Chase the Morning

Jyp looked blank. ‘Don’t know about that. Sounds like this Darwin, and I was brought up strict. They changed, that’s all I know. Like as not something unhuman crept into that bloodline along the way; maybe it was just their own bad blood showin’ through – and maybe there was something else on that island. Long and the short of it is, Wolves aren’t human. Don’t look quite like any of us. Don’t think like us; surely don’t smell like us! They can’t breed with the line of man any more; only their own foul kind.’

I whistled. ‘They’re a new species? My God, it makes sense. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. A small isolated group, interbreeding freely, swapping genes about – a mutation sticks, and they begin to breed true. It’d explain that foul skin colour, and the size of them. But happening to humans, to men –’ Unheard of, maybe; but now I knew why my skin crawled at the very sight of these things. It was ancestry speaking, warning me off the interloper, the intruder – and more than that. The predator …

‘And my boss thought they were just punks! If you know what those are.’

Jyp blinked. ‘Sure. And I’m not surprised. Like I said back when, it’s amazing how folk only see what they want to see –’ He smiled wryly. ‘Tell you something, Steve. The world’s a lot wider place than most of them ever realize. They cling to what they know, to the firm centre where everything’s dull and deadly and predictable. Where the hours slip by at just sixty seconds to the minute from your cradle to your tombstone – that’s the Core. Out here, out on the Spiral, out toward the Rim. It’s not like that – not always. There’s a whole lot more to this world than just a mudball spinning in emptiness like the wisemen say. It’s adrift, Steve, in Time and in Space as well. And there’s more tides than one that ebb and flow about its shores.’

He lifted his eyes to the dimming sky. ‘So one day, maybe, for everybody, one such tide comes lapping about their feet. And most just look and draw back before more’n their toes gets wet. They look and don’t understand, or won’t; and they turn back into the Core again, forever.’

‘But there’s always a few that don’t?’

‘And they look out upon infinite horizons! Some bow down in fear and slink away from the truth they’ve seen. But others, they take a step forward into the chill wide waters.’ He nodded, to himself, deep in his own inner seeing as he walked. ‘And across them, eventually. From Ports like this one, often enough, where comings and goings over a thousand years and more have tied a knot in Time, to all the corners of the wide world. Lord, lord, how wide!’ He looked up at me suddenly, and I saw his teeth flash in the twilight. You’re a well-learned kind of a man, Steve. Just how many corners d’you think the world has?’

I shrugged. ‘Four, as a figure of speech. But in reality –’ I saw Jyp grin again, but went on and stuck my head in the trap. ‘None, because it’s a sphere. More or less, anyhow.’

Jyp shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Ask the mathematical men. Like I did, when I learned me my spherical navigation. Even stuck deep in the Core they know better than that. A sphere’s a concept, a limiting case; so they don’t say no corners, they say it’s got an infinite number. And Steve, know what? Every which one of those corners is a place. Places that were, that will be, that never were save that the minds of men gave them life. Lurking like shadows cast behind the real places in that reality of yours, shadows of their past, their legends and their lore, of what they might have been and may yet be, touching and mingling with every place at many points. And you can search your life long and never find a trace of them, yet once you learn you may pass between them in the drawing of a breath. But are they the shadows, Steve – or is your reality theirs?’

I stared, speechless, but Jyp went on, talking in a soft sing-song almost to himself, like somebody mulling over something he has known all his life, and still amazed by it. ‘There, west of the sunset, east of the moonrise, there lies the Sargasso Sea and Fiddler’s Green, there’s the Elephant’s Graveyard, there’s El Dorado’s kingdom and the empire of Prester John –’

‘Huy Brazeal?’ I suggested, for that strange cargo came back to mind.

‘Been there; it’s okay, but there’s other places. There’s everywhere. Riches, beauties, dangers – every damn thing within the mind and the memory of men. And more too, probably – only those paths are kind of harder to find.’

But thinking of that cargo had brought other memories, and with them freight of bitter anxiety. ‘And that’s where they’ve taken Clare?’ I caught his arm. ‘Then how the hell can we ever hope to find her again?’

Jyp smiled, a little wryly. ‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Steve.’

I let go of him. Despair trickled down with the last drops of rain. ‘You and your bloody step forward! Damn the day I ever took it!’