"Of course, she wasn't an old woman anymore. It was strange seeing my old momma a young woman. That didn't make no difference to her, though. She was as holy and righteous and filled with the spirit as when she'd lived on Earth. Why, I tell you, when she preached in church there she had white folks come for miles around to listen to her. Most of them were white trash, but she converted them, and then they got in trouble..."
"You're wandering again, Burton said. "That's enough of your background. Why do you want to go with me?"
"Because you got that boat that can travel faster than a bird."
"But why do you want to go to the end of The River?"
"I would have told you if you hadn't interrupted me, man. You see, my mother being here didn't shake her faith at all. She said that we were here, all of us, because we were sinners on Earth. Some worse than others. This was really Heaven, the outskirts of it anyway. What sweet Jesus wanted was that the real believers should go up The River, the sweet Jordan, and find Him at the end. He was up there, waiting to embrace those who truly believed, those who'd go to the trouble of seeking Him out. So she went.
"She wanted me to come with her, but I was scared. I wasn't sure anyway that she knew what she was talking about. I didn't tell her that. It would've been like hitting her in the face, and nobody has guts enough to do that. Anyway, it wasn't just that that kept me from going with her. I had a mighty sweet man, and he wouldn't go with her. He said he liked things fine as they were. So I let my pussy do the thinking for me, and I stayed with him.
"But things went bad with me and my old man. He started chasing other women, and I got to thinking that maybe this was judgment on me for not obeying my momma. Maybe she was right, maybe Jesus was waiting for the truly faithful. Besides, I really missed my momma even if we do go around and around like wildcats sometimes. So I lived with another man for a while, but he wasn't any better than the first. Then, one night while I was praying, I saw a vision. It was Jesus Himself, sitting on His diamond and pearl throne with the angels singing back of Him, all in a blaze of glorious light. He told me to quit sinning and to follow my mother's footsteps and I'd get to Heaven.
"So I went. And here I am. It's been many years, brother, and I've suffered like one of God's own martyrs. I've gotten bone-weary and flesh-sick, but here I am! Last night I prayed again, and I saw my mother, only for a second, and she told me to come with you. She said you weren't a good man but you weren't bad either. You were in between. But I would be the one to bring you to the light, save you, and we'd go together to Kingdom Come and sweet Jesus would wrap His arms around us and welcome us to the glory throne. Hallelujah!"
"Hallelujah, sister!" Burton said. He was always willing to throw himself into the form of a religion while laughing at its spirit.
"It's a long long trip yet, brother. My back hurts from paddling my canoe against the current, and I hear that it's foggy and cold most of the way from now on and not a living soul to be seen. It'll be very lonely there. That's why I'd like to go with you and your friends."
Burton thought, Why not?
"There's room for just one more," he said. "However, we don't take pacifists since we may have to fight. We don't want any deadweight."
"Don't you worry about me, brother. I can fight like an avenging angel of the Lord for you, if you're on the side of good."
She put her few possessions on the boat a few minutes later. Tom Turpin, the black piano player, was happy to see her at first. Then he found out she'd taken a vow of chastity.
"She's crazy, Captain," he told Burton. "Why'd you take her on? She's got that good-looking body and she'll drive me crazy her not letting me touch her."
"Perhaps she'll talk you into taking the vow, too," Burton said, and he laughed.
Turpin didn't think that was funny.
When the boat pulled out after a four-day, not a two-day, leave as planned, Blessed sang a hymn, then she shouted, "You needed me, brother Burton, to complete your number. You were only eleven and now you're twelve! Twelve's a good, a holy number. The apostles of Jesus were twelve!"
"Yaas," Burton said softly. "And one of them was Judas."
He looked at Ah Qaaq, the ancient Mayan warrior, a pocket-sized Hercules gone to pot. He seldom offered to start a conversation, though he would talk fluently if he was cornered. Nor did he draw back if someone touched him. According to Joe Miller, X, when visiting Clemens, had not wanted to be touched, had, in fact, acted as if Clemens were some sort of leper. Clemens had thought that X, though soliciting the help of the Valleydwellers, felt that he was morally superior and that if one touched him he was somehow fouled.
Neither Ah Qaaq nor Gilgamesh acted as if they must keep others at a proper distance. In fact, the Sumerian insisted on being very close when conversing, almost nose to nose. And he touched the other speaker frequently as if he had to have flesh contact also.
That insistence on closeness could be overcompensation, though. The Ethical might have found out that his recruits had noted his dislike for near proximity and was forcing himself to get close.
Long ago, the agent, Spruce, had said that he and his colleagues loathed violence, that doing it made them feel degraded. But if that were so, they had certainly learned to be violent without showing any repulsion. The agents on both boats had fought as well as the others. And X, as Odysseus and Barry Thorn, had killed enough to satisfy Jack the Ripper.
Possibly, X's avoidance of touch had nothing to do with a personal feeling. It might be that a touch by another human being could leave some sort of psychic print. Perhaps psychic wasn't the right word. The wathans, the auras that all sentient beings radiated, according to X, might take a sort of fingerprint. And this might last for some time. If so, then X would not be able to return to the tower until the "print" had vanished. His colleagues would see it and wonder how he'd gotten it.
Was that speculation too bizarre? All X had to tell his questioners was that he'd been on a mission and had been touched by a Valleydweller.
Ah! But what if X was not supposed to have been in The Valley? What if he had an alibi for his absences but it didn't include a visit to The Valley? Then he could not explain satisfactorily why his wathan bore a stranger's print.
This speculation, though, required that an agent's or Ethical's prints be different from those of resurrectees and instantly recognizable as such.
Burton shook his head. Sometimes, he got almost dizzy •trying to think through these mysteries.
Deciding to abandon the wandering of the mental maze, he went to talk to Gilgamesh. Though the fellow disclaimed any of the adventures attributed to the mythical king of Uruk, he liked to boast of his unrecorded exploits. His black eyes would twinkle, and he would smile when he told his wild tales-. He was like the American frontiersmen, like Mark Twain, he exaggerated to an incredible extent. He knew his listener knew he was lying, but he didn't care. It was all in fun.
The days passed, and the air became colder. The mists hung more heavily, refusing to dissipate until about eleven in the morning. They stopped more frequently to smoke the fish they caught by trolling and to make more acorn bread. Despite the thin sunshine, the grass and the trees were as green as their southern counterparts.
Then the day came when they arrived at the end of the line. There were no more grailstones.
From the north, borne by the cold wind, came a faint rumbling.
They stood on the forward deck, listening to the ominous growling. The now ever-present twilight and the mists seemed to press upon them. Above the soaring black mountain walls the sky was bright, though not nearly as bright as in the southern climes.