“Who are they, Mr. Blake?” she would whisper, for he could see them too.

  “Ghosts, Kate. Curious ghosts, that’s all. They’re gathering here from every age, from the very ends of time.”

  “But why?”

  “They’re waiting for something, watching for something.”

  He tried speaking to the visions, questioning them, but they would not answer him.

  There were scenes now too, landscapes with castles and distant towers at dusk, the wind-sculpted dunes of unknown deserts, forests where the trees glowed at night and moved their limbs like women, vast emptiness where silver vessels, like schools of fish, swam from star to star. There were no sounds in the visions, though sometimes they spread out from the fireplace to completely surround her, completely replacing her familiar home. She might have been lost in them if it hadn’t been for William’s voice coming to her out of the vision, saying, “Do you see it? Tell me what you see.”

  She’d reach out her hand and he’d take it in his, and she’d feel safe in keeping on with it.

  Yesterday, though, had been bad.

  She’d been walking down the street, on her way home from the market, when the ghosts had faded into view all around her, so she looked through their transparent bodies as she might look through a reflection in a window, where one scene is superimposed on another. There was a cloud of them, swirling around her, regarding her curiously, and in an instant they became so thick she could no longer see where she was going and had to stop and stand motionless while they swooped in on her, coming so close she could feel their cold fingers brush her cheeks, like spiderwebs.

  A coachman had shouted a warning behind her and, as she jumped to avoid the horse’s hoves, the ghosts had faded quickly away.

  Later, at home, she’d told William about it, but his only comment was,

  “Good! Good! You’re progressing splendidly!”

  Yes, it was then she’d wanted to bring these lessons to an end, but William had said, “One more night.” And she’d remembered her vow.

  So here she was again, leaning forward in her rocking chair, a shawl thrown ‘round her shoulders, gazing fixedly into the ruddy coals, while William spoke quietly, saying, “Relax, Mrs. Blake. It’s all right. There’s no harm in it. Relax and tell me what you see.”

  What had once been impossible was now only too easy. The room grew vague, drew back, while the red glow expanded to fill her entire field of vision. And yes, there were images in the redness, moving images…

  “I see your brother Robert, Mr. Blake.”

  “Wonderful, Kate!”

  “He looks worried. He’s holding up his hand as if to warn me to go back.”

  “Speak to him.”

  “Too late. He vanished. There are other men there now, men I don’t know. Can you see them?”

  “Only shadows. Tonight it seems you are the teacher and I the student.”

  “They’re warning me, too, telling me to go back. Perhaps we should…”

  “We can’t stop now, Kate.”

  William and the room were gone. William’s voice came to her out of the air, from a long way away. The ghosts were thronging around her now like a whirling flock of birds, warning her, warning her.

  “I can see the ghosts, Kate,” came William’s faint distant voice. “I’m still with you.”

  She was drifting, bodiless, across a red-lit plain. Ahead lay a city like no city she had ever seen. It was gigantic, inhuman, dark, made of immense blocks of stone leaning together.

  She floated up and over the city walls.

  “William!” she screamed.

  “I see them, Kate. Don’t be afraid.”

  The citizens were not human, but serpentine, like lizards that walked on their hind legs like men. She saw them for an instant, then they were gone.

  The ghosts had returned, but now they were rushing past at blinding speed, as if Kate were falling, falling through them at an ever-increasing velocity.

  “Mr. Blake! Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like this. Concentrate, Kate. We’re back home in front of our fireplace. Concentrate!”

  She concentrated. Something was looming ahead of her, something huge and formless. She could almost see it… then, abruptly, she was in her chair at home.

  “Thank God,” she breathed.

  “Are you all right, Kate?” William was concerned, anxious, as he stood up to bend over her and look her over with large worried eyes.

  “Yes, quite all right, thank you.” She laughed nervously. Then she noticed something.

  “When we left, the fireplace was painted white,” she said.

  “Why yes, of course.”

  “Mr. Blake, it’s got a plain wood varnish finish now. It’s brown, Mr.

  Blake!”

  A soft deep voice came out of the shadow to the right of the fireplace.

  “You’ll have to get used to little things like that now, Mrs. Blake.” It was not William’s voice.

  Urizen stepped into the firelight. “I hope I didn’t startle you,” said the powerfully built white-bearded naked man.

  Urizen stood on one side of her, William on the other. She looked from one man to the other. What would they do now? Urizen extended his hands, one to William, one to Kate. “I’ve come to congratulate you both.

  Come now, don’t look so surprised. Isn’t this what you’ve been working for all this time? Today is graduation day. You’ve succeeded!”

  She hesitated, then took Urizen’s hand. It was a hard, muscular hand, but certainly felt human enough. “Well, thank you, Mr. Urizen,” she said haltingly. “I’m… pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”

  Urizen chuckled. “Come, my dear. You too, William.”

  He had them both by the hand, pulling them toward him. She rose half-fearfully from her chair.

  “Urizen…” protested William.

  “No arguments, either of you,” said the smiling Urizen. “You must be my guests at my home. This is an occasion for celebration.”

