by Gene Wolfe
A final effort, and he was up, lying on the safe side of the coaming and almost afraid to look at it. Rolling onto his back put half a cubit between him and the edge; he pressed his chest with both hands and shut his eyes, trying to control the pounding of his heart.
Almost he might have been on top of Blood’s wall, with its embedded sword blades at his shoulder. Almost, except that a fall from Blood’s wall would have been survivable — he had survived one, in fact.
He sat up and wiped his face with the hem of his robe.
How foolish he had been not to take off his robe and leave it with his shoes! The gondola had been cold, the draft from the port colder still; and so he had kept his robe, and never so much as considered that he might have lightened himself by some small amount by discarding it. Yet it was comforting to have it now, comforting to draw its soft woolen warmth around him while he considered what to do next.
Stand up, though if he stood he might fall. Muttering a prayer to the Outsider, he stood.
The top of the gondola was a flat and featureless deck, painted mummy-brown or perhaps merely varnished. Six mighty cables supported the gondola, angled out and stabbing upward into the airship’s fabric-covered body. Forward, the canvas tube snaked up like an intestine; aft was a hatch secured with lashings, a hatch that would return him to the gondola — that would, equally, permit those inside it to leave. Once again he pictured the stealthy advance and wild charge, a score of young pterotroopers dead, the rest firing, disorganized at first.
Soon, shouted orders would render them a coherent body. A few Vironese would have weapons by then, and they might kill more pterotroopers; but they would be shot down within a minute or two, and the rest shot as well. Auk and Chenille and Gib would die, and with them Horn and Nettle and even poor Maytera Marble, who called herself Moly now. And not long after that, unless he and Hyacinth were lucky indeed -
“Hello, Silk.”
He whirled. Mucor was sitting on the deck, her shins embraced by her skeletal arms; he gasped, and felt the pain of his wound deep in his chest.
She repeated her greeting.
“Hello.” Another gasp. “I’d nearly forgotten you could do this. You did it in the tunnel, sitting on the water — I should have remembered.”
She bared yellow teeth. “Mirrors are better. Mirrors scare more. This isn’t, is it? I’m just here.”
“It was certainly frightening to hear your voice.” Silk sat too, grateful for the chance.
“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to talk to you, but not where there were so many people.”
He nodded. “There would have been a riot, I suppose.”
“You were worried about me with so many people gone. My grandfather came to see if I was all right. The old man and the fat woman are taking care of me. He wanted to know where Grandmother and the little augur went, and I told him.”
My grandfather was Hammerstone, clearly; Silk nodded and smiled. “Does the old man have a beard and jump around?”
“A little beard, yes.”
Xiphias in that case, not His Cognizance; no doubt the fat woman was a friend of Xiphias’s, or a servant.
“I’ve been eating soup.
“That’s very good — I’m delighted to hear it. Mucor, you possessed General Saba, and there’s something that you can tell me that’s very, very important to me. When does she expect us to arrive in Trivigaunte?”
“Tonight.”
Silk nodded, he hoped encouragingly. “Can you tell me how long after shadelow?”
“About midnight. This will float over the city, and in the morning they’ll let you down.”
“Thank you. Auk intends to try to take control of this airship and fly it to Mainframe.”
Mucor looked pleased. “I didn’t know that.”
“He won’t be able to. He’ll be killed, and so will others I like. The only way that I’ve been—” He heard voices and paused to listen.
“They’re in there.” Mucor looked over her shoulder at the dangling canvas tube.
“Going down into the gondola? Can they hear us?”
“They haven’t.”
He waited until he heard the hatch thrown back. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know.”
His forefinger traced small circles on his cheek. “When you go, will you try to find out, please? It may be important, and I would be very, very grateful.”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you. You can fly, I know. You told me so in that big room underground where the sleepers are. Have you been all over this airship?”
“Most of it, Silk.”
“I see. The only way that I could think of to stop Auk from trying to take it and being killed was to disable it some way — that was why I climbed up here, and you may be able to tell me how to do it. In a moment I’m going to try to tear the seam of that tube and climb up.”
