by Gene Wolfe
Then we watched the jumbled structure come down, piece by piece. I had thought that the three machines would work independently, but it was not so—they cooperated as though they communicated by some means we could not hear. Dragon took the highest parts, stripping off the panels and beams with his great mouth and lowering them to the ground for Roller to haul away. Bug lifted the heaviest sections, his legs growing and shrinking as needed. Dust, the first I had seen in the cavern, rose into the air as they worked, and a sour smell with it.
When perhaps a twentieth of the palace was gone, the Min poured out. Some carried weapons, but they did not fire them at the machines or aim them at us. For a few moments they stood watching the destruction; then one—I think the one who had led Cim and me to the room below the throne room—came toward us. His weapon was shaped like a crutch; when he was within five meters of us, he laid it at his feet. “Stop them,” he said.
I told him to stop them himself if he could.
“We cannot. We have spoken to them, and they will not obey us. If we attack them, they will defend themselves. What is it you want?”
Cim said: “My tunic. Ketin’s cloak. Then we will be able to return outside, where we belong, and leave you in this grave where you belong.”
“You will have them. Tell the machines to halt work.”
Cim looked at me, and I said nothing.
“At once. Tell them to halt at once.”
“And then, when they are no longer pulling down your ants’ nest, you can kill us.”
“No. Why should we kill you then? If you are going away? You might start them again before you died. I will leave my weapon where it lies and will tell the others to lay down theirs.”
I told Ketin to take the weapon and destroy it; he did so, breaking it over his knee with a quick motion that left it twisted and splintered.
“I will get your clothing,” the creature said. “Then you will tell them to stop.” And he hurried away without waiting for me to reply.
Soon he was back. He ran like a machine, but I had the impression that, despite the unliving glitter of his eyes, a man was riding the even-stroking mechanical legs. Again he stopped five meters from us. As though they had dirtied his hands, he threw the furs at our feet. I watched while Cim put on her beautiful tunic again and Ketin tied a long cloak about his shoulders. “Stop them now!” the creature said.
I shook my head.
“You agreed!”
I told him that I had agreed to nothing, and he pointed to Cim. “She said it. If the clothing was returned to you, you would leave; you would halt the machines and go back to the upper world.”
“She is an animal,” I said. “Her word is not even binding on herself, much less on me.”
He turned and dashed off again, and the rest of the Min followed him into the building.
“Are you going to tear it all down?” Cim asked.
I nodded.
“I don’t think Mantru will let you,” Cim said. And she was correct. Not more than three or four minutes had passed when I saw the dwarf clambering, with the aid of several of the Min, through the wreckage. Roller came toward him carrying a load of ruined panels, and I thought that he would be frightened, but he was not. He shouted at Roller—I could not hear what he said above the racket the other two were making—and Roller stopped and put the panels down. He shouted again, and Bug became immobile. Dragon slowly lowered his neck until three-quarters of it had telescoped into itself, then was still. Holding his forked staff as though it were a lance, the dwarf advanced toward us.
I had not the least idea how my own staff could be used as a weapon, but I went out to meet him. “We are the only ones left,” he said. “You should not have tried to destroy my home.”
“You should not have tried to murder me in it.”
“With the beast? My vizier did that, not I. And there was no danger—you could have killed him easily, and we thought you would.”
I said, “What is done is done.”
“Nothing has been done that cannot be repaired. Send your pets outside. These machines you have found, and my servants, can restore the damage. And someday—”
His voice broke off. I could not read the expression on his fat, squinting face: it might have been hope or despair.
“‘Someday’?” I asked.
“Someday my servants may find a human woman for me—for us to share. That is why I send them out. But the beasts grow more and more as we; so that sometimes they make errors they would not make if they had the radiations of my own mind for comparison.”
I said, “I don’t believe that was what you intended to say.” I do not know how I knew this, but I knew.
His face tightened, fat and soft though it was. “If you laugh at me,” he said, “I will kill you.”
“I haven’t laughed at anything for a long time.”
“Someday, human beings may return to this world. Then they will find us here, and we shall crush the beasts as we did of old and raise new cities to the stars.”
“I understand,” I said, “but we are leaving.”
I do not know what went through his mind then—at the time I was very surprised when he attacked me. Perhaps it was only because I would not share his dream. More probably, I think, it was because, as I spoke, I pulled loose the sleeves of my coveralls, which I had knotted about my waist for coolness, and slipped my arms into them. It may be that he saw them for the first time that I was not dressed in skins—that I wore the clothing of the Great Steigh—and he thought that I was one of those for whom he waited; that I meant that I would abandon him.
However it was, he thrust his staff toward me, and it grew longer as it came, so that the forked head seemed to fly through the air like one of the vampires. I moved my own staff to strike it aside, and it came to life in my hand; I felt again that I held the muscular body of some thin, cold animal. It twined itself about the dwarfs staff and the two reared upward, lashing each other with their slender horns.
I said that the staff had felt cold, but it grew colder still, colder than any ice I have ever touched—though I knew that it was not the coldness of ice or snow I felt, but a different thing, a draining, for which cold is the only word I know.
