Nightside the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Rocking almost imperceptibly, the floater slowed, then settled onto the roadway. “Here’s Orchid’s place, Patera.”

  “On the right there? Thank you, my son.” Silk slid the azoth into the top of the stocking on his good foot and pulled his trousers leg down over it; it was a considerable relief to be able to lean back comfortably.

  “Quite a place, they tell me, Patera. Like I said, I’ve only been inside a couple times.”

  Silk murmured, “I very much appreciate your going out of your way for me.”

  Orchid’s house seemed typical of the older, larger city houses, a hulking cube of shiprock with a painted façade, its canary arches and fluted pillars the phantasmagoria of some dead artist’s brush. There would be a courtyard, very likely with a dry fishpond at its center, ringed by shady galleries.

  “It’s only one story in back, Patera. You can get in that way, too, off of Music Street. That might be closer for you.”

  “No,” Silk said absently. It would not do to arrive at the rear entrance like a tradesman.

  He was studying the house and the street, visualizing them as they would appear by day. That shop with the white shutters would be the pastry cook’s, presumably. In an hour or two there would be chairs and tables for customers who wished to consume their purchases on the spot, the mingled smells of maté and strong coffee, and cakes and muffins in the windows. A shutter swung back as Silk watched.

  “In there,” the driver jerked his thumb at the yellow house, “they’ll be getting set to turn in now. They’ll sleep till noon, most likely.” He stretched, yawning. “So will I, if I can.”

  Silk nodded weary agreement. “What is it they do in there?”

  “At Orchid’s?” The driver turned to look back at him. “Everybody knows about Orchid’s, Patera.”

  “I don’t, my son. That was why I asked.”

  “It’s a—you know, Patera. There’s thirty girls, I guess, or about that. They put on shows, you know, and like that, and they have a lot of parties. Have them for other people, I mean. The people pay them to do it.”

  Silk sighed. “I suppose it’s a pleasant life.”

  “It could be worse, Patera. Only—”

  Someone screamed inside the yellow house. The scream was followed at once by the crash of breaking glass.

  The engine sprang to life, shaking the whole floater as a dog shakes a rat. Before Silk could protest, the floater shot into the air and sped up Lamp Street, scattering men and women on foot and grazing a donkey cart with a clang so loud that Silk thought for a moment it had been wrecked.

  “Wait!” he called.

  The floater turned almost upon its side as they rounded a corner, losing so much height that its cowling plowed the dust.

  “That might be a—whatever the trouble is.” Silk was holding on desperately with both hands, pain and the damage the white-headed one had done to his arm forgotten. “Go back and let me out.”

  Wagons blocked the street. The floater slowed, then forced its way between the wall of a tailor shop and a pair of plunging horses.

  “Patera, they can take care of it. It’s happened there before, like I told you.”

  Silk began, “I’m supposed—”

  The driver cut him off. “You got a real bad leg and a bad arm. Besides, what if somebody saw you going in there—a place like that—at night? Tomorrow afternoon will be bad enough.”

  Silk released the leather-covered bar. “Did you really float away so quickly out concern for my reputation? I find that difficult to believe.”

  “I’m not going to go back there, Patera,” the driver said stubbornly, “and I don’t think you could walk back if you tried. Which way from here? To get to your manteion, I mean.” The floater slowed, hovered.

  This was Sun Street; it could not have been half an hour since they had floated past the talus and out Blood’s gate. Silk tried to fix the Guard post and soiled statue of Councillor Tarsier in his memory. “Left,” he said absently. And then, “I should have Horn—he’s quite artistic—and some of the older students paint the front of our manteion. No, the palaestra first, then the manteion.”

  “What’s that, Patera?”

  “I’m afraid I was talking to myself, my son.” They had almost certainly been painted originally; it might even be possible to find a record of the original designs among the clutter of papers in the attic of the manse. If money could be found for paint and brushes as well—

  “Is it far, Patera?”

  “Another six blocks perhaps.”

