food is scarce in Armatuce just now."

"For how long?" Casually polite, the Iron Orchid raised a brow.

"The current shortage has lasted for about a century."

"You have found no means of ending the shortage?"

"Oh, we have the means. But there is the moral question. Is it good for us to end the shortage?"

For a second there came a faint expression of puzzlement upon the Iron Orchid's face, and then, with a polite wave of an ortolan leg, she turned away.

" 'Fatness Is Faithlessness'," quoted Dafnish Armatuce. " 'The Lean Alone Learn'." She realized then that these maxims were meaningless to them, but the zeal which touched the missionary touched her, and she continued: "In Armatuce we believe that it is better to have less than to have enough, for those who have enough always feel the need for too much, whereas we only quell the yearning for sufficient, do you see?" She explained: " 'Greed Kills'. 'Self-indulgence Is Suicide'. We stay hungry so that we shall never be tempted to eat more than we need and thus risk, again, the death of the planet. 'Austerity Is Equilibrium'."

"Your world recovers from disaster, then?" said Lord Jagged sympathetically.

"It has recovered, sir." She was firm. "Thanks to the ancestors of the Armatuce. Now the Armatuce holds what they achieved in trust. 'Stable Is He Who Stoic Shall Be'."

"You fear that without this morality you would reproduce the disaster?"

"We know it," she said.

"Yet —" he spread his hands — "you find a world still here when you did not expect it and no evidence that your philosophy has survived."

She scarcely heard the words, but she recognized the sly, pernicious tone. She squared her shoulders. "We would return now, if you please. The boy has eaten."

"You will have nothing?"

"Will you show me to my ship?"

"Your ship will not work."

"What? You refuse to let me leave?"

As succinctly as possible, Lord Jagged explained the Morphail Effect, concluding, "Therefore you can never really return to your own Age and, if you left this one, might well be killed or at very least stranded in a less congenial era."

"You think I lack courage? That I would not take the risk?"

He pursed his lips and let his gaze fall upon the gorging boy. She followed his meaning and put two fingers softly upon her cheek.

"Eat now," said the tall lord with a tender gesture.

Absently, she touched a morsel of mutton to her tongue.

A shadow moved across the field, cast by a beast, porcine and grey, which with lumbering grace performed a somersault or two in the sky. Overhead there were now several more objects and creatures pirouetting, diving, spiralling — a small red biplane, a monstrous mosquito, a winged black and white cat, a pale green stingray — while below the owners of these entrants jostled, laughed and talked: a motley of races (some Earthly beasts, others extraterrestrial; but mostly humanoid), clothed and decorated in all manner of fanciful array. On the edges of the blue and white field there had sprouted marquees, flagpoles, lines of bunting, crowded together and waving boisterously, so that she could no longer see beyond their confines. She let the mutton melt, took one plum and consumed it, drank an inch of water from a goblet, and her meal was done, though the effort of will involved in resisting a leaf of lettuce only by a fraction succeeded in balancing the guilt experienced at having allowed herself to eat the second half of the fruit. Meanwhile Snuffles' jaws continued to move with dedicated precision.