Wyrms

by Orson Scott Card

  "And if I wait long enough, will I get over it?"

  Sken, of course, had no diplomatic instincts. "You are a little bitch. A body tries to be nice-"

  Patience answered, as if to explain everything about herself, "I've faced death more times this month than you have in your life."

  Sken was still a moment, then smiled. "But you don't know boats like I do."

  "We're not on the water now," said Patience.

  "Nor are we assassinating anybody," Sken answered, Patience lay back on the mat and smiled icily. Sken had made her point. "Death and the river, we each know our trade," said Patience.

  "This lover who makes you sweat and cry out in your sleep-"

  "Not my lover," said Patience.

  "He wants you, doesn't he? And you want him?"

  "He wants me like a jackal hungers for a lamb. And I want him like-"

  "Like a fish wants water."

  Patience shuddered. That's how it felt, even now, like needing to take a breath, a deep long draught of air. But if she took that breath, it would be her last.

  "Sken," said Patience, "I'm made of paper."

  Sken touched her gently, stroked the cold damp flesh of her arm with a single dry finger. "Flesh and bone."

  "Paper. Folded this way and that, taking whatever shape they give me. Heir to the Heptagon House, daughter of Peace, assassin, diplomat, give me a shape, I'll wear it, I'll act the part, fold me again, again, I'll be his lover, the one who calls me, and if he ever gets me, he'll fold me down so small I'll disappear."

  Sken nodded wisely, her whole body jiggling just a little with the movement.

  "What if someone unfolded me all the way? What would I be then?"

  "A stranger," said Sken.

  "Yes, even to me," said Patience.

  "Just like everybody else."

  "Oh, do you think so! Do you think something like a normal woman lives inside this lovely delicate murderer's body?"

  "Don't take on such airs," said Sken. "We're all folded up, and nobody knows what we really are. But I know. We're all identical, blank, empty pieces of paper.

  It's the folding that makes us different. We are the folds."

  Patience shook her head. "No, not me. Probably no one starts out blank and smooth, but certainly not me.

  I'm more than what they've done to me. I'm more than I the roles I have to play."

  "What are you, then?"

  "I don't know." She rolled over, faced the wall to end the conversation. "Maybe I won't find out until just before I die."

  "Or maybe just after, when they take your head."

  Patience rolled back, caught the folds of Sken's robe in her tight-clutching fingers. "No," she whispered harshly. "If they ever do that to me, promise you'll split my head in two, you'll pour out the gools, something-"

  "I won't promise, that," said Sken.

  "Why not?"

  "Because if you're in such a state that they could take your head, Heptarch, it means I'm already dead."

  Patience relaxed her grip on Sken's clothing, lay back down. The knowledge of Sken's loyalty was a comfort. But it was also a burden. Patience was so tired. "Go to sleep," said Sken, "and don't dream of love."

  "What should I dream of, then, since you're the master of sleep."

  "Dream of murder," said Sken. "Knowing you, you'll sleep like a baby."

  "I don't love death," whispered Patience.

  Sken patted her hand. "No, I didn't think so."

  "I didn't want my father to die. Nor Angel to be injured, I didn't wish for it."

  Sken looked puzzled. Then she understood. "I know you didn't wish for it, girl," she whispered. "But it means you're on your own now, doesn't it? For a time at least. So of course that feels good."

  "Exciting, sometimes. Scary."

  "And knowing you face the strongest enemy in the world, alone-"

  "Doesn't make me feel good."

  "Don't lie," said Sken. "You love it, sometimes."

  "I hate him for what he's making me want-"

  "But to stand alone against him, you want that, you want to face him alone and win."

  "Maybe."

  "It's perfectly natural to feel that way. It's also perfectly natural to be an idiot."

  "I can kill anybody."

  "Anybody you want to."

  The words sank in. "You're right," said Patience.

  "How can I kill him, if he makes me love him?"

