by Gene Wolfe
In the meantime, I am going to write about what I saw and what I dreamed, which comes down to saying the same thing twice. By writing about them, I will subject them to the discipline of my conscious mind. At least I hope so.
The corpses were the first and the most obvious thing. They floated past upon the slow water the whole time I searched, mostly singly, but sometimes by two and threes. I have already written about the first, the one I saw in the water while the Neighbor was still with me. There would be no point in recording the same facts about the rest. I had cleared the blockage enough to raise the level of the river noticeably, and the opening I had made was permitting the water in the sewer to erode dead men (and women and children) as any little flow of water washes away grains of sand. A few of them floated face up. Most were face down, and I was glad of that.
Nothing has happened, except that I have sat here thinking, trying to recall something that I heard Patera Pike read from the Chrasmologic Writings long, long ago. Something about the people Pas put into our Long Sun Whorl multiplying until they were as numerous as grains of sand. Patera Remora has a copy of the Writings, I know. He probably has the quotation by heart, too; it would not even be necessary to ask him to look it up. But what a sad thing it is to try to live by a book written for another time and another whorl! The gods to whom he prays and sacrifices are far away.
Yet he is one of the few good men in New Viron. One of the few good men left, I ought to say. Who is worse off, we who have lost faith in his book, or he who keeps it, faithful without praise and without reward? We are, beyond all question. Better to be good without reason than to be evil for a hundred good reasons.
Can Great Pas really have meant for all this to happen when he inspired one of the Chrasmologic Writers to pen those few words about grains of sand? Can he have foreseen the blocked sewer on Green, and the corpses bursting free in the wave that nearly drowned me? In my dream, the floating corpses motioned to me and spoke, saying the things they had said in life, urging me to buy nails or boots, cheap clothing, and meat pies, blessing me in the names of various gods, and wishing me a good morning, a good afternoon; and it became clear to me that the dead cannot know that they are dead, that if they know it they cannot be dead. Thus all those dead men and women behaved in death as they had in life. It seemed certain that I was dead as well-that it was only because I too was dead and did not know it that I could hear the dead as I did, that I could see them move and speak.
Let me leave my dream for a line or two. I have wondered a good deal about the actions of the Neighbor who released me, gave me my sword (and no doubt the light), and set my task. Why did he want the sewer beneath the City of the Inhumi opened? And why did he want me to do it, and not some other? Why did he not do it himself?
Most important, why would he not permit me to take Sinew with me?
This last is the easiest, I feel sure. I had reached my conclusion long before nightfall, and have never changed it. He wished me to return to the City of the Inhumi and free everyone who had been held with me. If Sinew had been freed too, the two of us would have been much less likely to return for the others, and would, moreover, have shared their gratitude if we did. Freeing them made me their leader.
I had no desire to be, and still less did I wish to risk my life a second time in the City of the Inhumi. I decided, very firmly, and as I thought irrevocably, that I would not return-that I would not allow myself to be so manipulated. Sinew had detested me for years; very well, let him free himself or die. As for the others who had been our companions on He-hold-fire's lander, I did not care a straw for any of them except Krait, who was safe. I resolved that when night came I would abandon the search and make my way down the river until fatigue overcame me, putting as much distance as possible between the City and myself.
The sky, which is nearly always dark on Green, grew darker; and the slumberous silence of river and jungle was violated again and again. I heard splashes and snorts as animals, newly awakened from their day-sleep, came to drink, and from across the river (which was by no means wide) the breaking of bones as some beast fed upon a stranded corpse. With my mind's eyes, I saw the blind man crouching on the bank, an arm between his jaws.
And I set off downriver, as I had resolved to do.
In my dream tonight, however, that moment never came. I had found gems, or at least smooth stones that seemed gems, in the sand in the hollow of an abrupt bend in the channel. After pocketing a few I ignored the rest, having hoped to find my light there. In my dream they were jewels indeed, jewels as big as pullet's eggs, sparkling from a hundred facets. At the opposite point, where the strengthened current washed away the earth of the bank, I had glimpsed squared stones and shards of pottery among the roots. In my dream, these became strange machines and gleaming weapons, objects of unthinkable power and mystery. The dead children taunted me, and begged, "A cardbit, sir? Just one cardbit, " urged on by Scylla.
Or at least, I believe now that those strange machines and weapons must exist only in my dream tonight, as Active as Scylla and the speaking dead. It may have been, however, that they were actually present, that I saw them and ignored them, refusing to recognize them for what they were; but that my memory has stored them up, and now recalls them to torment me for my neglect. What might we find if we were to dig for those treasures near buildings such as this rambling house of Inclito's?
Tonight, when we told stories around the dinner table, I discovered to my utter astonishment and her consternation that I could enter into Fava's, seeing everything she described and more, and changing the course of her tale. (I must remember to describe all that here.) If there is more to tales than I have ever believed, may there not be more to dreams, too? I will not say that there are treasures in the ruins here because I dreamed them. Madness lies in all such assumptions. But may not they be there, just as my sword was concealed in a wall? (Better yet, as the silver cup must have been hidden somewhere in the ruined Neighbor house near Gaon.) And may I not find some because of my dream?
