by Gene Wolfe
Sea and air were still, and at last it came to me that the noises I heard resulted from the leatherskin’s continued efforts to climb aboard. It was not swimming swiftly and silently beneath the hull as I had feared, but struggling with idiotic ferocity to go straight to the place in which it had last seen me.
I am a strong swimmer, and I considered the possibility of swimming ashore. I knew it was a league or more away, because it had been almost out of sight when I stood in the waist of the sloop; but the sea was calm and warm, and if I paced myself carefully I might succeed.
An instant more, and I realized that I would have no chance whatever. The leatherskin would follow me over the starboard gunwale, and once it was back in the water was certain to hear my splashings and track me down. However slender it might be, my only chance was to reclaim the sloop the moment that the leatherskin returned to the sea.
By the time I had understood that, I had managed to kick off my boots. Diving so as to make less noise, I swam to the bow, surfaced, and risked grasping the bowsprit Sinew and I had added when it had become apparent that our new sloop would benefit from more foresail.
The sloop was still rocking violently; it was clear that the leatherskin had not given up its struggle to clamber aboard. I waited, trying very hard to breathe without gasping, and heard, and felt, the impact as its great inflexible body crashed to the bottom of the sloop, which sank under its weight until the freeboard was a scant hand.
I pulled myself up, and risked a look.
It was a sight I shall never forget. The leatherskin, one of the largest I have seen, stood with six massive legs and half its weight on the starboard gunwale, over which silver water cascaded. Its long, corded neck was stretched toward the last fleck of the vanishing Short Sun, its mouth so wide agape that every spike of its thousand fangs stabbed outward. Before I could have drawn breath, it had tumbled over the side and back into the oily sea.
The bowsprit was jerked up as if by the mighty hand, and I with it, although I nearly lost my grip. When it plunged down again to strike the sea (for the foundering sloop was pitching as though in a gale) I was able to throw myself onto the foredeck.
By the time I had scrambled to my feet, the leatherskin had heard me and turned back, its head above the surface and its ponderous bulk moving so rapidly below that the sea swirled and frothed above it. Floundering knee-deep, I got the harpoon I had re-stowed that afternoon; and when the leatherskin’s huge claws gripped the starboard gunwale and its hideous jaws had snapped shut upon the barbed head, I rammed the harpoon so deep that its fangs actually tore the skin of my right hand. It fell back into the water, its head dripping bloody foam, and was lost to my sight, the harpoon line hissing after it as it sounded.
I was afraid that it might snatch the boat under, and bailed frantically, telling myself again and again that I must cut the line, which was tied to a ringbolt in the keel. I groped for it, terrified that a loop of the uncoiling line would catch my wrist or my ankle. But although I would have sworn an hour before that I could put my hand on that ringbolt in the dark, I would not find it.
The leatherskin surfaced thirty cubits from the bow, snorting blood and water. In less than a minute, the sloop was jerked along behind it, listing fearfully and making more speed than it ever had under sail. I lunged forward (I had been too far aft searching for the ringbolt) to cut the line, but before I could, the leatherskin had done the job for me. The line went slack.
By that time the first stars were out. I ought to have finished bailing and recoiled the line, I suppose, and no doubt done other things as well-gotten out our little tin lantern and lit it.
But I did not. I sat in the stern instead, where I was accustomed to sit, with my trembling hands resting on the tiller; and tried to catch my breath, and felt the hammering of my heart, and tasted the sweet-salt tang of the sea. Spat, and spat again, too tired and shaken to get up and break out a fresh bottle of water.
Green rose larger and brighter than any star, a flying whorl of visible width, where the stars are but twinkling points of light. I watched it climb above the dim white cliffs and swaying incense willows, and wondered whether Silk had seen it, at the bottom of the grave in his dream (where it would have been a fit ornament) and forgotten it when he awakened-or perhaps had only forgotten to tell me about it. Even if it had been there, he would not have known what a horror he saw.
