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the mirror. But we can't see him."
"Can't we nip ahead and catch up with him?"
"Not a chance. It's like Zeno's paradox. As he says in the inscription,
he'll always be ahead of us. By the time we reach the fraction of a second
he's in, he'll have bounced ahead to another one. And he's not dead, either.
He's in a special kind of suspended animation."
Kate leaned her elbows on the rim of the coffin and gazed up at the
reflection of Urizen. Paradox! Everything about time voyaging was
paradox. For example, was Urizen really in the future? Or was he in the
past? He was certainly in the past in one sense& he had been here, and
gone.
She said, "He's teasing us, putting himself barely out of reach, so we
can see him but are helpless to do anything."
"That's right. He can't be very far ahead. Just far enough so the light
has time to strike his body, pop up to the mirror, and bounce down to our
eyes."
She examined Urizen's bearded features, his muscular naked body.
Urizen held something rectangular in his arms. "What's that he's got
there?"
William answered, "That's the bronze book Urizen has inscribed with
the laws for his perfect world. I'm beginning to understand what he meant
when he said he's put a lock on this universe. Here he is, safe, and out
there his robots are setting everything up for him. He talked about this
many times, when he and I were rulers of Albion."
"But what can we do?"
"Nothing."
"I won't accept that, Mr. Blake. There's always something a person can
do."
Before the flood there was a world of men, and there was land where
there now is water and water where there now is land, and there were
giants, and visitors called the Sons of God who loved and taught the
Daughters of Men, but all that was done then is either forgotten or but a
whisper of legend, bits and threads of truth torn from a vast fabric.
Men fought giant lizards, and finally won.
There was a science, which we now call magic, and a magic we call
science.
There were empires. There was a man who owned the whole world and
everyone and everything in it. There were cities. There was vision. There
was blindness. There were jewels full of power and grains of sand full of
wisdom. If we were to pick up these grains on our seashores and learn to
read them, we could learn secrets that would topple our most certain
knowledge.
Continents sank and continents rose from the sea, and billions of books
were written and billions of songs sung, and billions of battles lost and
won. There was evil and cruelty and glory and pride.
Once or twice, there were moments of real love.
Through it all, Urizen slept in the mountain.
Before that there was only sea, except for one island.
And on that island, the only dry land on the planet, Urizen slept. Under
endless clouds moved sluggish seas where life flickered and glowed and it
was always night, with no moon, no stars, nor any living thing that walks
on land or flies in the air.
A vast and horrible peace.
Water heated to boiling by a sun that can't be seen, and boneless
monsters living in the boiling water, eating invisible energy.
Above the boiling water and fleshy giants, above the slow-moving
clouds of steam, hovered Kate and William Blake, she in torn and tattered
long skirt, clutching the remains of a shawl, he in battered and filthy
knee-breeches.
"Can you see Urizen's mountain?" she asked.
"It's over there, that blackness where none of the creatures are
glowing."
They glided slowly toward the blackness.
Kate screamed
Something had reached up from the water and grabbed her ankle. She
pulled free, with William's help.
Feeling her ankle, she thought, Is that sea slim, or my own blood?
There was no way to be sure.
Her fingers moved along the hot stone, found the crack, straight as a
rulerline. "Here's the door to Urizen's strong-hold."
She followed the crack to a right angle turn. She was sure now. There
are no right angles in nature.
"He's still in there," William said wearily.
"We must go back some more, go downtime a little further, Mr. Blake.
We can't make things as they should be unless we go back to where Urizen
made the first change."
"What if there is no beginning, Kate? What if Urizen was always
there?"
"Don't talk nonsense!" She groped in the hot darkness, found his
sweating hand. "Come along now." Even the place outside of time was
dark.
*
"We've passed it!" Kate could no longer find the crack in the rock.
"Are you sure?" William was beside her, joining in the search.
"It was here. Now it's gone. Let's go uptime a bit."
As soon as they were outside the time stream, they saw the light. It was
like a tiny star at first, then grew larger and brighter. "Here he comes,"
whispered Kate in awe. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]