Legends From the End of Time Read Online Free PDF

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.
    "Your year?" My Lady Charlotina creased her golden forehead. "You said…"
    "1922."
    "Miss Ming is from 2067. Until recently she lived at Doctor Volospion's menagerie. One of the few human survivors, in fact."
    Miss Ming's abrupt, monotonous voice might have seemed surly had it not been for the eagerness with which she imparted meaningless (to Dafnish Armatuce) confidences, coming closer than was necessary and placing intimate fingers upon her shoulder to say: "Some of Mongrove's diseases escaped and struck down half the inhabitants of Doctor Volospion's menagerie. By the time the discovery was made, resurrection was out of the question. Mongrove refuses to apologize. Doctor Volospion shuns him. I didn't know time travel was discovered in 1922. And," a girlish pout, "they told me that I was the first woman to go into Time."
    Surely, Dafnish thought, she sensed aggression here.
    "An all-woman team launched the craft." Miss Ming spoke significantly. "I was the first."
    And Dafnish Armatuce, her boy hard alongside, chanted at this threat: "Time travel, Miss Ming, is the creation and the copyright of the Armatuce. We built the first backward-shifting ships two years ago, in 1920. This year, in 1922, I was chosen to go forward."
    Miss Ming pursed lips which became thin and down-turned at the corners, giving her a slight leonine look, but she did not seek conflict. "Can we both be deluded? I am an historian, after all! I cannot be wrong. Aha! Illumination. A.D.?"
    "I regret…"
    "From what event does your calendar run?"
    "From the First Birth."
    "Of Christ?"
    "Of a child, following the catastrophe in which all became barren. A method was discovered whereby —"
    "There you have the answer! We are not even from the same millennium. Nonetheless," Miss Ming linked an arm through hers before she could react, and held it tight, "it needn't stop friendship. How delicate you are. How exquisite. Almost," insinuatingly, "a child yourself."
    Dafnish pulled free. "Snuffles." She began to dab at his face with her wetted glove. The little boy turned resigned eyes upward and watched the circling machines and beasts. The crowd sighed and swayed, and they were jostled.
    "You are married?" implacably continued Miss Ming. "In your own Age?"
    "To a cousin of the Armatuce, yes." Dafnish's manner became more distant as she tried to move on, but Miss Ming's warm hand slipped again into the crook of her elbow. The fingers pressed into her flesh. She was chilled.
    Three white bats swooped by, performing acrobatics in unison, their twenty-foot wings making the air hiss. A