by Gene Wolfe
Maytera Mint thought of getting up to see whether he had gone. It seemed to her that she had slept even as she spoke aloud; but it was too delicious, far too delicious to lie where she was, with Bison in the other bed snoring softly and Auk to watch over them. “Auk?” she called softly. “Auk?”
Auk would bring them water, would surely bring water if she asked for it, a carafe of cold clear water, fresh from the well, and glasses. More loudly this time: “Auk!”
Yeah, Mother. Right here.
“Auk, my son?”
“Sorry, Patera.” Shivering in the afternoon sunlight, Auk returned his attention to Incus. “Thought I heard something.”
“You desired to speak with me?”
“Right. Back in the manteion you explained what he said.” Auk felt uneasy among the Palatine’s gracious mansions of gray stone; until now he had visited them only to steal.
“I endeavored to explain, certainly. It was my sacred duty to do so, thus I strove to make clear the divine utterances.”
“You were clear as polymer, Patera,” Hammerstone declared loyally. “I felt like I could understand every word Pas ever said before you finished.”
Voices called for them to halt, and they did.
“Bios with slug guns, Patera. I heard them behind us, but I was hoping they wouldn’t mess around.”
Afraid he was about to be arrested, Auk grumbled, “Can’t a man walk uphill any more?”
By then the patrol leader had noted Incus’s black robe. “Sorry, Patera. It’s the soldier. They say some are on our side. Is he one?”
Hammerstone nodded. “You got it.”
“Indeed, my son.” Incus favored the patrol with a toothy smile. “You have my sacred word as an augur and your — well, let us not go into that. You have my sacred word that Corporal Hammerstone longs for the overthrow of the Ayuntamiento, even as I do myself.”
“I’m Sergeant Linsang,” the patrol leader said. “Are you going to the Grand manteion, Patera?”
Incus shook his head. “To the Prolocutor’s Palace, my son. I am a resident thereof” His voice grew confidential. “I have been favored with a theophany. Great Pas himself so favored me. It is not the first, but the second time that I have been thus favored by the gods. You will scarcely credit it, I know, for I scarcely credit it myself. But both my companions were present upon the latter occasion. They will attest to the theophany, I feel quite certain.”
One of Linsang’s troopers raised his slug gun so that it no longer pointed at Auk. “Aren’t you Auk? Auk the prophet?”
“That’s me.”
“He’s been going all over the city,” the trooper explained to Linsang, “telling everybody to get ready for Pas’s Plan. He says Tartaros told him to.”
“He did,” Auk declared stoutly. “Pas wants me to keep on doing it, too. What about you, trooper? Are you set to go? Set to give up on the whole whorl?”
Linsang asked, “What did Pas say? That is if I’m not—”
“It is irregular,” Incus conceded, “but not contrary to the canon. Do all of you desire to hear the words of the Father of the Gods?”
Several assured him that they did.
“And will you,” Incus pursued his advantage, “permit us to proceed upon our sacred errand once you have heard them?”
Linsang’s troopers nodded. They were in their teens, and identifiable as troopers only by their slug guns and bandoliers.
Linsang objected. “I need to get it from this soldier, first. Hammerstone? Is that your name, Corporal?”
“Present and accounted for.” Hammerstone’s own slug gun was pointed at the skylands, its butt on his hip.
“Are you for the Ayuntamiento or the calde?”
“The calde, Sergeant.”
“How do you feel about the Ayuntamiento?”
“If the calde or Patera here said not to shoot them, I wouldn’t do it. If it’s up to me, they’re dead meat.”
One of the troopers ventured, “A soldier killed Councillor Potto. That’s what we heard.”
Hammerstone grinned, his head back and his chin out. “It wasn’t me, but I’ll shake his hand first chance I get.”
“All right.” Linsang grounded his slug gun. “You can go on to the Prolocutor’s Palace, Patera. Them, too. Only tell us what Pas had to say.”
“I fear not.” Incus shook his head. “You would not accept my sacred word, my son, but insisted that Hammerstone speak for himself. As it chanced, though nothing is mere chance to the immortal gods, but a moment previously he had declared that he comprehends the god’s entire message, while my other companion, Auk, wished a fuller exposition.”
