by Gene Wolfe
Dace put in, "That big gal cryin an' yellin' at him."
"Yeah, that too. Look here-"
"Wait a minute," Auk told them. "Chenille. She cried?"
Dace chuckled. "I felt sorrier fer her than fer you."
"She wasn't even there when I woke up!"
"She run off. I was over talkin' ter that talus, but I seen her."
"She was around when I came to," Hammerstone told Auk. "She had that launcher, only it was empty. There was another one, all smashed up, where we were. Maybe she brought it, I don't know. Anyhow, after I talked to Patera about you and a couple other things, I showed her how to disarm the bad one's magazine and load the SSMs in the good one."
Dice told Hammerstone, "She got her'n up the tunnel whilst the augur was fixin' you. This big feller, he was off watch, and didn't nobody know rightly how bad he'd got hurt. When she come back an' seen he wasn't comin' 'round, she foundered."
Auk scratched his ear.
"You've broke your head-bone, big feller, don't let nobody tell you no different. I seen it afore. Feller on my boat got a rap from the boom. He laid in the cuddy couple nights 'fore we could fetch him ashore. He'd open the point an' talk, then sheer off down weather. We fetched him the doctor an' I guess he done all he was able but that feller died next day. You're in luck you wasn't hit no worse."
"What makes it good luck?" Hammerstone asked him.
"Why, stands ter reason, don't it? He don't want ter be dead, no more'n me!"
"All you meatheads talk like that. Only look at it. No more trouble and no more work. No more patrols through these tunnels looking everywhere for nothing and lucky to get a shot at a god. No more-"
"Shot god?" Oreb inquired.
"Yeah," Auk said. "What the shag are you talking about?"
"That's just what we call them," Hammerstone explained. "They're really animals. Kind of like a dog, only ugly where a real dog's all right, so we say it backwards."
"I've never seen any kind of shaggy animal down here."
"You haven't been down here long, either. You just think you have. There's bats and big blindworms, out under the lake especially. There's gods all around here, only there's five of us and me a soldier, and quite a few lights on this stretch. When we get to someplace darker, watch out."
"You don't mind dyin'," Dace reminded him. "That's what you says a little back."
"Now I do." Hammerstone pointed up the tunnel to Incus, a hundred cubits ahead. "That's what I was trying to tell you. Auk said he didn't need an outfit or a leader like Patera, or anything like that."
"I don't," Auk declared. "It's the shaggy truth."
"Then sit down right here. Go to sleep. Dace and me will keep going. You feel pretty sick, I can tell. You don't like walking. Well, there's no reason you've got to. I'll wait till we're about to lose sight of you, then I'll put a couple slugs in you."
"No shoot!" Oreb protested.
"I'll wait till you've settled down, see? You won't know it's coming. You'll get to thinking I'm not going to. What do you say?"
"No thanks."
"All right, here's what I been trying to get across. It doesn't sound that good to you. If I kept on about it, you'd say you had to take care of your girl, even when you're hurt so bad you can't hardly take care of yourself. Or maybe look out for your talking bird or something. Only it'd all be gas, 'cause you really don't want to, even when you know it makes more sense than what you're doing."
Sick and weak, Auk shrugged. "If you say so."
"It's not like that for us. Just sitting down somewhere down here and letting everything slow down till I go to sleep, and sleeping, with nobody ever coming by to wake me up, that sounds pretty good. It would sound all right to my sergeant, too, or the major. The reason we don't is we're supposed to look out for Viron. That means the Caldé, 'cause he's the one that says what's good for Viron and what's not."
"Silk's supposed to be the new Caldé," Auk remarked. "I know him, and that's what Scylla said."
Hammerstone nodded. "That'll be great if it happens, but it hasn't happened yet and maybe it never will. Only I've got Patera now, see? Right now I can walk in back of him like this and keep looking at him just about all the time, and he isn't even telling me not to look like he did at first. So I don't want to sit down and die any more than you do."
Oreb bobbed his approval. "Good! Good!"
Farther along the tunnel, Incus asked with some asperity, "Are you sure that's all, my daughter?"