For a moment at least I had the company I have been wishing for. The kitchen maid, fully dressed, with tousled hair and the indescribable expression of a woman who has been satisfied in love, appeared in my doorway to ask whether I would not like something to eat. Without answering her question, I demanded to know why she was awake at such an hour.
She said that it was necessary for her to rise very early to help the cook make bread, so that we could have freshly baked bread at breakfast, which my host's mother insists upon whenever there is company.
I remarked that she could not get much sleep in that case, asked where she had slept. It struck home. She colored, her cheeks (fuller even than Mora's) blushing so dark a red that I could not miss it even by candlelight, and said that she slept in the kitchen. "I'm going there now."
I refrained from asking from where.
"So I can get you something very easily, Master Incanto, if you want anything, sir."
I told her that I did not, and she fled. The other maid is slender and more attractive.
* * *
I have tried to sleep again, but it is perfectly useless. The nightmare river waits in my mind, ready to pounce the moment my eyes close, its dead people voicing their dead greetings and its dead children crying out to me for help. I do not mean that I dreamed it again. I cannot have, since I did not sleep. But it filled my thoughts most unpleasantly.
Not half a minute after I sat up again, in came the kitchen maid with this tray. This time I was able to speak with her somewhat longer, although she seemed more frightened than ever. Her name is Onorifica, she is the fourth child of seven, and her father owns a smaller, poorer farm nearby. He has bought three heifers (Onorifica says very good ones) from Inclito, and is paying for them with three years' labor from his daughter.
"It's not near as bad as you're thinking, sir. I get plenty to eat and my clothes, and presents sometimes." She showed me a silver ring and a bracelet she thinks is gold. It is actually brass if I
am any judge, and was probably made in Gaon, where you can see a thousand like it on any market day.
"And I'll get in a nap after breakfast, sir. Cook and I both will."
I asked her about the others. Decina, the cook, is a permanent servant, paid in foodstuffs that she trades for whatever other things she may require. The coachman and the other farm laborers are paid in the same fashion, and all take a wagon into Blanko once a month to trade for whatever they want or need.
Torda, the other maid, is a distant relation of Inclito's. "A cousin?" I suggested.
"She'd like you to think it, sir. Madame's brother's son was married to her mother. I think that's the way of it. Only he got killed in a war, and she married somebody else, and that when she"-she meant Torda-"got born. It's some story like that, sir. Anyhow she came here in rags, that's what cook says, expecting to be treated like Mora, you know. Only they was always fighting. That was how it was when I came and I've got to go."
This tray she brought me holds a cup and saucer, a little pot of very good tea, sugar whiter than I was accustomed to in Gaon, half a lemon, and enough cherry tarts for four or five persons. I am drinking the tea, but I intend to leave the tarts for Oreb. That business about fresh bread for breakfast suggests a substantial meal.
Looking back over what I wrote an hour ago, I find my speculations on the motives of the Neighbor on Green who recruited me to clean his sewer. Let us try another, one I think deeper and more difficult.
Why (I asked) did he not do it himself? I am going to propose two theories; neither or both may be correct. The first is that the Neighbors find it hard to move some kinds of objects. So it seems to me after the dealings I have had with them. I do not think that they are here in the sense we are, even when they are standing beside us. This is only speculation, but I believe they may be able to move natural objects such as sticks and stones, and things that they themselves made when Blue and Green were their homes, better than other things. The silver cup they gave me (which I am very sorry I left: behind), the door the Neighbor opened for me when I was confined on Green, and the sword and light he gave me are all examples. We human beings are native to the Long Sun Whorl, and not to Blue or Green; and so the tangled corpses of so many hundreds of us would have presented a Neighbor with great difficulties, if I am correct.
Second, he wished me to see (and to smell and touch) those bodies. He might have freed me in many ways, and made me the leader of my fellow prisoners in many ways, too. But I cannot think of any other way in which he could have been half so effective. The horror of the inhumi that I had when I set out from the Lizard had been blunted by living with Krait on the sloop. If the Neighbor wanted to renew it as much as it could be renewed, he chose the most effective possible way of doing it.
I believe, however, that his true goal was to give me a realistic understanding of what we faced.
Before moving ahead, I ought to double back to the time after Mora left me. I've written nothing about that.
When I received the letters, it struck me that if I was going to ride out here with Mora and Fava it would be of value to know at what time their palaestra ended. I asked directions and walked over to it, and fin ding the coachman already waiting for them, I wrote Inclito a note thanking him for his invitation and saying that I could not come that day but hoped to come the next, and asked him to tell his coachman to allow me to ride with Mora and her friend.
The owner of the stationery store had invited me to share his supper; it was a simple meal of bread and soup, and I surprised and pleased him and his wife by eating little of either and amusing them with stories of my journey to Viron with Pig and Hound. Before we ate (as! should have said in the beginning) they asked me to invoke the gods. I blessed our meal in the name of the Outsider, making the sign of addition as solemnly as I would have when I was a boy, and talked about him for a few moments afterward. There is a great hunger for the gods here on Blue, I believe; but without their presence it lacks a focus.
