On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  I shook my head again. “I’ll swear to whatever you want me to swear to, by Pas and the Outsider, and your god, too, if you’ll let me.”

  “You’ll have my friendship and assistance. Do I have to go through that again?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then swear you’ll accept both. You’re not to kill or injure me, or drive me away, or betray me to anyone else for any reason whatsoever. You’re to do everything you can to see to it that I’m on the lander when it takes off. That we both are.”

  I swore, stumbling at times over the phrasing but corrected by him.

  When I was finished, he turned away. “I’m sorry, Horn. I really am. That was close. You tried very hard. If I can, I’ll be back tomorrow.” Before I could say a word, he had begun to climb the wall of the pit.

  I broke. I am a coward at heart, I suppose. Perhaps all men are, but I certainly am. I pleaded. I begged. I wept and shrieked aloud, and wept again.

  And when I did, he turned back. Krait the inhumu turned at the edge of the pit, and looked down upon me in my misery. He may have been smiling or grinning or snarling. I do not know. “Horn?” he said.

  “Yes!” I raised my arms, imploring him. Tears streamed down my face as they had when I was a child.

  “Horn, your oath didn’t convince me. I don’t think any oath you could give would. Not today, and probably never. I can’t trust you, and I don’t know of anything that would…” He stopped, perhaps only to watch me weep.

  “Wait!” My sobs were choking me. “Please wait. Will you let me talk?”

  He nodded. “For a minute or two, as long as you don’t talk nonsense.”

  “Hear me out-that’s all I ask. My house is on the Lizard. You’ve seen it. You said you flew over it and saw Nettle on the beach.”

  “Go on.”

  “I built it, and we’ve lived there for years. I know how things are done in our house. Isn’t that obvious? You’ve got to believe me.”

  He nodded again. “I do, so far.”

  “There are bars on the windows and inside the flue. There are good locks on both doors, and bars for them as well. Heavy wooden bars that you put up and lift down. When conjunction is near-”

  “As it is. Go on.”

  “When conjunction’s near, we always bar the doors. My wife bars them at shadelow, even if I’m still working in the mill. I have to knock and be let in.”

  “You’re proposing that I knock and imitate your voice. I could doit.”

  “No,” I said, and shook my head. “Let me finish, please. It-it’s something better.”

  In his own voice, which might have been Sinew’s, he said, “Let’s hear it.”

  “When conjunction’s past, she forgets. She never bars them then. I’ve spoken to her about it, but it didn’t help. Unless I bar them, they aren’t barred.”

  I reached into my pocket, got the key, and held it out. “You want to go to the Whorl. But if you don’t go-if we don’t-you’ll be here. And you’ll have the key.”

  He hesitated. Perhaps his hesitation was feigned; I do not know.

  I said, “If we get to the Whorl, you and I both, I want you to promise me you’ll give it back.”

  “You trust my promise?” His face was as expressionless as the face of a snake.

  “Yes. Yes, I must.”

  “Then trust this one. I’ll get you out at once, as soon as you throw me that key.”

  I did. I was too weak to throw it out of the pit the first time; it rang against the stone side a hand’s breadth below the top, and fell back in. I tried to run and catch it in the air, and nearly fell myself.

  “I’m waiting, Horn.” He was kneeling at the edge, his hands ready.

  I threw again, and watched those scaly hands close around it.

  Without a word, he stood, dropped the key into his pocket, turned, and walked haltingly away.

  There are times when time means nothing. That was one. My heart pounded like a hammer, and I tried to clean my face with my fingers.

  When he came back, it might almost have been a theophany. I had wanted to see him so much that when I did I was horribly afraid that I was imagining it. “Get my slug gun,” he said. “We may need it.”

  I did as I was told, slinging it across my back.

  “I’m not heavy enough to pull you up. You’d pull me in.” He tossed down a coil of rope. “I’ve tied the other end to one of these little bushes. If you can climb up, you’ll be out. If you can’t…” He shrugged.

