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you."
"I am Los," said the first. He kissed her hand.
"You may have seen his picture," said William.
"His picture?" The man did look vaguely familiar.
"In my own century," Los explained, "I use the name Milton. I'm a
poet." He bowed.
"And this is Tharmas," put in Urizen. "In his own century he is the King
of Atlantis."
Tharmas gave her hand a squeeze but did not kiss it, murmuring, with
a thick strange foreign accent, "Charmed, I'm sure."
"And we mustn't forget Luvah," Urizen finished.
Luvah gazed at her but said nothing. She shuddered.
"Luvah is called The Unapproachable," Urizen said. "He is called the
Lord of Hate, the Warmaker, and by science he's made himself
hermaphroditic. In his own century Luvah is ruler of a galactic empire."
Kate took a step backward.
Luvah was a kind of beautiful monster, his thick beard a disturbing
contrast to the rounded feminine curves of his body. He could have been a
bearded lady in some circus sideshow.
Los said seriously, "Mr. and Mrs. Blake, we share with Urizen the rule
of Rintrah, and of the League of the Zoas. Could we speak to you? Alone?"
"He means without me around," Urizen said dryly, then to Los he
added, "These two are my guests, Los. There are certain rules& "
"Rules? How dare you, of all people, speak of rules!" snapped Los.
Tharmas laid a restraining hand on his arm and mumbled something in
an incomprehensible language.
"Urizen& is my friend," said William haltingly.
Kate shot him a disturbed glance.
"You see, Los? They are with me!" Urizen was delighted.
"I only hope that is not true," sighed Los. "The gift of time-voyaging is
given to only a few, and of those few, all are content to enjoy the gift and
not ask for more. All but Urizen. He says it is not enough to travel through
time; one must also change it."
Tharmas frowned.
Luvah stood almost motionless, lips, cheeks and eyelids painted to hide
any trace of tell-tale expression.
William went on, "I don't understand this dispute you have between
you, but I know this& Urizen sought me out and spoke to me, Urizen made
himself my guide and teacher when a guide and teacher was what I sorely
needed."
"Only to recruit you," Los said urgently.
"Only for making you on his side," Tharmas added.
Luvah said nothing.
"It is not our way to impose ourselves and our ideas on people," said
Los. "We wait. When questions are asked, we try to answer."
"Soon you would come to us. We know this," said Tharmas. "No hurry."
Urizen spoke with contempt. "When questions are asked, you have no
answers. Answers come from experience. None of us have enough of that."
Los was about to reply, but William said, with calm determination, "I
see I must choose between you. Very well, good sirs. But I will decide
nothing until I have more information."
"And from whom will you get this information?" demanded Los.
"Urizen," said William.
"No, Mr. Blake& " Kate began, but then she saw the firm line of her
husband's lip, and fell silent.
*
There were no clocks in Rintrah, nor any day or night.
"We tell time by the sun," Urizen explained. William and Kate were
puzzled by this statement until they came to understand that the sun was
undergoing rapid changes as it neared supernova; the only time that
mattered in Rintrah was the time until the end, and that was not
measured in clock ticks, but in subtle shifts in the sun's spectrum.
But because they could not read these shifts, the Blakes soon lost all
sense of time while urbane Urizen patiently imparted to them the lore of
Zoas which included a view of history that was full of unsettling
surprises and the art of time-voyaging.
It may have been weeks later, or it may have been months, when Urizen
finally said, "That is all we know. We have come to the edge of our
knowledge."
Kate was disappointed. "Is that all?"
"By no means," said Urizen. "The best is not the known, but the
unknown, and that is what we start on now. Are you ready?"
"I am, for one," said William.
"Perhaps we should check with the other Zoas& " said Kate uncertainly.
They had not seen Los, Tharmas or Luvah since their arrival.
"Nonsense," Urizen snorted. "I know what they'd say without asking
them. They'd say, 'Whatever you plan to do, don't do it!' " He chuckled and
took them by the hands. "Come, my friends. Let's try our wings."
He meant this quite literally. All three were now wearing the broad
white wings the Zoas used in their trips through time. These wings served
to guide them rather than support their weight. The force that propelled
them and held them aloft was the energy of time itself. Urizen had taught
the Blakes how to use their unique time-voyaging talent to tap from the
flow of temporal energy a power that protected them even in the void of
outer space. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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