  "You see? You can't do this alone," said Sken. "You need Angel. You need the goblins, disgusting as they are. Their pet giant, too. You may even need me."

  "Even you," whispered Patience.

  "Sleep now. We're all with you, you're at the center of everything, and we're all with you. Plenty of time to unfold yourself when this is over, and your lover's plow is hung on a wall somewhere."

  Patience slept. She never spoke of the night's conversation again, but things were changed between her and Sken. They bickered as always, because Sken hardly knew another way to deal with people, but things were changed. There were ties between them, ties between sisters, strange sisters indeed, but good enough.

  In the morning they traveled again, a queer caravan.

  But Sken's words had made a difference in the way Patience saw the others, too. She looked at them with new eyes, thinking, how can I use him? Why do I need her? What is the strength he has that makes up for the weakness in me? They were all dangerous-to her, but' also to Unwyrm. The geblings especially, they were a mystery. The more Patience watched them, the more she realized that they did most of their communicating without speech, each seeming to sense when the other was in need. She was jealous of their closeness; she even tried to imitate them, going to Angel now and then, whenever she felt he might need her. Sometimes he did more often he didn't. Whatever the geblings had, she lacked it.

  No special sensitivity. Geblings are too different from us.

  This power of theirs is something of this world, not from ours. They're like Unwyrm. Both part of this place, and I'm a stranger here.

  Then the days of land travel were over. The river stretched before them again, this time with a busy town along its bank. It was no trouble finding a merchant to buy the carriage and horses. This close to Cranning, all the buyers were geblings, of course. So Patience dressed herself as a wealthy young man, took Will with her so no one would try to rob her, and did all the bargaining herself, without Ruin or Reck present to foul the deal.

  Geblings had a way of giving gifts to each other instead of making a profit, and though Patience knew that Angel's small treasury had money enough to buy as many boats as she liked, she didn't want to waste their resources.

  When what he had was gone, it could not easily be renewed.

  The carriage gone, the money in hand. Patience-still looking for all the world like a cocky young man-took Sken with her to buy a boat. Sken was a riverwoman, after all; who else could judge a boat's fitness for their upstream voyage? ;

  "Not that one," said Sken, time after time. Too small, too deep a draft, in bad condition, doomed to sink, not enough sail for upriver travel, too hard to steer-reason after reason to reject boat after boat.

  "You're too picky," said Patience. "I'm not planning to live the rest of my life on it."

  "If you buy the wrong boat," said Sken, "that's exactly what you'll do."

  As they walked the bustling wharf, Patience noticed that the boats were all being sold or hired out by humans.

  "It was a gebling who bought our carriage," she said.

  "Don't they travel by water?"

  "Don't ask me about goblins," said Sken. "I hope those two don't travel by boat."

  "They saved a life that's dear to me," said Patience.

  "And if they do sail with us, I hope they remember who's captain of the ship."

  "I'm captain of the ship," said Patience.

  "Not any ship Til sail on, nor any sane person neither," said Sken. "You've got the money, that makes you owner. I've got the know-how, an
d that makes me captain."

  "Supreme authority?"

  "Not quite."

  "Oh? Who's higher than the captain?"

  It wasn't Sken who answered. The voice came from Patience's other side, and it belonged to a man. "Pilot!" he said.

  Patience turned-and saw no one, just a monkey jumping up and down as it pumped at a bellows. The bellows was connected to a tube that ran down into a thick glass jar, then up into the windpipe of a head whose eyes just peered over the top.

  "Pilot?" asked Patience.

  Sken had not yet turned. "Yes, a pilot. Someone who knows the river. Every river is different, and different from year to year, as well." Then she saw the one who had spoken, the head perched in a thick glass jar. Sken wrinkled up her face. "A dead one," she said. "Lot of good he'll do."

  "Been up and down Cranwater every one of the last two hundred years," said the head.

