Deep Time

Awareness and existence are not the straight, well-marked path humans believe they see. No, time is a whirlwind of rainbows. It is a coruscating vortex that never stops. It ripples, forms eddies, and even turns back upon on itself.

Your world view, that of a single, lonely consciousness, travelling inexorably from birth to death, is a fiction. Your finite minds, unable to contemplate the infinite universe about you, created that comfortable deception eons ago. It was necessary, lest you lose what your kind call sanity.

Your soul, that deep kernel of self which the Spirit Above breathed out, in the morning of the world, suspects what your mind denies. That fundamental part of you does begin to know, but the rest never can, until at last you part the Veil and journey on.

I do not suffer the same limitations. My kind know and experience not just time, but Deep Time. We ride its waves and flows, and sometimes even turn and go back. Our existence, our nine Life-Walks, are scattered upon it like seeds before the wind, upon the earth and under the sun.

I am of the Clan of Cat, and called by my kinsmen “Shadow Chaser.” All of us, you of the Clan of Man, and we of the Clan of Cat, and all the other Clans; we together are the Folk. We are the awareness of the universe, the living spark, kindled in the darkness by the Spirit Above.

In my very first Walk, when my spirit awakened in the beginning of my existence, I was the friend of a human man who had no use of his legs. He sat in a cart, whose wheels he grasped in his hands, and in this way he moved about.

I came to him when my original companion took up residence in a dwelling whose owner had no liking for the Clan of Cat, and would not allow me there. I had seen less than one summer, and my Walk nearly ended then and there.

But the Spirit Above was kind. The man who sat in the cart loved me, and thought me handsome, with my broad whiskers and coat of grey and white. He brushed my fur, and told me that I was the light of his existence.

I brought him gifts: the mice and insects I caught. He in his turn would travel in his cart to a place where food might be bought, returning with fragrant salmon, and other good things, with which he rewarded me.

I loved the man who could not walk; it hurt me to see him thus. But I knew that my companionship was the gift he really needed from me, and I gave it gladly.

Sometimes in the evenings, I sang for him, after the way of my kind. I knew he could not understand the songs and tales of the Clan of Cat that I sang, but nonetheless, he seemed to enjoy the sound of my voice. I knew I had the power to make him smile, when nothing else could.

He gave me an amusing name, but it was done in love; he called me “Mister Boogie” in those days, upon the earth and under the sun.

Many summers I rode in his lap and shared his life in great contentment, until age and sickness overtook me, and I ended my Walk.

I made my Journey then, and tarried long upon Avalon’s Sacred Isle, where the Clan of Cat must rest between our lives, and heal our wounds. My wounds, if not of body, then certainly of heart, were many.

If it had been permitted me, I would then and there have parted the Veil and journeyed on, so grievous was my parting from the man who could not walk. To love invites the pain of loss, for that is the way of all life.

But the Spirit Above decreed, for my Clan and my kind, Nine Walks, upon the earth and under the sun. There can be no more, and no less. Therefore, to life I turned once more, with my wounds but barely healed.

I rode the whirlwind tides backward this time, back five thousands of summers. When I awoke once more, and looked about me with a kitten’s bright eyes, I saw a young brown girl in the garb of a slave.

Hebrew she was, and pretty. She had been taken by raiders and sold when only a child. Now, at fourteen summers, she was handmaid to the family of Great Pharaoh, on the banks of Father Nile.

Sarai, for that was her name, was a valued slave, for she played skillfully upon the lute, and the lyre. She made her own songs, about the birds and the river, and the buzz of the insects in the reeds.

Our days were filled with music, and Sarai gave me of what little she herself had to eat. I was content, for she was kind, and the banks of the Nile were a pleasant place for the Clan of Cat. The summers I spent with her were good ones.

But a slave, in that place and time, sees only a short and weary life, and in sickness one night, Sarai ended her one and only Walk, upon the earth and under the sun. She parted the Veil, and journeyed on.

I mourned her for her heart was good, and I made my own Journey soon after, for now I had no friend to care for my needs.

Many times I lived and died, and was born to Walk again. I made great looping arcs across the rainbow lines of time and space.

I was ship’s cat, and lady’s companion, and temple guard. Sometimes I was feral, and other times a pampered member of a loving household. I lived in empires that vanished long ago, and in places yet to be, as I Walked again and again, upon the earth and under the sun.

Such is Shadow Chaser’s place, within the universe the Spirit Above breathed out, in the morning of all things. Never in all of my sojourns did I forget, for even a day, the man who sat in a cart and brushed my fur, and called me “Mister Boogie.”