Incus turned to the prophet in question. “Is that not so, Auk? Am I not correct?”
“You got it, Patera. Maybe I’m dumb. There’s not many that said so where I could hear ’em, but maybe I am. Only this is important, and some was about me. I got to be sure I got it straight, so I can do what he wants me to.”
“Would that such stupidity as yours were more widespread. The Chrasmologic Writings assert that the wisdom of the immortal gods is but folly in the ears of mortal men. Persevere in your stupidity, and you will be welcomed to Mainframe.” Incus nodded to the big soldier. “Tell us, Hammerstone, my son, and do not fear that you may blunder or omit a sacred injunction. I shall amend any such innocent errors, though I anticipate none.”
“I can’t do it as good as you, Patera, but I’ll give it my best shot. Let me get my thinking works going.” For eight or ten seconds, Hammerstone was as immobile as a statue.
“All right, I got it. It was when that bio was bringing up the pig. First the colors came on, right? Then his face. He started off by blessing everybody and said that everybody that was there ’cause they came with Auk — that was everybody but you, Patera — he blessed twice, once for coming and once for following Auk. Have I got that right?”
Incus nodded. “Admirable, Hammerstone, my son.”
“Then he said he was giving us this theophany ’cause his son told him what was coming down in the manteion we were at, only he didn’t say which son it was.”
“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk assured him.
Incus raised an admonitory finger. “He did not so state.”
“Maybe not, but I’d just been talking to him. That’s who it had to be.”
“He said his son’d given Auk his orders, and they were the right ones. He and his son were going to see to it everybody got the word. We’d been thinking about his Plan like it was way off, when it was already time to move out…”
“Continue, my son.”
“I’m sorry, Patera. That’s when he started talking about me, and I get kind of choked up. It was the greatest moment of my life, right? I mean, if I was to make sergeant or anything like that I’d feel pretty good. But this was Pas. I got his drift and later you explained, and it was like I’d been feeling it was, just exactly. Hearing you say it was just about like I was hearing it all over again from him. I’m thinking there’s a war, and all the good people’s on his side. That’s this son—”
“Terrible Tartaros,” Auk put in.
“And the calde and Auk and naturally you are, Patera… And it’s the side I’m on, too. He said how Auk got hurt when he was underground with us and how hard he’d been working for his Plan, and he was sending somebody from Mainframe to help him out.”
“From the Pole, Corporal. That is the term which the god himself preferred to employ. That Mainframe is at the Pole, I freely concede.”
Auk edged nearer. “To help me out? I’m the cull?”
“Yeah, you’re the one, only I’m supposed to help too. He said he was going to decorate you for what you’ve done soon as you do what he wants you to next. Only here’s where Patera said something I got to say too, so it’ll make sense to these other bios. Pas is us chems’ god. He’s the god of all the digital, nuclear-chemical stuff. You got to buy that if you want to see where Pas’s coming from. Isn’t that right, Patera?”
&
nbsp; Incus nodded solemnly.
“’Cause Pas told us what Auk’s decoration’s going to be. Anytime he sees anything like me, he’s going to understand it straight off. How it goes together and what it’s supposed to do, and how. Pas means to stick all the data into Auk, ’cause he’ll need it to carry out the Plan.”
Linsang and his troopers stared at Auk openmouthed. Auk endeavored to appear humble.
“That was when he gave me my direct order, and it wasn’t just ’cause I happened to be around. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. I asked Patera about it back at the manteion, and he says if I hadn’t been the one Pas wanted, I wouldn’t have been there, it would’ve been some other tinpot. But it wasn’t. I’m the one. Patera says it was probably ’cause him and me are, you know, like brothers only closer, and he’s a holy augur, and as soon as he said it I knew it was right.
“Pas needs a soldier, so which one? There’s thousands. Why, the augur’s friend, doesn’t that make sense? The friend of the augur Scylla picked to be the new Prolocutor, that’s the one you need. A god don’t have to think about stuff like that, he just knows. He said, talking to me, Auk might have a little trouble at first. You stick with him and help him over the tough spots. You’re a mechanism, help him out and he’ll help you. So here we are, Patera and me both, and we’re trying to help.”
