R f nelson, p.14
R. F. Nelson, page 14
“But it may be, Mr. Blake, that it’s here we can switch things back.”
William sighed and took her hand. “I wish it was that easy, but Urizen was right when he said we can’t make the correct changes unless we know what we’re doing. We could create an even worse future than the one Urizen has made!”
There was a dull apathy in William’s voice that frightened Kate. She gripped his arm and said, “But we must do something!”
“Must we?” He sounded so tired, so lifeless. “Maybe Urizen is in the right. After all, lizards are living creatures too. Who’s to say lizards aren’t as good as men? Or better?”
“Now you sound like those Zoas, ready to give up, ready to slip away into a garden of dreams, because you’re not as fanatic as Urizen, because you’re not as insane as he is! We must be up and about! There’s things to do!”
He looked at her with something very like pity. “What, for instance?”
“We can explore, investigate. If Urizen has a weak spot, we shan’t find it without looking for it!”
“You look for it, Kate. If you find it, you can let me know.”
This was too much for her. She screamed, “Mr. Blake! You damn fool!
Come along!”
He followed her back into the time stream and the storm, but unwillingly.
*
The tracks, though partially obliterated by the rain, could be followed from the air, and the Blakes quickly determined that all the tracks radiated from a common source. Kate guessed the source before she actually saw it.
‘“Mount Everest,” she said as they flew swiftly along the face of a mountain range. Of course. What better location for Urizen’s stronghold than the peak of the world’s highest mountain?
And she knew she must be getting close. It was no longer mere tank tracks she was following, but wide highways cut into the mountainsides, tunneling here and there, crossing gorges on fantastic suspension bridges that even the world holocaust seemed not to have been able to damage.
Urizen’s kingdom must have flourished up here for centuries, perhaps completely unknown to the humans to the east and west, the humans in the valley nations now lost beneath the sea. And the citizens of Urizen’s kingdom had nothing to say to the outside world… they were mindless machines, every one.
Below two roads met to become one in a Y intersection, near the crest of a mountain. Kate could see it clearly; the rain had slackened and the sun, low in the western sky, came in under the overcast, over the turbulent sea that now completely covered India, and briefly illuminated the sheer west face of towering Mount Everest with a hot red glow.
The glow faded as quickly as it had come. Kate realized that they must reach Mount Everest within the next few moments, or lose it in the fast-falling darkness. There was no cause for alarm. A simple leap backward in time would bring them once again the light of the setting sun.
No backward leap was needed.
Ahead, where she knew the peak of the mountain must be, a light appeared. A huge door was opening and a bright bluewhite light blazing forth. It opened vertically, like a mouth. Kate and William soared toward it.
They glimpsed a broad highway leading out of the mouthlike door, covered with the mingled tracks of many vehicles, then they were inside, and the door closed behind them.
Kate was worried. Perhaps they should not have rushed in so eagerly.
Perhaps this was a trap. But William had led the way, apparently unafraid, and she had followed out of habit. Could he be overestimating the immunity resulting from their Zoa training?
“Did those doors open just for us?” she asked.
“It would seem so. Urizen is probably waiting for us. Otherwise I don’t understand why he’s made no move to stop us.”
“He’s so sure of himself!”
They had traversed a vast empty hall, and now the passage narrowed.
They landed and proceeded on foot. Glancing around, Kate noticed that, though the bright shining bluewhite walls were made of some glasslike material that was as clear and smooth as if made a few hours ago, the floor was covered with thick dust that rose in choking clouds as their feet disturbed it. She wondered, How old is this place? How many centuries?
They passed rooms, dark rooms full of the hulking forms of immense motionless silent machines. It was these machines, Kate decided, that had built the robot army.
But now the passage widened again, opening into a round room with a high domed ceiling, a room with a disquieting echo. This echo of their footsteps and whispering voices was the only sound; the storm outside could not be heard at all.
In the exact center of the room was a low raised platform, oval in shape, and on the platform was what appeared to be an open coffin of the same glasslike material as the walls. It was carved with some sort of inscription, and decorated with ornate serpentine borders. Above it, set at an angle, was a large mirror.
The Blakes stepped closer to read the inscription.
The language was English; the letters Roman capitals.
“I’ll always be ahead of you.”
William frowned in puzzlement. “What does that mean?”
Kate glanced up at the mirror. “Look! Urizen!”
In the mirror they could see a dust-covered Urizen in the coffin, eyes closed, a faint smile on his face.
“Is he dead?” she asked, and the echo repeated her question.
William sprang up on the oval platform and peered into the coffin.
“He’s not here!”
Kate joined William beside the coffin, thrust her hand inside it and felt around. In the mirror it appeared as if she was putting her hand inside Urizen’s body, but she could feel nothing but the soft smoothness of the white silk lining. “Is it some kind of magic trick? A magician’s illusion?”
William sat down dejectedly on the edge of the platform. “Not exactly.
