On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  One of the seated Neighbors inquired, “Who and what do you yourself think we are?”

  I said, “I’m from New Viron, a town on the eastern shore of the sea, and I believe that you’re the Vanished People. I mean, I believe that you’re some of the people we call the Vanished People in New Viron.”

  Another said, “Then you must tell us who the Vanished People are.” All this was in the Common Tongue.

  “You are the people whose whorl this was before our landers came to it,” I said. No one replied, so I continued, fumbling now and then as I tried to find the right words. “The Whorl up there,” I pointed, “that was our whorl. This whorl, which we call Blue now, was your whorl. But we thought something had-had happened to you, because we never see you. Sometimes we find things you made, like that place on the island to the south, though I never did until I found that one. My son Sinew says that he and some other young men found an altar of yours in the forest, a stone table on which you used to sacrifice to the gods of this whorl.”

  I waited for one of them to speak.

  “Since you haven’t really vanished at all, we’re-I’m very glad that you’ve let me live here with my family. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  They said nothing, and after a while the one who had brought me to their fire indicated by a gesture, a motion of his fingers as if he were drawing words from my mouth, that I should go on talking.

  I said, “I’m seeing you here tonight, I realize that, and I’m happy that you gave me this chance to express my gratitude. But I’ve never seen any of you before in twenty years, and most of us think that you’re all dead. I’ll try to tell them that’s a mistake when I get back home.”

  As I spoke, I was reminded of Patera Remora’s long, foolish face, and the dark and dusty little sellaria in which we had con- versed, and I said, “I think perhaps our Prolocutor has seen you. He seems to know something, anyway. I hadn’t realized it until now.”

  They remained silent.

  I said, “We think your gods are still here. To tell the truth, we’re afraid that they are. I’ve encountered one myself, your sea goddess. I don’t know what you call her.” As I spoke I looked from shadowy face to shadowy face. That was when I realized that they were not made even slightly more visible by the fire. The fire was there. I could see its light on my hands and feel its heat on my cheeks. I do not doubt that its light was shining on my face, as firelight always does; but it did not light them.

  Lamely I finished, “Seawrack calls her the Mother. I mean the girl-the young lady that I call Seawrack. I mean, she used to.”

  The Neighbor to my left said, “That is one of her names.” He had not spoken before.

  “We’re here now,” I said, “we human men and women and children who came out of the Whorl.”

  All of them nodded.

  “And we’re taking your whorl, or trying to. I don’t blame you for being angry with us for that, but our gods are driving us out, and we have no place else to go. Except for me, I mean. I’m trying to get back to the Whorl, but not to stay. To bring back Patera Silk. Would you like me to tell you who Patera Silk is?”

  The Neighbor who had awakened me said, “No. Someone you care about.”

  I nodded.

  “Most of what you have said, we might say. This whorl of yours was ours. We, the remnant of our race, have abandoned it, giving it to no one and making no provision to keep it for ourselves. We found a way to leave and we left, seeking a new and a better home.”

  He turned from me, his face lifted to the western stars. “Some of you call the place where we are the Neighbor Whorl. It does not matter what we call it, or what we once called this one. This whorl is yours now. It is called Blue. It belongs to your race.”

  I stammered my thanks. I could set down everything I said, but there is really no way to describe how clumsily and haltingly I said it.

  “We have brought you here as the representative of your race,” he told me when I had finished. “You, here tonight, must speak for all of you. We have a question to ask. We cannot make you answer it, and if we could we would not. You will oblige us greatly by answering, even so. You say that you are grateful to us.”

  “For a whorl? For Blue? It’s a godlike gift, like Pas giving us the Whorl. In a hundred years we couldn’t repay you. Or a thousand. Never.”

  “You can. You yourself can repay us tonight, simply by answering. Will you?”

  I said, “I’ll try. I will if I can. What is the question?”

