R f nelson, p.7
R. F. Nelson, page 7
“Who… who are you?” stammered Octavian.
It was the white-beard who spoke, in a deep commanding voice. “We are the ruling deities of Egypt, oldest and most terrible of all the gods. We are Isis, Osiris and Horus, rulers of the Land of the Dead.”
“But what do you want… from me?”
“Your sword,” said the white-beard.
When Octavian hesitated, the winged naked man stepped forward and snatched it from his hand, saying, “We need it!”
With a rush of wings the three were airborne.
“What for?” Octavian shouted up to them.
“A gift to Cleopatra Ptolemy, Empress of The World,” called down the naked man. Octavian’s sword, in the stranger’s hand, flashed in the sunlight.
So high above that she might be mistaken for one of the gulls, Kate Blake glided in slow spirals, watching but not knowing how to intervene.
Kate was an experienced time-voyager; she knew how to measure her journeys down to the minute or, if need be, to the second. Thus there could be no mistake. The unfamiliar vista that spread out before her startled gaze was London in 1791, and this should have been her own pretty house at 13 Hercules Buildings.
Instead she saw what appeared to be a small café or tea room, quite attractive really, in a half-timber style that suggested Tudor. The sign which hung above the door, swinging slightly in the wind, was lettered in Greek characters.
William had taught her a little Greek but not enough, it would seem, to read the sign.
It was midafternoon and the café appeared to be open. She gathered her courage and pushed open the front door, noting as she passed a carving in the face of the door that seemed to portray the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. Yes, people were eating and drinking at the tables here in the somewhat dim interior. The murmur of conversation, the clink of dishes and silverware, the occasional laughter; all were exactly what one would expect in a small suburban tearoom, but then she began to notice the things that were not as they should be.
First, the costumes of the customers were unlike anything she had ever seen in any of the time periods she had visited. Both women and men wore long flowing garments of some heavy but silklike material. They could have been Arabs, except that they were bareheaded and the cloth in their robes was much more finely woven than any Arab material. Some of the customers glanced at Kate with curiosity; undoubtedly her costume appeared as strange to them as theirs did to her.
Second, there was a soft music playing in the room whose source she could not at first locate. The timbres of the music were harsh and the rhythms complex and percussive, not at all proper British tea room music, even played, as it was, softly enough not to disturb conversation. But where did this music come from? She could see no musicians. Then a shock. The music was coming from a television set mounted high on the wall. No one was watching the TV screen where, in color and three dimensions, nude men and women were dancing. Everyone, it would appear, took this for granted, yet Kate knew there should not be any TV
here. That was an invention of the 20th Century!
Third and most subtly disturbing, there was the language she heard all around her. It was Greek, yet not Greek, so that she could understand no more than a tantilizing word or phrase in all the buzz and hum, yet one word was repeated over and over, as if in echo of what she’d heard at the Battle of Actium.
Isis. Isis. Isis.
The serpentine sibilance of that name hissed at her from every corner of the shadowed dining room, and it took her a moment to realize why.
The name of Isis was being used “in vain”. The name of Isis had taken the place of the various names of Jesus and Jehovah in the unthinking blasphemies of polite conversation. It was then Kate realized that it had not been Mary and Jesus she’d seen carved in the door, but Mother Isis and the infant Horus.
Dazed, Kate opened a door at the rear of the dining room and immerged into…
Her garden!
There were her familiar poplar trees, there the tangled unpruned grape vines, all in their proper places, except that now they formed a backdrop for a cluster of outdoor tables where strange robed figures spoke some dialect of Greek never heard before and said “Isis” all the time. She was outraged. What were these strangers doing in her garden?
Outrage quickly gave way to horror as she realized it was she who was the stranger. William had made good his threat; he and Urizen had made a world in which Kate Blake had never been born.
She fell into a chair at one of the tables and sat staring at her grape vines until a waiter came walking quickly to her and spoke to her with concern in his voice.
She forced a smile and, seeing that he was carrying a menu, reached out for it. . He hesitated, then handed it to her.
She smiled at him again, and he left her to make her selection. Opening the menu she found, without surprise, that it was written in Greek characters and she could not understand a word.
A large jet airliner passed overhead, but Kate was the only one in the garden who looked up at it. Jet airliners were another thing that should not have appeared until the 20th Century, but of course these Londoners did not know that.
Over the top of the menu, Kate studied the people around her.
Some of the women wore crosses… but no, not crosses. Crosses with loops on top. The Ankh, Egyptian hieroglyph for Eternal Life.
The waiter returned; Kate ordered by pointing her finger at one of the items on the menu. She had no idea what she was going to get.
As she waited for her lunch, she puzzled over all she had seen since arriving in 1791, and a pattern began to emerge. This was what England had become as a result of Cleopatra’s victory.
The Roman Empire had been ruled from Egyptian Alexandria, seat of learning and science, instead of from Rome, seat of mere military power.
That explained the advanced technology! Perhaps there had been no decline and fall of the Roman Empire, no Dark Ages.
