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!’
Jyp shrugged. ‘Not for me; I’m here because you took it, three times over. And maybe not for you, neither.’ He laid a hard hand on my shoulder. ‘See, Steve, this side of town you soon learn you can’t see the end of everything, where any deed’s going to lead you. But one thing I’ve noticed, and that’s that a whole lot depends on how you first came to take that step. Old Stryge, he says the same, and he’s a real cunning bastard. With me it was slow, step by step you might say, an old shipmate I helped out from time to time, who showed me the ropes as his only way to repay. And me, I’ve done what I’d call all right – slowly. But you now, you just came barrelling in all in a moment, to help a man you didn’t know and to hell with the risk to yourself. That’s what I’d call a long straight step and a clear one, a good deed you shouldn’t repent of, not till you see how it all pans out in the end. I’d have said you’d do right well for yourself from such a beginning, only …’
He hesitated, stopped walking and began to stare around the street, as if looking for someone or searching out his way. But there was only one possible turn-off, on the far side ahead and to the right, and no living thing in sight except a distant dog, yellowish and skinny, probably a stray, that disappeared into some doorway or other. ‘Only?’ I prompted him. ‘Only what?’ But suddenly he set off across the empty road at a great pace, heading for the corner, and I had to trot after him; breathlessly repeating my question, and nudge him hard before he answered, slow and unwilling.
‘Only … it’s with all this reaching out, reaching into the Core. Can’t help wondering if … well, if maybe the step wasn’t all yours, good though it was. If, somehow you mightn’t have been lured in – sucked in, you might say. And that part of it could be bad.’
We walked on in silence. I could hear Jyp breathing fast, and his brow glistened; we were walking quickly, yet I’d seen him less affected by a running fight. Once or twice he would glance back the way we had come. I looked, too, and saw nothing; but his hand was seldom far from his sword hilt. The street we turned into was wide and open, one I vaguely remembered driving down at some time or other. One side of it was still lined with the old warehouses, but the other had been mostly cleared. After a few yards the old imposing wall ended abruptly and barbed-wire fencing took over. Behind it massive corrugated iron sheds had been erected, looking far dirtier and more desolate hunched beneath that bleak sky; here and there a lot stood vacant, overgrown and rubbish-strewn. It was in front of one of these, lying between two of the larger sheds and ending in a high and ancient brick wall, that Jyp stopped. He glanced quickly around, and I saw his eyes widen momentarily. But when I looked I only glimpsed the hindquarters of a dog disappearing hastily around the corner, the same dog probably, nervous of man’s eye as strays tend to be. Jyp seemed edgier than ever; he muttered something, then with sudden furious energy he flung himself at the barbed-wire and shinned straight up it to the top, agile as a monkey. I tried to follow him, impaled my palm on the first strand and dropped back to earth, swearing. Jyp nodded, set foot to one strand, hand to another, and heaved them so far apart I could easily clamber through.