Urizen told me about this once, but he never showed me how to do it. He’s in that coffin, right enough, but a fraction of a second in the future. We can see the light that bounced off him as he passed… that’s his refection in the mirror. But we can’t see him.”
“Can’t we nip ahead and catch up with him?”
“Not a chance. It’s like Zeno’s paradox. As he says in the inscription, he’ll always be ahead of us. By the time we reach the fraction of a second he’s in, he’ll have bounced ahead to another one. And he’s not dead, either.
He’s in a special kind of suspended animation.”
Kate leaned her elbows on the rim of the coffin and gazed up at the reflection of Urizen. Paradox! Everything about time voyaging was paradox. For example, was Urizen really in the future? Or was he in the past? He was certainly in the past in one sense… he had been here, and gone.
She said, “He’s teasing us, putting himself barely out of reach, so we can see him but are helpless to do anything.”
“That’s right. He can’t be very far ahead. Just far enough so the light has time to strike his body, pop up to the mirror, and bounce down to our eyes.”
She examined Urizen’s bearded features, his muscular naked body.
Urizen held something rectangular in his arms. “What’s that he’s got there?”
William answered, “That’s the bronze book Urizen has inscribed with the laws for his perfect world. I’m beginning to understand what he meant when he said he’s put a lock on this universe. Here he is, safe, and out there his robots are setting everything up for him. He talked about this many times, when he and I were rulers of Albion.”
“But what can we do?”
“Nothing.”
“I won’t accept that, Mr. Blake. There’s always something a person can do.”
Before the flood there was a world of men, and there was land where there now is water and water where there now is land, and there were giants, and visitors called the Sons of God who loved and taught the Daughters of Men, but all that was done then is either forgotten or but a whisper of legend, bits and threads of truth torn from a vast fabric.
Men fought giant lizards, and finally won.
There was a science, which we now call magic, and a magic we call science.
There were empires. There was a man who owned the whole world and everyone and everything in it. There were cities. There was vision. There was blindness. There were jewels full of power and grains of sand full of wisdom. If we were to pick up these grains on our seashores and learn to read them, we could learn secrets that would topple our most certain knowledge.
Continents sank and continents rose from the sea, and billions of books were written and billions of songs sung, and billions of battles lost and won. There was evil and cruelty and glory and pride.
Once or twice, there were moments of real love.
Through it all, Urizen slept in the mountain.
Before that there was only sea, except for one island.
And on that island, the only dry land on the planet, Urizen slept. Under endless clouds moved sluggish seas where life flickered and glowed and it was always night, with no moon, no stars, nor any living thing that walks on land or flies in the air.
A vast and horrible peace.
Water heated to boiling by a sun that can’t be seen, and boneless monsters living in the boiling water, eating invisible energy.
Above the boiling water and fleshy giants, above the slow-moving clouds of steam, hovered Kate and William Blake, she in torn and tattered long skirt, clutching the remains of a shawl, he in battered and filthy kneebreeches.
“Can you see Urizen’s mountain?” she asked.
“It’s over there, that blackness where none of the creatures are glowing.”
They glided slowly toward the blackness.
Kate screamed
Something had reached up from the water and grabbed her ankle. She pulled free, with William’s help.
Feeling her ankle, she thought, Is that sea slim, or my own blood?
There was no way to be sure.
Her fingers moved along the hot stone, found the crack, straight as a rulerline. “Here’s the door to Urizen’s stronghold.”
She followed the crack to a right angle turn. She was sure now. There are no right angles in nature.
“He’s still in there,” William said wearily.
“We must go back some more, go downtime a little further, Mr. Blake.
We can’t make things as they should be unless we go back to where Urizen made the first change.”
“What if there is no beginning, Kate? What if Urizen was always there?”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” She groped in the hot darkness, found his sweating hand. “Come along now.” Even the place outside of time was dark.
*
“We’ve passed it!” Kate could no longer find the crack in the rock.
“Are you sure?” William was beside her, joining in the search.
“It was here. Now it’s gone. Let’s go uptime a bit.”
As soon as they were outside the time stream, they saw the light. It was like a tiny star at first, then grew larger and brighter. “Here he comes,”
whispered Kate in awe.
It was coming from uptime, from the far future, and from the odd angle at which it traveled, she got the impression it was coming from a different future. But of course. It would be coming from Rintrah, in the future of the world before the change.
From here, at the point where the two futures branched, she could see down them both. An idea began to form in her mind, a flicker of hope…
but it was driven away by the rushing arrival of The Ship, monstrous and metallic, blazing with lights, Urizen’s insignia, the picture of William’s Urizen statue, embossed on the hull, painted in glistening metallic paint.
She and William had to move quickly to get out of the behemoth’s path as it rushed past them and entered the time stream. Kate and William followed it.
From a distance, hovering in the steamy air, they watched the timeship open its doors and disgorge a horde of quick, insect-like machines. The machines instantly set to work digging into the side of the island’s only hill. Kate recognized the style of the devices. They were from the distant future, from the time when Luvah had been a galactic emperor, a time when technology had reached a height it never afterward surpassed.