  He would be getting out in a moment. When he had left Blood’s reception hall, he had imagined that the night was already gray with the coming of shadeup. Imagination was no longer required; the night was virtually over, and he had not been to bed. He would be getting out of the floater soon—perhaps he should have napped upon this soft seat after all, when he had the opportunity. Perhaps there was time for two or three hours sleep in the manse, though no more than two or three hours.

  A man hauling bricks in a handcart shouted something at them and fell to his knees, but whatever he had shouted could not be heard. It reminded Silk that he had promised to bless the driver when they parted. Should he leave this walking stick in the floater? It was Blood’s stick, after all. Blood had intended for him to keep it, but did he want to keep anything that belonged to Blood? Yes, the manteion, but only because the manteion was really his, not Blood’s, no matter what the law, or even the Chapter, might say. Patera Pike had owned the manteion, morally at least, and Patera Pike had left him in charge of it, had made him responsible for it until he, too, died.

  The floater was slowing again as the driver studied the buildings they passed.

  Silk decided that he would keep the manteion and the stick, too—at least until he got the manteion back. “Up there, driver, with the shingled roof. See it?” He gripped the stick and made sure its tip would not slide on the floor of the floater; it was almost time to go.

  The floater hovered, “Here, Patera?”

  “No. One, two, three doors farther.”

  “Are you the augur everybody’s talking about, Patera? The one that got enlightened? That’s what somebody told me back at the estate.”

  Silk nodded. “I suppose so, unless there were two of us.”

  “You’re going to bring back the caldé—that’s what they say. I didn’t want to ask you about it, you know? I hoped it would sort of come up by itself. Are you?”

  “Am I going to restore the caldé? Is that what you’re asking? No, that wasn’t in my instructions at all.”

  “Instructions from a god.” The floater settled to the roadway and its canopy parted and slid into its sides.

  Silk struggled to his feet. “Yes.”

  The driver got out, to open the door for him. “I never thought there were any gods, Patera. Not really.”

  “They believe in you, however.” Aided by the driver, Silk stepped painfully onto the first worn shiprock step in front of the street entrance to the manteion. He was home. “You believe in devils, it seems, but you do not believe in the immortal gods. That’s very foolish, my son. Indeed, it is the height of folly.”

  Suddenly the driver was on his knees. Leaning on his stick, Silk pronounced the shortest blessing in common use and traced the sign of addition over the driver’s head.

  The driver rose. “I could help you, Patera. You’ve got a—a house or something here, don’t you? I could give you a hand that far.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Silk told him. “You had better go back and get to bed.”

  Courteously, the driver waited for Silk to leave before restarting his blowers. Silk found that his injured leg was stiff as he limped to the narrow garden gate and let himself in, locking the gate behind him. By the time he reached the arbor, he was wondering whether it had not been foolish to refuse the driver’s offer of help. He wanted very badly to rest, to rest for only a minute or so, on one of the cozy benches beneath the vines, where he had sat almost every
day to talk with Maytera Marble.

  Hunger urged him forward; food and sleep were so near. Blood, he thought, might have shown him better hospitality by giving him something to eat. A strong drink was not the best welcome to offer a man with an empty stomach.

  His head pounded, and he told himself that a little food would make him feel better. Then he would go up to bed and sleep. Sleep until—why, until someone woke him. That was the truth: until someone woke him. There was no power but in truth.

  The familiar, musty smell of the manse was like a kiss. He dropped into a chair, pulled the azoth from his stocking, and pressed it to his lips, then stared at it. He had seen it in her hand, and if the doctor was to be believed, it was her parting gift. How preposterous that he should have such a thing, so lovely, so precious, and so lethal! So charged with the forgotten knowledge of the earlier world. It would have to be hidden, and hidden well, before he slept; he was by no means sure that he could climb the steep and crooked stair to the upper floor, less sure that he could descend it again to prepare food without falling, but utterly certain that he would not be able to sleep at all unless the azoth was at hand—unless he could assure himself, whenever he was assailed by doubts, that it had not been stolen.

