R f nelson, p.18
R. F. Nelson, page 18
*
“We will talk again before I leave.”
Reassured by these words, Kate left her sleeping husband and went for a walk.
She moved as if in a dream, and hardly knew where her feet were taking her until she found herself turning off the Strand and heading down Wellington Street toward the Waterloo Bridge.
I’m going to Lambeth, she realized.
She knew she could have stepped out of the timestream and flown there, could have hovered unseen over her beloved garden, that now belonged to someone else, but she did not. She still had the ability to do such things, but did not use it.
But it’s a long walk, she thought as she reached the midpoint of the bridge. Did she really want to see the garden again? Did she even really want to go downtime and see it as it was in earlier, happier times?
She stopped, went to the rail, and gazed down at the brown river.
There were no earlier, happier times. Even poverty-stricken as she was, even with her husband dying, she had never been happier than she was at this moment. And this puzzled her.
Wagons and carriages passed behind her, with a constant rattle, whinny and clop, but she neither saw nor heard them.
William had taught her so much: to read and write, to draw and paint, to speak a little in a half dozen foreign languages. Lately he’d taken her, step by step, through the Bible, helped her to understand deeply all that she had before believed blindly, with faith but without comprehension.
And he’d taught her one more thing… or had she taught it to him?
Acceptance. He’d taught her to accept things.
She smiled down on the slow water.
A few days earlier, she remembered, William had been working in bed, finishing the coloring of an etching of “The Ancient of Days” for a customer, his friend Frederick Tatham. Finally finished, William had all but thrown the etching at Tatham, crying, “There, that will do! I cannot mend it!”
Then he’d looked at her and added, with a new joy in his voice, “Stay, Kate! Keep just as you are! I will draw your portrait, for you have ever been an angel to me.” It had been a good likeness, though he’d drawn it almost without looking at her. What need was there to look at a face he knew better than his own?
She murmured, “He mustn’t wake and find me gone,” turned away from the rail, and quickly made her way back the way she had come.
*
Still smiling, she’d opened the front door, crossed the dark “Exhibition Room”, and entered the bedroom.
That was several minutes ago.
Now she stood motionless and pale, paralyzed by what she saw. Over and over she thought, I know he must die, but not like that.
The smashed engraver’s table. The shredded books. The scattered tools.
The collapsed bed, soaked in blood. The torn and mutilated corpse. The deep claw-scratches in the floor.
“Urizen!”
Urizen had been here, seeking revenge against his father, revenge for having been born!
She spoke softly. “No, not like that.”
At last she moved, but only to spring into the place outside of time and plunge downtime.
Was the corpse still there? The smashed furniture?
Yes.
A little further back then.
Ah, there was Mr. Blake, as yet unharmed, sleeping.
She waited.
Suddenly Urizen appeared in the center of the room, though Kate would never have recognized him if she hadn’t known what happened to humans in the lizard timeline. He was all lizard now, his white beard and hair replaced by green scales, his muscular body distorted, caricatured into a reptilian parody of the man he once had been… but there were traces. There were still traces of the old Urizen… a gesture, a way of holding his head cocked slightly to one side. Without seeing her, he advanced toward the bed.
“Urizen!” she shouted.
Urizen spun to face her, crouching, wary. Did he recognize her?
“Urizen, this is Kate.” Her voice was firm.
The creature hesitated, puzzled, then recognition began to dawn. She thought, The mind is almost gone. But the will, the terrible proud unyielding will was still there, giving a fixed, hard expression to the nonhuman features. He said nothing, not even in the language of the lizards. Had he lost the power of speech?
She went on, speaking as if to a small child. “You don’t want to hurt Mr. Blake, Urizen. It’s me you want. It’s me always said no to you, always took Mr. Blake away from you, always made a ruddy mess of your beautiful plans.”
Urizen stared at her in silence.
“You understand?” she demanded. “It’s me, Kate Blake, you want to kill!”
The lizard seemed to be making a titanic mental effort. He shifted from one clawed foot to the other, shook his massive head with perplexity, sucked in great gasps of breath. Finally his lips parted and, in an agony of concentration, spoke a single English word with a tongue that never was made for human speech.
“Yessssss.”
He drew out the final sibilant in a long whisper that began as a hiss and ended as a sigh, fading away into nothing.
“And so you see…” Kate began.
Urizen lunged.
His talon brushed her arm as she sprang backward, ripping the white cloth of her blouse. In an instant she was clear of him, hurtling downtime through the graygreen world of shifting images in the place outside of time.
She glanced over her shoulder. He was following her, matching her speed. Through the rush of the unreal wind she could hear his hoarse panting.
Ahead a form materialized.
Another Urizen!
She veered off, then glanced back. There were two Urizens now, and as she watched they were joined by a third, all exactly alike, all swiftly pursuing her like a school of sharks.
“How many?” she whispered.
She was Zoa enough to know there was no practical limit to the multiplication of selves, and that she could multiply her self too, by zig-zagging backward and forward in time.