“If we attack now…” whispered Kate.
But it was too late. Urizen and Vala had just emerged from the forward hatchway… a surprisingly young Urizen and a young Vala.
Urizen raised a microphone to his lips and spoke, and his voice, greatly amplified, came to Kate from across the steaming water. “Mr. and Mrs.
Blake! How nice of you to come to the grand opening of my new future! I can’t see you, but my machines can, so why be shy? Come on down here and join me in a spot of tea.”
The Blakes hesitated, but Kate said, “We may learn, something useful,”
and they descended.
Two beetle-like machines about the size of cats brought out a card table and set it up. Another beetle-machine brought four chairs, and a third appeared carrying a tray with a teapot, cups, dishes and silverware. It was more comfortable here near the ship. The ship generated some kind of energy-field that drove off the steam and a refreshingly normal atmosphere was being puffed out by hardworking air-conditioners.
Vala eyed the Blakes with distaste. “You look awful, my dears. In this new future, don’t you ever take baths or put on fresh clothes?”
As she sank into one of the chairs, Kate realized how tired she really was. If she looked half as bad as she felt…
Urizen was shaking his head sympathetically. “Won’t you let Vala and I loan you two some fresh clothes?”
“If you wouldn’t be inconvenienced…“‘William began.
Kate broke in. “I never knew you to give anyone something for nothing.
What do you want in return?”
“A little information, that’s all.” Urizen sat down, smiling. “You’ve come from uptime. Tell me, how is it? What’s it like in the world I’m about to create?”
They were all seated now. Urizen nodded to Vala, who poured the tea.
Vala was beautiful in her flowing red robes.
“It’s a hell you’re creating, not a world,” Kate said.
Urizen raised an eyebrow. “So? Why do you say that?”
Kate thought, it doesn’t have to happen. If I can talk him out of it… She blurted, “There’s no people uptime, just lizards.”
“Excellent,” Urizen said with satisfaction. “Just as I’d planned. I’m tired of humans. Humans are so unmanageable, not to mention ungrateful. We can’t have Utopia with humans, can we, Vala?”
“No indeed,” Vala answered. “Each human has a different idea as to what constitutes perfection. Lizards may be a bit stupid, but otherwise they’re much better. Easier to please, you know.”
“If you like lizards so well,” Kate challenged, “are you prepared to become one?”
Vala was shocked. “What a disgusting idea!”
William joined the conversation. “That’s what will happen. The new future you’re creating doesn’t like humans. If you linger too long in it, it will change you, change you into something that… fits in.”
“Interesting,” Urizen said, then sipped his tea. “To turn into a lizard.
That would be a novel experience.” He gazed thoughtfully off into space.
Vala shuddered. “Really, Urizen dear!”
Urizen spoke blandly, though his words were harsh. “Shut up, mother.”
He turned to William and added, “Women have no stomach for things that are really grand, eh William? But you and I, we know. Power isn’t power unless you use it! That’s what we used to say, back in Albion.
Right?”
William squirmed. “Well, er…”
Urizen slapped William on the knee, saying cheerfully, “But you’re half starved, old man! Vala and I will be having supper soon. You and the little lady are welcome to join us.”
“You’re very kind,” William said, a bit too humbly for Kate’s taste.
But when one of the beetle-robots led her into the timeship, she, like William, went along docilely and allowed the machines to wash her and dress her in a flowing white linen tunic that made her look like an ancient Greek.
It was either during the fish course or the meat course or perhaps during desert that Urizen explained to the Blakes that he was going though with his experiment, come what may. He ended by saying, almost sadly, “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
*
Before going into suspended animation, Urizen carefully explained,
“Because I am here, slightly out of phase in the time stream, there will be a powerful locking effect in this area. You won’t be able to move anything on this island, or on the mountaintop this island will become. Nor will you be able to enter unless it opens for you, and it will open only when it sends out a flying robot to capture lizard specimens and later, during the second flood, it will open to release the army that will exterminate the last of mankind. Both those times Vala and I will be in the time zone, patroling to see that you, William and Kate, don’t do anything naughty. So go in peace!
I will not harm you, because there is nothing you can do to harm me.”
He shook William’s hand and kissed Kate on the cheek. Kate was surprised. The usually cold Urizen was displaying genuine warmth… but then he could afford to. He was winning.
Urizen lay down in his white coffin and vanished.
Kate could still see him in the mirror above the coffin.
In the next room, in another coffin, lay Vala, equally invisible, equally invulnerable.
Kate and William tried to move some of the beetle-robots, tried to drag them into the place outside of time, but, as Urizen had said, it was no use.
Taking a powerful light globe with them, the Blakes left the timeship by the forward hatch. The furious digging had gone on constantly all the time they’d been on board, and now the timeship was three-quarters buried.
