by Gene Wolfe
“I think I understand. What if we turned around and tried to go the other way?”
“Then this still air would at once become a gale.”
The smooth wooden deck on which Silk was sitting tilted, seeming almost to fall away from under him.
“Patera!”
He felt Horn clutch his robe. The sound of the remaining engines rose. “I’m all right,” he said.
“You could’ve slid off! I almost did.”
“Not unless the gondola were to slope much more steeply.” A vagrant breeze ruffled Silk’s straw-colored hair.
“What happened?” From the sound of Horn’s voice; he was far from the edge now, perhaps halfway to the hatch.
“The wind increased, I imagine. The new wind would have reached our tail first; presumably it lifted it.”
“You still want to die.”
The plaintive note in Horn’s voice was more painful than an accusation. “No,” Silk said.
“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Please, Calde?”
“I would if I could explain it.” The city was behind them already, its houses and fields replaced by forbidding forests. “I might say that it’s an accumulation of small matters. Have you ever had a day when everything went amiss? Of course you have — everyone has.”
“Sure,” Horn said.
“Can you come a little closer? I can scarcely hear you.”
“All right, Calde.
“I also want to say that it has to do with the Plan of Pas; but that isn’t quite right. Pas, you see, isn’t the only god who has a plan. I’ve just understood this one, perhaps while I was still in the cockpit, as it’s called, guiding this airship and thinking — when I didn’t have to think much about that — about Hyacinth’s overpowering our pilot. Or perhaps only when I was talking with General Saba, just before I came up here. It might be fair to say that I understood in the cockpit, but that the full import of what I had understood had come only when I was talking with Nettle and General Saba.”
“I think I get it.”
“On the other hand, I could say that it was about facts that the Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can and do take place. Which would you like to hear about first?”
“The little things going wrong, I guess. Only please come back here with me, Patera. You said it was hard to hear me. Well, I can hardly hear you.”
“I’m perfectly safe, Horn.” Silk discovered that he was grasping the edge of the deck; he forced himself to relax, placing his hands together as if in prayer. “We might begin anywhere, but let us begin with Maytera Marble. With Moly, as she asks us to call her now. Do you think her name was really Moly — Molybdenum — before she became a sibyl? Honestly.”
“That’s what she says, Calde.” Horn was moving closer; Silk heard the faint scrub of his coat and trousers against the planking.
“I don’t. She hasn’t told me she’s lying, but I hope she will soon.”
“I — I don’t think so, Calde.” Horn’s tones grew deeper as he asserted his opinion. “She’s really careful about that kind of thing.”
“I know she is. That’s why it’s such a torment to her. I’m going to ask Patera Incus to shrive me. I hope that it will lead her to ask him — or Patera Remora, though Incus would be better — to do the same.”
“I still—”
“Why are there so few chems now, Horn? There the Plan of Pas has clearly gone awry. He made them both male and female, and clearly intended them to reproduce and so maintain their numbers — perhaps even increase them. Let us assume that he peopled our whorl with equal numbers of each sex, which would seem to be the logical thing for him to do. What went wrong?” It was becoming colder, or Silk more sensitive to the cold. He drew his thick winter robe about him.
“I don’t know, Calde. The soldiers sleep a lot, and naturally they can’t, you know, build anybody then.”
“Ours do, at least. Most of the soldiers in most other cities are dead. Most have been dead for a century or longer. Pas should have made female soldiers, like the troopers from Trivigaunte. He didn’t, and that was clearly an error.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that, Patera.”
“Why not, if I think them true? Would Pas like me better if I were a coward? Some male chems were artisans and farm laborers, from what I know of them, and a few were servants — butlers and so forth. But most were soldiers, and the soldiers fought for their cities and died, or slept as Hammerstone did. The female chems, who were largely cooks or maids, wore out and died childless. Nearly every soldier must have courted a cook or a maid, three hundred years ago. And nearly every such cook and maid must have loved a soldier. How likely is it that such a couple would be reunited by chance after centuries?”
