'No!' he wrote in the margin at one place.
' Good,' at another.
Saul looked up again and frowned as he realized Sean was defacing the
book. Then he noticed Sean's expression, saw its scowling
concentration and his own face relaxed. He watched Sean from under
lowered eyelashes. His feeling for this man of muscle and moods and
unexpectedly soft places had passed affection and now reached the
borders of adulation. He did not know why Sean had placed protecting
wings above him.' nor did he care. But it was good to sit quietly, no
longer reading, and watch the face of this big man who was more than
just a friend.
Alone in the midst of a multitude they sat together. The train snaked
northwards across the grassland, spreading a long trail of silver-grey
smoke behind it and the sun sank exhausted to the earth and bled on to
the clouds. After it was gone the darkness came quickly.
They ate canned meat spread on coarse bread with the blade of a
bayonet. There was no lighting in the compartment, so after they had
eaten they sat together wrapped in their blankets and talked in
darkness. Around them all other conversation died and was replaced by
the sounds of sleep. Sean opened one of the windows and the cold sweet
air cleaned their minds and sharpened them so that they talked in
quietly suppressed excitement.
They talked of men and land and the welding of the two into a nation;
and how that nation should be governed. They spoke a little of war and
much of the peace that would follow it; of the rebuilding of that which
had been destroyed into something stronger.
They saw the bitterness ahead that would flourish like an evil weed
nourished on blood and the corpses of the dead, and they discussed the
means by which it should be rooted out before it strangled the tender
growth of a land that could be great.
They had never spoken like this before. Saul hugged his blankets about
his shoulders and listened to Sean's voice in the darkness. Like most
of his race his perception had been sensitized and sharpened so that he
could pick up a new quality, a new sense of direction in this man.
I have had a hand in this, he thought, with stirring of pride.
He is a bull, a wild bull, charging anything that moves; charging
without purpose, then breaking his run and swinging on to something
new; using his strength to destroy because he had never learned to use
it in any other way; confused and angry, roaring at the barbs in his
shoulders; chasing everything and as a consequence catching nothing.
Perhaps I can help him, show him a purpose and a way out of the
arena.
And so they talked on into the night. The darkness added another
dimension to their existence. Unseen, their physical forms no longer
limited them and it seemed that their minds were freed to move out and
meet in the darkness, to combine into a cushion of words that carried
each idea forward. Until abruptly, the whole delicate pattern was
shattered and lost in the concussion of dynamite and the shriek of
escaping steam, the roar of breaking timber and glass, and the