  "Heads don't learn," said Patience. "Heads don't pay attention, and they forget too quickly."

  The monkey kept jumping up and down. It was distracting.

  "I pay attention," said the pilot's head. "I know this river. Some pilots, the river's like an enemy, they wrestle it up and down. Some, it's like a god, they worship, they pray, they curse. Some, it's a whore for them, they think they're in charge but she plays them for fools.

  Some, it's a lover, a wife, a family, they live and die for it. But me-"

  "Come along, young sir," said Sken. But Patience stayed to listen.

  "For me, the Cranwater's not like anything else. This river is myself. That's my name, River, as God gave it to me that's my name, the stream is my body, my arms, my legs."

  The monkey stopped to pick a louse. The head grinned, but because the mouth was lower than the lip of the jar, the thick glass transformed the smile into a hideous leer.

  The monkey tasted the louse, swallowed, and went back to work. Again the breath came through the pilot's throat.

  "My boat's good," said River.

  "Your boat's a rotten old canoe," said Sken.

  "So. You're the captain, you get a good boat, but you come back and buy me for pilot."

  "We'll get a live pilot, thanks all the same," said Sken.

  "That's right, walk away, you've got legs, you can just walk off, what's that to you?"

  A hawk swooped low, circled, came back and landed on a small platform atop the pole where River hung. It held a squirming rat in one talon. It raked open the belly, spattering blood, snatched the guts into its beak, then dropped the rest of the carcass into River's jar. The jar lurched as the gools and headworms attached themselves and fed.

  "Pardon my lunch," said River. "As you see, I'm a self-contained system. You don't have to feed me, though I'm glad if you can keep my jar full of Cranwater, and it's nice if you now and then wash my jar. Monkey's apt to smear it with a bit of his stuff."

  "Where's your owner?" asked Patience.

  Sken was irate. "You're not thinking of-"

  "Go buy a boat, Sken. You have fifteen minutes.

  Choose the best, and I'll come negotiate the price."

  "I won't have this thing as pilot!"

  "If Ruin and Reck have to put up with you as ship's captain, you'll learn to live with River as pilot. Weren't you the one said the pilot was most important?"

  "You're enjoying this," said Sken. "You're making sport, and I thought we were friends."

  "You're not making a mistake, young master," said River. "A pilot has to know the sandbars, the currents, the fast places, the slow places, the shallow channels, the spring rises, I know them all, I'll get you through, provided you do as I tell you, up to and including that Queen of Grease you have with you, what do you do, harvest her sweat and sell it as lamp oil downriver?"

  Patience laughed. Sken did not.

  "Buy the boat," said Patience. "I want this pilot, for reasons that are good enough."

  River cheered her on. "For reasons of wisdom, for reasons of-"

  "Shut up," said Sken to River. Then to Patience:

  "Young sir, you don't know this man-"

  "I know from how his face has aged and cracked that he's at least two centuries, in hard sunlight and bad weather much of the time,"

  "Ah, it's the truth, the torture of my life written on my face," said River.

  "So he's old," said Sken.

  "He's been a head at least a century," said Patience.

  "Plying the river all that time. And in those many voyages, he's never failed a customer. He's never broken up a boat on a sandbar or a rock."

  "How do you know that?" Sken demanded.

  "Because the young master's got the spirit of discernment of truth in him," said River.

  "Because he's here," said Patience. "If he'd ever let an owner down, his jar would have been broken, and he would have been poured out into the river long ago."

  Sken glared, but had no answer. So she went farther along the dock, examining all the boats with an even more skeptical eye.

  "You've got wisdom," said River. "I hope that among the hundred sons I conceived when I could still do the mattress hornpipe, there's one as well-favored and intelligent and-"

  "And rich."

  "As your most gracious self. Though I could wish a son of mine might have more of a beard on him."

  "As he would no doubt wish his father to have more limbs."

