Chill

12 this time of trial and desperation

The greatest and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost all the rest are either consequent or subservient, is the wresting of it to prove that the kingdom of God, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that, being dead, are to rise again at the last day.

--THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan

The mammoth was still screaming.

Gavin, perched on Mallory's shoulder, hid his head under his wing as Prince Tristen and the angel Samael discussed options in low tones. Gavin would have imagined Tristen ruthless, but the First Mate had made it flatly obvious that he had no intention of slaughtering the infant mammoth unless no other humane option remained.

Unlike Tristen, the basilisk wasn't distressed by the uncertain fate of the mammoth, but rather the recurrence of what was becoming a chronic sense of deja vu. He'd been here before; he had seen this before--the broad strokes, if not the particulars. It shouldn't have left a worm of unease gnawing his complacency, but there was something about the mammoth, in particular, that came with a kaleidoscope of unresolving images.

Gavin had never suffered disorientation or the impermanence of memory before the last few days, and the experience was one he would have gladly forgone. Meat people lived with this all the time. It was no wonder every last one of them was clinically insane.

Mallory withdrew a step or two, head tilted, unwilling to intrude into this argument. Gavin, forcing his filters to process the overload of fragmentary remembrances, pulled his head from under his wing.

Whatever Tristen had just said, Samael protested. 'Sentiment has no place when it comes to the engineering of biospheres.'

Tristen had folded his arms. 'Give the mammoth its chance.'

'Because there's a place for an elephant on a spaceship?'

'The Builders made one,' Tristen said. 'They brought it here and ordained its birth in this time of trial and desperation. Who are we to gainsay their insight?'

Gavin forgave Tristen that last, because he said it with a mocking lilt, but he didn't blame Samael for his flinch, the contraction of all his motes and scraps as if around a blow--or the headshake that followed.

'Besides'--Tristen paused, his hand curling restlessly around the pommel of his sword as if to give the speaking weight--'are we not on Errantry?'

Samael looked away, unable to deny the truth of Tristen's statement. Instead, he fell back on the practical. 'It won't reproduce.'

Tristen's voice went wry, even muffled through Gavin's feathers. 'How do you know? Maybe somewhere out there is its perfect complement, already bumbling through some Heaven on broad calf feet.'

'We must consider lifeboat rules, My Prince. It will die,' Samael said. 'And whatever resources it consumes along the way to starvation may result in the deaths of other life-forms, ones with a better chance of long-term survival. It will starve, and perish in great travail and suffering.'

'That is,' said Tristen, in a voice so strange that Gavin stretched his head forward on its long neck, the better to listen, 'the purpose and privilege of life, my dear Angel of Poison. And as your First Mate, I command you to respect it.'

The angel made a small noise--perhaps of protest, perhaps of acquiescence. Gavin supposed that in the final analysis, the two were not mutually exclusive.

Tristen continued, 'But surely I don't need to remind you of that. The mammoth gets its chance.'

Mallory stepped forward, startling Gavin, who remembered not to clench his talons only when he felt the necromancer wince. Mallory had lived and prospered by staying aloof from conflicts between the powerful and by serving Samael quietly and well, so even Gavin was startled by what was said. 'At the Breaking of the world, Samael, there were creatures such as this brought forth. Some lived and evolved, and some fell to the inevitable. If we could predict which species would survive and flourish, would we not be like unto gods?'

Mallory spoke with the conviction of experience, leading Samael to sigh and let his shoulders drop. 'And its competitors?'

That was the glint of light off a toothy grin. Perhaps Tristen was ruthless after all. 'Then they shall by the hand of God learn to adapt, won't they, angel?'

Mallory tensed beneath Gavin's feet, but Gavin did not need the unconscious warning. Gavin knew Tristen's expression of old: the Conn look of eagles, of certainty and command. They might be wrong, the family. They might even understand, in a sort of hypothetical, abstract fashion, that it was possible for them to be wrong. But neither before Rien nor since had Gavin met one who acted, even occasionally, as if she believed the possibility could apply to her.

It was a failing with which he had a sense he once had understood--in a sort of hypothetical, abstract fashion. As something that was possible. As something that could happen--had happened--to somebody else.

Now, staring through closed eyes at the improbable mammoth, comparing its massive, present reality with the fragmentary oneiric memories that harassed him, he understood much better the hazards of grandiose plans.

But the principles of inertia did not permit what had been set in motion to be casually set aside. Whatever the Builders had intended, they had been earthbound souls, of limited vision. They had been less than what they spawned, constrained by assumptions and fanaticisms, their creativity rooted fast. The Conns had grown beyond their progenitors. And whatever their failings, their delusions, their tendency to overreach, the tragedies they might inflict upon those who looked to them for guidance--

--the Conn family was not earthbound.

It seemed Samael knew the stare as well as he did, because the angel folded his leaf-litter arms over his scarred leaf-litter chest, grimaced, and shook his hair over his eyes. The argument was ended.

Samael said, 'What would you have of us, First Mate?'

Tristen nodded a small acknowledgment and replied, 'Free the mammoth, angel.'

'And once I've freed it, First Mate? What would you have me do with it then?'

Tristen's smile was not promising. But--somewhat to Gavin's regret--Samael turned away before Tristen said whatever was on his lips.

Whatever its earlier panic, the mammoth went very still when the angel crouched beside it and pressed his hands to its trapped ankle. Its trunk snuffled toward him, hesitant, almost thoughtful. For a moment, Tristen thought it might attack--not that he expected any animal, no matter how impressive, to stand a chance against even a diminished angel. But the reaching trunk simply brushed Samael's cheek, snuffed deeply, and stroked his grass-fluff hair aside.

Even the beasts of the holde and Heaven, it seemed, could recognize an angel of the lord.

Samael, however reduced his circumstances, was perfectly competent to infiltrate himself between the beast's foot and the tree roots, and ease the one loose from the other. The foot glided up, Samael stood, and the mammoth backed away, moaning and swaying. The angel regarded it, frowning, wiping his hands on his trousers until the beast whirled and vanished into the leaves and trunks.

Tristen felt Mallory at his elbow, and turned in time to catch the sidelong glance. 'Hope it eats figs,' was all Tristen said.

Mallory winked, surprising him, and Tristen winked back. The necromancer's face lit up around a startled smile. Tristen glanced away, back at the angel, pausing to wonder just for a moment what it was like to be Mallory, with a head even more full of dead people than the Captain--and by choice.

When he was done wondering, he started forward, one hand on Mirth's hilt to keep it from swinging. A sense of praise and excitement filled him; the sword was pleased. I didn't do it for you, he told it, but that didn't seem to affect its happiness.