  He looked around at the others. All those sitting upright nod- ded, I believe, although I cannot be sure. “Let me remind you again,” the Neighbor who had brought me to their fire said, “that you will speak for your entire race. Every man of your blood. Every woman, and every child.”

  “I understand.”

  “I chose you, and I did so because I hoped to incline your race’s judgment in our favor by choosing someone apt to be well disposed toward us.” By a trifling gesture he indicated the ring that Seawrack had given me before we left the sloop. “If you wish to hold my choosing such a person against us, there is nothing to prevent you.”

  I said, “Certainly not.”

  “Thank you. Here is our question. Nearly all of us have abandoned this whorl, as I told you. Tonight we give it to you who call yourselves human, as I have also told you. Do you humans, the new possessors, object to our visiting it from time to time, as we are doing tonight?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. Realizing that the words I had used could be understood in a sense opposite to the one that I intended, I added, “We have no objection whatsoever.”

  “From this whorl we sprang. You spoke of a hundred years, and of a thousand. There are rocks and rivers, trees and islands here that have been famous among us for many thousands of years. This is one such place. I ask you again, may we visit it, and the others?”

  Trying to sound formal, I responded, “Come whenever you wish to, and stay for as long as you wish. Our whorl is your whorl.”

  “I ask a third time, and I will not ask again. You must answer for all your human kind. Guests are frequently awkward, embarrassing, and inconvenient. Your ways are not ours, and ours are not yours. They must often seem foreign, barbaric, and irrational to you. May we come?”

  I hesitated, suddenly fearful. “Will you come as the inhumi do, to do us harm?”

  There was stir among those seated around the fire. I could not be certain whether it was of amusement or disgust. “No,” the Neighbor who had brought me said, “We will not come to do you harm, and we will help you against the inhumi when it lies in our power.” The rest nodded.

  I swallowed, although my mouth was as dry as my knees. “You are welcome. I know I’ve said it already, but I don’t know how else to-all I can do is repeat it. You may visit this whorl you have given us whenever you want to, and go back to your own whorl whenever you want to, freely. I say that for every human man and every human woman, and even for our children, as humanity’s representative.”

  They relaxed. I know how strange it will be for you to read this, Nettle darling, but they did. It was not anything I saw or heard; I could feel the tension drain away. They seemed a little smaller then, and perhaps they were. I still could not see their faces clearly, but they were not so deeply shadowed as they had been; it was as though they had been wearing veils I could not see, and they had drawn them back.

  The Neighbor who had brought me stood up, and I did, too. “You spoke of a companion,” he said, and he sounded almost casual. “Seawrack, you named her. You did not give us your own name, you who have been every being of your kind.”

  “My name is Horn.” I offered him my hand.

  He took it, and this time I felt his hand and remembered it. It was hard, and seemed to be covered with short, stiff hairs. Beyond that I will not say. “My name is Horn also,” he told me. I felt that I was be- ing paid an immense compliment, and did not know how to reply.

  He pointed. He was tall, as I have said
, but all his arms were too long even for someone as tall as he was. “Are you going back to your companion? To the fire where she and others lie sleeping?” She-pick-berry’s little fire seemed very near when he pointed it out.

  “I was hunting,” I told him, “and I left my slug gun hanging on a tree. I’ll have to get it first.”

  “There it is.”

  Looking where he pointed, I glimpsed it through the trees, and saw the red reflection of the flames in its polished and oiled steel. It seemed much too near to be mine, but I went to get it anyway, took it down from the broken limb upon which I had hung it, and slung it behind my right shoulder as I usually did. When I turned to wave to him and the others, they were not there.

  Nettle, I know that you are going to think it was a dream, not so very different from the dream of you I had when I was in the pit, the dream in which you brought me a dipper of water. It was not. It seemed dreamlike at times, I admit; but I have had a great many dreams, as everyone has, and this was not one of them.