"That's everything since Patera Silk shrived me, like I said," Chenille declared, "everything that I remember, anyhow." Apologetically she added, "That was Sphixday, so there wasn't time for a lot, and you said things I did when I was Kypris or Scylla don't count."
"Nor do they. The gods can do no evil. At least, not on our level." Incus cleared his throat and made sure that he was holding his prayer beads correctly. "That being the case, I bring to you, my daughter, the pardon of all the gods. In the name of Lord Pas, you are forgiven. In the name of Divine Echidna, you are forgiven. In the glorious ever-efficacious name of Sparkling Scylla, loveliest of goddesses and firstborn of the Seven and ineffable patroness of this, our-"
"I'm not her any more, Patera. That's lily."
Incus, who had been seized by a sudden, though erroneous, presentiment, relaxed. "You are forgiven. In the name of Molpe, you are forgiven. In the name of Tartaros, you are forgiven. In the name of Hierax, you are forgiven."
He took a deep breath. "In the name of Thelxiepeia, you are forgiven. In the name of Phaea, you are forgiven. In the name of Sphigx, you are forgiven. And in the name of all lesser gods, you are forgiven. Kneel now, my daughter. I must trace the sign of addition over your head."
"I'd sooner Auk didn't see. Couldn't you just-"
"Kneel!" Incus told her severely, and by way of merited discipline added, "Bow your head!" She did, and he swung his beads forward and back, then from side to side.
"I hope he didn't see me," Chenille whispered as she got to her feet, "I don't think he's jump for religion."
"I dare say not." Incus thrust his beads back into his pocket. "While you are, my daughter? If that's so, you've deceived me most completely."
"I thought I'd better, Patera. Get you to shrive me, I mean. We could've been killed back there when our talus fought the soldiers. Auk just about was, and the soldiers could have killed us afterwards. I don't think they knew we were on his back, and when he caught fire they were afraid he'd blow up, maybe. If they'd been right, we'd have got killed by that."
"They will return for their dead, eventually. I must say the prospect concerns me. What if we encounter them?"
"Yeah. We're supposed to get rid of the councillors?"
Incus nodded. "So you, possessed by Scylla, instructed us, my daughter. We are to displace His Cognizance as well." Incus permitted himself a smile, or perhaps could not resist it. "I am to have the office."
"You know what happens to people that go up against the Ayuntamiento, Patera? They get killed or thrown in the pits. All of them I ever heard of."
Incus nodded gloomily.
"So I thought I'd better get you to do it. Shrive me. I've got a day left, maybe. That's not a whole lot of time."
"Women, and augurs, are usually spared the ignominy of execution, my daughter."
"When they go up against the Ayuntamiento? I don't think so. Anyhow, I'd be locked up in the Alambrera or tossed in a pit. They eat the weak ones in the pits."
Incus, a full head shorter than she, looked up at her. "You've never struck me as weak, my daughter. And you have struck me, you know."
"I'm sorry, Patera. It wasn't personal, and anyhow you said it doesn't count." She glanced over her shoulder at Auk, Dace, and Hammerstone. "Maybe we'd better slow down, huh?"
"Gladly!" He had been hard put to keep up with her. "As I said, my daughter, what you did to me is not to be accounted evil. Scylla has every right to strike me, as a mother her child. Contrast that with that man Auk's behavior towar
d me. He seized me bodily and cast me into the lake."
"I don't remember that."
"Scylla did not order it, my daughter. He acted upon his own evil impulse, and were I to be asked to shrive him for it again, I am far from confident I could bring myself to do so. Do you find him attractive?"
"Auk? Sure."
"I confess I thought him a fine specimen when I first saw him. His features are by no means handsome, yet his muscular masculinity is both real and impressive." Incus sighed. "One dreams…I mean a young woman such as yourself, my daughter, not infrequently dreams of such a man. Rough, yet, one hopes, not entirely lacking inner sensitivity. When the actual object is encountered, however, one is invariably disappointed."
"He lumped me a couple of times while we were hoofing out to that shrine. Did he tell you about that?"
"About visiting a shrine?" Incus's eyebrows shot up. "Auk and yourself? No indeed."
"Lumping me, I meant. I thought maybe… Never mind. Once I sat down on one of those white rocks, and he kicked me. Kicked my leg, you know. I got pretty sore about that."
