The fog was so thick they had to walk slowly, but at least they were in no danger of being run over. Here in Golgonooza, unlike London, only foot traffic was allowed in the central business district. Kate could see William as little more than a blurred black shape except when they passed under a streetlight where she could catch a glimpse of his drawn features.

  “I hope you know where we’re going,” he said.

  “I won’t get lost in this neighborhood. I used to come down this very street every day when I was living with the Daughters of Albion. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Be where?”

  “At the Women’s Mission, next door to the Temple of Isis. There’s someone there I must talk to. See, that’s the temple now.”

  The temple loomed ahead of them, black and huge. They passed in front of it, then left the street and silently mounted a flight of stairs. A glowing window seemed to materialize out of the fog. They stopped to peer through it.

  “Why, that’s you in there!” William whispered.

  “Hush now.”

  Inside Kate could see herself talking to the old woman, see the old woman telling her about the rockets. She could hear the murmur of their voices, but could not make out the words. Now the Kate inside the room was nodding, now turning and walking briskly away.

  The Kate outside said, “Wait. That’s it. All right, let’s go in.”

  She pulled open the door to the Mission dining room and entered, William beside her.

  The old woman looked up, startled. “What’s this? You go out one door and come in another! Did you forget something, Sister?”

  Kate answered, “I’m not a Sister. I’m just wearing this robe because…

  but never mind about that. Yes, I did forget something. I need to know exactly where that base is where they’ve got the rockets.” She spread out the map of Albion on the table. “Could you point out the place for me?”

  “No trouble at all,” the old woman replied, squinting at the map. “It’s right there.” She pointed a bony ringer. “And there’s another one in the north of Albion and another in the south—here and there. I remember from a map they had in the office.”

  William said, “Three bases. Are you sure that’s all there are?”

  “Just three,” the old woman said, nodding firmly. “I’m certain sure.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said fervently. “Thank you so much.”

  “Then you’ll do something about it?” The old woman was grinning toothlessly with rekindled hope.

  “We’ll try,” Kate promised.

  “Isis be praised, Sister!” exclaimed the woman.

  Kate and William were already heading for the door.

  *

  The sentry did not look up, and thus did not see the Blakes pass swiftly and silently overhead, high enough to clear the electrified barbed wire fence, but too low to be picked up on radar.

  They landed atop the administration building and crouched there on the roof, shivering in the damp fog, whispering together through chattering teeth.

  “Are you sure this is the right place, Kate?”

  They had so far gotten lost four times that night.

  “It must be. It’s so… so military.”

  “I don’t see any rockets.”

  “Well, we must look for them of course. Come along!”

  She took off and he followed.

  The rockets, when they found them, were lying on their sides in a long line, hidden from passing aircraft under vast tentlike camouflage nets. It was too dark to see any but the closest ones, but the Blakes, by making a tour of the area, determined that there must be around a hundred.

  “Multi-stage,” William whispered, indicating the three segments into which each missile was divided. “But no warheads.”

  William had become, Kate reflected, quite an expert in weapons under the tutelage of Urizen.

  “They’re overconfident,” muttered William. “It’s not wise to put all the rockets so close together. If one explodes, they all explode.”

  “Then let’s explode them!” Kate cried delightedly.

  William’s gloomy voice came out of the darkness. “It’s not as easy as that. I told you, they have no warheads.” A spot check revealed that they had no fuel on board either.

  “They’re not as stupid as I thought,” William complained.

  For a moment they stood baffled, gazing in frustration at the nearest rocket. It was so long that both nose and tail were lost to sight in the fog.

  At last Kate said, “There’s no fuel on board now, but there will be.”

  “When?” He did not sound very hopeful.

  “When it takes off, you silly man!”

  *

  A little over a month later, on a sunny afternoon, the countdown was completed and the first of the transoceanic rockets breathed flame and slowly rose from its launching pad. In a nearby concrete bunker, tense scientists, watching it rise, began, tentatively, to smile.

  Then one of them shouted and pointed skyward, but his voice was drowned out by the thunder of the rocket. All the same, the others looked where he pointed.

  A man and a woman had appeared, drifting through the air. The woman was wearing the robe of a nun of Isis; the man, a redhead, was clad in tunic and sandals, with his cloak swirling in the wind. They moved in from either side of the rocket, which was still rising quite slowly, and put their hands on it.

  The rocket, together with the man and the woman, vanished.

  In the sudden silence that followed, one of the scientists could be heard, weeping.

  *

  The rocket reappeared a little over a month earlier, moving at a different angle, skipping on its side over the ground through darkness and fog. An instant later it rammed into the central segment of another rocket (Or was it the same rocket at an earlier time?) with an earsplitting crash, then kept on going, passing through one rocket after another until, almost at the last one, it exploded in a great rolling ball of flame and a deep thump of an explosion that broke windows fifty miles away.

  High above, their faces illuminated by the flames, the Blakes embraced and laughed hysterically.

  “How’s that for a firecracker?” he shouted.

  “Capital, Mr. Blake!” she answered.

  Before dawn the two other bases in the north and south of Albion were also masses of roaring flame, and the attack on Oothoon definitively postponed, perhaps permanently.

