by Gene Wolfe
“Yes,” I told him. “I want to because it is my duty.”
“Careful be. Careful you must be.” He made off through the hay market, pushing others out of his way and leading us as if he knew the route to Marrow’s better than either one of us; he was a big man, not so much tall as broad, with a big, square, sun-reddened face and muscular, short-fingered hands whose backs were thick with reddish hair.
“He’s rough,” Marrow whispered, “but don’t let that make you think he’s honest. He may send you wrong.”
The set of Wijzer’s shoulders told me he had overheard, so I said, “I’m a good judge of men, Councilor, and I think that this one can be trusted.” At the word councilor, Marrow’s eyes went wide.
His cook had prepared a good, plain dinner for us. There were seven or eight vegetable dishes variously prepared (most of Marrow’s wealth came from trading fruits and vegetables still), a big pork roast with baked apples, hot breads with a bowl of butter, and so forth. Wijzer pitched into the meat and wine. “No cheese, Marrow? Councilor Marrow? So said it is? Like a judge you are? No one this to me tells, or before more polite I am.”
“A few people call me that.” Marrow leaned back in his carved chair, toying with his wine glass. “But it has no legal force, and I don’t even make my servants do it.”
“This man Horn, he does. Him I hear. Why him you send it is?”
Marrow shook his head. “We’re sending him because he’s best qualified to go, and because he will. If you’re asking if I trust him, I do. Absolutely.”
“I’m going because I want Silk here more than anybody,” told Wijzer.
“Ahh?” His fork, laden with a great gobbet of pork, paused halfway to his mouth.
Marrow’s look suggested that I hold my tongue.
“So. Silk. Why you want so far to go I wondered. A long sail ror you Pajarocu is. Long even for me from Dorp it is, where nearer I am.” The Pork attained its ultimate destination.
“Do you know about Silk?”
He shrugged. “Stories there are. Some I hear. Someone a big book he has. Things he said, but maybe not all true they are. A good man, just the same he is. In Pajarocu Silk is, you think? Why? Him I did not see.”
“We don’t believe he’s in Pajarocu,” I said, “either one of us. I believe that he’s probably still in Viron, the city we left to come here. But Councilor Marrow got a letter from Pajarocu not long ago, a very important letter. I asked him to have a copy made for me, and he did. I think you ought to read it.”
I got out the letter and handed it to Wijzer, but he only tapped it, still folded, against the edge of the table. “This city, this Viron. From there you come. A councilor it steers. Not so it is?”
Marrow shook his head. “Under our Charter, the caldé decided things in Viron. We didn’t always follow our Charter, but that’s what it said. The Ayuntamiento was under him, and it was composed of councilors. When Horn and I left, Silk was caldé, and he told us to go. People from other landers who came later than we did say he was still caldé when they left, and urged them to risk the trip.”
Wijzer gestured with the folded letter. “One of these councilors you were, Marrow?”
Marrow shook his head again.
“Nothing you were. When this Silk comes, nothing again you will be. Why him do you want, if nothing you were?”
I began to protest, but Marrow said, “That’s right. I was nothing.”
Wijzer swallowed half his wine. “So here Silk you bring, where people who have never him seen him love. Caldé here he will be, and a council like before he will want. A councilor then you are that real is.”
“It could happen.” Marrow shrugged. “But it probably won’t. Do you seriously think that’s why we’re sending Horn here to fetch Silk?”
“Enough for me it is.”
“Who governs your own town? You?”
“Dorp? No. My boat I govern. For me, enough she is.”
Marrow buttered a roll while we waited for him to speak again. “You may know winds and landmarks, but you don’t know men. Not as well as you think you do.”
“Anybody that can say.” Wijzer helped himself to another salsify fritter.
“You’re right. Anybody can say it. Even Caldé Silk could, because it’s true.” Marrow picked up his wine glass and put it down with a bang. “I’m one of five who try to steer New Viron. Horn can tell you about that, if you want to hear it. I’m not always obeyed, none of us are. But I try, and our people know I want what’s best for the town. You say Caldé Silk will want a new Ayuntamiento if he comes here. He may not, he had a lot of trouble with our councilors back home.”