And that explained the carving of Isis and Horus, the Ankh pendants around the women’s necks, the casual whispers of the name of Isis. As Alexandria had triumphed over Rome, so had The Great Mother Isis triumphed over The Great Father Jehovah.
And Greek, not Latin, had become the mother of modern languages.
This Greeklike tongue she heard around her… those who spoke it must believe they were speaking English!
But of course England must now have another name. Kate wondered what it was.
And her garden—she glanced around at it, on the verge of tears—her garden had developed the same as if nothing had ever been changed. Her garden took no part in politics.
The waiter arrived with her food.
It was some sort of meat stew. When she tasted it, she found it overly spicy, but ate it anyway. She had become, without noticing it, very hungry indeed. The silverware, in an ornate floral pattern, consisted of a knife and a spoon, but no fork. A glance at the other tables informed her there was not a fork to be seen. She wondered, Is the fork a Roman invention?
When the waiter approached her, obviously expecting to present her with the bill, she vanished.
*
Language is the great divider; in every society those who speak the dominant tongue are on top, and those who don’t on the bottom, with social rank in between determined largely by linguistic fluency.
Thus Kate sought out the foreigners, the outcasts, in this changed London. She made her search mostly on foot, using her power to slip out of the timestream only when she felt in some danger. She didn’t like the world outside of time. The herds of ghosts who roamed there seemed greatly multiplied, and their terrible howling had begun to form words. If only they could be silent a moment; perhaps elect a spokesman. Then she’d listen to them and be able to understand what they were so urgently trying to tell her.
At first it puzzled her that the streetplan of London was so little changed. Almost all the main avenues followed exactly the same course they had before the change, though in the sidestreets the changes had been great. Then she remembered that these main avenues followed roads laid out by the ancient Britons, long before the coming of the Romans.
William had taught her the history of her nation, along with all the rest, and in her time-voyaging she’d seen enough to know more than any ordinary historian.
She knew, as ordinary historians did not, that before the invaders had called her city Londinium it had had another name: Golgonooza. She knew, as ordinary historians only suspected, that where the Roman milestone called the London Stone stood against the south wall of St.
Swithin’s on Cannon Street, there had once been a stone of a different sort, where druids stretched out their victims for human sacrifice.
Now, in this changed London, she discovered that St. Swithin’s was gone but the London Stone remained, now set apart in a little park before a temple of Isis. Cannon Street also was still there, as was Cheapside, Gracechurch Street and Fleet Street, though all had new names she could not read. And London Bridge, though it was greatly changed in appearance, still crossed the Thames at exactly the same spot.
So different, yet so much the same.
At first she did not understand why, almost without exception, every one of the churches she remembered had been replaced by a temple of Isis on the exact same site. Then she remembered that these sites had all once been druid holy places: the religion of Isis, like Christianity, had taken care to occupy the locations already made sacred by defeated gods and goddesses, the hubs of the web of magical roads that once radiated from Stonehenge to the opposite side of the globe.
She wandered all day long and at night was given shelter in some sort of woman’s refuge next to the Temple of Isis that stood on the site of Westminster Cathedral. Here she found the foreigners, the outcasts, the poor people she sought, lying in fourdecker cots arranged in long straight tiers. Here she ate, surrounded by people of all races and languages and costumes and ages, women with only one thing in common, their poverty.
The shaven-headed nuns of Isis who served the food asked Kate questions, but were not surprised when she could not reply, nor did they seem to find anything remarkable about Kate’s clothing. That night Kate slept well, in spite of the stench of unwashed bodies and the moans of the sick.
*
Kate was a good student. Sister Boadicea was a good teacher. In a little more than a week the alchemy of translation had begun to take place; when Sister Boadicea spoke in her native tongue, Kate’s mind transformed what she said into something very like the King’s English.
“You have done well in your lessons,” said Sister Boadicea, speaking slowly and carefully.
Kate struggled with the words. “Thank… thank you, Sister.” There were sounds in the language she could not form.
“Better than the others, my dear.”
“Thank you.”
Kate was glad that she had been kept after class to be praised rather than criticized. The Sister’s dignity and shaven head made Kate a little in awe, but both women were young, about the same age. Sister Boadicea, seated behind a massive desk, was smiling up at Kate now as Kate stood before her, trying hard to speak in a way to justify the Sister’s praise.
“May I ask a question, Sister?”
“Of course.”
“What is the name of this city?”
“Golgonooza.”
“Golgonooza? That’s a very old name.”
The Sister was surprised. “How do you know that, my dear?”
“I learned it… at home.”
Sister Boadicea did not ask where home was, only said quietly, “You are right. When the Alexandrian Empire expanded to include our nation, the soldiers brought with them scholars from the Alexandrian Library. Thanks to these devoted servants of Isis, nearly all the old place names were preserved as they were when this was a land of druids and superstition.”
Kate asked, still struggling with the language, “And what is the name of this nation?”
“Albion, of course. How strange that you know the name of Golgonooza and not the name of Albion. They must have strange schools in your land.”
“I never went to school. My husband taught me.”
