Returning from China to London and the Spring of 1936, Una Persson found an unfamiliar quality of pathos in most of the friends she had last seen, as far as she recalled, during the Blitz on her way back from 1970. Then they had been desperately hearty: it was a comfort to understand that the condition was not permanent. Here, at present, Pierrot ruled and she felt she possessed a better grip on her power. This was, she admitted with shame, her favourite moral climate for it encouraged in her an enormously gratifying sense of spiritual superiority: the advantage of having been born, originally, into a later and probably more sophisticated age. The 1960s. Some women, she reflected, were forced to have children in order to enjoy this pleasure.
But she was uneasy, so she reported to the local Time Centre and the bearded, sullen features of Sergeant Alvarez who welcomed her in white, apologizing for the fact that he had himself only just that morning left the Lower Devonian and had not had time to change.
"It's the megaflow, as you guessed, " he told her, operating toggles to reveal his crazy display systems. "We've lost control."
"We never really had it." She lit a Sherman's and shook her long hair back over the headrest of the swivel chair, opening her military overcoat and loosening her webbing. "Is it worse than usual?"
"Much." He sipped cold coffee from his battered silver mug. "It cuts through every plane we can pick up — a rogue current swerving through the dimensions. Something of a twister."
"Jerry?"
"He's dormant. We checked. But it's like him, certainly. Most probably another aspect."
"Oh, sod." Una straightened her shoulders.
"That's what I thought, " said Alvarez. "Someone's going to have to do a spot of rubato." He studied a screen. It was Greek to Una. For a moment a pattern formed. Alvarez made a note. "Yes. It can either be fixed at the nadir or the zenith. It's too late to try anywhere in between. I think it's up to you, Mrs P."
She got to her feet. "Where's the zenith?"
"The End of Time."
"Well, " she said, "that's something."
She opened her bag and made sure of her jar of instant coffee. It was the one thing she couldn't get at the End of Time.
"Sorry, " said Alvarez, glad that the expert had been there and that he could remain behind.
"It's just as well, " she said. "This period's no good for my moral well-being. I'll be off, then."
"Someone's got to." Alvarez failed to seem sympathetic. "It's Chaos out there."
"You don't have to tell me."
She entered the make-shift chamber and was on her way to the End of Time.
Elric of Melnibone shook a bone-white fist at the greedy, glaring stars — the eyes of all those men whose souls he had stolen to sustain his own enfeebled body. He looked down. Though it seemed he stood on something solid, there was only more blackness falling away below him. It was as if he hung at the centre of the universe. And here, too, were staring points of yellow light. Was he to be judged?
His half-sentient runesword, Stormbringer, in its scabbard on his left hip, murmured like a nervous dog.
