There was no answer.

  “Mr. Blake!” she shouted again, at the top of her voice.

  Silence.

  Wrapping the furs around her naked body, she stumbled to the cabin door and looked out.

  There were the poplar trees and the wild grape vines that marked her garden, there, in the distance, wound the familiar river. The long grass was there, and the weeds, and the humming bees, and the occasional fluttering birds. No painter could imagine a more peaceful sunny landscape.

  But where was William?

  She felt the pains coming on again, turned and threw herself on the bed.

  “Mr. Blake!” The pain was bad this time, but the fear was worse. Could she bring little Ore into the world alone, by herself, without aid? What if, at some crucial moment, she fainted? “Mr. Blake!”

  The pains were fading.

  It was cool in the room, but Kate was drenched with sweat. With the back of her wrist she wiped her damp forehead, brushed the unruly hair back out of her eyes.

  “Mr. Blake!” she screamed.

  Then she heard footsteps approaching, a rustling in the high weeds outside the cabin. With a great sigh of relief she closed her eyes and fell back, relaxed, on her fur-covered pillow. ”

  “Thank God you’ve come, Mr. Blake!”

  The footsteps halted in front of the cabin door.

  Kate waited for William to say something, make some excuse for not being there when she needed him.

  “Mr. Blake?” she called uncertainly.

  Why. did he stand there saying nothing? What was wrong?

  She opened her eyes and looked toward the door. A pair of reptilian eyes was watching her… a huge green scaly head was grinning at her, framed in the open doorway.

  “Grooh!”

  The lizard did not reply.

  “You are Grooh, aren’t you?” she asked, sliding back in her bed until her shoulders were against the wall.

  “Yes. I am Grooh.”

  “What… what are you doing here?”

  “I heard you scream. Is the child coming?” His tone was flat, emotionless.

  Why did he want to know that? Was he here… to kill the child?

  “No,” she said.

  “You are lying.”

  There was a long tense silence.

  Then Grooh said, “Do not fear me. I am yours.”

  “What?”

  “I said I was yours, and I am yours.” The lizard hunched over and thrust his snout inside the cabin. “You are not an evil demon to me, as you are to my people. You are a helpless little creature who wants to live and give life, like all other animals. Like me. I have stayed away because the chief commanded it, but I passed close by every day, keeping out of your sight, watching that no harm should come to you.”

  She did not know why, but she believed him instantly. “Grooh, Grooh, you’re right. I was lying. The child is coming. My pains have begun and Mr. Blake is nowhere to be found. Can you help me?”

  Grooh tried to enter the cabin, but quickly gave up. “I can’t get through the door. It’s too low and narrow.”

  Kate felt her contractions beginning again and rolled over with a groan.

  The huge reptile hissed in frustration and tried once more, without success, to thrust himself through the doorway.

  “Grooh!” she cried. The room was spinning. The pain was unbearable.

  She reached out blindly toward him. “Grooh!” she screamed.

  Grooh gripped the sides of the doorway in his powerful front claws, braced his hind legs against the cabin’s stone foundation, and, with a grunt, pulled. There was a long drawn-out creak as the wood bent, then a loud, sharp crack as it broke. A large portion of the front of the house splintered and crumpled as it came loose in his hands.

  A moment later he was at her side, leaning over her.

  Was it his presence, or simply the natural progress of the cycle?

  Whichever it was, the pain was now draining away as she clutched Grooh’s heavy muscular claw in her small sweating hands. “Oh thank you, Grooh. Thank you,” she whispered.

  She looked up, past Grooh’s shoulder, out through the gaping hole in the side of the cabin. There was a dot in the sky, growing larger. “It’s all right now, Grooh. Mr. Blake is coming.”

  It was indeed Mr. Blake. She could see him clearly, clad in his Greek tunic and sandals, his beard and long hair streaming in the wind. Then she frowned, puzzled. William was drawing his shortsword. Why was he doing that?

  Then, in a horrified flash, she understood. “No, Mr. Blake!” she shrieked. “Don’t!”

  With the full force of his flying momentum, William rammed his sword to the hilt into Grooh’s unprotected throat.

  *

  “He was trying to kill you,” William insisted.

  “No, no, he was trying to help me. You have the power of time travel.

  You can go back and undo what you’ve done!” Kate cried.

  William’s jaw was set. “No. It was a trick. He tricked you!” She looked at William with anguished frustration. He won’t admit he made a mistake, she realized. He’ll never admit it. But she needed this man now.

  Whatever he’d done, she needed him.

  “Mr. Blake…” The pain was starting again.

  William, still carrying his blood-wet sword, stepped over the limp tail of Grooh’s corpse and knelt at her bedside.

  “William,” she moaned, eyes closed, and felt his strong arms encircle her. She’d never called him William before.

  The sword, as it turned out, came in handy for cutting the umbilical cord.

  *

  He was a human baby the first day.

  On the second day he began, to change.

  She was startled to feel teeth against her nipple as the baby sucked and, holding him away from her, forced open his tiny mouth.

  Ore had teeth all right, but they were not human teeth. There were too many of them, and they were too small and sharp. Ore began to cry. She put him back on the breast. His teeth didn’t really hurt her, at least not yet.