Then something I had never expected happened: when next I left Avalon’s Isle to live once more, I had no mother. My dim awareness dawned, as a frozen embryo thawed, and was brought slowly back from the brink of death. I floated in a place of artificial fluids and warmth, but no reassuring heartbeat.

I grew, and dreamed, and became stronger, and then one day I emerged into the light.

As my being returned to me, I was nursed, not by the living flesh of a she-cat mother, but by a soft, smooth contrivance, which was nonetheless filled with warm, life-sustaining milk. Hands that felt human held me gently, lovingly, and soft voices spoke.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she? A classic calico,” said the warm contralto voice of a human woman.

“Yes, she is. It’s been near a century since old Aldebaran had a ship’s cat. It will be nice. This was a good idea, Stephanie,” answered a man’s resonant baritone.

“We’ll be active this time for nearly eighteen more years. This little lady can spend most of it with us,” said his pleasant voiced female companion.

I pondered what I’d heard, as I faded into one of the many naps a newborn kit is prone to. It seemed I was to be a “she” this time.

I had been a ship’s cat before; I had crewed the Clipper Southern Cross back from Adelaide, on her record run, when the sailors had named me “Sinclair.” We touched twenty knots a time or two on that trip, and beat the Flying Cloud to San Francisco by seventeen hours.

The ship was awarded a broad ribbon of sky-blue, to fly upon her gaff. I can personally attest that fewer rodents finished the voyage than had begun it, too. That was a good memory, one of my favorites.

But the woman’s voice had said “eighteen years,” and the man had spoken in terms of a century. A century. What manner of ship could remain at sea so long? What port could lie so far away as to require such a voyage?

There would be much to see, when my newborn’s eyes finally opened. One thing was certain: I had ventured further than ever I had before, along the twisted skeins of time and space. I slept then, as a newborn is wont to do.

My eyes did open in their own proper time, and my ability to reason and comprehend grew apace. When I was old enough to wander the ship and overhear more, I learned I was correct in my first supposition: I was now very far indeed, in miles and in years, from the proud Clipper Southern Cross. Unthinkably far had I wandered, this time.

Many thousands of summers, and a physical distance so far as to have no real meaning now separated me from that old South Seas voyage.

What appalling thing, in their reaching, grasping ambition, had the Clan of Man wrought this time? Had they left themselves any way back?

As I listened to conversations and glimpsed pictures, I learned that the Star Clipper Aldebaran was not a ship at all, in the sense of the old tall ship, Southern Cross.

She was a Bussard Ramjet, a starship whose sails were woven of fervent, pulsating energy, like vast butterfly’s wings of bright aurorae. With these she gathered the sparse gasses that lay in the lonely space between the stars, and guided them into the fires at her heart.

Aldebaran was built as a broad, silvery, lacework wheel, a mile or more across, and a living, lambent star burned at her center, the flaring mighty engine that drove her.

She was an exploratory ship of the heavens, meant to reach for the stars, and the grandest thing the Clan of Man had ever built, so far as I could see.

Aldebaran had been underway for almost two centuries of time, as we perceived it from within her. But that time was not true. No indeed.

Most of it had been spent travelling at a fearful speed, so near to that of light itself that thousands of summers had already come and gone, back upon the earth that lay under the sun I knew.

I accepted that, only because I heard my humans speak of it so many times. Otherwise I would have scoffed at such an idea. It was a frightening thing to think upon, and my mind recoiled from it.

Here, even my Clan’s ability to parse the ebb and flow of Deep Time was warped and changed, useless. For the first time in all my Walks, I was lost. Even to the senses of Cat, there was no real where, and no when, that made any sense.

I had no idea how time had passed for me, since last I had lived. Ten thousands of summers? A hundred thousand? Unthinkably more than that? How could one even know, so far from the earth and the sun that shone upon it? Could even the Spirit Above find us now?

Later, I learned that for as long as we flew so appallingly fast, more than a thousand summers would pass by upon the earth, for every single one that we perceived here. No wonder my perception was damaged!

Still, as it has a way of doing, life settled into a routine that lent something close to normalcy, even in these bizarre circumstances. Though I was the only member of my Clan present, I found myself with companions who were pleasant and good. I knew a measure of content, even in this strangest of all my Walks.

We, of the Clan of Cat, must have companions, other souls to be near, and to love. That is how we were created, in the morning of all things. Otherwise, there would have been no point to life.