Incus shook his head, dismayed at Auk's brutality. "I should imagine so, my daughter. I, for one, am disinclined to criticize you for it."
"Only by-and-by I figured it out. See, Kypris had-you know, what Scylla did. It was at Orpine's funeral. Orpine's a dell I used to know." Transfering the launcher to her other hand, Chenille wiped her eyes. "I still feel really bad about her. I always will."
"Your grief does you credit, my daughter."
"Now she's lying in a box in the ground, and I'm walking in this one, only mine's a whole lot deeper. I wonder whether this is what being dead seems like to her? Maybe it is."
"Her spirit has doubtless united itself with the gods in Mainframe," Incus said kindly.
"Her spirit, sure, but what about her? What do you call this tunnel stuff? They make houses out of it, sometimes.
"The ignorant say shiprock, the learned navislapis."
"A big shiprock box. That's what we're in, and we're just as buried as Orpine. What I was going to say is Kypris never told Auk, Patera. Not like Scylla. She told him right away, but he thought Kypris was me, and he liked her a lot. He gave me this ring, see? Then she talked to people in Limna and went in the manteion and went away. Went clear out of me and left me all alone in front of the Window. I was scared to death. I had some money and I kept buying red ribbon-"
"Brandy, my daughter?"
"Yeah. Throwing it down, trying to pretend it was rust because it's about the same color. It took a lot before I got over being scared, and then I still was, a little, way back in my head and deep down in my tripes. Then I saw Auk, this was still in Limna, so I hooked him because I was out of gelt, and I was just some drunk, some old drunk trull. So naturally he lumped me. He never did lump me as hard as Bass did once, and I'm sorry I lumped you. Aren't the gods supposed to care about us, Patera?"
"They do, my daughter."
"Well, Scylla didn't. She could've kept me out of the sun and kept my clothes so I wouldn't get so burned. We got hot when I was running for her and they got in our way, so she just tore them off and threw them down. My best winter gown."
Incus cleared his throat. "I have been meaning to speak to you about that, my daughter. Your nudity. Perhaps I ought to have done so when I shrove you. I foresaw, however, that you might misunderstand. I, myself, am sunburned, and nudity is wrong, you know."
"It gets bucks hot. Mine does, I mean, or Violet. I saw a buck practically jump the wall once when Violet took off her gown, and she wasn't really naked, either. She had on one of those real good bandeaus that hike up your tits when they look like they're just shoving them back."
"Nudity, my daughter," Incus continued gamely, "is wrong not only because it engenders concupiscent thoughts in weak men, but because it is often the occasion of violent attacks. Concupiscent thoughts are wrong in themselves, as I suggested, though they are not seriously evil. Violent attacks, on the other hand, are seriously evil. In the matter of concupiscent thoughts, the fault lies with you when by intentional nudity you give rise to them. In that of violent attacks, the fault lies with the attacker. He is obliged to restrain himself, no matter how severe a provocation is offered him. But I ask you to consider, my daughter, whether you wish any human spirit to be rejected by the immortal gods."
"Getting beat over the head the way they do," Chenille said positively, "that's the part I'd really hate."
Incus nodded, gratified. "There is that, as well. You must consider that the men most inclined to these attacks are by no means the most noble of my sex. To the contrary! You might actually be killed. Women frequently are."
"I guess you're right, Patera."
"Oh, I am, my daughter. You may rely upon it. In our present company, your nudity does little harm, I would say. I, at least, am proof against it. So is the soldier whose life I, by the grace and aid of Fairest Phaea, contrived to save. The captain of our boat-"
"Dace."
"Yes, Dace. Dace is also proof against it, or nearly so, I would imagine, by virtue of his advanced age. Auk, of whom I had entertained the gravest fears for your sake has now, by the intercession of Divine Echidna, who ever strives to safeguard the chastity of your sex as well as my own, been so severely injured that he is most unlikely to attack you or-"
"Auk? He wouldn't have to."