Wijzer continued to eat, watching Marrow’s face.
“If he doesn’t, I’ll be nothing again. All right, I’ll see to my turnips, and if Silk ever asks my help, he’ll get it. If he wants an Ayuntamiento, he may want me to be on it. That will be all right, too. If he asks my help, I may bargain for a seat. Or I may not. It’ll depend on what help he wants and how badly it’s needed. I won’t ask if all this satisfies you.”
“Good that is. Not you ask.”
“I say I won’t ask, because I’m not asking your help for my own sake. I’m asking for everybody in my town, and everybody on this inside-out whorl Pas packed us off to. If that’s not exact enough for you, I’m asking for Horn here. He’s going off alone to a place that neither one of us have ever been to, because there’s a chance we can get Silk to come here.”
Marrow pointed to me with his fork. “Look at him. There he sits, and inside of a week he may drown. He has a wife and three boys. If you know something that might help him, this is your chance to tell him. If you don’t and he dies, maybe I’ll be the only who blames you. One old man in a foreign town, that’s nothing. But maybe you’ll blame yourself. Think about it.”
Wijzer turned to me. “This wife, a beautiful young girl she is?”
I shook my head and explained that you are my own age.
“Me?” He indicated himself, a broad thumb to his chest. “A beautiful young girl I got. In Dorp she is.”
“You must miss her, I’m sure.”
Marrow started to speak, but Wijzer stopped him with an up-raised hand. “Did I say I wouldn’t tell? No!” He belched. “This I will I have said. A trader that his word keeps I am. Who and why to know I wish. My right that is. But who you are I see, Marrow, and why it is they here to you listen.”
He unfolded the letter and rattled it between his fingers. “Good paper. Where this do you get?”
Again, Marrow pointed to me.
I said, “I made it. That’s what I do.”
“The papermaker you are?”
I nodded.
“Not a sailor.” Wijzer frowned. “Why a sailor does he not send?”
Marrow said, “He’s a sailor, too. He’s going instead of somebody else because getting to Pajarocu won’t gain us anything unless he can persuade Silk to come back with him. He’s the only one, or almost the only one, who may be able to.”
Wijzer grunted, his eyes on the letter.
I said, “There are two other people who might have as much influence with Caldé Silk, or more. Do you want to hear about them?”
“If you want, I will listen.”
“Both are women. Maytera Marble might, but she’s old and blind, and believes that she’s taking care of the granddaughter who cares for her. Would you want me to step aside so they could send her?”
Wijzer made a rude noise. “Not as far as Beled she would get.”
“You’re right. The other is Nettle, my wife. She’s a fine sailor, she’s strong for a woman, and she’s got more sense than any two men I know. If I had not offered to go, they were going to ask her, and I feel sure she would have gone.”
Wijzer chuckled. “And you at home to sit and cook! No, you must go. That I see.”
“I want to go,” I told him. “I want to see Silk again, and talk to him, more than anything else in the whorl. I know Nettle feels the same way, and if I succeed, sh
e’ll get to see him and talk to him too. You said Maytera Marble wouldn’t get as far as Beled. Beled’s the town where the Trivigauntis settled, isn’t it?”
Marrow said, “That’s right.”
“It’s that way? North?”
Wijzer nodded absently. “Here of this He-hold-fire I read. Back to the Whorl he will make his lander go. How it is, this he can do? Other men this cannot do.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Perhaps I can find out when I get to Pajarocu.”
“Horn’s good with machinery,” Marrow told Wijzer. “He built the mill that made that paper.”
“In a box it you make?” Wijzer’s hands indicated the size.
“No. In a continuous strip, until we’re out of slurry.”
“Good! A lander here you got? A lander everybody’s got.”
Marrow said, “We have some, but they’re just shells. The one Horn and I came in…” He made a wry face. “For the first few years, everybody took everything they wanted. Wire, metal, anything. I did it myself.”
“Dorp, too.”