After an hour or more had passed, it occurred to me that if the leatherskin had arrived a few minutes later it would almost certainly have killed me. By the last rays of the Short Sun I had scarcely escaped it.
In the dark…
The thought re-energized me, although I cannot explain why it should. I lit the lantern and ran it up the mast, found the bailer and resumed work, wearily scooping up water as black as ink and flinging it over the side. When I was a boy, we had pumps to raise the water from our wells; none but very backward country people and the poorest of the poor dropped buckets down their wells and hauled them up again; I thought as I worked how much easier a similar device would make it to empty a boat half filled with water, and resolved to build one when I could, and thought about how such a thing might be constructed-a tube of copper or waxwood, a plunger that would first draw the water up, and then, the positions of the valves being reversed by the motion of the handle, force it out another opening and back into the sea.
I longed for paper, pen, and ink. There was plenty of paper in the cargo chests, but I would not have dared to open them for fear it would get wet; and I had no ink and nothing with which to make my drawings, anyway.
Bailing is easy at first, when the water is high. It grows more difficult (as I suppose everyone knows) as it progresses. When my own bailer was scraping wood, I heard a soft and almost stealthy sound that seemed to have returned from the distant past, a whisper of sound that I associated with some similar labor long, long ago, with youth, and with the acrid smell of yellow dust. I left off bailing, straightened up to rest my back, listened, and heard, in addition to that remembered and practically inaudible rusding sigh, the faint creaking of the mast.
The swell was running a trifle higher now, I thought, and rocking us; but the sloop felt as steady under my feet as any floor. The faint rusding returned, perhaps minutely louder, and this time I knew it for what it was-or rather, for what it had been: the sound my father made turning over the pages of his ledger while I swept the floor of his shop. Day was done, palaestra was over, and the shop was about to close. Time to enter the sales, so many few of this and many fewer of that, which would have to be reordered at the end of the month or perhaps at the end of the year. Time to tote up the bits in the cash box and calculate that the total would not quite cover the cost of dinner tonight for Horn (who was helping around the shop so very unwillingly), the rest of the sprats, and the wife.
I spoke aloud to no one, saying, “Time to close,” and went aft to where the pages of Silk’s book were turning themselves, page after water-spotted page, upon one of the chests, in the faintest possible breeze.
Time to close.
So it was, and I thought about that then, I believe for the first time ever. My boyhood was over and done with long ago, and my young manhood was behind me. I had married because it had seemed natural for Nettle and me to marry as we had planned from childhood. We would not willingly separate as long as we both lived, no matter how much distance might separate us; and if she should die before me, I would not marry again. Life and chance had given us three sons; we would have liked a daughter as well, a daughter certainly, or even two; but it was too late for that now, perhaps. Or if not too late, it would be when I returned from the Long Sun Whorl.
Time to close, to tote up accounts.
That, as I realized sitting alone upon the quiet sea, had been the chief reason I had so readily accepted the task those five people had come to persuade me to undertake. How surprised they had been! They had brought food, tents, and trunks full of clothing, expecting to spend a week or more on Lizard; b
ut in my books Silk was an account that had never been closed, one so large that it dwarfed all others. At fifteen, I had thought him the greatest of great men. At thirty-five, only a little taller, thick-bodied and nearly bald, I thought him a great man still.
I closed the book, and secured it in the cubby under the foredeck.
He would meet us at the lander, he had said, if he could; he had not met us there. Latecomers such as Blazingstar had reported that he was still caldé when they had left Viron; but even their information was years out of date. There had been Trivigaunti troopers in the tunnels, and it seemed probable to me then (I mean then, on the sloop) that they had captured him when he had tried to rejoin us. If so, it seemed likely that Generalissimo Siyuf would soon have restored him as caldé, subject to her orders. That would account for the latecomer’s reports, and in that case he might be governing Viron still, with every decision he made dictated by some cruel and arrogant Trivigaunti general.