  River giggled, an artificial-sounding laugh because it all came from his mouth. There could be no belly laugh, with the monkey pumping the bellows with the same steady rhythm. "Ay, there's something lacking on both of us, I can't deny it."

  "When will your owner come back?" asked Patience.

  "When I send the monkey to fetch him."

  "Then send."

  "And miss out on conversation with such a likely young man? I buggered a few as fair as you in my time, I'll have you know, and they thanked me afterward."

  "As I'll thank you for mislaying your practical buggery tools before we met."

  River winked. "Nothing shocks you, does it?"

  "Nothing that lives in a jar, anyway," said Patience.

  "Send the monkey. If you want to talk, I can read your lips."

  River made three sharp kissing noises. Patience realized that it was a sound he could make without the bellows. The monkey immediately dropped the bellows and clambered around to perch on the lip of the jar, pressing his forehead against River's. A few more chirping sounds, tongue clicks, lip pops, and the monkey dropped to the wooden dock and ran off through the crowd.

  River made a single clicking sound, and the hawk took off and flew away.

  Patience stood, reading his lips as he made jokes, told stories, and studied her with his eyes. All the while, Patience felt Unwyrm calling her. Come faster, I need you, you love me, I'll have you. Not in words, it was never words, it was just the need. Fly to me now.

  I'm coming, said Patience silently, trying hard not to think consciously of the murder in her mind.

  The head named River babbled on and on, looking less and less like her father the longer she watched. Good.

  She didn't need the distraction.

  Once they were on the water, Sken was in her element, and lorded it over them all. Never mind River muttering commands from his jar, which dangled from a pole near the helm; Sken was glad enough to follow River's orders about where to steer, once he showed that he really did know the river. Steering was the pilot's business-everything else about the boat was Sken's to decide. Only Angel, lying in comfort at last, without the bouncing of the road, only he was exempt from her orders. All the others, Sken kept them hopping with the business of a boat making the tricky upriver passage under sail and oar.

  She took particular pleasure in ordering Reck and Ruin to climb the mast and fiddle with the two sails-she watched with unbearable satisfaction on her face as they dangled over the water doing her bidding. The height didn't seem to bother them, nor the work, but the water itself seemed to make them uncomfortable. And credit Sken with this: she did not ab
use her authority. Like any good captain, she knew that the geblings would obey her, but only as long as she ordered them to do what was clearly needful.

  Patience did her part as well, a full share of work, like any of the others. At first Sken was uneasy ordering her about, but if she left Patience without labor. Patience would come and ask, until Sken barked out commands to her as easily as to anyone. Patience was grateful for anything that engaged her mind. The Cranning call was relentless, but it was easier to live with when she was busy. So she spent many an hour braiding lines, raising and lowering sail, or leaning on the helm as River ordered their way upstream, tacking across the current to keep the wind, easing into deep channels with oars or poles to get past the tricky places-it was a vigorous, hardworking life, and Patience came to love the river, partly because of the peace it brought to her, partly for the life itself. Sken's coarseness and crudity became vigor and strength, when seen within the river life.

  For all that Sken was a good captain, though, she was not perfect. Patience noticed within a few days that Sken tyrannized Will without mercy, perhaps merely because he let her do it. No doubt they weighed about the same, but she was a good meter less in height. It was comical, watching him pull on a rope or haul something above or below deck, his massive muscles rippling along his body as he worked, while all the time the jiggling fat woman scolded and cursed him. Poor Will, thought Patience. All the pangs of marriage, and none of the conveniences. But he bore it well and didn't seem to mind. It became part of the equilibrium. Patience let it go.

  It was early morning. Will was drawing up the anchor while Reck was raising the sail. Ruin sat in the bow, staring glumly ahead. Sken sent Patience to secure a line when Reck threw it down, and the task brought her near to Ruin, who was not working this shift.

  She saw him shudder at her approach. "Is it that strong, when you feel him calling me?" she asked.