“I used to hope that another would land. That was before the fourth came. I had a plan, and men to carry it out. We would arrive before the last colonist left, and seize control. Search them as they got out, and make them put back the cards they’d taken, any wiring, any other parts. We did, and it took off again.”
Wijzer laughed.
“They-Pas-doesn’t want anyone to go back. You probably know it. So unless a lander’s disabled before it unloads, it goes back to the Whorl so it can bring more people here.”
“A good one at Mura they got,” Wijzer remarked pensively. “This I hear. Only nobody near they will allow.”
“If I had succeeded,” Marrow told him, “I wouldn’t have let anyone near ours either.”
“Dorp, too. Our judges there, but none they got.” Wijzer refolded the letter and handed it back to me. “Pajarocu to go, a sharp watch you must keep, young fellow. The legend already you know? About the pajarocu bird?”
I smiled; no one had called me young in a long time. “I’ll try, and if you know the legend, I’d like to hear it.”
He cleared his throat and poured himself another glass of wine. “The Maker everything he made. Like a man a boat builds it was. All the animals, the grass, trees, Pas and his old wife, everything. About the Maker you know?”
I nodded and said that we called him the Outsider.
“A good name for him that is. Outside him we keep, into our hearts we don’t let him come.
“When everything he’s got made, he got to paint. First the water. Easy it is. Then the ground, all the rocks. A little harder it gets. Then sky and trees. Grass harder than you think it is, the little brush he had got to use, and paint so when the wind blows the color changes, and different colors for different kinds. Then dogs and greenbucks, all the different animals. Birds and flowers going to be tough they are. This he knows. So for the last them he leaves.”
I nodded. Marrow was yawning.
“While the other stuff painting he is, the pajarocu with the big owl up north they got makes friends. Well, that big owl the first bird the Maker paints he is, because so quick it he can do. White for feathers, eyes, legs, and everything. But that owl not much fun he is, so the snake-eater bird next he calls. At the owl the pajarocu bird looks, and all over white he is. Does it hurt the pajarocu wants to know. That big owl, he never laughs. To have a game he wants, so he says yes. A lot it hurts, he says, but over quick it is.
So the pajarocu, over to look he goes. The Maker the snake-killer bird painting is, and two dozen colors using he is. Red for the tail, brown for wings, blue and white in front, yellow around the mouth and the chin, everything he’s got using he is. So the pajarocu hides. When the Maker finished is, the pajarocu nobody can find. Because he has never been painted and nobody him can see, it is.”
Marrow chuckled.
“So the Maker for the owl and the snake-eater bird calls, and them for the pajarocu to look he tells. The owl at night can look, and the snake-eater bird when light it gets. But him they never see, so him they never find. All the time the owl around the night he flies, and cu, cu he says. Never the snake-eater bird talks, till somewhere where the pajarocu might be he comes. Then Pajarocu?”
I said, “That’s a good story, but if I understand you, you’re telling me that even with your directions I may have a lot of trouble finding Pajarocu.”
Wijzer nodded solemnly. “Not a place that wants to be found it is. Traders to steal will come back, they think. If close you get, wrong their friends to you will tell.”
Marrow, who had eaten nearly as much as Wijzer, said, “They have invited us to send someone, one man or one woman to fly back to the Long Sun Whorl and return to this one. You’ve seen their letter, and that’s an accurate copy. How do you explain it?”
“They it maybe can explain. Them ask. Everything this young fellow to tell I want, so that careful he will be. Afraid you are that so much I will tell that not he will go?”
Marrow said, “No,” and I reaffirmed that I was going.
“You a question I ask.” Wijzer swirled what little wine remained in his glass, staring into it as though he could read the future in its spiral. “One man back can go, your letter says. This fellow Silk to bring here you want. Two you will be.”
I nodded. “Marrow and our other leaders and I talked about that. A great many people know about Patera Silk now. When he identifies himself, we believe they’ll let him come aboard their lander.”
When Wijzer only stared at me, I added, “We hope that they will, at least.”
“You hope.” Wijzer snorted.
