Chase the Morning

‘Well, yes! The most ungrateful s.o.b. this side of the sunset; but –’ I brushed that aside. ‘It’s more than that – isn’t it? Her kind; it’s in their nature, right? To love pretty much as it takes them.’

Jyp chewed on nothing a moment, considering. ‘So you do understand. Never would’ve expected it, Steve. You’re full of surprises.’

‘After the castle – yes, I understand. Some of it, anyhow. You told me, didn’t you? About people who move outward, towards the Rim, one way or another. Who change and grow – towards evil, or towards good. And Mall’s one of them. Immortals, I mean. Or what would you call them? Goddesses. Demi-goddesses, anyhow.’

‘Just beginning to be, yeah. You don’t often see it, that fit coming on her. Guess it’s got to be there under the surface all the time, though; what makes her such a hell-fighter. Then something wakes it up, and – whizbang! Though, jehosaphat! I tell you straight, I never saw her like last night before, never quite, and for whole minutes at a time. That’s a big step she took. Some day, maybe, a long time from now, that’ll break through forever, and in the end she’ll just slough off the surface like ragged ol’ slops and blaze pure. But till then she’s got her feelings and her weaknesses like the rest of us – maybe more so. When it passes, then she’s at her weakest, all over. Then she really backslides. She needs …’ He frowned. ‘I don’t know. Love, comfort. A lot of it. She reaches out where she can.’ He considered me again for a moment, ‘Not still mad?’

I sighed. ‘No. Maybe not. It’s just … well, the ancient Greeks – with all those randy gods and goddesses around …’

‘Yeah?’

‘No wonder they turned out philosophical, that’s all.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’ve been there. Believe me!’

But he didn’t elaborate. It was my turn to weigh him up. ‘How about you, Jyp? You on your way to becoming a god, too?

‘Me?’ I expected him to laugh again, but he looked mildly appalled at the prospect, like the office junior offered a vice-presidency. ‘No! I’m barely past my first century yet. Got a long way to go – if I want to. But I doubt I ever will. Guess I’ll just go on going around in circles, long as I’m spared – but at least they won’t be ever-decreasing ones. Keep moving, keep living, keep the blood flowing and the vices polished up till one day the meter runs out – that’s how most of us keep going. But some, some with a real passion, a real spirit, they start losing the taste for anything else. They narrow down, they fine out, they grind themselves down to needle points. More and more they become that passion; you can see it in ’em.’

‘Like Hands!’

‘Sure, like Israel Hands. If he lived long enough and he’d half a brain he’d burn right down to a mind of fire and sparks and flying iron. He’d maybe become somebody’s gun-god, somewhere in time, and be whistled up at their ceremonials to cast new cannon, or have gunners sacrifice to him for better aim. Maybe when the storms go trampling ‘cross the skies men somewhere say to their children “Hark! There’s ol’ Israel’s cannons, scaring up the stars!”’ We chuckled, though I still tasted bitter bile. ‘But Mall now,’ he mused. ‘She’s harder to nail. Justice, that’s a part of her passion; but so’s a good fight, and music. And a kind of wisdom, insight, when she’s least troubled …’

I nodded, thinking back to that starry night by the wheel, when she’d drawn my life out of me as few others could have. He pressed on.

‘It’s mostly the ones like that who make it, they say. Who reach the Rim, cross it maybe – who knows? – and come back transfigured. Come back somewhere, anyhow; time means less, the further Rimward you get. Maybe she already has come back. Maybe it’s Minerva we’re shipped with, Steve boy; or Diana. Or some hunting goddess of our first forefathers, squatting in caves among the Great Ice. Or some power only the future’ll know, when all those clever little boxes of yours have crumbled back to the silica beaches they came from. I don’t know. Nobody does. But it sure can happen.’

It was a sobering thought; and when Mall came back from the pool a little later I was ready to look at her with new eyes. But she had never seemed more ordinary, pale even, with her curls plastered damp around her face, rawboned and ungainly instead of sleekly graceful. She looked like a autumn wood wind-stripped of its leaves, and she avoided meeting my glance – or, I noticed, Clare’s. It came to me then that maybe last night had put her through an experience more shattering than any of ours. ‘Bide but ten minutes idling!’ she announced flatly. ‘Then up straitly and to the ship!’ A chorus of groans and complaints arose, but she rounded on us stridently. ‘You witless pack of puling whipjacks! D’you fancy another Bedlam night i’the woods, then? We’ll scarce be to the beach by sunset!’