Stephanie was the human woman who’d held me, when I first awakened. She fed me, cared for me, and nurtured me during the first weeks of this, my newest Walk. She gave me the name “Callie,” which was a shortened form of “Calico,” for my bright and colorful fur.

I liked her immediately and intensely. Soon, I redefined that liking into love. Though there was no real ownership involved, I became what her husband Ronald called “Stephanie’s Cat.” I had no objection to it. I was proud to be whatever they needed me to be.

Ronald too, was a loving and gentle human. He once called himself a “Cat Person” in my hearing. I saw his heart, and there was nothing in him but good. His love for Stephanie formed a glowing bond between them that was clear and obvious, to the eyes of Cat.

Had I been able to use their speech, I would even have been willing to reveal my Clan name, “Shadow Chaser,” to this kind and caring couple. Even the Clan of Man has its shining examples.

Ronald was “Shift Commander” of the Aldebaran; Stephanie held the title of “Flight Engineer”. That is a bit deceptive, however. They were well suited to each other, and worked as a team; their ranks did not translate into any actual command structure.

There were three more mated pairs of human beings aboard, asleep in a deep and deathlike cold. I had seen them, in the part of the ship most shielded from harm, each in a separate sealed chamber. Their faces behind the glass were untroubled, unmoving, as still as death.

These were Aldebaran’s crew, and would be awakened as needed, pair by pair, as my own humans, spent their own time in icy sleep.

The ship needed to be crewed by wakeful human beings for at least twenty years of every hundred she flew. This had already happened for the sleepers, and for my humans, several times. Their whole lives would be spent in this way.

The sleeping couples were very strange, in their almost lifeless frozen slumber. Though they had the appearance of death, I knew they lived. The slow, glacial thread of their thoughts and emotions was hard to discern, but it was there, buried deep down. I could find it, but I doubt Stephanie and Ronald could.

For the eighty years of each century when no human was awake, Aldebaran flew unattended, save by vast machine minds of metal and energy. These were utterly alien to me; if there were thought or feeling there at all, I could not touch it.

The ship was my world, as I grew from infancy to adulthood under the attentive care of Stephanie and Ronald. It was a surreal place, where there was no sun above, and no earth below. Only the companionship of my humans was as it had always been.

My favorite place on Aldebaran was a long, high chamber, located in the heart of what Stephanie called “The Atmosphere Plant.” This space was filled with green and growing things, and a bright light, like a yellow sun, travelled the length of its high roof once each day. There were real, living things there. Bees buzzed about its flowers, and colorful birds fluttered among its dwarfish trees.

I could lie down in this place, upon its sweet grass, and close my eyes. Then I could pretend that we lived somewhere closer to the earth I remembered. A gentle, scented breeze always blew in that chamber; all of the air of the ship was made to pass over the green things, as it was refreshed and made pure.

Here I could feel that I was still Shadow Chaser, once called “Mister Boogie” by my human companion. I could, for a time, forget the black infinity outside Aldebaran’s metal walls. I imagined Stephanie and Ronald in other, better places, and I was always with them.

I spent much time in what I called my “Chamber of Life,” after I was old enough to be given my freedom within the ship. Many times Stephanie would accompany me there; we would play games of chase, and she would talk to me.

I searched for rodents, as I had always done when called “Ships Cat,” but there were none at all.

So far as I could tell, my green chamber was the only living, breathing area there was, within the entire ship. All the rest of Aldebaran was sterile, and empty. It had never lived, and would never do so.

I felt troubled, and lost. Surely the Spirit Above had never meant any Clan of the Folk to venture so far. This was no fitting place for a cat, or for a woman or for a man.

This Void was never meant to be crossed by living beings. Was it even a part of the universe the Spirit Above breathed out? And if not, where then were we?

In all my Walks, I had learned about my surroundings by listening to human beings talk about them. The Clan of Man has never known just how much of their daily speech my kind comprehend.

But this time, what I could learn and know was sharply limited. My kind, the Clan of Cat, simply do not do technology. We have no need of it, and the Spirit Above gave us other gifts, different, and in some ways better than those of Man.

Those gifts, however, did not help me understand words like “trajectory,” or “acceleration,” or “temporal shift.” What were “protons,” and “fusion?” What was a “galaxy,” or a “neutrino?”

Neither could my abilities allow me to communicate with the cold, analytical, machine minds that managed the ship, or ask them questions. These spiritless entities frightened me. In any case, I did learn, but slowly, so slowly.