Linsang asked Incus, “Was that all, Patera?”
“All? I should say it was more than enough, my son. But no. It was not. Let us have the remainder, Hammerstone.”
“He said that a while back, forty years, he said, he knew he was going to die—”
“To die?” Linsang was incredulous.
“That’s what he said. He saw it coming, so he sort of took off little pieces of himself and hid them in various bios where they wouldn’t be found. Then he died, and he’s been dead for quite a while.”
Incus cleared his throat. “All of you, and I, similarly, must comprehend the dificulties under which a god seeking to communicate with human kind labors. He can but speak to us in words mere mortals apprehend. Thus by die, the Father of the Gods indicated his own renewal. That noblest of trees, the goldenshower, is sacred to Great Pas. You cannot be ignorant of so elementary a fact.”
Linsang and several of his troopers nodded.
“Suppose that a forest of goldenshowers could speak to us. Would it not say, ‘That I, the sacred forest, may remain young and strong, my aged trees must fall, though they have endured for centuries. Let young trees spring up in their places. I, the forest, endure.’ Hammerstone?”
“I’m on it, Patera. He said now when his Plan’s starting to move, he’s putting himself back together. He said right now he was his own ghost, Pas’s ghost, but with more of his pieces getting found, he’ll be Pas again. He wants us to help. Auk in particular, but everybody’s supposed to pitch in. We got to find this one particular bio, Patera Jerboa, ’cause he’s got the piece for Viron. There was maybe five or six hundred bios in the manteion, but after Patera’d explained the whole thing to them, there wasn’t one that knew who this Patera Jerboa was or where we could maybe find him.
“So Patera told them not to bunch up, but scatter and start asking people all over, and bring him to Auk when they got him. Then he told Auk the Chapter’s got records about all this stuff, where every augur’s at and what he’s doing there, and they’re in the Palace, and Patera knows where and how to read them. He’s worked with them for years, right Patera? So him and Auk and me started off to take a look, and here we are.”
“The majesty of diction was lacking, Hammerstone, my son, yet the matter was in attendance.” Incus regarded Linsang and his troopers. “What of you? We seek to obey the dictates of the Father of the Seven. Can you assist us? No holy augur can know every other. We are far too numerous. Do you know of a Patera Jerboa? Any of you? Speak.”
No one did.
Shots woke Maytera Mint. At first, as she lay blinking in the darkness, she did not know what the sounds had been; she was hungry and thirsty, vaguely conscious of the cold, and conscious that she had been cold for a long time, shivering as she slept. Her buttocks and shoulder blades, pressed by her slight weight to unyielding shiprock, were numb, her feet freezing.
She sat up. Her room had been the smallest and meanest in the old cenoby on Silver Street, with a ceiling that dripped at every shower; yet it had not been too small or too mean for a window past whose threadbare drape wisps of light crept on even the darkest nights.
Three sharp bangs, unevenly spaced. Pictures falling? She recalled an incident from her childhood: an old watercolor had fallen when its yellowed string rotted through at last, and had taken another picture and a small vase down with it. Once she had heard a horse trying to kick its way out of its stall. The shots had sounded like that.
“Ah, General?”
The voice had been Remora’s; his nasal tones brought it all back to her. “Yes, Your Eminence.”
“You have, um, familiar with the sound of gunfire, hey? During the past — ah — fighting.”
“Yes, Your Eminence. Tolerably so.” Against her will, she found herself wondering how many Remoras there had been, how many augurs and sibyls who had responded to Echidna’s theophany by going to the safest place they could find and staying there. Patera Silk had not. (But then, he wouldn’t.) Patera Silk had been shot in the chest, had been captured, and had contrived, somehow, to turn Oosik and the whole Third Brigade, the act that had done more than any other to determine the course of their insurrection. But how many more -
“Er, General?”
“Yes, Your Eminence. I was considering the matter. The door is thick and rather tightly fitted, and these walls are shiprock. Those factors must have affected the quality of the shots as we heard them.”
“You — ah — believe them shots, eh?”