  I made use of every foothold, and tried to remember how Silk had climbed Blood’s wall, and Blood’s house, too; but nothing seemed to help. In the end Krait helped me, his hand grasping my own and his clawed feet braced against the side of a little depression he had made for them. His hand was small, smooth, cold, and strong; unpleasantly soft.

  Then there came a moment when I stood at the rim of the pit I had come to know so well, staring down at its stones and bones, its fallen leaves and broken strands of vine.

  “What about the rope?” he said. “Shall we take it with us?”

  I shook my head.

  “We may need it. I got it from your boat.”

  So the sloop was safe. Just knowing that made me feel a little bit stronger. “Leave it,” I told him. “Somebody else may fall in.”

  Together we made the long walk back to the sloop. “You can fly,” I said once when we stopped to rest. “Why don’t you? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “You’re afraid I don’t trust you.”

  I denied it.

  “You’re right. It would be foolish of me to doubt you now that you’re out of that hole and have my slug gun and your knife. You could kill me easily, and take the key from my pocket.”

  I nodded, although I was thinking that it would not be half so easy as he implied.

  “I’m going to become one of you, and in fact I already have. I did it when I borrowed your clothes. So now I have to act like one of you and walk, even though walking’s hard for me.” He smiled bitterly. “Do I look like a real boy to you?”

  I shook my head.

  “You see, I’m keeping my promise. I’ll look like a boy to the young woman you call Seawrack, however, and to everyone we meet, unless they’re… Well, you know. So I can’t fly. I can’t because you can’t. Do you enjoy paradoxes?”

  I told him that Silk had liked them more than I did.

  “He was wiser than you are, exactly as you say. I’ll pester you with dozens before we part, Horn. Here’s one. Those who cling to life lose it; those who fling their lives away save them. Do you like that?”

  I said, “I might if I understood it.”

  “Paradoxes explain everything,” he told me. “Since they do, they can’t be explained.”

  * * *

  That was a second paradox, of course. Or rather, it was a great truth embodied in a paradox, the truth being that a thing cannot be employed to prove itself. We had a fortune-teller at court a few days ago. He had come partly, as he said, because he wanted permission to ply his trade in our town; and partly, or so I would guess, because he hoped to gain notoriety here.

  He volunteered to read my future in the stars. I declined, pointing out that it was midday and that even if he went outside he would not be able to see them. He insisted that he knew their positions even when he could not, unrolling a score of big charts, and launching into a convoluted recitation that nobody understood.

  I cut him off, ruling that he did not need my permission to tell fortunes, or anyone’s, as long as he behaved himself. I added that he was free to take fees from, anyone foolish enough to give him their money.

  He retired to the back of the room, and I soon forgot about H him; but after an hour or two he came forward again, announcing If loudly that he had completed his prediction for me. (It was the I usual mixture of flattery and menace-I would lead three towns not my own to victory, would be tried for my life, would return as a stranger to my sons’ native place, find new love, and so on a
nd so forth. I will not put myself to the trouble of recording the entire rigmarole.) When he had finished, I asked how I-or anyone whose future he foretold-might know that his prophecies were valid; and he solemnly declared that the stars themselves confirmed them.

  Everybody laughed. But there is rarely a day on which I do not hear proofs of the same kind advanced with confidence. Somebody testifies, and his testimony being doubted, swears that it is true. A dozen heads nod sagely. Yes, since he declares it true, it must be.

  That is easy enough; but what about Krait’s first paradox? Now I think that he meant that I had doomed myself by my own anxiety to leave the pit. Given courage enough to refuse the help of an inhumu, I might have been rescued by someone else or freed myself by my own efforts, and so might have returned eventually to my home, which I feel certain that I shall never see again.

  That I will never see more, even if the storms and waves have spared it.

  * * *

  I had intended to continue my narrative tonight-or rather to resume it, telling how the inhumu and I made our way down the mountainside to the sloop, how we went in search of Seawrack, and so forth. I would then be very near the point at which she gave me the ring.