Yet there were half a dozen other possibilities. No more settlers had reached us from Old Viron for years now, and Silk might have died aboard a lander that had failed to reach either whorl; everyone knew that not all the landers that left the Whorl landed safely on Blue or Green.
Equally, he might have been killed on Siyuf’s orders at a later date, or been deposed by her or some other Trivigaunti; in which case he might be living in exile.
With or without Hyacinth, he might have boarded a lander that took him to Green, and if he had he was presumably dead. Equally, he might have landed on some part of Blue remote from us. (This still seems possible to me, as I wrote when I began this straggling history.) Before they left Lizard, I had brought up the possibility with Marrow and the rest, and they had agreed that it could not be discounted entirely. Here I am in a part of Blue a very considerable distance from New Viron, and hear nothing of Silk; but that means nothing. If he were a hundred leagues east of Gaon and me-or on Shadelow-it would explain everything.
I may find him yet. Perseverance and prayer! All is not lost until I give up the search.
* * *
Very busy the last few days, busy until I was at length forced to put off all the others who desired to speak with me or desired to do it again, telling them that I required rest and prayer (which was true enough) and that my subordinates would hear their protestations, weigh their proofs, and decide matters. And telling my subordinates in turn that I trusted their judgment (which is not entirely false) and would support their decisions as long as they played no favorites and took no bribes.
Having said all that, and made it clear that I meant it, I retreated to this pleasant room and shut and barred the door. Here I sit, surrounded by a reverent hush, having prayed and read this rambling account of the beginning of my adventures through, and prayed again. All with intervals of pacing up and down, slamming my fist into my palm, and providing food and fresh water against the return of the pet who is no longer on his perch.
I am stunned to find this account as worthless as it is. It tells me nothing about myself (or Nettle, or the boys, or even Patera Silk) that I did not know already. It contains no plans for returning home, the very thing I should be thinking about most intently. Yet under these circumstances what plans can there be?
I must free myself from these handsome, generous, feckless people upon some pretense, and somehow procure a swift horse. Conceivably some other beast, although I would think a horse would be best. I must escape with cards enough-or the new rectangles of gold we use for cards sometimes here-to enable me to buy a small but seaworthy vessel when I reach the coast. After that, it will be in the hands of the Outsider and the weather gods of Blue-of the monstrous goddess whom Seawrack called the Mother, perhaps.
There is my plan, then. Under these circumstances, how can I plan anything more? The terrible aspect is that these people need someone like me very badly, and I am in a sense responsible for my own abduction.
As well as for them. They have made me their ruler, in name and very nearly in fact, and I have accepted the office. I, who have only a single wife for whom I long, now have no less than fifteen more-all young enough to be my daughters. Fifteen graceful and charming girls whom I sometimes permit as a very special favor to sing and play for me while I sit dreaming of home.
No, not of Old Viron, though I have been calling Old Viron “home” all my life. Dreaming of the house of logs at the foot of the Tor we built when we were young, of the napping tent of scraped and greased greenbuck skins upon the beach, and of eager, explanations of papermaking made to Nettle and-sometimes-to the wind. Dreaming of Lizard, the rushing water and thumping hammers of my mill, the measured clanking of the big gear, the crawl of the laden wire cloth, and the golden glory of the Short Sun sinking into the sea beyond a Tail Bay crammed with prime softwood.
Once I planned to print our paper as well as make it. But I have written about that. What would be or could be the use of setting it down again?
-3-
THE SIBYL AND THE SORCERESS
The Marrow I had known as a boy had been portly in the best sense, a fat man whose bulk promised strength and gave him a certain air of command. He was no longer steady on his legs, and limped along (as Silk once had) with the help of a stick; his face was lined, and such hair as remained to him was white. Yet I could tell him quite truthfully that he had scarcely changed since we had fought the Trivigauntis in the tunnels together. He was fat still, though somewhat less energetic than he had once been; and the air of command had become a settled fact.
