R f nelson, p.10
R. F. Nelson, page 10
The doctor reacted with surprising anger. “That’s God!” he snapped.
“God?” said Kate stupidly.
“The Winged Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, God of Oothoon!”
After the doctor had left, Kate fell asleep looking at Quetzalcoatl, thinking, The redmen won the war… thanks to us.
*
The young doctor, whose name was Laughing Bear, became quite friendly with the Blakes during the following week. The three of them often talked together on the sundeck during the afternoons, when the doctor was taking his break.
The hospital, they learned from him, was located in the south of Gallica (or France as the Blakes might have called it) near the Mediterranean Sea, so sunny days were many. They suspected it was their strangeness that drew Laughing Bear to them; the Blakes were the only Whites in the entire institution.
She thought, The redmen must be world rulers now.
William and Kate were feeling much stronger now. They might have asked to leave the hospital, but they hadn’t the slightest idea where they would go. The whole of the past and the whole of the future were open to them, but it seemed somehow easier to lie in the afternoon sun and pass the time in lazy conversation.
The only disturbing factor was the coldness of the other patients.
Perhaps it was skin color, perhaps religion, perhaps politics, but the red-skinned dark-eyed convalescents studied the Blakes from a distance but never spoke to them.
One afternoon, as William and Kate lay in deckchairs clad in bathrobes and sunglasses and Dr. Laughing Bear sat on a stool facing them, William brought the matter up.
“Laughing Bear, can the other patients here speak the language of Albion?”
The doctor smiled, teeth very white against dark skin. “Of course. It’s the only language all the thousand tribes of Oothoon have in common.
Most of us speak two languages: the historic tongue of our province, and Albion.”
“Then why don’t they speak to us?”
The doctor sighed. “How can I explain? Partly it is guilt, if we are speaking honestly. No winner is ever free of guilt. Partly it is resentment.
The older ones remember how it was before the war, when you ruled us with an all-too-heavy hand.” Laughing Bear often addressed the Blakes as if they represented the entire White race.
Kate commented, “Sometimes they seem afraid of us.”
“Afraid?” Laughing Bear nodded soberly. “Yes, some of them are afraid.
You are, to them,” he paused, searching for a word, “holy.”
“Holy?” William was surprised.
The redman nodded, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Our religion teaches us that white is the skin-color of the gods. That is why the redman was so long content to bow under the whiteman’s domination. Our scripture foretold your coming to Oothoon, foretold that we would be your servants for a time, learning from you until we were your equals, then, when you destroyed yourself, the scripture foretold that we would inherit the world. It has all happened as our god Quetzalcoatl promised.” His voice lowered a bit in reverence as he spoke his deity’s name.
“But Laughing Bear,” William persisted, “I know there are not other Whites here, but aren’t there any Whites anywhere else? People of our own kind?”
Laughing Bear shook his head. “Your race is almost extinct. A few survive in the priestly orders. Indeed, their skin color helps them attain high rank there, but of all your millions that once swarmed Albion, Gallica and this whole continent there remain around ten or fifteen individuals at most.
“Perhaps, when you are well, you would like to go and live with them.
They have a little village in the mountains where they keep alive the ancient customs of their nations for the benefit of tourists.”
Kate shuddered, “I don’t know as I fancy that.”
“Then you must study for the Holy Priesthood of the Winged Serpent.”
He seemed pleased and eager to inform them about his religion.
“And there’s no third choice?” Kate asked.
“None.” Kate noticed that the doctor’s voice was deep and calm, like William’s.
“Then we shall study,” William concluded.
Lapsing into English, Kate sat up abruptly and snapped, “We shall not!
You’re a Christian gentleman, Mr. Blake, and don’t you forget it!”
Laughing Bear was startled by the sound of an unfamiliar language and, though he couldn’t understand her words, could easily see that Kate was protesting.
William translated her outburst, but the doctor was still puzzled.
“Christian? Christian? What’s that?”
Of course, Kate thought, in this world there’s no such thing as a Christian. She thought of the church she’d been married in, of the church she’d faithfully attended as a child, and for the first time she realized how utterly alone she was now.
She tried to explain. “Dr. Laughing Bear, there is another world where things turned out differently, where…”
The doctor interrupted. “Impossible! Things could not turn out any other way. All history is a reflection of the will of Quetzalcoatl, all events planned by him from before the beginning of time to beyond the end. He created the world, and he created the redman to rule it, and he wrote our holy scripture to show us our future, to ready us for our role as his chosen people!” At this point Laughing Bear realized he had raised his voice so that some of the patients nearby were looking at him curiously. Speaking more calmly, he added, “But you will learn all this when you study for the priesthood.”
“No thank you just the same,” Kate said firmly. “I think the tourist business sounds more promising.”
The doctor looked at her sadly. “Still clinging to your childish superstitious faith in Isis?”
“We never did believe in Isis,” she told him primly. “Isis isn’t the real God.”
“Of course not,” the redman agreed. “A real god is someone you can see and hear and touch, like Quetzalcoatl; someone who can stand at the head of all nations and give personal guidance to his loyal worshippers.” He was becoming excited again. ” Someone you can see on TV!”