“There’s a trooper up there.”
“I see. A sentry? In any case, I must find a way to open the seam first. I should have gotten new glasses; I could have broken them and cut it with a piece of glass. But Mucor,” Silk made his tone as serious as he could to emphasize the urgency of his request, “you’ve given me another way now, at least for the time being. Will you possess General Saba again for me?”
She was silent, and as seconds crept by he realized that she had not understood. “The fat woman,” he said, but Mucor would surely confuse that with the woman Xiphias had found to care for her. “The woman that you frightened in the Calde’s Palace. She spilled her coffee, remember? You talked to me through her before Hyacinth and I went into the cage.”
“Oh, her.”
“Her name is General Saba, and she’s the commander of this airship. I want you to possess her and make her turn east. As long as it’s going in the direction that Auk—”
Mucor had begun to fade. For a second or two a ghostly image remained, like a green glimmer upon a pool; then it was gone and he was alone.
Condemning himself, he rose again. There had been half a dozen things — eight or ten, and perhaps more — he should have asked. What was taking place in Viron? Was Maytera Mint alive? What were Siyuf’s plans? The answers had melted into the fabled city of lost opportunities.
He walked forward to the tube and examined it. The canvas was thinner than he had feared, but looked strong and nearly new. His pockets yielded only his new prayer beads and a handkerchief, the only items that his captors had let him retain. He detached an arm of Pas’s voided cross and tried to tear the canvas with it, but its sharpest corner slipped impotendy along the surface. Many men, he reminded himself angrily, carried small knives for just such occasions as this — although any such knife would presumably have been taken from him.
Even if he had possessed a knife, there was a sentry at the top of the ladder. If he was able to poke a hole in the canvas and enlarge it enough to climb through, he would almost certainly be captured or killed by that sentry when he emerged from the tube. Saba had no doubt worried that her prisoners might break one of the hatches; but a single pterotrooper there would be able to hold her position until she exhausted her ammunition, and her shots would have brought reinforcements long before then. Saba’s prisoners had not escaped through either hatch — not yet. But Saba’s logic confined him as though he had been its object.
Shaking his head, he crossed the deck of the gondola to the nearest cable. Woven of many ropes, it was as thick as a young tree, and its surface was rougher than the bark of many. Still more significantly, its angle, here where it was bent through a huge ringbolt, slanted noticeably off the vertical.
Removing his robe, he put it over his shoulder and tied it at his waist. Once he had finished praying and begun to climb, he found it relatively easy; as a boy he had climbed trees and poles far more difficult. The key was to fix his eyes on the surface of the cable, never stealing even a glance at the snowy plain of cloud so achingly far below.
He had boasted of his climbing to Horn, whi
le conceding only that he had climbed less adroitly than a monkey; it was time to make good that boast…
Gib missed the companionship of his trained baboon — what would Bongo think, if Bongo could see him crawling upward with chattering teeth and sweating palms? Could baboons laugh?
The airship was, just possibly, turning ever so slightly to its left. To look down was death, but to look up?
The whir of the engines sounded louder, but of course he was somewhat nearer them. He reminded himself sharply that he had not yet climbed far…
The airship’s southward course must necessarily have put its long axis across the great golden bar of the sun. If he looked up — if he risked it, and it was not much risk, surely, he might be able to catch sight of the sun to one side of the vast hull from which the gondola hung…
Momentarily, he halted to rest the aching muscles in his thighs, and glanced upward. Scarcely ten cubits overhead, the cable entered the monstrous belly of the airship proper; beyond the opening, he glimpsed the beam to which it was attached.
“Done try, laddie.”
“Tick!” Hyacinth stared, blinking away tears. “Tick, how in the whorl—”
Auk handed him to her. “Came in through the window, didn’t you, cully? A dimber cat burglar, ain’t you?”
“My see, wears she putty laddie?” Tick explained. “An Gawk sees, hue comb wit may. Den my — add word!”