  With a grunt and a muttered prayer to Sphigx (it was certainly Sphigxday by now, Silk had decided, and Sphigx was the goddess of courage in the face of pain in any event), he made his way slowly up the stair, got the rusty and utterly barren cash box that was supposed to secure the manteion’s surplus funds from beneath his bed, locked the azoth in it, and returned the key to its hiding place under the water jug on his nightstand.

  Descending proved rather easier than he had expected. By putting most of his weight on the stick and the railing, and advancing his sound foot one step at a time, he was able to progress quite well with a minimum of pain.

  Giddy with success he went into the kitchen, leaned the stick in a corner, and after a brief labor at the pump washed his hands. Shadeup was peeping in through every window, and although he always rose early it was an earlier and thus a fresher morning than he had seen in some time. He really was not, he discovered with delight, so very tired after all, or so very sleepy.

  After a second session with the pump, he splashed water over his face and hair and felt better still. He was tired, yes; and he was ravenously hungry. Still, he could face this new day. It might even be a mistake to go to bed after he had eaten.

  His green tomatoes waited on the windowsill, but surely there had been four? Perplexed, he searched his memory.

  There were only three there now. Might someone have entered the garden, intent upon the theft of a single unripe tomato? Maytera Marble cooked for the sibyls. Briefly Silk visualized her bent above a smoking pan, stirring his tomato into a fine hash of bacon and onions. His mouth watered, but nothing could possibly be less like Maytera Marble than any such borrowing.

  Wincing with every step and amused by his own grimaces, he limped to the window and looked more closely. The remains of the fourth tomato were there, a dozen seeds and flecks of skin. Furthermore, a hole had been eaten—bored, almost—in the third.

  Rats, of course, although this did not really look like the work of a rat. He pared away the damaged portion, sliced the remainder and the remaining pair, then belatedly realized that cooking would require a fire in the stove.

  The ashes of the last were lifeless gray dust without a single gleam, as it seemed to Silk they always were. Others spoke of starting a new fire from the embers of the previous one; his own fires never seemed to leave those rumored, long-lived embers. He laid a few scraps of hoarded waste-paper on top of the cold ashes and added kindling from the box beside the stove. Showers of white-hot sparks from the igniter soon produced a fine blaze.

  As he started out to the woodpile, he sensed a furtive movement, stopped, and turned as quickly as he could manage to look behind him. Something black had moved swiftly and furtively at the top of the larder. Too vividly he recalled the white-headed one, perched at the top of a chimney; but it was only a rat. There had been rats in the manse ever since he had come here from the schola, and no doubt since Patera Pike had left the schola.

  The crackling tinder would not wait, rats or no rats. Silk chose a few likely-looking splits, carried them (once nearly falling) inside, and positioned them carefully. No doubt the rat was gone by now, but he fetched Blood’s stick from its place in the corner anyway, pausing by the Silver Street window to study the indistinct, battered head at the end of the sharply angled handle. It seemed to be a dog’s, or perhaps …

  He rotated the stick, holding it higher to catch the grayish daylight.

  Or perhaps, just possibly, a lioness’s. After a brief uncertainty, he decided to consider it the head of a lioness; lionesses symbolized Sphigx, this was her day, and the idea pleased him.

  Lions were big cats, and big cats were needed for rats, vermin too large and strong themselves for cats of ordinary size to deal with. Without real hope of success, he rattled the stick along the top of the larder. There was a flutter, and a sound he did not at once identify as a squawk. Another rattle, and a single black feather floated down.

  It occured to Silk then that a rat might have carried the dead bird there to eat. Possibly there was a rat hole in the wainscotting up there, but the bird had been too large to be dragged through it.

  He paused, listening. The sound he had heard had not been made by a rat, surely. After a moment he looked in the waste bin; the bird was no longer there.