She had visited the twentieth century and read some of the stories about time travel in that curious genre of literature known as science-fiction. So far as she could recall, she’d never seen a story that grasped one simple fact, more fantastic than any of the so-called time paradoxes the science-fiction writers delighted in.
If you can go backward in time, you can meet yourself.
If you can meet yourself once, you can meet yourself twice, three times, a hundred times, a thousand!
She veered, saw herself pass with the gang of Urizens in hot pursuit.
She veered again.
There was three of her.
One of her said, “All of space and time is open to me, past, present and future… including all the other alternate time tracks. I’ll lead Urizen a merry chase… or should I say, we’ll lead Urizen a merry chase!”
*
Kate and William sat in their rocking chairs, gazing into’ the fire in their fireplace. They were young, just beginning. Kate wondered, Will I ever learn to see William’s visions?
Then, in the ruddy glowing coals, something moved.
“Mr. Blake! I see something.”
“Yes, Kate? What is it?”
“It’s… myself… as an old woman. I’m flying.”
“Go on, go on.”
“Something’s following me. A dragon!”
“Yes? Yes?”
“I’m coming closer!”
“Yes, Kate. I see it too.”
“Mr. Blake! Watch out!”
The young Kate and the young William sprang out of the way an instant before the old Kate, panting and pale, burst from the fireplace, rushed by and turned, crying, “Help!”
The young William snatched up a poker, the only weapon available, and struck at the beast. He hurt it. He could see a fleck of blood on its arm.
Then the dragon Urizen swept him to one side with a single sweep of its great claw, sending him crashing against the wall.
As William lay there, half-stunned, he saw—or thought he saw—another Kate spring from the fire, pursued by another dragon, then another Kate, then another dragon.
But here he screamed and closed his eyes.
*
Dr. Laughing Bear frowned as he made his way down the hallway toward the mental ward. Was that the sound of running feet he heard?
Suddenly, up ahead, the swinging doors of the mental ward burst open and a majestic wave of Kates hurtled toward him, and behind that wave came another wave… of demonic green lizards. His eyes saw but his mind would not believe.
He jumped back into a doorway and watched as the running figures passed and passed and kept on passing.
*
Vala, standing on the bridge and looking out over the palace grounds toward Golgonooza, where the statue of Urizen towered on the skyline against the brightening dawn sky, saw a white-clad army surging toward her, and behind that another army of darker figures, strangely inhuman.
“Urizen!” she screamed as she ran toward the throne-room.
“Revolution!”
*
Drunken Antony awoke on board ship.
He felt sick.
He could hear the rowers singing, feel the galley surge. Were they going into battle? He lurched to his feet. Where was he? What was happening?
Oh yes. He knew now. This was the battle tent on the afterdeck of his flagship. He must be going out to fight Octavian!
“Cleo!” he shouted.
If anyone answered, they were drowned out by the singing and the clatter of oars as they rose and fell, rose and fell.
“Cleopatra!” He opened the flap of his tent and looked out.
There was a woman amidships, but it was not Cleopatra. She wore a strange white dress with a torn sleeve and a long skirt of the same material, and on her head was a broad-brimmed hat of straw.
“Where’s Cleopatra?” he demanded.
Kate ignored him.
He looked past her, beyond the prow of his ship.
“By the gods!” he gasped.
A solid wail of ships was bearing down on him, flying the colors of Octavian, his arch enemy, but as the ships closed in he saw the troops on board them were not human.
They were lizards or crocodiles in armor, hundreds of them, waving swords and spears and shields, swishing their tails, opening their fang-lined jaws and shrieking wordlessly.
Antony stared at them stupidly for a moment, then he became aware that,the troops were pouring up from belowdecks on his own ship.
But they were all women!
And they were all exactly alike, all wearing the same outlandish white dresses with ripped sleeves and broad-brimmed straw hats, though the weapons they carried were unlike anything he’d ever seen before.
They were sticks that spouted fire and smoke and made a frightful racket!
“That’s it girls!” shouted one of the Kates.
The lizard Urizens were dying under the hail of gunfire, falling from the decks of the enemy ships into the foaming sea.
Antony shook his aching head and went back to bed.
*
The starships of the Urizens fought with courage; it was not courage but cold calculating intelligence that won wars out between the galaxies, so the starfleet of the Kates pressed on to one victory after another.
*
In the place outside of time, the tension that had been so long in building at last found relief. A rip appeared in empty space. Another. A cloud of white-clad female figures whirled through the rip, mixed with struggling green reptiles. There was something like an infinite sigh, and the vast cone of spacetime began to collapse.
One of the Kates, hiding in her hut in New Lambeth to catch her breath, saw the lines of space around her that had been straight grow curved, saw the walls grow transparent, saw her poplar trees and wild grape vines writhe as if alive as the earth sucked them down.
An Urizen appeared nearby.
She thought, Rintrah!
She launched herself toward the future.
*
A Kate was running; Urizen was close behind, she human and weary, he strong, inhuman and gaining on her.