I felt, for the most part, just terribly gone astray, as I had never been in all of my Walks, here where there was no Sun, and no Earth for it to shine upon.

After what might have been several summers in more normal places, Ronald and Stephanie became troubled as well, though their concerns were different, and little understood by me.

The Aldebaran had been meant to speak to the rest of the Clan of Man, back upon the distant earth, and hear commands from them. This was done by means of a great and intense beam of light, which somehow carried their words.

I learned, from worried conversations, that this light from earth had ceased to be sent. The devices meant to hear the words from home still functioned, as far as my humans could tell, but Earth had stopped talking. It had happened during a complex message, and for no discernable reason.

More troubling still, whatever had happened, had done so millennia, thousands of summers ago, in Earth’s past. Light itself must make a fearfully long journey to catch Aldebaran, as she flew on at her unthinkable speed. Thus any word from home was ages old by the time we received it.

Ronald seemed to believe this meant that the Clan of Man itself was no more, had by some catastrophe ceased to exist.

It took much time, much thought and pondering, for me to put this information together from snatches of overheard conversation. When I comprehended, I was thunderstruck.

If there was no more Clan of Man, then there was no more Earth. If this was so, then the Clan of Cat had vanished as well.

The Folk were no more, upon the earth and under the sun. All had parted the Veil and journeyed on. We were truly alone, at the edge of the universe, and the end of all things.

Then one of the great, cold machine minds that managed the ship broke. It refused to associate with the others of its kind aboard Aldebaran. They, in turn, had “locked it out.” Ronald was of the opinion that it had first managed to damage the ship, somehow.

Did even the Spirit Above still see us? Was there still a Sacred Isle to return to, when my Walk was done? Was oblivion to be my fate? Or would I be just a lost spirit, doomed to wander forever in the infinite Void?

I began to dream of the slave girl Sarai, on the green banks of Father Nile, and also of the man who lived in a cart, long ago when I was grey and white, and rode in his lap.

My humans began to talk then, of whether continuing on with our voyage had any more purpose. They spoke also of “mission termination.” Stephanie sometimes cried in her husband’s arms at night now, as I lay on the foot of their bed.

That decision was taken from their hands in the end; we never knew what actually happened, one night while we slept. Whatever destroyed the Aldebaran did it so quickly and totally there was no way for us to experience it.

There was no sound, not even a flash of light. I suppose we might simply have run into something, some object unseen in the darkness. We were, after all, flying so terribly, appallingly fast.

I hoped the Spirit Above could somehow find Stephanie and Ronald, and embrace their good and loving souls, and the others too, the sleepers I had never met. They had but one Walk, and I knew not where the Journeys of their kind were meant to end.

I was a drifting spirit in the darkness, nameless and disembodied. I cried and called, after the manner of my vanished kind, but there was no one to hear. The currents of Deep Time swept me away, bereft and alone, on their infinite tide.

An age passed, or maybe it was only a few moments. I had no senses that could tell me which. I was lost at the edge of the universe, at the end of time. Hope itself had died.

But long ago, in the morning of all things, The Spirit Above had decreed that all nights must see a dawn, and every darkness end. Thus I did, in time, awake in warm sunlight.

I was lying on sweet green grass. A clear brook chuckled nearby, and birds sang. I saw several glimmering Fey, as they flitted between the trees, like living rainbows with butterfly wings.

I wept in gratitude. My nightmare had ended, though its hurt would likely never be forgotten. I had returned to the Sacred Isle of Avalon, where my Clan and my kind come to rest, between the many lives we live.

The Spirit Above was kind, and could indeed find those lost at the edge of the universe, and in the deeps of time. The strangest of all my Walks had ended, just as all that had gone before.

I silently sent upward my grateful thanks, and also my fervent petition, that Stephanie and Ronald would also find their way, to wherever the good of their kind go, according to the way of the Clan of Man. If any deserved reward, it must be they. I would long mourn for them.

I knew that later there would be things I must do, but for now I rested my weary soul. I knew that my sojourn must be long, for my wounds were many. My memories had sharp edges that tore at my heart; these must be tamed, before I could think of a return to the world of men, upon the earth and under the sun.

One of the Fey now hovered above me, where I lay on the grass. “Thou hast wandered far afield this time, brave Shadow Chaser, of the noble Clan of Cat.” Her voice was a sweet soprano, light and tinkling like the brook. She came near to my face.

“Thou hast only to name thy desire, furred friend,” she said. “It shall be given thee, for thou art a great-heart of thy Clan, and thy name is well known. The Shades themselves, have sent us word of thy coming.”