“It could happen.” Horn sounded defiant.
“Of course it could. All sorts of unlikely things can, but they rarely do. Something has been troubling her ever since she and Hammerstone were married, and I believe I know what it is. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Even if you’re right,” Horn said, “that’s not a very good reason to want to die.”
“I disagree, but let’s move on. In the cockpit, I realized that Chenille and Hyacinth had fought when both of them were at Orchid’s — she was the woman who paid for the funeral at which Kypris spoke to us, not that it matters. My sister—”
“I didn’t know you had a sister, Calde.
Silk smiled. “Forget I said that, please; it was a slip of the tongue. I was about to say that Chenille blacked Hyacinth’s eyes, which isn’t surprising since she’s considerably larger and stronger. Nor do I blame her. If Hyacinth has forgiven her, and she clearly has, I can do no less. But they lied about it, both of them, and I found it very painful. I can’t prove they lied, Horn; but if you’d been there, you would have caught the lie just as I did. Hyacinth identified an incident to which Chenille was about to refer before Chenille specified it. That could only mean that Chenille was much more closely involved than she pretended.”
A wide river dotted with ice divided the forest below. Silk leaned forward to study it. “You’ll say that what I’ve told you is not a good reason to die. Again, I disagree.”
“Calde…?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“You don’t look like her. Like Chenille. She’s got that red hair, but it’s dyed. Underneath her hair’s dark, I think. Your eyes are blue, but hers are brown, and like you said she’s real big and strong. You’re tall and pretty strong, but…”
“You need not proceed, Horn, if it embarrasses you.”
“What I mean is she’d be a lot like Auk if she was a man. You’d be a better runner, but — but…”
“We are alike in certain ways, I suppose.”
“That’s not it.” Horn was less at ease than ever. “Since you’ve been calde everybody talks about the old one. Then last night before those women came you were talking about his will. Nettle told me, and this’s her idea, really. He said he had an adopted son, and this son was going to be the next one. What Nettle says is he didn’t say to make it happen, he just said it would. Is that right?”
Silk nodded. “’Though he is not the son of my body, my son will succeed me.’”
“Chenille’s his real daughter, Nettle told me that too. And you’re the next calde. So if she’s your sister—”
“We will go no further with this, Horn. It has nothing to do with our topic.”
“All right. I won’t tell anybody.”
“There are so many lies in the whorl that it’s not likely anyone would credit you if you did. May I instance one more? Hyacinth subdued our pilot, Hyacinth alone. I mentioned it.”
“Yes, Calde.”
“I’ve been trying to think of an enlightening analogy for you, but I can’t. Suppose I were to say that it was like seeing Patera Incus overpower Auk. The analogy
would be flawed because I’ve never supposed that Patera Incus could not fight, only that he would fight badly. I had imagined Hyacinth would be helpless in the face of violence; she spoke of taking fencing from Master Xiphias once, yet I never…”
“I can’t hear you. Can’t you turn around this way?”
“No. Come closer.” Silk found Horn’s hand and drew him nearer the edge.
“Nobody thought you could fight either, Calde.”
“I know, and they had almost convinced me of it. That was a part of the reason I broke into Blood’s — I needed to prove I wasn’t the milksop everyone took me for. Nor was I, though I was badly frightened most of the time.”
“Maybe that’s how Hyacinth felt about the pilot.” Greatly daring, Horn sat up, his legs stretched before him and his feet on the edge of the deck. “Hyacinth’s real girly when you’re around. We got lots of it this morning. She smiles whenever you look at her and holds on like she can’t stand up. She wants you to like her. Calde, you know that big cat Mucor’s got?”
Silk was staring down at a mountain valley, following the snowy rush of a young river over red stones. “You mean Lion?”
“I don’t know the name, but Lion sounds like a boy. This was a girl cat, I think, kind of gray, with long pointed ears and a little short tail. I saw it one time when I brought up Mucor’s dinner. It really liked her. It would rub up against her and smile. Cats can smile, Calde.”