Onorifica came back, perspiring from her bread-making but with her hair in better order. She had appeared frightened when she carried my tray in, her eyes darting around the room; I had thought that she was afraid of Oreb and had assured her that he was gone. This time she seemed more resolute; I made her sit down and offered her one of her own tarts.
"Cook was like to die at me for that, sir." She sat gingerly, picked up a tart in both hands, and nibbled at it like a fat squirrel.
I remained silent.
"She's afraid of you, sir. Swears she won't show her face in the kitchen door as long as you're here."
Of course I said that she had no reason to be, although I wondered how true it was; it seemed barely possible that his cook was the spy Inclito felt certain he was harboring.
"They're afraid of you in town, too, sir. Terrible afraid's what I hear."
I asked whether she had been there, and when she said she had not, how she knew.
"Coachman says, sir." She paused, worried (I believe) that she might be getting her informant into trouble. "He's got to come straight back after he drops them off in the morning, sir, and he does."
"But in the afternoon he has time to-" Gossip clearly would not do. "Talk to people there, assuming that he arrives a little early."
"That's right, sir."
"When I rode out here, Onorifica, Mora and Fava told me that their teachers had been quizzing them about me all day."
She chewed and swallowed. "I think so, sir."
"They also said that they'd given me a good character, and told everyone I was perfectly harmless. That last is quite true, and I'd like to think that the first is, too-though I know better."
"Is that all they said, sir?"
I shook my head. "They said quite a lot, Fava particularly. But that's all they told me that they had told their teachers."
"Mora wouldn't lie to you, sir."
"I'm delighted to hear it." I would have been even more delighted if I had believed it.
"But that Fava! Don't you trust her, sir."
I promised I would not.
"Looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Well, Master don't trust her, let me tell you. I've heard him jawing away sometimes, and she come in the room and that's the end. After that he talks about as much as a sti-" As Onorifica spoke, she caught sight of the staff that Cugino had cut for me. In a markedly different tone she asked, "Does your stick talk, sir?"
I smiled and said that it had not done so recently.
"It has that little face on it, though, don't it, sir?"
"Does it really? Show it to me."
"I'd rather not to touch it, sir, if it's-would you want me to fetch it, sir?" Her eyes pleaded with me to refuse, so I got up and got it myself.
She pointed, her trembling finger a good cubit from the wood. "Right here, sir."
There was a small hole where a knot had come out. Above it, a minute protuberance that might be called a nose, and over that two small, dark markings, that could-with a cartload of imagination-be taken for eyes. I rubbed this "face" with my thumb, dislodging a few dry scraps of inner bark. "Do you mean this, Onorifica?"
"Don't touch it, please, sir." The color left her cheeks. "Don't make it talk."
Suppressing a smile, I promised not to.
"What I got to ask you about, sir, is-is… " Her lips twitched soundlessly.
"Whether I really am a strego, as your mistress calls them? A magic worker?"
Her expression told me I had missed the mark, but her head bobbed.
"No, Onorifica, I'm not. No one is."
I waited for her to speak.
"Nobody is. There is no such thing as magic, in the way you mean it. Things we don't understand, ghosts and sudden storms for instance, make us think that there might be. But ghosts are merely the spirits of the dead, and though I don't know what causes sudden storms, I know they aren't raised by magic. It's true that certain people can predict the future, but they do it by drawing upon insights that they don't know they
have, or because they're informed by the gods."
I smiled again, trying to reassure her. "Long ago I was the friend of someone who became a sort of god, an aspect of Pas. He gave me a lot of information and advice, and all of it was valuable. But wise as he was, he taught me no magic. He couldn't have, even if he had considered such a thing desirable."
"Like tonight, sir."
I thought she was referring to Fava's story. "Strange things happen, Onorifica. Nevertheless, it is no explanation to call them magic." There was a tap at the windowpane, and I got up and opened the window to let Oreb in.
"Good girl?" He eyed the good girl (who seemed on the verge of fainting) doubtfully.
"A very good girl, " I assured him.
"I told him we shouldn't with you in the house, " the good girl blurted, showering me with crumbs.
"Bad thing, " Oreb warned me.
I started to ask whom she intended by "him, " thinking that there might be an inhumu here, then realized the true state of affairs. Speaking very softly I said, "The friend to whom I referred was spied upon once when he was shriving a young woman. He told me that because the young woman had kept her voice very low, the spy had learned little or nothing." More loudly I concluded, "We should do the same."
"Yes, Master Incanto." From her expression, Onorifica had not the least idea what I was talking about.
"You happened to pass my room tonight on your way back to the kitchen, and very kindly asked whether I needed anything. And I, without in the least meaning to, frightened you by asking where you slept. Isn't that so?"
She seemed almost afraid to move her head, but managed a nod.
"I have no business interfering in my host's affairs, save those in which he has asked my help, and no business interfering in yours at all."