Several large, fiery wheels went by, a score of feet above her head, drowning with their hissing the loud babble of the crowd.

"Cwumbs!" exclaimed Sweet Orb Mace, with a knowing wink at her, as if they shared a secret. "Goah Blimey!"

The words were meaningless, but he appeared to be under the impression that she would understand them.

Deliberately, she guided her glance elsewhere. Everyone was applauding.

"Chariots of Fire!" bellowed a deep, proprietorial voice. "Chariots of Fire! Number Seventy-Eight!"

"We shan't forget, dear Duke of Queens," sang a lady whose gilded skin clashed sickeningly with her green mouth and glowing, emerald eyes.

"My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake," murmured Lord Jagged. "Would you like to meet her?"

"Can she be of help to me? Can she give me practical advice?" The rhetoric rang false, even in her own ears.

"She is the Patron of Brannart Morphail, our greatest, maddest scientist, who knows more about the Nature of Time than anyone else in history, so he tells us. He will probably want to interview you shortly."

"Why should one of your folk require a Patron?" she asked with genuine interest.

"We seek traditions wherever we can find them. We are glad to get them. They help us order our lives, I suppose. Doubtless Brannart dug his tradition up from some ancient tape and took a fancy to it. Of late, because of the enthusiasm of the Iron Orchid's son, Jherek, we have all become obsessed with morality…"

"I see little evidence of that."

"We are still having difficulty defining what it is," he told her. "My Lady Charlotina — our latest time travellers — Mother and Son — Dafnish and Snuffles Armatuce."

"How charming. How unusual. Tell me, delightful Dafnish, are you claimed yet?"

"Claimed?" Dafnish Armatuce looked back at the departing Jagged.

"We vie with one another to be hosts to new arrivals," he called. His wave was a little on the airy side. "You are 'claimed', however, as my guests. I will see you anon."

"Greedy Jagged! Does he restock his menagerie?" My Lady Charlotina of Below the Lake stroked her crochet snood as her eyes swept up from Dafnish's toes and locked with Dafnish's eyes for a moment. "Your figure? Is it your own, my dear?"

"I fail to understand you."

"Then it is! Ha, ha!" Mood changed, My Lady Charlotina made a curtsey. "I will find you some friends. My talent, they say, is as a Catalyst!"

"You are modest, cherubic Charlotina! You have all the talents in the catalogue!" In doublet and hose reminiscent of pre-cataclysm decadence, extravagantly swollen, catechrestically slashed and galooned, bearing buttons the size of cabbages, the shoes with toes a yard or two long and curled to the knees, the cap peaked to jut more than a foot from the face, beruffed and bedecked with thin brass chains, a big-buckled belt somewhere below the waist so as, in whole, to make Sweet Orb Mace seem mother naked, a youth bent a calculated leg before continuing with his catechism of compliment. "Let me cast myself beneath the cataract of your thousand major virtues, your myriad minor qualities, O mistress of my soul, for though I am considered clever, I am nought but your lowliest catechumen, seeking only to absorb the smallest scraps of your wisdom so that I may, for one so small, be whole!" Whereupon he flung himself to the grass on velvet knees and raised powdered, imploring hands.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Volospion." She relished the flattery, but paused no longer, saying over her shoulder, "You smell very well today."

Unconcerned, Doctor Volospion raised himself to his feet, his cap undulating, his chains jingling, and his rouged lips curved in a friendly smile as he saw Dafnish Armatuce.

"I seek a lover," he explained, peeling a blade of blue grass from his inner thigh. "A woman to whom I can give my All. It is late in the season to begin, perhaps, with so many exquisite Romances already under way or even completed (as in Werther's case), but I am having difficulty in finding a suitable recipient." His expression, as he stared at her, became speculative. "May I ask your sex, at present?"

"I am a woman, sir, and a mother. An Armatuce, mate to a cousin of the Armatuce, sworn to suffer and to serve together until my son shall be ready to suffer and to serve in my place."

"You would not like to link your fate with mine, to give yourself body and soul to me until the End of Time (which, of course, is not far off, I hear)?"

"I would not."

"I came late to the fashion, you see, and now most are already bored with it, I understand. But there is, surely, the fulfilment of abandonment. Is it not delicious to throw oneself upon another's mercy — to make him or her the absolute master of one's fate?" He took a step closer, peering into her immobile countenance, his eye sparkling. "Ah! Do I tempt you? I see that I do!"

"You do not!"

"Your tone lacks conviction."

"You are deceived, Doctor Volospion."

"Could we have our bodies so engineered as to produce another child?"

"My operation is past. I have my child. No more can bloom."

She turned to search for Snuffles, fearing suddenly for the safety of his person as well as for his mind, for she was now aware that this folk had no scruples, no decency, no proper inhibitions even where that most sacrosanct of subjects was concerned. "Snuffles!"

"Here, mama!"

The boy was in conversation with a tall, thin individual wearing a crenellated crown as tall as himself.

"To me!"

He came reluctantly, waddling, snatching a piece of pastry from the table as he passed, wheezing, his little protective suit bearing a patina of creams and gravies, his hair sticky with confectionery, his face rich with the traces of his feast.

Someone had begun to build cloud-shapes, interweaving colours and kinds and creating the most unlikely configurations. She seized his sweetened hand, tempted to remonstrate, to read him a lesson, to forbid further food, but she knew the dangers of identifying her own demands upon herself with what she expected from her son. Too often, she had learned, had ancient parents forbidden their children food merely because they could not or would not eat themselves, forbidden children childish pleasures because those pleasures tempted them, too. She would not transfer. Let the boy, at least, enjoy the experience. His training would save him, should they ever return. A lesson would be learned. And if they did not return, well, it would not profit him to retain habits which put him at odds with the expectations of society. And should it seem inevitable that they were permanently marooned, she could decide when he would be mature enough to become an adult, grant him that status herself and so put an end to her own misery.

The crowd seemed to close in on her. Doctor Volospion had already wandered away, but there were others — every one of whom was a living, mocking parody of all she held to be admirable in Man. Her heart beat faster, at last unchecked. She sought for the only being in that whole unnatural, fatuous farrago who might help her escape, but Lord Jagged was gone.

And My Lady Charlotina broke through the throng, Death's Harlequin grinning and triumphant, drawing another woman with her. "A contemporary, dear Dafnish. Mutual reminiscence is now possible!"

"I must go…" began the time traveller. "Snuffles wearies. We can sleep in our ship."

"No, no! The air fete is hardly begun. You shall stay and converse with Miss Ming."

Miss Ming, at first bored, brightened, giving Dafnish Armatuce a quick glance which was at once questioning and appraising, warm and calculating. Miss Ming was a heavily built young woman whose long fair hair had been carefully brushed but had acquired no more of a lustre than her pale, unwholesome skin. She wore, for this Age, a simple costume, tight dungarees of glowing orange and a shirt and short jacket of pale blue. Now Dafnish Armatuce had her whole attention, was granted Miss Ming's smile of knowing and insincere sympathy.