“I know.”
“It kept putting its paw in Mucor’s lap so she’d pet it, but it wasn’t too sure about me. It showed me its teeth, pulling its lips back without making any noise. I was pretty scared.”
“So was I, Horn. I shot two of those horned cats once; I’m very sorry for that now.” Silk leaned forward again. “Look at that cliff, Horn. Can you see it?”
“Sure, I saw it just a minute ago. I don’t think I could climb it, but I’d like to try.”
Horn made himself speak more loudly. “I know what Hyacinth seems like to you, Calde, but she seems a lot like Mucor’s cat to Nettle and me. She’s respectful to Moly, though.”
Silk glanced over his shoulder. “You’re right, there is a great deal of good in Hyacinth, though I would love her even if there were none.”
Horn shook his head. “I was going to say she sort of hits it off with Hammerstone. He can be awful rough.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of it.”
“He likes Moly and Patera Incus, so he’s nice to them. But he treats Nettle and me like sprats, and with other people he’s like Auk. Hyacinth won’t give him half a step, and once when she got mad she called him all kinds of names. I thought I knew all those. I learned most of that stuff when I was little, but she had some I never heard. If the pilot pulled a needler on Mucor, what do you think her cat would do?”
“Come here,” Silk told him. “Sit with me. Are you afraid I’ll take you with me if I jump? I’m not going to, and I’d like you beside me.”
“I’m still pretty scared.”
“You would have climbed that cliff, given the chance. You would be no more dead falling from here.”
“All right.” Gingerly, Horn edged forward until his legs dangled over the abyss of air. Oreb settled on his shoulder.
“As I said, I’ve neglected my duty to teach you. Now I can actually show you part of the Plan. I find it enlightening, and you may, too. See the city ahead? The mountains we crossed isolate it from the west. Soon we’ll see what isolates it from the east; and if we were to turn north or south, we’d come upon barriers there as well. Some are more formidable than others, of course.”
“Their houses are like people, Calde. Look, there’s Pas, with the two heads. Even the little ones are like people lying down, see? The thatch makes it look like they’ve got blankets.”
“Good place.” Oreb bobbed on Horn’s shoulder.
“It is,” Silk agreed, “but if we weren’t used to seeing Pas pictured like this, we’d think this image the more horrible — and it is horrible — for being so large. I won’t ask if you’ve lain with a woman, Horn; it’s too personal a matter to broach save in shriving, and I know you too well to shrive you. Should you wish to be shriven, I hope you’ll go to Patera Remora.”
“All right.”
“I had not until my wedding night. Indeed, it remains my only such experience. You needn’t tell me that Hyacinth has lain with scores of men. I knew it and was acutely conscious of it; so was she. I can’t say what our experience meant to her, and perhaps it meant little or nothing. To me it was wonderful. Wonderful! I came to her as one starving. And yet—”
Still very frightened, Horn jerked his head. “I know.”
“Good. I’m glad you understand. There was a taint that came from neither Hyacinth nor me, but from the act itself. After two hours, or about that, I rested. We had done what men and women do more than once, and more than twice. I was happy, exhausted, and soiled. I felt that Echidna, particularly, was displeased; and I doubt that I would have had the courage if I had not rejected her in my heart after her theophany. You were there, I know.”
Horn nodded again. “She’s a very great goddess, Calde.”
“She is. Great and terrible. It may be that I was wrong to reject her — I won’t argue the point. I only say that I had, and felt as I did. As I’ve said, the Outsider enlightened me a second time then. I won’t tell you all that he told me — I couldn’t. But one thing was that he created Pas. The Seven, as everyone knows, are the children of Pas and Echidna; it had never occurred to me to wonder whence they themselves came. Why do you think Pas built barriers between our cities, Horn?”
The sudden question caught him off guard. “To keep them from fighting, Calde?”