  But I will not have much time tonight, and I am going to use it to write about something that happened today instead. In a way it bears upon everything that I had intended to write, and I will get to that soon enough.

  A man came to court this morning to ask protection from the Vanished People. There was a good deal of laughter, and when I had restored order I pointed out to him that his fellow townsmen did not believe him-or even credit the present existence of the Vanished People-and suggested that he first put forward whatever evidence of their existence he possessed so that we would not be laughed to scorn.

  This man, whose name is Barsat, admitted that he had no evidence beyond the testimony of his wife, whom he offered to bring to court tomorrow; but he swore that he had seen the Vanished People on three occasions and felt sure they were by no means friendly.

  I asked what he had done to offend them. He does not know, or at least says he does not. I then asked him to describe the circumstances under which he saw them the first time. He said he was going into the jungle to cut firewood when he saw several standing or sitting in thickets and regarding him in a less than friendly way, and turned back. I asked how many there were. He said he could not be sure, at which there was more laughter.

  That and his obvious sincerity convince me that he is telling the truth. If he were lying, his testimony would have been both more circumstantial and more sensational. Besides, any number of Neighbors greater than two is difficult to count in my experience.

  * * *

  It was already late when the inhumu and I started down the mountain, and neither of us was capable of swift or sustained walking. You are not to imagine from that, however, that I was downhearted or despondent. Health makes us cheerful, and illness and weakness leave us gloomy and sad-that, at least, is the common view. I can only say that I have seldom been weaker or nearer exhaustion, but my heart fairly leaped for joy. I was out of the pit. Free! Free even of the burning thirst that had at last become a torment worse even than hopelessness. The rocks and ancient, moss-sheathed trees were beautiful, and the very air was lovely. The inhumu assured me that he knew the shortest way back to the sloop; and I reflected that Patera Quetzal had been a good friend to Silk. Was it not at least possible that this inhumu would prove a good friend to Seawrack and me?

  I quickly convinced myself that he already was.

  Having satisfied my thirst from the water bottle he had brought, and again at the spring he showed me, I had become ravenously hungry. There was food on the sloop, I knew; and it was even possible that the inhumu and I might sight the game that had evaded Seawrack and me. If we did, I told myself, I would shoot it, butcher it, and eat it on the spot. I unslung the slug gun and carried it at the ready.

  We had gone about two-thirds of the way when something rattled the branches of an immense flintwood that had fallen only a few days earlier. It was nearly dark by then; I heard the rustle of the dying leaves much more plainly than I saw them move.

  I pushed off the safety and advanced cautiously, and when they rustled again, put the butt to my shoulder. Urgently the inhumu whispered, “Don’t shoot until we see what it is.”

  I scarcely heard him. I was fairly sure I knew about where the animal was, and was resolved to cripple it if I could not kill it, telling myself that I would soon track it down.

  The branches sounded a third time, I squeezed the trigger, and the inhumu slapped my slug gun to one side, all in far less time than it has taken me to write it.

  Before the report had died away, Babbie broke from cover, charging straight at us with all the blinding speed of which hus are capable over short distances. If it had been five minutes later and thus a shade darker, he would have opened me from thigh to shoulder. As it was, he recognized me at the last possible moment, and recognizing the inhumu as well, diverted his charge to him.

  Although I had written about Patera Quetzal’s flying, and had heard him in flight when we were in the tunnels, I had never actually seen him fly. Here on Blue, I have seen inhumi in flight several times, but always at a distance, so that they might almost have been bats or even birds; in the shadow of those twilit trees, I saw one take flight when I stood so near that I might easily have touched him. He sprang into the air, and as Babbie passed beneath him his arms lengthened, widened, and thinned. His fingers spread a web of skin, each finger grown longer than my arms. That is something less than clear, I realize; but I do not know any other way to describe it. At once his arms beat, not slowly as one normally sees when the inhumi fly but with the most frantic haste, raising a sudden gale in complete and ghostly silence. Babbie turned back and leaped, his tusks slashing murderously at-

  Nothing. The inhumu had vanished into the darkness of the boughs.