William and Kate looked at Dr. Laughing Bear in astonishment as Kate echoed his words. “Someone you can see on TV?”
“Of course.” The doctor was quite smug now. “Come, I’ll show you. We have video tapes of Quetzalcoatl’s weekly television broadcast here. I’ll play one for you on the set in the game room.”
He led the Blakes off the sundeck and down a long deserted hallway.
A terrible suspicion was forming in Kate’s mind. “Tell me, Doctor. Is Quetzalcoatl a white man?”
“Just as was foretold!” said Laughing Bear.
“And,” she continued, “does he have long white hair and a long white beard?”
“Yes, he does, just as our scriptures describe.”
They entered the game room. There was nobody there; on fine days like this everyone ambulatory was always out on the sun deck. Dr. Laughing Bear selected a tape from the library cabinet and inserted it in the read unit.
The television screen high on the wall hummed, crackled; a colored image began to form, the face of a man.
“You see?” Dr. Laughing Bear said triumphantly.
“Blessings on you all, my children,” said Urizen’s recorded image.
*
“Wake up, O immortal god of wine,” Cleopatra called from the entrance to Antony’s tent.
Antony groaned but did not reply.
She sniffed. The air in the tent was heavy with the smell of stale spilled wine and vomit. “Wake up, Antony dear. It’s battle time.”
He rolled over but his eyes remained closed, his nude hairy body more that of an aging wrestler than of a potential emperor of the known world.
“Leave me alone, bitch,” he mumbled thickly.
“The enemy is waiting, Antony dear.”
“Let ‘um wait.”
“Someone has to lead your fleet into battle, Antony dear.”
“You lead it.”
“Antony!” she shouted, but he had slipped once more into unconciousness.
Angrily she turned on her heel and, muttering obscenities, walked quickly away from the tent. Antony’s second-in-command snapped to attention, thumped his breast with his fist, and gave her a straight-arm salute. Handsome young man, she thought, looking him over from sandaled feet to helmeted head. Perhaps …
The soldier’s crisp voice interrupted her speculations. “Is the general awake, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, more or less.”
“Does he have any orders for us, Your Majesty?”
“Yes… as a matter of fact.” A faint ironic smile appeared on her lips.
“He ordered that he be carried on board his flagship.”
“Carried, Your Majesty?”
“You heard me, soldier. Then, he told me to tell you, you are to sail out and engage the enemy.” That would be a sobering experience, she thought maliciously, to wake up in the middle of a sea battle… with a hangover.
“Is that all, Your Majesty?” The soldier had turned rather pale.
“One thing more. When I asked him who was to lead the fleet into battle, he confidently placed the responsibility in my hands.”
“But…”
“But I’m a mere woman? My own Egyptian soldiers would not question that, but you Romans with your blustering male pride… very well. I will give the commands, but as far as the troops are concerned, it will be Antony who has spoken the words you pass on. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Dismissed!”
He again thumped his breastplate, gave her a straight-arm salute, and then hurried off to obey her orders.
She continued through the camp, so deep in thought she hardly saw the soldiers who leaped to attention and saluted her. She squinted at the sky.
It was a beautiful clear morning, a fine day for a battle. Octavian’s fleet, she knew, was waiting out beyond the mouth of the channel. His ships were lighter, faster and more maneuverable than hers, his men better trained, the cream of the Roman legions. She had Antony’s Romans, but her forces were fleshed out with slaves and freedmen, Egyptian palace guards, the troops of various allied minor kings, and a scraggly mob of local peasants pressed into service. There was, it seemed to her, only one way she could win. She must at all costs avoid hand-to-hand combat, where Octavian’s legionaries would butcher her irregulars, and instead ram his fleet head-on when, as it always did, the wind picked up around noon, blowing his ships so they’d bunch up and show their sides to her.
Her stronger heavier ships would smash his light ones to splinters!
The camp was laid out in a perfect square, Antony’s tent exactly at the center where the two roads crossed at right angles. Her own camp, somewhat smaller, was a little apart, with walls and embankments and ditches of its own. To reach it, she had to pass briefly through a grove of trees that hid her from the view of the sentries on either wall.
It was here she had her vision.
Suddenly, so suddenly she jumped back with a gasp, there appeared a man and a woman floating through the air. The man was stocky, red-haired and wore a short tunic. The woman was slender with curly light-brown hair and a long white robe.
Kate spoke first, raising her hand so her long sleeve hung down like a wing. “Cleopatra Ptolemy!” Her Greek had an accent Cleopatra had never heard before.
“We bring you a message,” boomed William. His Greek was better.
“From whom?” Cleopatra demanded, unafraid.
“From the gods!” William answered.
The queen drew herself up proudly. “There are no gods, unless they are the gods within us. All others are theater.”
He said uncertainly, “But you believe yourself to be the goddess Isis…”
Cleopatra replied coldly, “I do not believe, I know it! Religion’s too important to rest on belief!”
“But look!” The man sounded desperate. “We’re flying!”