Then the dwarf’s staff—perhaps only because it was the longer—began to bend backward.
I looked at his face then and saw that he was in pain. He was gripping his staff with both hands, and the sweat dripped from his row of chins, but the two staffs curved backward toward him even as I felt my own drawing all my strength. My life seemed to be flowing through my hand and down the shaft.
Then the heads were near him, and mine unwound a meter of its length and struck at the dwarf himself. He dropped his staff, but the slender horns of mine drove into his body from either side. As he died, I felt a great pleasure and power that left me weak and shaken and bewildered afterward.
I did not talk to Cim or Ketin about the struggle then; but tonight, after we camped, they spoke of it. They did not see—I find—what I did. Both say only that the dwarf pointed his staff at me, and I pointed mine at him, and he fell dead. I do not know why this is. Still, I felt, even at the time, that the fighting of the staffs was taking place outside the ordinary world.
We left the city when the dwarf died. The creature he had called his vizier came to us and asked if we intended to level what remained of the palace. I could not speak, but Cim told him we would not.
He said, “It does not matter if it comes down now. We will use the material to build a tomb for Mantru.”
Ketin was eager to go and urged me to point the way to him; so I began to walk. Cim came with me. Behind her I heard the clank and roar of the machines. I turned, thinking they had resumed the destruction of the dwarf’s palace, and saw that they were following us.
For half a kilometer I walked, but I was too tired then to go farther. Roller held out his great hands to me, and I rode on his head, as I had when I found him. There was room there for Cim and Ketin, but they were frightened and
would not come up.
After what seemed to me to be an astoundingly short time, we reached the edge of the city. Abruptly, the buildings were gone and all the light in the cavern was behind us, except for the lights of the machines. Then we crossed the cavern floor, with Roller and Bug and Dragon roaring as they swerved around slabs of fallen rock, and Cim and Ketin trotting to keep up. Very quickly we were in the narrow cave that leads to the outside world, with the machines knocking stalactites from the ceiling with their iron shoulders, so that the crashing of smashing stone echoed up and down the cave continually as we made our way out to the sunlight.
Without warning it was much colder, and I smelled fresh air and snow. I fastened the front of my coveralls. Roller swung around a bend, and I could see the narrow opening of the cave mouth, and light on the white expanse outside. I had been afraid that it would be night when we got out, but it was afternoon.
Cim and Ketin wanted to get away from the cave at once. I persuaded them to stay and told the machines to close the entrance, which they did, pulling down tons of rock. Given the energy and determination of the Min, I feel sure they will dig their way out eventually, but the world will be safe from them for a time at least.
When the machines were finished, the sun was halfway down the sky. I told Cim and Ketin that I was going to continue after the Great Sleigh, making it clear that it was my own decision and that they should not consider themselves bound to come with me. Cim said she felt as I did; Ketin did not, but said he would go with us until he had a chance to kill for us, so that we would have something to eat. I showed him the white cubes I had taken from the cart in the cavern, but I do not think he understood what they were.
And that is all for today (which, I am sure, is the longest day I have ever recorded). To tell the truth, I am not going to try to play this back—I am afraid I have exhausted the capacity of the recorder. But while I have been talking tonight, I have finally come to understand that this device does more than simply preserve my words. I know now that by its instrumentality I communicate as well, and that you, on the Great Sleigh, listen as I speak. When I am quiet and there is no sound but the crackling of the fire, and Cim’s soft breathing, and Ketin’s shuddering sighs, I think I hear you. I do not understand why you will not speak to me, but it is enough to know that you are there.
This is the eleventh day. It has been a bad one, though not wholly bad. I dreamed last night—I suppose because I was sleeping in the cold again—of Cim’s kidnapping. In my dream the Min came, and their missile struck me as it had before; this time, the pain was much greater than it had actually been, and I lay in the snow with the useless firewood all around me, knowing that it must all begin again, that the Great Sleigh would be farther away than ever when I returned.
But it was only a dream.
Bug would not move this morning. Apparently the cold killed him in the night. Roller told us several things he believed might help him; we tried them all, but none was effective. Cim cried, the first time I have seen her cry. Roller explained that Bug was not truly dead, that if he was repaired, he would live again. She did not understand, and to tell the truth I think she is more nearly right than he is—no one will ever come with the tools and skills to make Bug’s mechanism operate again; if one night’s cold stopped it, what will a hundred do?
We went on with only Roller and Dragon. I rode Roller, but the metal of his skull was so cold that I had to cut some brush to sit on. After a couple of hours we struck the track of the Great Sleigh. It is almost filled with drifted snow, but still recognizable, and the machines make better time in it than they did when they had to dodge among boulders.
Ketin left us, saying that as long as we continued in the track he would find us, and that he was going to hunt. He returned after we had camped tonight, carrying the corpse of a young woman of some species I do not know. She was taller than any of us, and slender, and must have been beautiful before Ketin broke her neck. He would not eat anything, saying she was all for us; Cim and I had already eaten, so we have tied her to Dragon’s back. Ketin will leave us in the morning.