“Not at all. Not only do they fight, but he knew that they would; if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have provided them with armies. No, he erected mountains and dug rivers and lakes so they could not combine against him. More specifically, so they couldn’t combine against Mainframe, the home he was to set over them.”
“Did the Outsider tell you that, Calde?”
Silk shook his head. “Hammerstong did, and Hammerstone is right. The Outsider, as he showed me, has no reason to fear our leaguing against him. We’ve done it innumerable times, just as we betray him daily as individuals. His fear — he is afraid for our sake, not his own — is that we may come to love other things more than we love him. When I was at your manteion on Sun Street, foolish people used to ask me why Pas or Scylla permitted some action that they regarded as evil, as if a god had to sign a paper before a man could be struck or a child fall ill. On my wedding night, the Outsider explained why it is that he permits what people call evil at all — not this theft or that uncleanness, but the thing itself. It serves him, you see. It hates him, yet it serves him, too. Does this make sense to you, Horn?”
“Like a mule that kicks whenever it gets a chance.”
“Exactly. That mule is harnessed like the rest and draws the wagon, however unwillingly. Given the freedom of the whorl — and even of those beyond it — evil directs us back to the Outsider. I told you I rejected Echidna; I thought I did it because she is evil, but the truth is that I did it because he is better. A child who burns its hand says the fire’s bad, as the saying goes; but the fire itself is saying, ‘Not to me, child. Reach out to him.’”
“I think I see. Calde, I’m getting pretty cold.”
“Fish heads?” Oreb inquired.
Silk nodded. “We’ll go in soon, so you and Oreb will be warm and can get something to eat; but first, have you been looking at our whorl, Horn? This is winter wheat below us, I believe. See how the sunlight plays on it, how it ripples in the wind, displaying every conceivable shade of green?”
“You still haven’t told me — maybe I shouldn’t ask you—”
“Why I was tempted to jump? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Oreb squawked, “Look out!”
Already, Horn was sliding from the edge of the deck; the face he turned toward Silk di
splayed Mucor’s deathly grin.
“You know where Silk is?” Auk stepped into the cockpit and shut the flimsy door behind him.
Sciathan pointed to the ceiling, his urchin face all sharp V’s. “Upstairs, which is what you call me. I saw shoes and stockings, and the legs of trousers at the top.” He gestured toward the slanted pane before him. “The trousers were black, the shoes and stockings the same, the legs too long for the smallest augur. The tallest, I think, would not do this.”
“They ain’t there any more.” Auk bent, craning his neck to peer upward. “I ought to tell you, too. Number Seven ought to work if you start it.”
Sciathan flicked two switches and nodded appreciatively as a needle rose. “You have removed his clamp.”
“There was more to it than that. We’re working on Number Five now. They got ’em out on booms, see?”
“I have observed this. In a moment I shall tell you what else I have observed.”
“Only you can haul the booms in to fix the engines. It’s a pretty good system. We had to yank the heads and beat on the pistons some, but we didn’t hurt ’em much. What’d you see?”
“Another seated beside Silk. It is hazardous to sit thus.”
“You said it.”
“The other was almost chilled…” Sciathan paused, his head cocked. “Calde Silk comes now to General Saba’s cabin. I hear his voice.”
Leaving the cockpit, Auk saw that Saba’s curtain was drawn back. Silk stood where it had hung, and a perspiring Horn had crowded into the cubicle beside Nettle.
“ — don’t know how to put this, exactly,” Silk was saying. “I ought to have given that more thought while I was up on the roof a moment ago.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Hello, Auk. I’m glad you’re here; I was going to send Nettle for you. We’re about to return her airship to General Saba.”
Oreb bobbed in assent as Auk stared.
“I don’t mean, of course, that we’re not going to take you to Mainframe — you and Sciathan, and the rest. We are. Or rather, she is; Hyacinth and I will accompany her, with Nettle, Horn, His Eminence, Patera Remora, and Moly.”