by Gene Wolfe
She choked and sobbed. "Where the tunnels crossed, and I could hear him walking. Not the way he had been when I'd been following him, but slowly, stumbling every step or two. He was a long way off, but I had good ears and I gave them to Marble."
Nettle looked puzzled; I signaled her not to speak.
"So I ran some more." Maytera Mint looked up at us, and it seemed worse to me than any weeping that her eyes were not full of tears. "He'd fallen down when I got there. He was bleeding terribly, like the animals do after the augur pulls his knife out, but he wouldn't let me look at it, so I carried him."
We ourselves carried him after that, carrying him in our arms like a child because we had no poles from which to make a stretcher. He directed us, for he knew where the Trivigauntis were, and down which tunnel the sleepers were coming.
(I will say nothing of our brush with the Trivigauntis; it has been talked about until everyone is tired of listening. Shrike, Scleroderma, and I had needlers, as did certain others. Scleroderma risked her life to get our wounded to safety; and as the fighting grew hotter, she was wounded and wounded again, but she continued to nurse us when her skirt was stiff with her own blood.
(She has been dead for years now; I very much regret that it has taken me so long to pay her this well-deserved tribute. Her grandchildren are very proud of her and tell everyone that she was a great woman in Viron. Nobody in Viron thought her a great woman, only a short fat woman who trudged from house to house selling meat scraps, an amusing woman with a joke for everyone, who had dumped a bucket of scraps over Silk while he sat with her on a doorstep because she felt he was patronizing her. But the truth is that her grandchildren are right, and we in Viron were wrong. She was a very great woman, second only to General Mint. She would have ridden with General Mint if she could, and she fought the Guard in Cage Street and nursed the wounded afterward, and fought fires that night when it seemed the whole city might burn. In the end, she and Shrike lost their home and their shop, all that they possessed, to the fire that swept our quarter. Even then, she did not despair.)
Quetzal had brought hundreds of cards from the Burse. He had already entrusted most of them to Remora, and he gave him the rest when we reached the landers. Some of us had thought that he had refused to have his wound bandaged for fear his cards would be stolen, but when they had been turned over to the sleepers, he still refused.
With the sleepers, we filled two landers. It was thought best to have some of them on each, because they knew much more about their operation than any of us did. As has been told many times, the monitor who controlled our lander appeared in the glasses, displayed Blue and Green to us, and asked which was our destination. No one knew, so we consulted Quetzal, although he was too weak almost to speak.
He asked to be carried to the cockpit, as we called that part of our lander which Silk had called the nose. The monitor there displayed both whorls to him, as it had to Remora, Marrow, and me; and he chose Green, and choosing died. Remora then personally carried his body back to the small sickbay; it was no easy task, because our engines were firing as never before, not even when we had left the Long Sun Whorl. As it chanced, there was a glass in this sickbay, I suppose to advise those who cared for the sick.
There was a woman named Moorgrass on board whose trade it had been to wash the bodies of the dead, and perfume them, and prepare them for burial. Remora asked her to wash and prepare Quetzal's, and Maytera Marble and Nettle volunteered to help her. I shall never forget their screams.
We did not know then that the inhumi live on Green, nor that they fly to Blue when the whorls are in conjunction, nor that they drink blood, nor even how they change their shapes. Or in fact anything about them. Yet everyone who saw Quetzal's body was deeply disturbed; and Marrow and I urged that we come here to Blue instead of going to Green as he had advised.
Remora heard us out; but when we had finished, he affirmed his faith in Patera Quetzal, whose coadjutor he had been for so many years, and declared that we would remain on the course he had recommended. It was not until three days later, when it had become apparent to anyone who went into the cockpit that we were really on course to Blue, that we learned that the monitor had overruled him. No one questions its decision now.
Here I close my defense, having (as I hope) satisfied the demands of my critics. Whether I have or have not, having compromised my principles more than I wished. I repeat that I set out to tell Silk's story, and no other.
It may be that he is dead, having been killed in the Long Sun Whorl. It may also be that he and Hyacinth later boarded a lander that carried them to Green, and died there.
But it also may be that he is still alive, and in my heart I feel that he is, either in the Long Sun Whorl or as I hope-on another part of this Short Sun Whorl we call Blue. The years will have changed him as they change all of us; I can only describe him as he looked on that overheated summer afternoon when he snatched the ball from my hand as I was about to score, a man well above avenge height, with a clear, somewhat pale complexion, bright blue eyes, and straw-colored hair that would never lie flat. A slender man, but not a slow or a weak one. He will have a scar upon his back where the needle left it, and may have faint scars on his right arm, left by the beak of the vulture Mucor called the white-headed one.
My own name is Horn. My wife Nettle and I live with our sons on Lizard Island, toward the tail, where we make and sell such paper as this. We will be grateful to anyone who brings us word of Patera Silk.
Afterward
Horn wiped the point of his quill with a scrap of soft leather and corked the ink that he and his wife had concocted from soot and sap, pushed back his chair, and stood. It was done. It was done at last, and now perhaps the ghost of the boy he had been would leave him in peace.
Outside, the short sun's fiery rim had touched the sea. A golden road-an Aureate Path-stretched westward across the whitecaps toward a new Mainframe that almost certainly did not exist. He walked to the beach where Hoof and Hide were playing and asked where Sinew was.
"Hunting," Hide declared; Hoof added, "Over on the big island, Father." Hoofs wide, dark eyes showed plainly how deeply he was impressed.
"He should be home by this time."
Nettle called from the kitchen window as he spoke.
"Go inside." When the twins objected, he gave each a push in the direction of the sturdy walls.
From the summit of the tor, he had a clear view of the strait. Still, a half-minute passed before he could be certain of the coracle, lifted upon distant waves only to vanish from sight. Night had come already to the eastern sky, scattering the short suns of other whorls across its black velvet. Soon Green would rise, almost a second sun, yet baleful as a curse; it had brought a succession of storms and monstrous tides-
There!
Horn watched and waited until he was sure the faint gleam was actually moving against its glittering backdrop. Within that point of light he had been born, and had grown almost to manhood. Within that point of light Sinew had been conceived, in all probability, in the Caldé's Palace. It did not seem possible.
Almost too quickly to be noticed, something dark flitted between Horn and the whorl that had been his; and he shuddered.
THE END
Table of Contents
Book Three
Caldé of the Long Sun
Chapter 1 The Slaves of Scylla
Chapter 2 Silk's Back!
Chapter 3 A Tessera for the Tunnel
Chapter 4 The Plan of Pas
Chapter 5 Mail
Chapter 6 The Blind God
Chapter 7 Where Thelx Holds Up a Mirror
Chapter 8 Peace
Chapter 9 Victory
Chapter 10 Caldé Silk
Epilogue
Book Four
Exodus from the Long Sun
Chapter 1 Back from Death
Chapter 2 His Name Is Hossaan
Chapter 3 The First Theophany on Thelxday
Chapter 4 Swords of Sphigx
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br /> Chapter 5 The Man from Mainframe
Chapter 6 In Spider's Web
Chapter 7 The Brown Mechanics
Chapter 8 To Save Your Life
Chapter 9 A Piece of Pas
Chapter 10 A Life for Pas
Chapter 11 Lovers
Chapter 12 I'm Auk
Chapter 13 Making Peace
Chapter 14 The Best Thieves in the Whorl
Chapter 15 To Mainframe!
Chapter 16 Exodus from the Long Sun
My Defense
Afterward