“Lo, girl.” flapping in advance of Silk, Oreb ignored the little catachrest. “Lo, Auk.”
Auk swore. Hyacinth dropped Tick (who landed on his feet) and Silk embraced her.
To him, so lost in the ecstasy of her kiss that he scarcely knew that her right leg had twined about his left, or that her loins ground his, Horn’s distant shout meant less than nothing.
“So what?” Auk inquired from the West Pole. “Let ’em come.”
After what seemed an eternity of love, something tapped Silk’s arm and Hyacinth backed away.
“Calde Silk!” The harsh voice belonged to a gaunt, hard-faced Trivigaunti officer of forty or more; he blinked, certain that he should recognize her.
“You’re Calde Silk. Let’s not waste time in evasions.”
“Yes, I am.” She had clicked into place in his memory, her hand around a wineglass, her back straight as a slug-gun barrel. “Major Hadale, this is my wife, Hyacinth. Hyacinth, my darling, may I present Major Hadale? She’s one of General Saba’s most trusted officers. Major Hadale consented to join me for dinner Thelxday, before we were reunited.”
Oreb eyed Hadale apprehensively. “Good girl?”
The major herself addressed the lieutenant on her right. “You were in here an hour ago looking for him. Are you saying he wasn’t here then?”
“No, sir.” The lieutenant’s face was set like stone. “He was not. I’m familiar with his appearance, and I examined every prisoner in this gondola. He was not present.”
Hadad turned to a trooper with a slug gun. “How long have you been on post?”
Silk began, “If I may—”
“In a moment. How long, Matar?”
The trooper had stiffened to attention. “Almost my whole watch, sir.”
Auk spoke into Silk’s ear; but if Silk heard him — or anything — he gave no indication of it. “You’re going to ask her if anyone left this gondola,” he told Hadale. “She’ll say no, and then I suppose you’ll call her a liar, or the lieutenant will. Can’t we—”
“Before we came down here I asked if she’d seen anybody,” Hadale interrupted. “She said she did. She saw a Vironese holy man. He went down into this gondola, and he had an order from General Saba that let him. Is that right, Matar?”
“Yes, sir.”
Silk fished a folded paper from his pocket. “Here it is. Do you want to see it?”
“No!” Angrily, Hadale took it from him. “I want to keep it. I intend to. Calde, you were careful to remind me that I’ve been your guest. You welcomed me and fed me well. That puts me in an uncomfortable position.” She glanced at the crowd that had formed around them. “Get out of here! Go to the other end of the gondola, all of you.”
Auk smiled and shook his head. Sciathan tugged the sleeve of Silk’s robe. “Now you wish it? If not, you must stop it.”
“You’re right, of course.” Silk raised both hands. “Auk! All of you! Go to the other end. You’re very brave, and there are only three of them; but there are at least a hundred others on this airship.” He took Hyacinth’s hand.
“Go ’way!” Oreb seconded him.
Maytera Marble added her voice to theirs, the crisp tones of a teacher bringing her classroom to order. “Hear that bird? He’s a night chough, sacred to Tartaros. Trust Tartaros!”
“I speak for the gods.” Incus stood on tiptoe, making wide gestures. “We must obey the calde, whom the immortal gods have chosen for all of us.”
“Thank you,” Silk told the little Flier. “Thank you very much. Moly — thank you. Thank you, Your Eminence.”
Hadale exhaled, a weary sigh that recalled Maytera Marble. “And I thank you, Calde. They wouldn’t have succeeded, but there would’ve been a lot of killing. By Scarring Sphigx, I don’t like this! A few days ago, we were drinking toasts.”
“I like it less,” Silk told her. “I propose that we put an end to it. May I speak with General Saba?”
Hadad shook her head. “Lieutenant, you and Matar go over there and keep an eye on those people. They may try to jump you. Shoot if they do.”
Silk watched them go. “I’d imagine you’ve got a glass on this airship. If you won’t let me speak with General Saba, may I use it to speak to your generalissimo?”