  Kate tried to pull free, but Urizen held her easily.

  “No thank you just the same, Mr. Urizen…” she mumbled.

  But the room was already dissolving.

  The ghosts reappeared, but now she could not only see them but hear them and feel them. They seemed to be howling an endless wail of dismay as they streamed past, a blur of distorted, anguished faces, and as they brushed against her they were like a cold damp wind that passed through the skin to freeze the bone. Images were flashing in an out of focus, each lasting only a fraction of a second.

  Buildings. Mountains. People, but people moving at impossible speeds.

  Darkness and light, flickering faster than the mind could register.

  And she had the feeling, the horrible feeling, of falling. William said,

  “Don’t be frightened, Kate. It’s always like this.”

  Now the fall slowed.

  Now it stopped.

  Kate, William and Urizen stood on a parched white desert. The sky was white and too bright to look into. Nearby was a jumble of bleached ruins.

  “Where are we?” said Kate, when she could speak.

  “This once was London, but that was many a million year ago,”

  answered Urizen. “This is, you might say, the end of time, if time can be said to have an end.”

  “You can let go my hand now,” she said, trying to pull away.

  Urizen laughed. “Not so fast, young lady. As long as I touch you two, you share in the energy fields that protect me. The moment I let you go, you’d die. There’s no air here, and that sun is hot enough to melt many metals. Soon there will be a supernova and the world and the whole solar system will be gone, and even I, with all my power, would be gone if I did not spring back from the instant of nova, back into some earlier, safer time.” He tugged on their hands. “Come.”

  They walked across the sands toward the ruins.

  There was an entrance in the ruins, Kate could see, and a passageway leading down into the earth.

  Urizen paused as they reached this entrance and said mockingly,

  “Welcome to Rintrah, the Kingdom of Wrath.”

  *

  Rintrah was an underground city, or better, a vast underground cathedral, for its high stone ceilings and endless echoing passageways were clearly intended to suggest the majesty of one of the great churches of the Middle Ages. It had tall, brilliantly-lit stained glass windows, too.

  Urizen said, “That’s the sun you see behind those colored windows, my friends, but the sun filtered and tamed by a long journey from the surface.

  The sun is the only light we have in Rintrah, and the only light we need.”

  William asked, “Even at night?”

  “There is no night here, sir. The Earth keeps always the same face toward the sun,” Urizen answered. “Look there.” He pointed toward one of the windows. “I’m particularly pleased by the design of the windows in this chamber.”

  The window he indicated was in the artistic style of ancient Egypt. It depicted a smiling young woman bending over an agonized old man. The woman’s headdress suggested the horns of a bull, or a half-moon on its side.

  “Isis,” William said.

  “Ah, you recognize the tale.” Urizen smiled broadly. “Isis has just poisoned her father, the god Ra.” He was explaining for Kate’s benefit.

  “She won’t give him the antidote until he tells her his secret name, and when she knows that he will be her slave.”

  The three moved on across the wide flagstones. There was air here and protection from the sun, but Kate continued to cling to William’s hand, as if he, not Urizen, had the power to hold the elements at bay.

  “It’s one of the finest stories in Egyptian mythology,” Urizen added.

  “And that other window,” William said. “That’s Prometheus, isn’t it?”

  The stained glass showed a proud young man chained to a rock and trying to beat off an attacking eagle.

  “Right again, sir! A great hero, according to the Greeks. He stole the fire from Heaven for mankind and as a punishment was chained to a rock to be tormented for all eternity by that eagle there. A pity the decision couldn’t have been appealed to a higher court.”

  They had come to another window, and this one Kate recognized easily.

  “Why, that’s Adam and Eve by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

  Urizen added, “And, as you see, they are listening to the wisdom of their good friend and advisor, the serpent.”

  “Their friend?” Kate was puzzled.

  Urizen said softly, “One might even say, their Savior. He gave them freedom, and he would have given them eternal life if he’d been allowed to.

  But come, there’s more.”

  The next window showed a desert at dawn. The hazy pinks and yellows and blues in the background were disturbingly real, and in the foreground a powerful man with a black beard was wrestling violently with what appeared to be an angel.

  “This is my favorite.” Urizen gazed up at it with intense glittering eyes.

  “Jacob! The only man who ever wrestled hand to hand with God, and won.”

  There was one more window in the chamber, but this one was not yet finished. Kate looked up, squinting, at the face in the center of the composition, the only part that was clear enough to recognize. “Mr.

  Urizen! That’s you!”

  “Indeed so, my dear,” said Urizen.

  “Why isn’t it finished?” William asked.

  “Because I am not finished,” Urizen said crisply.

  “Unfortunately,” came a voice from the next chamber. As the voice died away in echoes, Kate turned to see three tall bearded men striding toward her. As they approached they were alternately in darkness and in the patterned colored light from the stained glass windows, so she could at no time clearly see their features.

  “Ah,” cried Urizen delightedly, spreading his arms as if to embrace the men. “My good friends Los, Tharmas and Luvah! You know Mr. Blake of course, but this time he’s brought his wife Kate. Allow me to introduce you.”