  I called, “Babbie! Babbie! It’s me!” and crouched as I used to on the sloop.

  He came to me only slowly, clearly very conscious (as I was myself) that I had shot at him a moment before; and very conscious, too, that I still held the slug gun. I laid it aside and spoke to him, and although I no longer remember just what it was I said, it must have been effective; before long his head was between my hands, as it had sometimes been when we two were alone in the sloop upon the wide, wide sea. I talked to him until the day ended and the stars appeared, while stroking his muzzle and rubbing his ears; and no doubt a great deal of it was nonsense; one thing impressed me, however, and I should record it here. These, I believe, were my exact words: “You thought I was gone, didn’t you, Babbie? Well, I just about was. Poor Babbie! Poor, poor Babbie! You thought I was dead.”

  At which he nodded.

  * * *

  I went a-hunting today for the first time since Hari Mau brought me here. It might be more accurate to say that I watched the others hunt, since I killed nothing. But then, neither did they.

  These people hold cattle sacred (as I may have mentioned before), seeing the embodiment of Great Pas in the bulls and that of Echidna in the cows. Out of regard for these deities, they will not eat beef or knowingly wear or possess any leather items made from the skins of cattle. When they sacrifice cattle, as they do almost daily, the entire carcass is consumed by the altar fire.

  The result of all this is that cattle are raised here only for religious purposes, and although there was a good supply as long as there were frozen embryos from the landers to implant, their numbers have fallen so low of late that the priests are seriously concerned. Since the gods cannot be seen here as they used to be in the Sacred Windows of the Long Sun Whorl, the priests feel it absolutely necessary that their symbols be seen as often as possible. Thus no sooner had some farmers reported wild cattle than a party of eager volunteers was recruited to capture them. It was a delicate operation, since the sacred animals could not be harmed or even made to suffer any indignity.

&
nbsp; We rode out about an hour after shadeup, located the herd: without much trouble, and surrounded it, turning back the animals that tried to bolt by riding at their shoulders and flourishing yellow flags embroidered in scarlet thread with quotations from the Writings. Or rather, as I ought to have said, from what are called the Sacred Books here; these are rather different, I believe, from the Chrasmologic Writings we knew back in Old Viron.

  They were generally effective, however, although we lost one heifer and a horse was gored. When we had tired the most rebellious and had the herd together, a holy man approached it on foot, hung every animal with garlands, put a noose of red and yellow rope over the head of each, and led them away, nine head plus three carves. They will be kept at the temple until they are tame enough to be permitted to wander at large. The priests say that will be very soon.

  * * *

  Before I described our cattle hunt, I should have given some reason for including it; but to write the truth, I am not sure I had any at the time. It had occurred that day and my mind was full of it, and that is all; but when I think about the walk back to the sloop with Babbie, I can see that it fits in well enough. He had begun to revert to the wild state, as the cattle had. Like the holy man, I was able to retame him because I meant him no harm.

  After chewing Oreb’s quill for a minute or two, I have decided to take the analogy further. It should prove amusing, and may even be enlightening.

  The inhumu had told me that we human beings were the cattle of his kind. They drink our blood in preference to the blood of animals merely because they prefer it (this is what he said), just as we prefer the milk of cattle to that of goats. Various other animals give milk too: pigs, dogs, and sheep, for example. Yet we do not even try to milk those.

  The more intelligent an animal is, the more difficult it is to tame. I am not going to offer that as an opinion, because I am convinced that it is a fact. Let us consider a progression, beginning with the hus. Hus are more intelligent than nittimonks, nittimonks more intelligent than dogs, and dogs more intelligent than cattle. Adult cattle can be captured and tamed in a few weeks. Adult dogs, born in the wild, can scarcely be tamed at all; and unless they have been raised among humans they are almost untrainable. Young nittimonks can be tamed, but can be trained only with the greatest difficulty, and they are never reliable.