  She did not mention the teeth to William.

  On the third day Ore hissed at her.

  Still she said nothing to William.

  On the fourth day she caught Ore staring at her intently as he lay bundled up-in his furs in his makeshift crib. She stared back. And she began to understand.

  “Are you Grooh?” she asked the chubby, strangely silent child. A four-day-old baby was not supposed to be able to focus his eyes like that.

  Ore said nothing.

  “Are you Grooh?” she repeated. “Give me some sign.”

  He smiled, ever-so-slightly, and she saw his teeth had grown. They were more reptilian than ever.

  On the fifth day Ore’s skin had taken on a faint tinge of grayish green.

  William said, “Is he sick?”

  Kate said, “It’s just a phase.”

  She laughed in a forced way that made William glance at her with suspicion. Have to be careful, she thought.

  William wouldn’t understand.

  William wasn’t a mother.

  On the sixth day, when the nub of a tail became visible at the base of Ore’s spine, it was no longer possible to know and not to know at the same time.

  William had examined the child while she slept, and she awoke to find him standing at her bedside, a naked Ore in his arms, in the dim misted light of morning. William was gentle; Ore, eyes closed, hissed faintly with contentment. She sat up quickly, trying to meet William’s accusing gaze.

  “It’s not my fault,” she said, her eyes on the nub of a tail.

  “You didn’t tell me. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “At first. Then he got worse.” She reached up. “Give him to me!”

  Half-angrily she took the child and put him to her breast. William watched grimly, hand on swordhandle. Kate thought, Poor little thing.

  Mother will protect you. But the tiny teeth hurt her nipple.

  “We can’t keep him,” William said softly.

  “I won’t let you kill him!” She turned to the wall, shielding Ore with her body, looking at William over her shoulder.

  “He’s not human,” said William.

  “He is! What does that mean, ‘human’? When he gets older he’ll be all right.”

  “Now he’s half human. When he gets older he’ll be all lizard.” Suddenly she hated the calmness, the sweet reasonableness of his voice. It was William who was not human!

  “Leave us alone!” she shouted.

  William sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a warm hand on Kate’s bare back, saying, “I won’t kill him, but… you can’t ask me to accept that thing as my son.”

  “We won’t kill him, but we won’t keep him! What will we do with him then, I’d like to know?”

  William considered her question, brows knit, great eyes full of pain. At last he said, “I want to give him to Urizen.”

  “Give him to Urizen? You’re insane, you are!”

  “He belongs to Urizen.”

  “He belongs to me!”

  “This is Urizen’s universe. Everything in it belongs to Urizen. You belong to Urizen. I belong to Urizen. So Ore belongs to Urizen too.” He reached for the child.

  “No!” She retreated across the fur-strewn bed. “Urizen don’t know how to care for no baby.”

  “Vala does.”

  “Vala! She’s got one of your brats already! You’ve got your bloody nerve… !” She was cornered now, wedged in to the place where the side and rear walls of the room joined.

  “Don’t you see, Kate? If Ore was human we might have had a chance.

  He’s not. He’s a… a monster.”

  “No!”

  “And you and I, we’ll be monsters too. Urizen will be a monster. Vala will be one. We’ve lost, don’t you see? The fight’s over and we’ve lost.” He leaned over and roughly wrenched Ore from her arms. Oh, why did he have to be so much stronger?

  As he stood up she sprang forward and snatched the shortsword from his scabbard. They faced each other in the center of the room, he with the baby, she with the sword. Ore looked first at one, then at the other, eyes glowing with unnatural concentration.

  “Are you going to kill me?” William asked gently. “Are you really going to kill me?”

  Kate hefted the weapon, getting the feel of its weight and balance, silently asking herself, Well, am I?

  They stood motionless for a long time, then Kate said, in an almost inaudible voice, “Not you.”

  “Who then?”

  “Urizen!”

  As she leaped into the place outside of time, William was close behind her, still carrying Ore in his arms.

  *

  There were spirits in the maze of fading, brightening, shifting images, but none of the spirits were human. Lizards! Lizards! Lizards! As she soared uptime they whirled around her in clouds, green and transparent like emeralds, hissing and whispering like waves on an ocean beach. They paid no attention to her, occasionally even passing through her body with a sensation like a cold wind. Was the battle over here too? Had the lizards won, once and for all?

  Ahead she saw the rip in the universe, the gap that led into…

  somewhere else. It had almost completely closed. Here and there the last few humans were still struggling as they were forced through the opening by an overwhelmingly superior reptilian force. Was that Robert, in the claws of a half-dozen opponents? They were too far away to tell for certain.

  The red light was fading as the rip closed, but the new light was greener than the one she remembered, much greener. A reptilian green!

  She changed course, cutting through space as well as time. Spain passed below her, then the Mediterranean. There was Egypt, and there the great gash that marked the Dead Sea. The Himalayan mountains appeared on the eastern horizon.

  Soon she would be able to see Mount Everest.