“Mirrors! Wires! In Alexandria we have magicians who can make an elephant seem to fly.” Her glance was flicking nervously around, though her voice still showed no trace of fear. Was this a trap? Had Octavian sent assassins? “Speak and be gone! I have men to kill today.”
“I can’t…” He was flustered, frustrated.
The woman spoke to him in some unknown language. “Yes, Kate,” he answered gently.
“Well?” prompted the queen.
He said haltingly, “We are your friends. We’ve come to warn you.”
“Warn me?” Her tone was almost pitying.
“The spirits of the dead are gathering, my queen.” His voice was deep and sombre, the voice of a singer, a poet. “They want you to rule the Western Land, to rule Amenti, the Kingdom of the Dead.”
Still she answered mockingly, “And you, I suppose, have come to offer me a crown?”
“Not a crown, my queen. A sword. And not now but later today, when the battle begins. I will come flying to you over the waves, and with me will be a woman in red robes and a man with a white beard. The man will offer you a sword, saying it is the sword of Octavian. But it is not! It is the sword of the Land of the Dead, and if you take it you will lead no more living men into battle, but only spectres. Do not take that sword, if you love life, but flee.”
“Flee from a battle I expect to win? Impossible!”
“Then stay and die.”
Cleopatra laughed outright. “It was not the gods or the spirits of the dead who sent you, but that sick weakling Octavian! If you come from the dead, give me proof of it!”
Kate took Cleopatra’s right wrist and William the left, quickly, giving the queen no chance to straggle. “This is the proof,” said William.
In the place outside of time Cleopatra saw the swirling, clouds of moaning spirits, the images of past and future that appeared and faded, and the swiftly changing graygreen light that is seen more with the mind than with the eyes. She screamed as she fell through the nothingness, clutched at the wrists that held her wrists, and, at last, believed.
Antony’s second-in-command was supervising the loading of the ships when he turned and saw Queen Cleopatra running toward him. He was surprised. Cleopatra never ran, she strode, with queenly dignity, yet here she was, pale, panting, with her hair blowing in wild disarray.
He saluted, pretending not to notice. “Antony is safely on board, Your Majesty.”
Gasping for air, she commanded, “Load… the sails and the rigging.”
“But we have no need” for sails in battle, only oars!”
“Fool!” she screeched. “We make ready not to fight, but to flee.”
When the demon came to offer her the sword, she knew she would refuse it. What she did not know was that this refusal would change the course of history, swing it back to what it would have been if the sword had never been offered to her.
*
“We threw a scare into her, didn’t we?” laughed Kate, as she and William drifted through the place outside of time. She could see the wave of change rushing on into the future, making everything once again “the way it ought to be.”
As the wave moved onward, the clouds of ghosts faded, except for one who came toward them. It was William’s brother Robert.
“Robert,” William called out, “What’s happening to all the spirits?
There used to be clouds of them around. I saw them when Kate and I came back from that future where the redmen ruled the world. What’s become of them now?”
“They are being born,” answered the transparent Robert.
“But why couldn’t they be born before?” he demanded.
“The world has changed,” the spirit said sadly. “The bodies meant for them were not brought into being.”
She protested, “Not the same bodies, perhaps, but there were bodies in the changed world. Who was… wearing them?”
Robert seemed uneasy. There are other spirits, spirits not intended to be human. When Urizen diverts the time stream, these unhuman things seize the opportunity to invade the human universe, to take human form.
Thank God you two were able to return the time stream to its proper channel.”
“So all’s well then?” William said cheerfully.
“There’s still a danger,” Robert warned. “Urizen is a determined man.
He’ll try again to make some world in which he is master, in which he can realize his dreams of of false perfection. Next time he may go further back in time to make his change, draw more of the unhuman beings into the human universe. The other Zoas no longer restrain him or correct his changes. It’s up to you two now.”
“But you’ll help us?” Kate asked hopefully.
“I can do so little,” the spirit said. “I have no physical body. But I can warn you when Urizen makes a change. We know it here before the chain of effects reaches those in the timestream. We can see his changes coming, like a line of falling dominoes.”
“Warn us then, Robert,” said William seriously.
“I will,” said Robert, fading away.
“We’ll do what we can,” Kate promised.
*
Albion was gone, and Oothoon, and Golgonooza. It was 1791 in Lambeth, across the Thames from metropolitan London, the evening of the day Kate had left in search of William. The sky was still clear, so the moon (almost full) and the stars were plainly visible.
Kate stood at her back door and gazed out into her garden. There were the wild untrimmed grapevines, there the poplar trees.
“Even when everything else changed, my garden stayed the same,” she murmured.
William lightly slipped his arm around her shoulders. “There could be other changes, changes that even your garden, though it is uncommonly hardy, could not resist,” he said.
“Don’t say that, Mr. Blake!”
“Why not? It’s the truth.”
She sighed. Of course he was right. The garden seemed so alive, so eternal, so indestructible, but there was an infinite number of ways it could be utterly obliterated. The birds she heard could cease to sing. The fragrance she smelled of plants and flowers could be replaced by poisonous fumes. The cool night breeze could be replaced by the airlessness of outer space. Impulsively she reached out to touch, almost to caress, the moist surface of a grape leaf.