He was the same man.
“I don’t need to talk to you,” he said. “I know you, Horn, and know you’ll do your best. That’s all I need to know. But maybe you need to talk to me. If there’s anything I can tell you, I will. If there’s anything you need, I’ll supply it if I can, or get somebody to.”
I told him that I had come largely to buy provisions and get directions, that I had wanted to leave most of the food we had with my family; and I reminded him that he had promised to try to locate someone who had been to Pajarocu and could provide firsthand information regarding the best routes.
“Food’s no problem.” He waved it away. “I’ll give you a barrel of apples, some dried stuff, cornmeal, and leavening powder.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “A ham, too. A case of wine and a cask of pickled pork.”
I doubted that I would need that much, and I told him so.
“Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. How was the voyage down?”
I shrugged. “I lost my harpoon.”
“I’ll get you another one, but it may take a day or two.”
With thoughts of the leatherskin still fresh in my mind, I asked whether he could lend me a slug gun, adding that I could not afford to buy one.
His bushy eyebrows rose. “Not a needier? You had one in the old days. Still got it?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll get you one.” He leaned back, sucking his teeth. “It may take longer, I don’t know. If worst comes to worst, I’ll give you mine. I doubt that I’ll ever need it again.”
“I’d prefer a slug gun. I’ve heard that someone here is making them now, and making cartridges for them.”
He rose with the help of his stick, saying, “I’ve got a couple in the next room. I’ll show them to you.”
It was a far larger house than ours, though not, I believe, so solidly built. The room to which he led me held cabinets, several well-made chairs, and a big table covered with papers. I bent to look at them.
He saw me, and picked up a sheet. “Your stuff. Just about all of it is. The traders have it sometimes, mostly off a lander if you ask me. They’re surprised to find out we’re making our own here in New Viron.” He chuckled. “We means you, this time. I tell them we can make slug guns and mean Gyrfalcon, and we can make paper and mean you.”
He handed me the sheet and took out a key. “We can do a couple of other things that mean a lot more. We can make a paper mill, and make a lathe and a m
illing machine for metal that are good enough to let us copy a slug gun. But I don’t tell them that. We want sales, not competitors.”
I protested that he made no profit when I sold my paper.
He smiled. “Sometimes you sell it to me.”
“Yes, and I’m extremely grateful to you. You’re a good customer.”
“Then I sell it to them, some of it. I don’t make anything when Gyrfalcon sells his slug guns either, or not directly. But it brings money here, and sooner or later I get my share. So do others. You did your own woodworking, didn’t you, building your mill?”
I had, and said so.
“What about the metal stuff? Did you do that, too?”
“Others made those for us. They had to extend us credit, but we repaid them some time ago.”
The key turned in the lock, and the door of a cabinet swung open. “Then you could make the paper Gyrfalcon and his workmen used when they drew out the parts for this slug gun. One hand scratches the other, Horn.”
“I thought you said they copied the parts of a slug gun someone brought from home.”
“Oh, they did. But it’s better to measure once and draw it up than to keep on measuring. I won’t ask you to tell me which of these was made back in the old place and which here. You could do it pretty easily, and so could any other man who had his wits about him. I want you to take them both in your hands, though. Look them over, and tell me if you think one ought to shoot better than the other, and why.”
I did, opening the action of each first to assure myself that it was unloaded. “The new one’s a little stiff,” I said. “The old one’s smoother and a fraction lighter. But I don’t see why they shouldn’t shoot equally well.”
“They do. They’re both mine, and I’ll consider it an honor to give either one to you, if you want it.” Marrow paused, his face grave. “The town ought to pay you. We can’t, or not nearly enough to make you want to go for the money. The question is, is New Viron going to be richer in a few years, or poorer? And I don’t know. But that’s all it is, not the rubbish about morals and so forth that the old Prolocutor goes on about. We need Silk for the same reason we need better corn, and we’re asking you to bring him here to us for nothing.”