  If his ankle had been well, he would have climbed up on the stool; as things (and he himself) stood, that was out of the question. “Are you up there, bird?” he called. “Answer me!”

  There was no reply. Blindly, he rattled Blood’s stick across the top of the high larder again; and this time there was a quite unmistakable squawk. “Get down here,” Silk said firmly.

  The bird’s hoarse voice replied, “No, no!”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Silence from the top of the larder.

  “You stole my tomato, didn’t you? And now you think I’ll hurt you for that. I won’t, I promise. I forgive you the theft.” Silk tried to remember what night choughs were supposed to eat in the wild. Seeds? No, the bird had left the seeds. Carrion, no doubt.

  “Cut me,” the bird suggested throatily.

  “Sacrifice you? I won’t, I swear. The Writings warned me the sacrifice would be ineffectual, and I shouldn’t have tried one after that. I’ve been punished very severely by one of your kind for it, believe me. I’m not such a fool as to try the same sacrifice again.”

  Silk waited motionless, listening. After a second or two, he felt certain that he could hear the bird’s stealthy movements above the crack of whips and rumble of cartwheels that drifted through the window from Silver Street.

  “Come down,” he repeated.

  The bird did not answer, and Silk turned away. The fire in the stove was burning well now, yellow flame leaping from the cook hole. He rescued his frying pan from the sink, wiped it out, poured the remaining oil into it—shaking the last lingering drop from the neck of the cruet—and put the pan on the stove.

  His tomatoes would be greasy if he put them into the oil while it was still cold, unpleasantly flavored if he let the oil get too hot. Leaning Blood’s stick against the door of the larder, he gathered up the stiff green slices, limped over to the stove with them, and distributed them with care over the surface of the pan, rewarded by a cloud of hissing, fragrant steam.

  There was a soft cluck from the top of the larder.

  “I can kill you whenever I want, just by banging around up there with my stick,” Silk told the bird. “Show yourself, or I’ll do it.”

  For a moment a long crimson bill and one bright black eye were visible at the top of the larder. “Me,” the night chough said succinctly, and vanished at once.

  “Good.” The garden window was open already; Silk drew the heavy bolt of the Silver Street window and opened
it as well. “It’s shadeup now, and it will be much brighter soon. Your kind prefers the dark, I believe. You’d better leave at once.”

  “No fly.”

  “Yes, fly. I won’t try to hurt you. You’re free to go.”

  Silk watched for a moment, then decided that the bird was probably hoping that he would lay aside Blood’s stick. He tossed it into a corner, got out a fork, and began turning the tomato slices; they sputtered and smoked, and he added a pinch of salt.

  There was a knock at the garden door. Hurriedly, he snatched the pan from the fire. “Half a minute.” Someone was dying, surely, and before death came desired to receive the Pardon of Pas.

  The door opened before he could hobble over to it, and Maytera Rose looked in. “You’re up very early, Patera. Is anything wrong?” Her gaze darted about the kitchen, her eyes not quite tracking. One was pupilless, and as far as Silk knew, blind; the other a prosthetic creation of crystal and fire.

  “Good morning Maytera.” Awkwardly, the fork and the smoking pan remained in Silk’s hands; there was no place to put them down. “I suffered a little mishap last night, I’m afraid. I fell. It’s still somewhat painful, and I haven’t been able to sleep.” He congratulated himself—it was all perfectly true.

  “So you’re making breakfast already. We haven’t eaten yet, over in the cenoby.” Maytera Rose sniffed hungrily, a dry, mechanical inhalation. “Marble’s still fooling around in the kitchen. The littlest thing takes that girl forever.”

  “I’m quite certain Maytera Marble does the best she can,” Silk said stiffly.

  Maytera Rose ignored it. “If you want to give me that, I’ll take it over to her. She can see to it for you till you come back.”

  “I’m sure that’s not necessary.” Sensing that he must eat his tomatoes now if he was to eat them at all, Silk cut the thinnest slice in two with his fork. “Must I leave this instant, Maytera? I can hardly walk.”