They ran through the Hall of Windows near the center of Rintrah, the city at the End of Time. She saw, as she passed, that Urizen’s window was complete. It depicted, in a slightly stylized form, an Urizen pursuing a Kate through the Hall of Windows. (It might almost have been a mirror image of what was actually happening.) She went on running.
Here, too, space was beginning to bend.
She came to the entrance to Vala’s Garden.
“Los!” she screamed through the portal. “Luvah! Tharmas! Help me!”
There was no answer.
She heard claws on the stone floor behind her.
She stepped forward as if to enter, then suddenly leaped to one side.
Urizen was too heavy for such rapid changes of direction. He tried to stop himself, his claws wildly flailing, but could not. He, slid past her with an almost-human howl of frustration.
She looked through the doorway, saw Urizen inside, saw Urizen’s face relax, his great jaws open in an idiot smile, like a panting friendly dog.
The other Zoas stepped out from among the dancing trees, coming forward to welcome him.
Los said, loudly enough for Kate to hear, “We’re only dreams and shadows here, brother. Stay with us. Be one of us. It’s better… better than being real.”
The earth shook. The air became suddenly hot around Kate, but beyond the gateway, in the Garden of Vala, nothing was disturbed. Kate thought, wonderingly, The Garden of Vala is the true place outside of time. In the Garden of Vala there was no memory, and thus no past. There was a dream, an endlessly changing but meaningless dream, a beautiful and fascinating dream. What is the perfect trap? A trap that removes the desire of the victim to escape, that makes him forget that escape is possible. Urizen stayed in the garden, smiling, and in another garden another Urizen smiled, and in yet another garden, yet another Urizen smiled, and in an infinite number of Gardens of Vala, an infinite number of Urizens smiled forever as the cone of possible futures slowly, steadily collapsed until one Urizen remained, dreaming in the one remaining timestream.
Los took Urizen’s claw in his hand and they walked slowly among the changing trees and dancing flowers. Los said, “Can you understand what has happened to you?”
Urizen’s reptilian eyes were opaque with incomprehension.
Los said, “You love change, don’t you?”
Urizen’s eyes glowed with a faint light, and the huge gargoyle head nodded.
Los said, “Here there is nothing but change.” He gestured toward the moving forms and colors around them.
Looking around, Urizen felt all his discontent fading. There was so much to see here. It would take an eternity to see it all. For a moment he remembered someone… a woman.
Kate Blake.
And a man. William… he couldn’t remember the last name.
When one awakes, dreams fade quickly. To remember dreams one must write them down as soon as one opens one’s eyes. Few people take the trouble. Is there anything in dreams worth remembering?
Urizen did not think so.
The other Zoas followed Los and Urizen to where a hill was growing.
They stood in a little cluster on the hill and let the ground raise them slowly above the level of the surrounding trees.
Again the image of the woman passed before Urizen’s inner eye. An evil woman. His enemy. Yet he could not remember her face, only her white dress. The faceless Kate in his mind turned in emptiness, and other Kates came to her and they all became one, and the one Kate was swept from Urizen’s mind by the majesty of the panorama that stretched out before him as the hill became a mountain.
*
Outside the entrance to the Garden of Vala Kate felt the temperature rapidly rising. The earth shook again.
The supernova, thought Kate, and leaped downtime as the Earth became a ball of flame in the inferno of the exploding sun. There was nobody in the hall to see the gateway to Vala’s Garden glow red, then white, then soften and melt. There was nobody to glance through the portal and see the undisturbed universe within where, in the distance, the Four Zoas stood on a mountain. A moment later, when metal became liquid, then gas, the portal vanished. No one would ever pass through it again.
In the collapsing cone of time Kate turned in the void, absorbing selves as the many timestreams became one. Golgonooza and London melted together, and New Lambeth joined them. The fabric of time itself was collapsing, slumping, decaying, rotting, putrefying.
Spirits swished past her like thin flames. She glimpsed transparent faces, all smiling with a strange ecstasy… and there were no lizard faces among them.
There came Robert! She stopped him with a shout.
“Robert! What’s happening?”
“Uptime!” Robert was almost incoherent. “A new cone!”
She thought, A new Heaven and a new Earth.
“But the lizard spirits,” said Kate. “Where are they?”
“There was only one, and he’s gone. Urizen was… all of them!”
Robert darted around her and vanished into the future.
*
William, when he awoke from his nap, asked Kate about her ripped blouse, but she pretended she’d caught it on a nail.
At six in the evening William began to sing hymns.
Kate joined in, as did the neighbor lady and a friend of William’s named George Richmond. The woman and Mr. Richmond wept as they sang, but Kate and William were dry-eyed.
The singing continued for several seconds after William fell silent.
*
William Blake was buried in Bunhill Fields on August 17, 1827, near where other members of his family were buried. The service was an orthodox one, performed by a clergyman of the Church of England. The widow, together with three of William’s friends, were the only mourners present.
The clergyman was somewhat scandalized to note that Kate did not give way to tears, but instead consoled the others and generally managed things so that all went off without a hitch.
