The Hops of a Frog - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Karen Bruce
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 1

"Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the urgency of contingent happenings.

~ Alfred North Whitehead

Mathematics was Remy's most guilty and secret indulgence. Guilty and secret, because he doubted that even his reputation could live down a lingering love of trigonometry and calculus. Still, in the rare few moments he had to himself, he would pull the journals from the back of his cupboard, where other men hid Playboys, and revelled in the rhythm and beauty of pure numbers. He could lose himself for hours in the elegant solution to an equation, in decomposing a problem then methodically solving each part. It was the mental equivalent of gymnastics, mind twisting around a problem with the grace that his body displayed on the parallel-bars. Reduced to x's and y 's, his world for a few moments became perfectly logical and ordered, neat rows of numbers leading towards one conclusion. Two and two were always four, unlike in real life where they were wont to make five or one-hundred and ninety-three.

Besides, he argued when reputation demanded an explanation for his unconventional use of part of his spare time, mathematics had helped him more times than he could recall on a pinch. From calculating the angles at which an infrared beam bounced off mirrors to breaking computer codes with a hacker's ease, it was certainly useful. In fact, being agile in mind was more important than even manual or physical dexterity for his chosen career. Henri had proved that to him by snatching the prize Remy had been pursuing before he had even reached the room. Cocksure, preadolescent, he had believed that his superior fitness, speed and agility would have won the day. Instead, slow, pondorous Henri had laughingly told his younger brother the story of the tortoise and the hare, while placing the stolen silver chain around his wife's slim neck. That night, his brother had initiated him into the mysteries of Calculus, of lines that never reached a point but missed it each time by a space as small as the constantly halving hops of a frog.

Remy remembered that particular story well. Remembered sitting with arcane-seeming diagrams in front of a fire, while Henri's voice had recounted an evidently unrelated anecdote. There was a frog, he said, who jumped towards a wall, but every jump that he made was half the distance of the one before it. This frog would never reach the wall, would get as close as it was possible to get without touching it, but would never attain its goal. That particular problem had intrigued the young Remy for a year - he had conducted endless experiments involving unwilling frogs scooped up from the bayou, but they had never seemed to want to hop in the right manner and they always hit the wall of Tante Mattie's cabin. In the end, exasperated by his experiments, he had worked it out on paper and marvelled at how the numbers never seemed to add up to the right total. It was the beginning of a lifelong love-affair, better fated than any he had experienced.

His romantic life was a frog, he thought seriously, but then laughed at the ludicrousness of the image. It was true, though, for all it was not the stuff of Valentine's Day cards. It appeared that no matter how many steps he took, he was always another away from his destination. He had thought that he would find true and lasting happiness with Belladonna, despite not loving her as a husband should a wife but as a dear, old friend, until her family had intervened. He had managed to convince himself that Claire deLuc was the right one, that her loveless, if passionate, embraces had been enough for him. The succession of women after her - blonde, brunette or red-headed - were something of a carnal blur, until Rogue had stepped into his life. He had known that she was his soul-mate from the moment that she had lambasted him for copping a feel in the Danger Room, using words that he had doubted any decent, respectable woman should have known. He had loved her, and lusted after her, but, for all her declarations that she felt the same way, she was ultimately as remote and unattainable as the point to which the frog hopped endlessly.

Happiness seemed that way too, after he had told her that she was not prepared for the manner of mature relationship that he had wanted, after he had become the leader of a team of leaders who knew that he was not right for the role. He was no Scott Summers, as Jean's thinly disguised animosity told him all too well, but he was forced to be better than him. Distance and time led glamour to the view, and, despite his lack of inventiveness and tendency towards being a martinet, Cyclops was remembered as being perfect. Remy LeBeau, on the contrary, could make no mistakes. His leadership of the team had to be almost mathematical - each step leading logically from the past one, each rationally explained, each necessary for the final result.

On the other hand, his position as Guild Master of the New Orleans' Thieves' Guild had more to do with superstition than science. He glanced over at the crimson robe with an emotion approaching but not reaching disgust. The Guild was bound by ritual and habit, by petty ceremonies and observances which bound the families together by giving them something to remember other than feuds. He hated it, but was powerless to change it. The patriarch, who had all the power of a baby. Guild structure and tradition were seemingly as irrevocable and immutable as the sum of two and two.

He was tired, he thought, as the numbers and letters swum and danced before his eyes. He could not rest until he reached a certain point - until the Guild was freed of the shackles of the past and he was released from the chains of his own one; until both X-Men and Guild accepted him as leader, rather than a second-class substitute for Cyclops and Jean-Luc - and, like the frog that jumped towards a wall it could not reach, he knew that he would be approaching it forever.