Mort - Death

A dark, stormy night. A coach, horses gone, plunged through the rickety, useless fence and dropped, tumbling, into the gorge below. It didn't even strike an outcrop of rock before it hit the dried river-bed far below and erupted into fragments. Then the oil from the coach-lamps ignited and there was a second explosion, out of which rolled - because there are certain conventions, even in tragedy - a burning wheel.

What was strange to Susan was that she felt nothing. She could think sad thoughts, because in the circumstances they had to be sad. She knew who was in the coach. But it had already happened. There was nothing she could do to stop it, because if she'd stopped it, it wouldn't have happened. And she was here watching it happen. So she hadn't. So it had. She felt the logic of the situation dropping into place like a series of huge leaden slabs.

Perhaps there was somewhere where it hadn't happened. Perhaps the coach had skidded the other way, perhaps there had been a convenient rock, perhaps it hadn't come this way at all, perhaps the coachman had remembered about the sudden curve. But those possibilities could only exist if there was this one.

This wasn't her knowledge. It flowed in from a mind far, far older.

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

She rode Binky into the shadows by the cliff road, and waited. After a minute or two there was a clattering of stones and a horse and rider came up an almost vertical path from the river-bed.

Binky's nostrils flared. Parapsychology has no word for the uneasy feeling you have when you're in the presence of yourself.

Susan watched Death dismount and stand looking down at the river-bed, leaning on his scythe.

She thought: but he could have done something.

Couldn't he?

The figure straightened, but did not turn around.

YES. I COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING.

'How . . . how did you know I was here . . . ?'

Death waved a hand irritably.

I REMEMBER YOU. AND NOW UNDERSTAND THIS: YOUR PARENTS KNEW THINGS MUST HAPPEN. EVERYTHING MUST HAPPEN SOMEWHERE. DO YOU NOT THINK I SPOKE TO THEM OF THIS? BUT I CANNOT GIVE LIFE. I CAN ONLY GRANT . . . EXTENSION. CHANGELESSNESS. ONLY HUMANS CAN GIVE LIFE. AND THEY WANTED TO BE HUMAN, NOT IMMORTAL. IF IT HELPS YOU, THEY DIED INSTANTLY. INSTANTLY.

I've got to ask, Susan thought. I've got to say it. Or I'm not human.

'I could go back and save them . . . ?' Only the faintest tremor suggested that the statement was a question.

SAVE? FOR WHAT? A LIFE THAT HAS RUN OUT? SOME THINGS END. I KNOW THIS. SOMETIMES I HAVE THOUGHT OTHERWISE. BUT . . . WITHOUT DUTY, WHAT AM I? THERE HAS TO BE A LAW.

He climbed into the saddle and, still without turning to face her, spurred Binky out and over the gorge.

***

Soul Music p209