Now her voice was softer, and her rainbow wings brightened and shimmered, as she fluttered expectantly there.

“I would only rest, for now,” I answered, “and drink of the brook, and lie in the sun. Perhaps a morsel to eat, and then I would sleep on the grass of Sacred Avalon.”

“All shall be granted thee, friend Shadow Chaser,” said the tinkling voice of the Fey. “An’ thou awaken, we shall speak again.”

She flitted away on her errands unknown, but Dryads of the wood soon brought me a bit of savory meat, and the Sprites of the brook fetched me water, in a golden bowl. I gratefully partook of these, and then I slept, on the sweet fragrant grass of Avalon, in that Isle’s warm sun.

All the days are sunny, on Avalon’s Isle of endless summer, and the nights are cool and soft. Slowly I healed there, so slowly, for my soul was grievously wounded.

Love that is deep, also wounds deeply, for that is its price. He, who would know the one, must pay the other.

I willingly paid it, for deeply had I loved my humans, Stephanie and Ronald.

All my needs and wants were cared for by the Fey. The Dryads sang their songs of green and growing things for me, and the Little Folk brought whatever I asked.

The wrinkled old Gnomes offered me their conversation, and the wisdom of their kin, and birds of every kind came to gift me with their music.

When called upon, I sang the song of my Walk just finished, with all of its sorrows and joys, its loves and its losses. I knew my song would be remembered by the Shades who watched over this place of peace. Every life that is lived, upon the earth and under the sun, is given a song in Avalon, and they keep them all in remembrance.

I rested many, many days, but at last I began to think of turning to life once more.

One sparkling morning, when I was strong enough, the Fey came for me. One of them, like a living star with gossamer wings, spoke thus: “Art thou sufficiently recovered, brave Shadow Chaser, great-heart of the Clan of Cat?”

“I am,” I said.

“Thy Lives are eight, furred friend; The Spirit Above granted thee nine. A single Walk doth remain. Art thou now ready to live again, upon the earth and under the sun? Art thou willing?”

“I am ready, and I am willing. I will go and live once more, upon the earth and under the sun.” I solemnly replied, and she laughed with joy, in her high, tinkling trill.

“Tis good to hear thee speak in such a wise again, brave one. Thou wert weak when thou came to us. We feared for thee.” At this the others of her kind brightened and fluttered about her in agreement.

“The Shades have spoken of thee, Shadow Chaser. They have decreed for thee a boon. For this last of thy Walks, upon the earth and under the sun, thou art granted choice.”

“How can this be?” I asked. “Never was it so before.”

“It is done but seldom, for those worthy of honor especial, friend Shadow Chaser,” laughed she, and bobbed and sparkled with pleasure.

“Thy heart and soul are known in Avalon,” she joyfully pealed. “Thy fondest desire is seen and bestowed upon thee. It is done already!”

And, as I had so many times before, I faded into dreamless, timeless sleep. Soon I would live again.

I was born to a feral mother, a she-cat black as night itself. I was her only kit, and she nursed me in a human’s storage shed, left open by a kindly soul. I knew myself as female again, with fur of many-hued tortoiseshell.

My kitten-hood was unremarkable: I grew and strengthened, and was led out by my mother, into the sun. There I learned once more the lessons of my kind, of bird, and mouse, and fearsome dog.

When I had lived ten weeks of my ninth and final Walk, my mother went out one day to hunt, and did not return. I was never to know what had taken her. It was often so with my Clan and my kind, and I honored her, for honor she deserved.

Left alone, I wandered and became disoriented. Soon though, I came to a house, a human dwelling that was sharp in my memory. I knew then that the Fey had spoken truth; I knew what gift the Shades of Avalon had given.

I sat upon the walk with pricked ears and called, after the manner of my kind. Soon the door opened, and a well-remembered face looked out.

The man who sat in the cart was older now. His face was more lined. His beard had once been red; now it was snowy white. His cart was heavier, and seemed to move of itself, so that he no longer needed to grasp its wheels with his hands. But it was he. It was my friend, otherwise little changed, from so many long lives ago.

He smiled and beckoned to me; I ran and hopped into his lap.

“Where did you come from, little cat?” he asked. “What have you been doing, wandering around alone?”

He would never have believed me, even if I had been able to answer. I had come home, to the place that was mine, upon the earth and under the sun. The Spirit Above was kind.

“I think I’ll call you Delilah,” He said. “Would you like something to eat?”

He turned his cart about, and we went into our house, and he closed the door.

END