Marrow said, “We do. Our own lander held more than five hundred. I doubt that they’ll get two hundred from other towns with their invitation, but suppose they do. Or let’s say they get a hundred, and to that they add four hundred of their own people. The lander reaches the Long Sun Whorl safely, and the hundred scatter, every man looking for his own city.”
Wijzer frowned. “It you must finish.”
“When the time to return comes, do you think a hundred will reassemble at the lander?”
Wijzer shook his head. “No. Not a hundred there will be.”
Marrow made a little sound expressive of satisfaction. “Then why not let Silk take one of the empty seats?”
“Because none there may be. Not a hundred I said. Two hundred, maybe. When about this town that you got I ask, what they say it is? You know? The first it was. The first lander from the Whorl came, and here landed. True it is?”
“No,” I told him. “Another lander left some time before ours, with a group led by a man called Auk. They were also from Viron. Have you ever heard of them?”
Wijzer shook his head. “Someplace else they landed, maybe.”
“On Green,” I said, “or so I’ve been told. There was also another lander that left at the same time ours did. One lander wouldn’t hold all of us, and we had cards enough to restore two, so we took two. It came here with us, but we’ve never learned what became of Auk’s.”
Wijzer leaned toward me, his elbows on the table and his big, square face ruddy with sun, wind, and wine. “You listen. Here twenty years now you been. For me, nine it is. Back up there,” he pointed to the ceiling, “where the Long Sun they got, what like it is, not you know. What like it was when away I went. Everybody out Pas wants. Storms, and a week all nights he gives. Even me, out he drives. Everybody! The landers up there that they got? No good! No good! You the cards had, this you said. Enough back you put, and it flies. Right that is?”
I nodded.
Wijzer directed his attention to Marrow. “Landers here you got, you say. But the wires pulled out are, seats, too. Cards, pipes glass, all that. Again to fly, not you can them make. Those landers up there? How it goes with them, you think? First of all you went so the best ones you took. The one I ride, like what it is, you thinly Forty-eight seats for us left. Forty-eight for six hundred and thirty-four. That I
never forget. Up we fly, and fifteen dead we got. No food but what we bring. No water. Pipes, taps, what you sit on every day, all gone they are. When here we get, how our lander smells you think? Babies all sick. Everybody sick or dead they are. Terrible it is. Terrible! So why go? Because we got to.”
He looked back to me and pointed a short, thick finger. “Not everybody comes back, you think. So more seats there are. Maybe not everybody comes. But the ones… Family up there you got?”
“My father, if he’s still alive. An uncle and two aunts, and some cousins. They may have left by this time.”
“Or not, maybe. Friends?”
“Yes. A few.”
“Father. Uncle. Aunt. Friend. Cousin. Care I don’t. Father we say. On his knees he gets. He cries. What then will you do? About that you got to think. Ever of you they beg? Your father, to you down on his knees before he has got? Crying? Of you begging?”
“No,” I said. “He never did.”
“Twenty years. A very young man then you are. Maybe a boy when you go, yes?”
I nodded again.
“At your father you looked, your father you saw. A man not like you he was. The same for me it is when a boy I am. No more! This time your own face you see, but old you are. Not strong like twenty years ago. Weak now he is. Crying, begging. Tears down his cheeks running. Horn, Horn! Me you got to take! My own flesh you are!”
Wijzer was silent for a moment, watching my face. “No extra seats there will be. No. Not one even.”
Marrow grunted again, and I said, “I understand what you mean. It could be very difficult.”
Wijzer leaned back and drank what remained of his wine. “To Pajarocu you go? Still?”
“Yes.”
“Stubborn like me you are. For you a good voyage I wish. Something to draw on you got, Marrow?”
Marrow called his clerk, and had him bring paper, a quill, and a bottle of ink.
“Look. Main this is.” Carefully, Wijzer drew a wavering line down the paper. “We on Main here. Islands we got.” He sketched in several. “North the Lizard it is.” He began to draw it, a tiny blot of ink upon the vastness of the sea. “The Lizard you know?”
I told him I lived there.