  * * *

  I was lost when I could no longer see the Neighbors’ fire. I knew that to return to He-pen-sheep’s camp all that I had to do was walk uphill. It should have been easy; but again and again I found myself walking across level ground or down a gentle slope, and so toward the sea, when I felt certain that I had set out in the correct direction.

  After two or three hours of this mazed wandering I realized that I ought to have been exhausted, but I was noj even slightly tired. I was thirsty and ravenously hungry, so hungry that my teeth seemed as sharp as knives; but I was not fatigued, or footsore in the least.

  Just about then I heard a twig snap, and the rattling and rustling of a big animal in the scrub. I had just warning enough to unsling my slug gun and push down the safety when Babbie snuffled, and I felt the familiar, waist-high probing of his soft snout. It was the second time I had nearly shot him, and it struck me as very funny, like one of those stories the men who sell us wood tell, in which some ridiculous situation occurs and recurs. I dropped to one knee, still laughing, rubbed Babbie’s ears, and told him that I was very glad indeed to see him, as I was.

  When I looked up, there was something looming above us so enormous and so dark that in that moment it seemed larger than a thunderhead. I remember (I shall never forget) seeing its long curved horns among the massed stars, and feeling that they were actually there, that when the beast moved they would extinguish stars as they might have poked out eyes. In another moment they vanished as it lowered its head to charge. I fired over Babbie’s back, and pumped the action faster than I would have thought possible, the opening and shutting of the bolt a single sound like the slamming of a door, fired again without bringing the butt to my shoulder properly, and was knocked over in literal earnest, knocked sprawling amid the sand and roots. I remember the angry rattle of Babbie’s tusks, and picking up the slug gun again and jerking the trigger without any idea whether it was pointed at the beast, at Babbie, or at my own foot, and wondering why it did not fire, too dazed to realize that I had not chambered a fresh round.

  All that lasted only a second or two, I believe. I climbed to my feet and pumped the action again; and then, seeing nothing and hearing nothing except Babbie, pushed on the safety. You will accuse me of exaggeration, dearest Nettle, I know. But I actually tripped over one of the immense horns before I knew that the huge beast lay there. I nearly fell again, and would perhaps have fallen myself if I had not caught myself upon its fallen shoulder.

  I had to explore it then with my hands, because it was black and lay in pitch blackness under those closely packed trees, none of which were much above five cubits high but all of which were still in full leaf in spite of the cold. I do not know what they are called, but their leaves are hard, thick, pointed, and deep green, not much longer than the second joint of my forefinger.

  It was enormous, that beast, and I was still trying to grasp just how enormous it was when He-pen-sheep and his son burst out of the scrub, howling like a couple of hounds in their exultation. “Breakbull,” they said over and over. “You kill breakbull, Horn.” The son cut off the tail and tied it to my thong belt; it made me feel a complete fool, but that is their custom and I could not have taken it off or even implied that it was unwelcome without offending them. I thought then about what that other Horn had said concerning the customs of his race, and wondered what I had let us in for. Our own differ greatly from one town to the next, as everyone knows. Those of another race (I thought) must be very peculiar indeed. As they are.

  At this point I have told you everything of interest. I am going to make the rest very short and so finish writing about all this before I go to bed.

  He-pen-sheep and his son skinned the breakbull in the dark with a little not very valuable help from me. I cut off a haunch, and tried to shoulder it without getting too much blood on the slug gun (which I had hung across my back with the butt up), at which I was not very successful. The two of them carried the skin back to their lean-to, and it was so heavy that the son fell once under its weight and was deeply shamed by it. As for me, I brought back ten times more meat than was needed to feed all seven of us. I say seven because Babbie ate at least as much as the hungriest, who was without a doubt your loving husband.

  I have been tempted to omit this next observation, and have already pushed my account past it; but whether it fits here or not, I am going to tell you something very strange. On the way back to He-pen-sheep’s camp, he and his son often had a.good deal of difficulty working their huge roll of hide through the tangle of scrub that had obstructed me so often. I, who stood taller than either of them and had the massive haunch (it must have weighed as much as the twins) over my shoulder, should have been at least as inconvenienced by the angular, wind-twisted trees.