  Kate and William, soaring hand in hand upward into the brightening sky, gazed down at the white overcast and at the glowing spot in the clouds that marked one of the burning bases.

  “A nasty surprise for Mr. Urizen, I dare say,” Kate remarked maliciously.

  But William’s mood was more sombre. “Surprise Urizen? I’m not sure that’s possible. Actually it’s I who am surprised… that Urizen has done nothing to stop us.”

  “What are you saying?” Now she was alarmed.

  “I’m saying that before we celebrate our victory, we should go uptime a way and examine the results of this night’s work.”

  *

  It was a gray afternoon in Golgonooza.

  Rain fell without cease on Kate’s garden, which now grew even more wild than it had when this city had been called London and this nation England. The grape vines had crept forward to reclaim the area where the tearoom tables had stood, where Kate had tried and failed to read the menu. The table where she’d sat, like everything else, was overgrown with the serpentine vines and translucent green fruit, and there was no sound but the steady hiss of the rain. The chairs, some still upright, some overturned, were iron under their chipped paint and had begun to rust.

  A yellowed skeleton lay face down in the garden, almost bidden by the leaves, the rain drumming on the skull with a curiously hollow sound.

  Kate and William stood in the back door of the tearoom for a long time, watching.

  Finally Kate spoke. “That skeleton… do you suppose that’s the fellow who waited on me?”

  William answered softly, “Perhaps.”

  Absent-mindedly she scratched herself with her slender fingers. There were fleas everywhere inside the tearoom. They thrived in the dust that lay thickly on all the furniture, here in the comparatively dry interior.

  They had walked the streets for hours before finally ending up here.

  Nowhere had they seen a living human being, though corpses were numerous enough.

  She spoke again. “It’s like this all over Golgonooza, isn’t it?”

  William’s large blue eyes turned toward her. “All over Albion, I expect.

  Probably all over the continent as well … and it’s our fault.”

  “Our fault?”

  “We exploded the germ warfare rockets here in Albion. We had literally all the time in world, but we had to hurry, had to rush in and make our silly blunder. We should have known that we’d be spreading here the plague intended for Oothoon! We saved the redmen, but sacrificed Albion to do it.”

  She thought of Sister Boadicea. She and William had been to the Mission of the Daughters of Albion, but had found no trace of anyone. She thought of the old woman who had been so eager to have the rocket attack stopped. All, all dead.

  “Let’s leave here,” she said, and her voice was soft as if she’d been in church. “Let’s go back downtime to before all this happened, to before Urizen came to Albion.”

  William shook his head heavily. “No, Kate.”

  She turned on him angrily. “What’s that? Do you like it here?”

  He laid his hand on her shoulder. “We must try to learn to like it. It’ll be our home from now on.”

  She swept his hand away with an impatient gesture. “Our home? Are you daft? We can go anywhere we like… the present, the past, the future!”

  He sighed. “No more. Here we are and here we stay.”

  “No! I won’t have it!”

  “We’ve got the plague, Kate.”

  “Don’t frighten me with your ugly jokes. How could we…”

  “We’ve been very foolish. You can’t walk the streets of a plague city without getting the plague, but I didn’t think of that until we’d been here for more than half an hour. Now, you see, we can’t leave here because we’d take the plague with us, we’d infect any age we visited. Those fleas that have been biting us… every one of them must be a plague carrier.”

  In a moment of blind panic she slapped and rubbed herself with impotent frenzy, trying to get rid of the fleas that, she now was horribly aware, were crawling all over her.

  “Hush now,” William said soothingly. “That will do no good. We’ll have some time together before the fever comes on. A few days. Maybe a week.

  Let’s make as good use of it as we can. You know, we’ve never gotten to know each other as well as we might.”

  She stopped slapping and scratching and said with ill-suppressed fury,

  “You’ve known for hours and you didn’t tell me!”

  His large eyes were full of pain. “I couldn’t think of any kind way to say it.”

  *

  “Look Kate. The rain has stopped.”

  She awoke and rolled over on the pile of tablecloths and towels on the floor that served her as a bed. The backdoor was open, and through it she could see her garden, fresh and bright in the morning sunshine, the grape leaves wet and dripping, the trunks of the poplar trees glistening with moisture.

  With the rain her suffering seemed to have passed as well. The fever was gone, not to be replaced by the chills, as before, but by a curious feeling of great peace. Her makeshift bed was clammy with old sweat, and she raised herself slowly into a sitting position, fighting against waves of dizziness and nausea that threatened to destroy her strange joy.

  William, she saw, was sitting nearby on the floor, his back to the wall.

  His reddish beard was quite long, dirty and tangled and his skin pale. His eyes were bloodshot and his body terribly thin.

  “Can I get you something to eat?” he asked gently. “There’s still some cans of food in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Blake, but I’m not a bit hungry. I’ll eat later perhaps. I’m feeling much better.”

  “You look better, and that’s a fact. I’ve never seen you more beautiful.”