  She thought, There will be a moment, when Urizen wakes, when he will fade back into common time. He will be there in his white coffin, dazed, vulnerable, with his shields not yet up. At that moment I will strike! Would that bring back the world she knew and longed for? It no longer mattered.

  There was Urizen’s mountain. She circled it, planning.

  The stronghold will be sealed when Urizen awakes, but a little later it will have to open to let him out. I’ll slip in then, go downtime, and be inside when he opens his eyes.

  She headed uptime, rushing through the weeks, the months, the years.

  The stronghold opened. The mouthlike entrance gaped wide. Urizen and Vala emerged. Vala was carrying something, but Kate could not, at this distance, see what it was.

  Before the entrance closed again, Kate had passed through, unseen. She entered the great hall where Urizen’s white coffin lay, now really empty, then, still outside the time stream, she hurtled backwards in time.

  There was a blur of reversed motion. She recognized herself, William, Vala… and Urizen. Urizen alive! Did that mean Kate’s mission would fail?

  No, she decided, just that her intervention had not yet generated a new future.

  Now she saw Urizen in the mirror but not in the coffin.

  She entered the timestream.

  There was an awesome silence in the stronghold. Clouds of dust arose from her feet as she walked quickly across the hall to stand, looking down at the empty coffin, then up at the image of Urizen in the mirror. She thought, Am I too early?

  The image in the mirror moved, ever-so-slightly, under its layers of dust. In the coffin the dust was disturbed. A cloud of dustmotes arose, and they outlined a figure, still invisible, lying there.

  Kate raised the sword. Her hand shook only a little.

  Urizen was transparent, then translucent.

  Kate thought, One second more.

  Urizen was there, breathing gently, and the dust that covered him made him seem hardly human. His eyes were still closed. Hardly human!

  Hardly alive! It would be easy to drive home the blade!

  But the same dust that made Urizen seem less than human also obscured his identity. For one instant Kate hesitated. Was that Urizen lying there? Or William?

  Urizen’s eyes opened.

  Kate stabbed downward.

  The blade shattered.

  “Too late, Mrs. Blake,” Urizen said, smiling.

  *

  Kate had no idea how long she had been sitting on the platform near the foot of the coffin, weeping hysterically. She could hear Urizen’s voice and William’s, speaking to her with concern, but the voices were so similar she could not tell them apart. She could hear Vala’s voice too, and the rustle of Vala’s long robes.

  Vala’s voice was full of pity. “There, there, my dear. There, there. Don’t cry. Everything will be all right.” Kate had never heard Polly Wood’s voice, but she had imagined it many times, sounding just like that.

  “Leave me alone!” Kate screamed.

  “But Kate dear…” Vala’s hand rested on her shoulder. Kate shrugged it off.

  Urizen had been speaking to William while Vala tried to calm her. For a moment Urizen’s words came through clearly. “… amazing woman, William. There was a chink in my armor after all, and she found it. She could have killed me if…” Kate’s consciousness blurred.

  When she looked up, a little later, she saw William handing Ore to Vala, saying, “Take care of him for us.”

  Vala looked down at the half-human infant with a false smile. “Of course. You can come and see him when Kate’s feeling better.”

  “Good of you…” William said.

  “Not at all,” Vala said.

  “Think nothing of it,” Urizen said.

  Urizen and William shook hands.

  Kate sprang up. “No! No! You can’t have him!” She tried to reach Vala, who backed away a few steps, as William and Urizen blocked the way.

  Kate slapped William’s face, kicked Urizen in the shins. They hardly seemed to notice. They were so strong, so hard. When she tried to scratch them with her fingernails, they caught her by the wrists.

  Fragments of words and sentences came to her through the sound of her own shrieking. “… she’s in no condition to…”

  “… of course…”

  “… obviously in no condition…”

  “… rest…”

  “… a long rest…”

  The room was tilting, spinning She thought with determination, I’m not going to faint.

  She fainted.

  *

  The long fever had passed.

  Kate opened her eyes and looked around. She was in the cabin at New Lambeth. Through the doorway she could see a low, slow-moving gray overcast. It was raining, but not very hard. She thought, William had fixed the wall.

  “Mr. Blake?” she called weakly.

  “Yes?” William emerged from the shadows to stand, looking down at her. His face was lined with weariness, and his beard and hair were more gray than red. His fur cloak was wet and filthy.

  “Where is Ore?” she asked him, without emotion.

  “Uptime, with Urizen.”

  “With Vala, you mean.”

  “With Vala.”

  “We must go…” She sat up in bed, but fell back instantly. Her body, it seemed, would not obey her.

  “We will go,” William said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “We’re not ready yet”

  “When I’m well, will we go then?”

  “It isn’t that.” There was something in his tone that alarmed her.

  “What is it then?”

  He smiled faintly, and she saw his teeth, small and sharp, not human.

  “We must wait until we’ve become… like him,” William said. “Like Ore.”

  “You’re changing!” She inched away from him.

  He nodded. “Yes.” The S drew out unnaturally long. He reached out to take her hand.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Look at your own hand, Kate.”

  She looked at her… claw. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  William said gently, “In a little while we’ll all be together, a family.”

  When she did not answer for a long time, William asked, “What are you thinking?”

 

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