“No.” Hadad paused to listen. “We just lost an engine.”
“The second one,” Hyacinth told her. “That was what Auk whispered to my husband, that the first one had stopped. I’ve been paying attention to them ever since.”
“Auk’s the man who was talking to my wife and me when you came,” Silk explained. “I apologize for not introducing you.”
“I should be in the cockpit, they’ll be going crazy up there. Calde, are you doing this?”
“Good man!” Oreb assured Hadale. “Good Silk!”
She gave him a look intended to fry him. “Your bird’s an oracle of Tartaros, so if he says you’re good that settles it. Don’t you know that many of us don’t believe in Tartaros, Calde? We have a faction that teaches that Sphigx is the only true god, and Pas and the rest are just legends. A lot of us believe it.”
Silk nodded, looking at the dangling ladder behind her. “I can sympathize with that — no doubt it’s nearer the truth than many of our beliefs. May I offer a suggestion, Major?”
“I’ve got one, too, but let’s hear yours. What is it?”
He showed her his hands. “We’re unarmed. You may search us if you wish; and we won’t attack you — we’ll swear to that by Sphigx or any other god you choose. If you were to hand your needler to Hyacinth or me, we wouldn’t employ it against you — though of course I’m not asking you to do anything of the kind. That said, I suggest we go to the place from which this airship is commanded. Where the tiller is, or whatever you call it. Is that the cockpit?”
Hadale nodded, her eyes suspicious.
“First, because we’d like to see it — that’s a selfish reason, I admit, but we would. Second, because they may need you there, you’re clearly anxious to go, and we can talk there as well as anywhere. Third—”
Hadale pointed to the dangling ladder. “That’s enough. All right. You two first, and stay in front.”
“So,” Siyuf began as she sat down in the wooden chair the round-faced stranger pulled out for her, “are we today at war? I hope you are lose, General Mint.” Without evident curiosity, her quick, dark eyes surveyed the spartan room, and the snow-splotched drill field and leaden sky beyond its windows.
Oosik nodded as he took his seat. “That was a point we planned to discuss, Generalissimo. Events have overtaken us.”
; “Trivigaunte declared war on Viron an hour ago,” Maytera Mint said briskly. “We feel we owe it to you to explain the situation. Our calde thinks you care nothing for the lives of your troops. He’s told me so. I’m doing something here that’s quite foreign to me, I’m assuming he’s wrong. If he isn’t, no harm will be done by this meeting. If he is,” she smiled, “some good may come of it. Are your troopers’ lives precious to you?”
The elevation and decline of Siyuf’s epaulets was scarcely visible. “Valuable is certain. Precious we must speak about, I think. Do you know how greatly I have desire to meet you, Mint? Do they tell this? Is Bison to sit in one of these empty chairs? He know of this.”
A new voice exclaimed, “So do I! I vouch for her, my dear young general. She’s expressed the wish many times.
Siyuf turned to the fat man who had come in. “You I know from a picture. You are Potto of the Ayuntamiento, that would make war on my city. You have win, I think, if we are at war.”
Potto sat gingerly, unsure of the strength of his chair. “If only a declaration were all it took!”
“I’m Councillor Newt,” the round-faced stranger explained, “the newest member of the Ayuntamiento.” He offered his hand.
She accepted it. “I am your prisoner Siyuf.”
“Not a badly treated one, I hope.”
Potto giggled. “A very well treated one, so far, Cousin. Since you’re a councillor now, I’ve appointed you an honorary cousin. Do you mind?”
Oosik cleared his throat. “Perhaps I should outline the entire situation, Generalissimo.”
“We are at war, you say. I believe this. I therefore give my name and rank. These alone, no other fact. Do you desire to exchange me? I will go.”
Maytera Mint said, “We do, very much.”
“Then I will fight you, after. It is to be regretted, but it is so, You cannot make me answer your questions—”
Potto giggled again.
“No more can I make you to answer mine. I ask anyway. Do you fight me together, Mint? Or do you fight each other also? When I return to my horde, it would be good that I know this.”