  “I am Los,” said the first. He kissed her hand.

  “You may have seen his picture,” said William.

  “His picture?” The man did look vaguely familiar.

  “In my own century,” Los explained, “I use the name Milton. I’m a poet.” He bowed.

  “And this is Tharmas,” put in Urizen. “In his own century he is the King of Atlantis.”

  Tharmas gave her hand a squeeze but did not kiss it, murmuring, with a thick strange foreign accent, “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  “And we mustn’t forget Luvah,” Urizen finished.

  Luvah gazed at her but said nothing. She shuddered.

  “Luvah is called The Unapproachable,” Urizen said. “He is called the Lord of Hate, the Warmaker, and by science he’s made himself hermaphroditic. In his own century Luvah is ruler of a galactic empire.”

  Kate took a step backward.

  Luvah was a kind of beautiful monster, his thick beard a disturbing contrast to the rounded feminine curves of his body. He could have been a bearded lady in some circus sideshow.

  Los said seriously, “Mr. and Mrs. Blake, we share with Urizen the rule of Rintrah, and of the League of the Zoas. Could we speak to you? Alone?”

  “He means without me around,” Urizen said dryly, then to Los he added, “These two are my guests, Los. There are certain rules…”

  “Rules? How dare you, of all people, speak of rules!” snapped Los.

  Tharmas laid a restraining hand on his arm and mumbled something in an incomprehensible language.

  “Urizen… is my friend,” said William haltingly.

  Kate shot him a disturbed glance.

  “You see, Los? They are with me!” Urizen was delighted.

  “I only hope that is not true,” sighed Los. “The gift of time-voyaging is given to only a few, and of those few, all are content to enjoy the gift and not ask for more. All but Urizen. He says it is not enough to travel through time; one must also change it.”

  Tharmas frowned.

  Luvah stood almost motionless, lips, cheeks and eyelids painted to hide any trace of tell-tale expression.

  William went on, “I don’t understand this dispute you have between you, but I know this… Urizen sought me out and spoke to me, Urizen made himself my guide and teacher when a guide and teacher was what I sorely needed.”

  “Only to recruit you,” Los said urgently.

  “Only for making you on his side,” Tharmas added.

  Luvah said nothing.

  “It is not our way to impose ourselves and our ideas on people,” said Los. “We wait. When questions are asked, we try to answer.”

  “Soon you would come to us. We know this,” said Tharmas. “No hurry.”

  Urizen spoke with contempt. “When questions are asked, you have no answers. Answers come from experience. None of us have enough of that.”

  Los was about to reply, but William said, with calm determination, “I see I must choose between you. Very well, good sirs. But I will decide nothing until I have more information.”

  “And from whom will you get this information?” demanded Los.

  “Urizen,” said William.

  “No, Mr. Blake…” Kate began, but then she saw the firm line of her husband’s lip, and fell silent.

  *

  There were no clocks in Rintrah, nor any day or night.

  “We tell time by the sun,” Urizen explained. William and Kate were puzzled by this statement until they came to understand that the sun was undergoing rapid changes as it neared supernova; the only time that mattered in Rintrah was the time until the end, and that was not measured in clock ticks, but in subtle shifts in the sun’s spectrum.

  But because they could not read these shifts, the Blakes soon lost all sense of time while urbane Urizen patiently imparted to them the lore of Zoas—which included a view of history that was full of unsettling surprises—and the art of time-voyaging.

  It may have been weeks later, or it may have been months, when Urizen finally said, “That is all we know. We have come to the edge of our knowledge.”

  Kate was disappointed. “Is that all?”

  “By no means,” said Urizen. “The best is not the known, but the unknown, and that is what we start on now. Are you ready?”

  “I am, for one,” said William.

  “Perhaps we should check with the other Zoas…” said Kate uncertainly.

  They had not seen Los, Tharmas or Luvah since their arrival.

  “Nonsense,” Urizen snorted. “I know what they’d say without asking them. They’d say, ‘Whatever you plan to do, don’t do it!’ ” He chuckled and took them by the hands. “Come, my friends. Let’s try our wings.”

  He meant this quite literally. All three were now wearing the broad white wings the Zoas used in their trips through time. These wings served to guide them rather than support their weight. The force that propelled them and held them aloft was the energy of time itself. Urizen had taught the Blakes how to use their unique time-voyaging talent to tap from the flow of temporal energy a power that protected them even in the void of outer space.

  William had asked, “Where’s the machine that converts all this energy?”

  Urizen, for answer, had solemnly pointed to his own forehead.

  “And another thing, Urizen… does it do any harm to tap out all this energy?”

  “I must confess, sir, I don’t know,” Urizen had answered with smiling frankness.

  But now all caution was behind them as they winged their way backward through the centuries, laughing, joking, pausing now and then to glimpse some particularly freakish folly of mankind or howl at some particularly outlandish turn of fashion. (Kate would never have believed men could actually admire some of the grotesque costumes women wore during the more obscure ages of history.) “Look there!” cried Urizen. “They call that the miniskirt.”

  “Indecent!” exclaimed Kate, but she was not really shocked.

 

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