  But I was not. My face and arms, which were already a mass of scratches from their limbs, were never scratched again. Although the haunch I carried was brushed now and again by leaves, it was never caught, not even momentarily. I cannot explain this. The limbs certainly did not move aside for me. The sky was gray by the time we were finished skinning the breakbull, and I would certainly have seen them if they had, and heard them, too. I can only say that it seemed to me that no matter in which direction I looked, I could see a clear path for me and my burden. And when I went forward, that was what it proved to be.

  We reached camp about sunrise. She-pick-berry leaped up shouting and woke her sick daughter and Seawrack, which neither appeared to mind. We ate, and although all of us ate a great deal I am sure I ate the most of all, so much that He-pen-sheep was open in his astonishment and admiration. Even the daughter, who had been so ill the evening before, ate as much as would make a good big serving on one of our big dinner plates back on Lizard.

  Afterward, She-pick-berry showed us how she would smoke the rest, making a sort of rack for thin strips of meat out of green twigs. We agreed that He-pen-sheep and his son would help Seawrack and me by bringing as much meat as they could carry to the sloop. In it return, they would receive the hide (which She-pick-berry was already scraping by the time we left their camp) and the remainder of the breakbull.

  Escorted by Babbie, we four returned to the carcass, cut loads of meat, and made our way through the scrub to the sea, striking the beach only a short walk from the sloop. Krait was aboard and greeted our arrival with ill-natured sarcasm, twitting Seawrack and me for being as bloody as inhumi and laughing inordinately at his own witticisms. Before we realized that Patera Quetzal had been an inhumu, Nettle, I would have thought that a sense of humor was an exclusively human possession. Associating with Krait made me wish more than once that it were so; he had an overdeveloped sense of humor, and as ugly a one as I have ever met with in all my travels. Since then I have learned that the Neighbors, who treated me with so much solemnity that night, are notorious for theirs.

  When He-pen-sheep and his son had helped us get the sloop back into the water, and had waded out to her with the loads of meat that they had brought a
nd washed themselves in the sea, he drew me aside. Indicating Krait with a jerk of his head, he told me, “No like,” and I acknowledged that I did not like him either.

  “You beat, Horn?”

  I shook my head.

  “Big beat,” he advised me. Then, “You talk Neighbor?”

  I nodded.

  “What say?”

  I considered. At no time had the other Horn or any other Neighbor asked me to keep our conversation confidential, or put me under any sort of oath. “We changed blood,” I told He-pen-sheep. “I,” I touched my chest, “for you and all the other men, and for all the women and all the children, too. The Neighbor for all the Neighbors.”

  He-pen-sheep stared at me intently.

  “Because I spoke for you, I can tell you what we said. We agreed that where men are, Neighbors can come as well.” I waved my arm at the horizon, indicating (I hope) that I intended the whole whorl. “They can visit us in peace and friendship.”

  “Big good!” He nodded enthusiastically.

  “I think so too,” I told him. “I really do.”

  As we hauled up the sails, he and his son waved farewell to us from the beach, and when we had so much sea-room that I could no longer distinguish one from the other, I could still hear them calling, “You kill breakbull, Horn!”

  * * *

  I had thought to end this part of my account with the words you just read, Nettle darling, the final words that I wrote last night; but there is more to tell, and it will fit in here better than anywhere else.

  When we left He-pen-sheep and his son on the beach, I supposed that we would never see them again. That was not the case. In justice to them I ought to tell you here, since I neglected to do it last night, that when we had gone back to the breakbull’s carcass I had been much taken with its horns, all four longer than the blades of swords, sharp, black-tipped, elaborately grooved, and cruelly curved. After examining and admiring them, I had asked He-pen-sheep what he was going to do with them, and he had explained to me all of the many uses to which horn can be put, things that I ought to have learned long ago, since I am named for that substance.