“I’m putting on my shoes, Your Eminence.” She groped for them in the dark. “If we’re to be taken somewhere—”
“Quite right.” Remora sounded cheerful. “Quetzal, eh? Old Quetzal. His Cognizance, I ought to say.”
More thirsty than ever, Maytera Mint licked her dry lips. “His Cognizance, Your Eminence?”
“Rescue, eh? He’s come for me, er, we. Or — ah — sent somebody. Shrewd, eh? Plays a deep game, old Quetzal. Card sense in both — um — the applicable senses.”
She tried to imagine the elderly Prolocutor fighting, slug gun in hand, against Spider and his spy-catchers, and failed utterly. “I would think Bison’s sent scouts into the tunnels by this time, Your Eminence. If we’re lucky, it may be some of them we heard. But even if they notice this door, they may not be able to get it open.
Another shot, and it was definitely a shot.
“They will notice it, General. I — um — my word on it. My gammadion, eh?”
“Your gammadion, Your Eminence?”
“Not you, ah, sibyls. But we augurs. Holy augurs, eh? Wear Pas’s voided cross. Comes apart. Use to test a Window, hey? Tighten connections, make adjustments, all that sort of, er, operations. Gold, hey? Mine is. Coadjutor, eh? Stones. Not like old Quetzal’s, I, um, but gems. Annethysts, largely. Gold chain. Under my tunic, generally. Out at sacrifice, hey?”
“I’m familiar with them, Your Eminence.”
“I’ve — ah — slipped it beneath the door, Maytera. Push it out, eh? Pull it back in. Moving object, hum? Catches the light, ah, attracts the eye.”
She went to the door (almost tripping over Remora) and rapped it sharply with the heel of one shoe.
“Admirable — ah — admirable. Crude, eh? Yet it — ah!”
The latch outside rattled and the door swung in, impeded by Remora. The burly Spider growled, “What’s that noise?”
The lights in the tunnel were so dim that Maytera Mint did not blink. “I was pounding on the door with my shoe. We heard shots and hoped we’d be freed.”
“Come on.” Spider gestured with the barrel of his needler.
“We, um’ require food,”
Remora ventured. “Water or — ah similar, er, potable.”
“You won’t if you don’t get movin’.”
“You don’t dare shoot us,” Maytera Mint declared. “We’re valuable hostages. What would you tell—”
He caught her arm and jerked her through the doorway. “I’m strong, see?”
“I never doubted it.” She tested her shoulder, fearing he had dislocated it.
“Strong as a chem. Not one of them soldiers, maybe, but a regular chem. You with me, sib? So I don’t have to shoot you. There’s twenty, thirty things I could do.” One of Spider’s men was lounging in the tunnel; he held a gleaming slug gun. “I’m ready to try a couple,” Spider continued. “You scavy Councillor Potto’s kettle? Wasn’t anythin’. He was just playin’, he’s like that. I don’t fool. We get lots of spies.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.” Maytera Mint had feared that she would not be allowed to resume her shoe; she tightened the bow and straightened up with an odd little thrill of triumph.
“I learned a lot, workin’ on them. I never seen one so tough I couldn’t get him to tell me anythin’ I wanted to know. That way, and keep movin’.”
“I, er, weak. Thirsty, eh? What one physically — ow!”
Remora had been prodded from behind by the man with the slug gun, who said, “I kicked a dead cull once till he got up and ran.”
“The gods — ah — Pas. Tartaros, eh?” Remora progressed with rapid, unsteady strides, outdistancing Maytera Mint.
“Slow up!”
“I — ah — prayed. Beads. eh? The, um’ general slept.”
“You should have awakened me,” she protested, and got a shove from Spider.
“Never! Wouldn’t, um, consider—” Remora froze until he was prodded from behind. Somewhat nearsighted, Maytera Mint blinked as she tried to peer ahead through the watery light.
“Dead cull,” Spider told her. “One of mine.”
“Was that the shooting we heard?”
Spider pushed her forward. “Yeah.” Another push. “He was watchin’ your door. Sib, you better shaggy learn to drive your shaggy ass or you’re going to learn a shaggy bunch you don’t want to know.”