“As best he could, I suppose. By Isis, I should get over being surprised at the odd things in the heads of those who come to Albion.” She toyed with the Ankh that hung from a leather thong from her neck. “Where is your husband now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t think so.” Kate thought, It is I who am dead, here in this world where I never was born.
“Did he abandon you?”
Kate could not answer. The image of William as he had once been, the good William, forbade it.
The Sister sighed and nodded. “I understand.”
But, thought Kate, how could she understand? How could anyone but a Zoa understand? Still, Sister Boadicea was so gentle, so wise, perhaps…
Kate began, “Sister, I must tell you. I do not come from Albion. In this world I never was born.”
“I know, my dear. None of us was born in this world. The body is born in this world. The Ka is born in this world. But the Ba is immortal. Never being born, the Ba cannot die.” The Sister was smiling sweetly. “The Ba is your true self. It is through your Ba that you are united with Isis.”
Kate was speechless. The Sister would take anything that was said to her and translate it into Bas and Kas and Mother Isis; Kate could see that now.
Sister Boadicea went on, “You cannot know how pleased I am to hear you speak in a spiritual way. You must realize, since you’re obviously a bright woman, that we teach you how to speak, not as an end in itself, but so that you may learn and one day speak the truths of our faith, that we teach you to read and write Albion so you may read the holy scrolls of Isis and write them on your heart.”
“No, Sister…”
“Many learn Albion, but few Isis. Perhaps you are one of that few. I am a nun in the order of the Daughters of Albion, as are all the Sisters here.
We are a teaching order, and in our teaching we seek not to press something in from outside, but, like the saintly Socrates, to draw something out from the inside. We seek to awaken the slumbering Ba, to turn it to its Maker. In you I believe I sense a Ba that slumbers lightly. If you will let us help you, I think you can become what I am, one of the loving hands of the Goddess.” She rose to her feet, leaned forward so her loose linen robe brushed the desktop. “The poor and ignorant have need of us, Kate. We can help them. As Isis tenderly raised her husband Osiris from the dead, we can here resurrect those who are dead to hope, who without us would die in the streets of Golgonooza, hungry, sick, helpless.”
Kate took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I cannot be one of you.”
“Oh Kate, once I said those same words, but now look at me!” Her words were urgent, serious. “When the Goddess created us, she…”
“When God created us,” Kate corrected. There was a moment of shocked silence, then Sister Boadicea sat down abruptly, saying, “I see.”
“You see what?” Kate already regretted offending the Sister.
“I see, Kate, that you have come from the land of dark superstition, where the red men worship the Sun King.”
“No, that’s not so.”
“No need to deny it, girl. You come from Oothoon.” It was some time before Kate realized that Oothoon was what, in the world before the change, had been called The American Colonies.
And the following day, from one of the other “students”, Kate learned that Oothoon and Albion were on the brink of war.
“Germs,” the old woman muttered, peering up at Kate with bloodshot eyes.
“Germs?” Kate knew the Albion word, but was uncertain she’d heard it correctly. She’d been with the Daughters of Albion for two months now and had learned to understand the language well, but she still sometimes made mistakes.
The old women took a sip of coffee from a cracked cup, nodding slowly.
“You Sisters shouldn’t bother your heads about things like that.”
“I’m not one of the Sisters. I help out around here to pay for my room and board, but I will never be one of the Sisters.”
The old woman sighed, squinting in the glare of the unshaded electric light bulbs that lit the now almost deserted mess hall. “All the same, I shouldn’t say nothing. It’s supposed to be a secret.”
Kate was turning to leave when the old woman added, “But it’s a crime what they’re doing, a crime and a sin. Isis don’t like things like that.”
Kate had chores to do. “What are you talking about, good mother?”
The old woman leaned forward and said in a low, confidential tone,
“There’s an army base just a bit south of here. I’ve had a job there until last week, cleaning up around the offices, but when I found out what they were doing, I quit.”
“What they were doing?” Kate prompted.
“They’re setting up huge big rockets, Sister. They’re going to shoot those rockets all the way across the ocean to Oothoon. A surprise attack!”
“But why…”
“Germs!” The rockets will be full of plague germs. As soon as I found out, I quit.”
“And started drinking?” Kate said.
The woman shrugged. “So what if I did? There are some things too awful for a sober mind.”
Kate went directly to the common room, where she thought she might find Sister Boadicea. Kate had formed the habit of talking to Sister Boadicea whenever something upsetting came up.
Sister Boadicea was there, watching television with Sister Gwendolen, Sister Ragan, Sister Sabrina and Sister Gonorill. Kate sat down beside her and said, “Sister Boadicea, I’ve just heard something…”
Sister Boadicea, finger to lips, cut in, “Ssh. The King is speaking.”
Kate glanced at the television screen. There was a face she’d come to recognize as that of King Caesarean, direct descendant of the son of Cleopatra Ptolemy and Julius Caesar; the lean sad features and large protuberant nose were unmistakable. The King was saying, “… Oothoon is to Albion a wilful disobedient child, testing its parent to see how far it can go, but…”