Before I close, I should say that the sleeve of my coveratts—where the vampires slit it with their teeth as I was entering the cavern—has been the source of more trouble than I had expected. The openings let the cold into the whole suit. I have bound it with the last of the leather from the sail I got from Longknife, but the cold is still bad. I think it causes the wound in my side to ache more than it would otherwise.
Twelfth day. Little to talk about. We followed the track all day, but it seems no fresher. Ketin was gone when we woke. I am very tired, but I have forced myself to walk part of the time to keep warm. About noon, I heard the singing of the Wiggikki—another band, I think, but the same song. It made me think of hunting Nashhwonk over the snow, and I tried to see if I could still run on top of the snow as I had then, but I could not get up enough speed. When I am better, I think I will be able to do it again. Made camp tonight, with Roller breaking trees for firewood for us as he has before. Cim borrowed my knife and cut a part of the leg from the dead woman on Dragon’s back and roasted and ate it, but I only drank some of the broth made from one of the white cubes. Cim was full of praise for my knife and the way it had cut the frozen flesh—mostly, I think, because she believes that I am depressed and need cheering up. The truth is that I am only tired.
The thirteenth day. We lost both Roller and Dragon, within a few hours of each other. Roller stopped first and could not speak. Dragon has never been able to, so he could not tell us how to help him, though we tried the same things (when we could) that he had told us to do for Bug. Nothing worked. He was a good friend, and we will miss him. Dragon stopped too, a few hours later.
Cim and I continued along the track, after cutting some of the best meat from the woman on Dragon’s back. That is for Cim. To tell the truth, I do not think I could eat it.
About dark today, when we were talking about making camp, we were joined by one of the Pamigaka. I did not recognize him at first, but it is Whiteapple. He is full of talk, and I think he is very happy to have caught up with us—he has spent the last few nights alone; I suppose he has been very frightened.
He says he heard about us several times—we seem to have been sighted by numbers of people who were afraid to come near us. We are supposed to be followed by monsters. I asked Whiteapple if he had seen the monsters. He laughed and said he had not, and boasted that he had never believed the stories. He must have passed Roller and Dragon, silent and covered with snow, without realizing what they were. I doubt if he is capable of comprehending that such things can move, unless he has seen them move himself. Still, he says he has questions he wishes to ask the people of the Great Sleigh.
Now he and Cim are both asleep. He snores, but over the noise he makes I can hear someone outside the circle of light thrown by our fire—stealthy movements every five minutes or so. The wind has died, and the snow creaks under his feet, whoever he is. I am keeping my staff close beside me.
I hear your breathing as well, though you are far ahead in the Great Sleigh, and I wonder why it is you cannot speak. Am I being tested? If I pass, do the right thing, if only once, will you talk to me then?
This is the fourteenth day. I do not know why that number should seem significant to me, but it does.
Terrible dreams last night. While I was in the city in the cavern, I killed one of the Min with Cim’s endieva wand, and afterward they hailed me as a kind of king. Last night in my dreams I killed that Min over and over again while he prostrated himself before me and told me that he would be my slave, would do whatever I asked. I kept striking him with the wand; each blow poisoned him, but he would not die. I was frantic and ashamed, guilty because I was killing someone who only wished to be my friend—yet, at the same time, I wanted him to die at once so that no one need know.
I woke up sweating, which was very uncomfortable in the cold; the perspiration seemed almost to freeze on my body as soon as I was awake
. I did not sleep again, and when it was light I went looking for the footprints of whoever it was I heard last night. They were easy to find, about the size of my own. He came within fifteen meters of the fire at one point. For some reason, he appears to take strides of uneven length.
We made very poor time today—I was too weak to walk far. Possibly we covered ten kilometers, but no more than that. Your track is growing dimmer, so you are traveling faster than we. Tonight I told Cim and Whiteapple that they should go on alone, but neither would hear of it. Last night Whiteapple ate most of the meat Ketin brought; but today he has been making up for it by foraging as we go, so I had a dish of herbs to accompany my broth tonight.
“Cutthroat, I have listened to you when you thought I was asleep. I know that you speak into this black ear, and that it returns your words when you wish. Now you are sleeping, and I will speak to you, and perhaps when you wake and I am gone, you will think to listen to this—or find it speaking to you with my voice sometimes when you thought to hear your own.
“I love you, but I cannot love you as a husband, and I cannot stay with you any longer. If only your heart had been born into Fishcatcher’s body, we might have lived beside the waters.
“I believed that I wished to overtake the Great Sleigh. When you took me on your sledge—do you remember that?—I believed that I desired it more than you. But then I believed that tomorrow, or the day after, we would see it.
“Now I know that we have little chance, and the track grows dimmer each day. Soon we will find ourselves in countries that are strange to me, and as the track fades behind us, there will be no way for me ever to return to the lakes and rivers I have known.
“So I am leaving tonight. If I thought I could persuade you to go with me, I would nurse you until you were healed; but I know that you would not come, and I cannot stay with you longer. I love you, and I wish that it had been possible for us to be together always.”