Incus cleared his throat again. "I forbear to dispute the matter, my daughter. Your reason or mine, though I greatly prefer my own. But consider this, also. We are to enter the Juzgado, using the tessera the talus supplied. Once there-"
"Is that what we're supposed to do when we get back? I guess it is, but I haven't been thinking about it, just about getting Auk to a doctor and all that. I know a good one. And sitting down and getting somebody nice to wash my feet, and some powder and rouge and some decent perfume, and drinks and something to eat. Aren't you hungry, Patera? I'm starving."
"I am not wholly unaccustomed to fasting, my daughter. To revert to our topic, we are to enter the Juzgado, or so that talus informed us as the claws of Hierax closed upon him. His instructions were Scylla's, he said, and I credit him. He told us the Ayuntamiento must be destroyed, as Scylla herself did upon that unforgettable occasion when she announced that she has chosen me her Prolocutor. The talus indicated that we were to announce her decision to the commissioners, and provided a tessera by which we are to penetrate the subcellar for that purpose. I must confess I had not known that such a subcellar existed, but presumably it does. Consider then, my daughter, that you will soon-"
"Thetis, that was it, wasn't it? I wondered what he meant when he said that. Does it work like a key? I've heard there are doors like that."
"Ancient doors," Incus informed her. "Doors constructed by Great Pas at the time he built the whorl. The Prolocutor's Palace has such a door. Its tessera is known to me, though I may not reveal it."
"Thetis sounds like a god's name. Is it? I don't really know very much about any of the gods except the Nine. And the Outsider. Patera Silk told me a little about him."
"It is indeed." Incus glowed with satisfaction. "In the Writings, my daughter, the mechanism by which we augurs are chosen is described in beautiful though picturesque terms. It is there said…" He paused. "I regret that I cannot quote the passage. I must paraphrase it, I'm afraid. But it is written there that each new year Pas brings is like a fleet. You are familiar with boats, my daughter. You were upon that wretched little fishing boat with me, after all."
"Sure."
"Each year, as I have indicated, is likened to a fleet of boats that are its days, gallant craft loaded with the young men of that year. Each of these day-boats is obliged to pass Scylla on its voyage to infinity. Some sail very near to her, while others remain at a greater distance, their youthful crews crowding the side most distant from her loving embrace. None of which signifies. From each of these boats, she selects the young men who most please her."
"I don't see-"
"
But," Incus continued impressively, "how is it that these boats pass her at all? Why do they not remain safe in harbor? Or sail someplace else? It is because there is a minor goddess whose function it is to direct them to her. Thetis is that goddess, and thus a most suitable tessera for us. A key, as you said. A ticket or inscribed tile that will admit us to the Juzgado, and incidentally release us from the cold and dark of these horrid tunnels."
"You think we might be close to the Juzgado now, Patera?"
Incus shook his head. "I do not know, my daughter. We traveled some distance on that unfortunate talus, and he went very fast. I dare hope we are beneath the city now."
"I doubt if we're much past Limna," Chenille told him.
Auk's head ached. Sometimes it seemed to him that a wedge had been pounded into it, sometimes it felt more like a spike; in either case, it hurt so much at times that he could think of nothing else, forcing himself to take one step forward like an automaton, one more weary step in a progression of weary steps that would never be over. When the ache subsided, as it did now and then, he became aware that he was as sick as he had ever been in his life and might vomit at any moment.
Hammerstone stalked beside him, his big, rubber-shod feet making less noise than Auk's boots as they padded over the damp shiprock of the tunnel floor. Hammerstone had his needler, and when the pain in his head subsided, Auk schemed to recover it, illusory schemes that were more like nightmares. He would push Hammerstone from a cliff into the lake, snatching his needler as Hammerstone fell, trip him as they scaled a roof, break into Hammerstone's house, find him asleep, and take his needler from Hammerstone's strong room… Hammerstone falling headlong, somersaulting, rolling down the roof as he, Auk, fired needle after needle at him, viscous black fluid spurting from every wound to paint the snowy sheets and turn the water of the lake to black blood in which they drowned.
No, Incus had his needler, had it under his black robe; but Hammerstone had a slug gun, and even soldiers could be killed with slugs, which could and often did penetrate the mud-brick walls of houses, the thick bodies of horses and oxen as well as men, slugs that left horrible wounds.