  His voice, she noted, was not strong, and had a quaver in it. They’d taken turns nursing each other, and that had seemed to be working quite well until last night when, four hours at time, neither of them had been altogether sane.

  “I was thinking,” he began. “It being such a fine morning, maybe you and I can go for a walk.”

  “A walk?” It sounded like such an insane suggestion she wondered if he was in a fever again, but no… fever gave a certain high quickness to a man’s voice, and he sounded perfectly normal. A walk? Why not? People go for walks all the time.

  “Down to the river,” he said. “That’s not far.”

  Was he joking? No, he was slowly, painfully, dragging himself to his feet. For a moment he stood there swaying and blinking, then, with shuffling sandaled feet, he came over and extended his hand to help her up.

  Could she stand up? Yes, much to her own surprise, she could.

  Very slowly, pausing every few steps to gather strength, they made their way to the front door and out into the street.

  Several times Kate felt as if her legs would give way under her, but each time William was there, holding her, keeping her from falling.

  “You’re a good man,” she whispered. “I always knew it.”

  He did not answer. Perhaps the effort of walking took all his energy.

  As they reached the intersection a pack of gaunt dogs appeared around a corner and, seeing them, came forward slowly, curiously. One, who seemed to be the leader, showed his teeth and let out a low growl.

  “Go on!” shouted William, bending over and picking up a rock from the cobblestone street. When he raised the rock as if to throw it, the pack of dogs fled, but not very far, and when William and Kate continued on their way, the dogs followed at a safe distance.

  “They want to eat us,” Kate said softly.

  “Nonsense. They’re just overfriendly.”

  Kate did not believe him. She had heard that growl. But she was not afraid. It seemed right and good that the dogs should eat her. Nature was like that.

  As she looked around she saw birds everywhere. There had never been so many birds in the neighborhood. And there were other animals too.

  Squirrels. Chipmonks.

  And an occasional huge rat that did not flee as rats used to do, but stood its ground in the middle of the street and watched them with fearless little eyes, so they had to detour around.

  In every yard the weeds formed a small jungle, and in each jungle there were eyes.

  She would die today. She knew it. And all the dogs and birds and squirrels and chipmunks and rats would eat her, because her man would die too and there would be no one to stop them. And that was fine. That was exactly as it should be.

  A small breeze made itself felt, a welcome breeze, because either the day had become suddenly very hot or the effort of walking was too much for her… “The fever’s coming on again,” she whispered. “We’ll be at the river soon. We can rest there.” His voice was strained, desperate. Was he getting a fever too? They paused to rest.

  The dogs settled themselves on their haunches, tails wagging, tongues hanging, intelligent eyes fixed on the Blakes with a calculating gaze. They were closer than they had been.

  But the sun was so warm. Everything was so quiet. The birds sang. The insects hummed. The cobblestones glistened, already beginning to dry.

  She’d never seen a more perfect day.

  Then, without warning, William fell. She bent over him, concerned yet somehow detached. “Are you all right, Mr. Blake?”

  He rolled over. “Yes, yes. A little dizzy there, that’s all. I’ll be on my feet in a minute.”

  But he found he could not stand, and she did not have the strength to lift him.

  “Damned nuisance,” he muttered, and began to crawl on all fours. The dogs came a little closer. She tottered along beside him. Her thoughts grew vague.

  When she was thinking again she found herself on the bridge, alone, leaning against the cement rail. Puzzled, she looked around. Where was William? Ah, there he was!

  He was about a block behind her, inching along on his belly toward her.

  The dogs were following him very closely, only a few yards from him.

  “Go away! Go away, you!” she screamed at the dogs. They paid no attention to her. The lead dog’s teeth were showing, so he seemed to be smiling.

  “Go away! Leave Mr. Blake alone!” she shouted.

  The lead dog rushed forward, sniffed at William’s ankle.

  “No!” cried Kate. It was no longer a beautiful day. It was horrible. Hot as an oven. Moist.

  Every cobblestone in the street stood out with a supernatural clarity.

  Every separate hair on the dog’s pelt stood out so she could have counted them.

  “William!” She tried to run toward him, but instead fell, painfully, on her knees.

  A great roaring rushing sound filled the universe.

  She raised her head, looked up.

  The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was a large brown helicopter hovering overhead.

  *

  His skin was brownish red, his shoulder-length hair black, and his shirt and pants white. He was a young man, handsome, and his teeth, as he smiled, were white too.

  “I see you’re awake,” he said pleasantly.

  “Yes. I think so.” Kate found it difficult to speak. “Where’s… William?”

  “William? Ah yes, he’s in the men’s ward.”

  “Ward? Is this a hospital?”

  “Yes it is, fortunately for you both. You and… what did you say the man’s name was?”

  “Mr. William Blake.”

  “You and Mr. Blake will be all right in a few weeks. The military police helicopter was able to bring you in for inoculation before the disease had reached the terminal phase.”

  Kate tried to sit up in bed, failed. Her eyes swung from the young doctor’s face to a curious object hanging on the wall. At first she took it for a caduceus, symbol of the medical profession, but then she noticed it had one serpent, not two, and no staff. “What’s that thing on the wall?” she demanded.

 

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