On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  “There is more,” I told Jahlee. Rinsing my fingers for the third time, I sipped tea and nodded my appreciation to Mehman.

  “More duties, Rajan? For me?” Her voice had become breathlessly feminine.

  “You might say so. Are you aware that there are other inhumi entombed here as you were?”

  “No.” For a moment the empty eyes flashed fire. “You torture us as we never torture you.”

  “There are, and I know where they are buried. Han’s our enemy, but only Han’s troops. You understand that.”

  Mehman brought in a fragrant cup for himself and another for Jahlee, and I motioned for him to sit down.

  Jahlee asked, “Do you intend to dig them up to fight for us, Most Merciful Rajan?”

  “I may. In addition to preying upon those troops, I want you to do whatever may occur to you to weaken and discomfort them. Knowing the cunning of your race, I leave the nature of those things entirely to you. You may do whatever seems good to you, as long as it doesn’t harm us.”

  “I understand, Rajan.”

  “When you have done something sufficiently impressive that you feel that word of it is bound to reach me, return here. My palace is in the same garden as this cottage. If it’s a court day, come to court. If it isn’t, ask for Evensong, who is also called Chota.”

  “Your servants may detect me, Rajan.”

  “See that they do not. If what you have done really is a major stroke, you and I, with Mehman here and Evensong, will rescue a second member of your race just as the three of us rescued you, and on the same conditions. He or she will be sent against the Horde of Han exactly as you are being sent. When either of you achieves a major success, a third will be rescued. And so on.”

  “If you win your war, you will release me from my promise?”; Her expression was guarded.

  “Exactly.”

  “Will you rescue the rest of us who are still in the living graves then?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But I will tell you-and the others who have been freed-where they are. You may free them yourselves, if you wish.”

  Slowly, she nodded.

  Soon after that, Evensong returned. She had a crimson silk gown over one arm and was carrying two elaborately inlaid boxes. “There are shoes in here,” she told Jahlee, handing her one, “and a good ivory bracelet and my second-best ivory ring. Women in Han don’t wear a lot of brass bangles the way women do here.”

  “Scent,” Jahlee whispered. “I must have scent.” She opened the box and took out a fanciful bottle.

  “That’s not the good perfume you gave me,” Evensong told me. “It’s what they gave me in Han when they sent me here.” As she spoke, a heavy, spicy fragrance filled the room. “You don’t need that much,” she cautioned Jahlee.

  Jahlee laughed then, laughter so dark and exulting that I wondered whether I had not made a serious mistake when I had decided to undertake this experiment after weeks of worry and indecision.

  “Here’s a woman’s traveling hat.” Evensong opened the other box and took it out. It was wide and flat, rather like an oversized saucer or a wide soup bowl of tightly plaited white straw turned upside down.

  There was a knock at the door; Mehman looked to me for guidance, and I asked whether he was expecting company.

  “My daughter and her little boy.”

  “Put on that gown and go,” I told Jahlee. “You know what you are to do.”

  Stepping swiftly into the shoes, she pulled it over her head. “Night would be better.”

  “Most people are still asleep.” I turned to Evensong. “Will you give her that box to keep the cosmetics in?”

  She nodded.

  Mehman’s daughter knocked again, and I told Mehman to admit them, adding to Jahlee, “When they come in, you are to leave immediately.”

  She did, favoring the humble woman and her little son with a flashing smile in which no actual teeth were to be seen, and running across the soft green grass with one hand clapped to the traveling hat and Evensong’s gown flowing and floating around her.

  Mehman made obeisance. “My daughter Zeehra, Rajan. My grandson Lal.”

  His daughter looked askance at Evensong and me, plainly dressed and soaked to the skin, before bowing almost to the ground.

  “The rani and I were discussing an expansion of the herb beds with your father when we were caught in the rain,” I explained.

  Little Lal started to speak, but was hushed at once by his mother.

  “We are about to return to the palace,” I continued, “but there is something of importance I must tell you first. Your father will confirm what I say after I leave, I feel certain. The woman whom I dismissed as you came in is not to be trusted. I would not wish you to think, because you saw her with my wife and me, that she is someone I trust, someone to whom you ought to defer.”

  Evensong surprised me by saying, “She is a thief and worse than a thief.”

  “Exactly.” I stood. “The two-hands spider kills our rats, but it remains a spider.”

  “You’re the Decider,” little Lal burst out. “The other people talk and talk, then you decide.”

  “I am,” I told him, “but I can’t decide everything. You must decide whether to obey your mother, for example-and accept the consequences if you don’t. What would you do, Lal, if that woman in the red gown came to your door?”

  “I wouldn’t let her in,” he declared stoutly.

  “Very good,” I said. “In time you may be an important and respected man like your grandfather.”

  * * *

  That was four days ago. Jahlee may have been active. I hope so, but I have heard nothing.

  My wound seems worse, Evensong says from the rain but I think it is actually from the strain of lifting that big flagstone in the market. Maybe it is for the best that we have no news about Jahlee.

  This rain makes my ankle ache.

  If I were to give every detail of the painfully slow voyage that Seawrack, Krait, Babbie, and I made up the river, I would use up as much again of this thin rice paper as I have consumed already.

  Which is too much. Paper is dear here, and I have several times come close to proposing that we build our own mill. The Cataracts (upper or lower) would supply far more water power than our little stream on Lizard Island. But it is out of the question as long as the fighting continues, and as soon as it ends I will go.

  A lot of paper, and to confess the truth it would have a good deal of interest written on it. On the lower reaches around Wichote, the lack of winds was the chief problem. The river was very wide there; even so, the center of its stream offered few such winds as one hopes for, and often gets, at sea; and when we tried to tack, whatever wind there was generally died away altogether as we appreached the thickly wooded banks. The current was slow, however, and what progress we made was often made with Babbie and me at the sweeps. Earlier I recorded my dismay when Krait said we might be in Pajarocu in ten days. I need not have worried, and after a good long session with the sweeps I would gladly have arrived that very instant if it had been possible. There were many days on which we could see the point at which we had dropped anchor the day before when we stopped for the evening meal.

  Somewhere I should say that we were attacked only once. Half a dozen men, perhaps, swam out to our boat while Krait was away and Seawrack and I were sleeping. Babbie and a couple of shots from the slug gun routed them, and one left behind a long knife that became Seawrack’s tool and weapon thereafter. Basically, no harm was done; but it taught me to anchor well away from shore on those rivers, as I invariably did from that time forward. As an added precaution, I made it a set rule to travel some little distance after we had finished our evening meal and put out the fire in the sandbox, and not to drop anchor until full darkness had arrived and the place could not easily be observed.

  Having found Pajarocu, Krait visited it almost every night; and I assumed that he was feeding there as well. He asked for and received my permission to leave us if it appeare
d that the lander was about to fly. In return, he assured me repeatedly that he would continue to guide us, faithful to the promise he had made when he rescued me from the pit, so long as it did not mean that he himself would miss the lander.

  Food was a continuing difficulty. Much of the meat Seawrack had smoked had spoiled, either because it had not been dried enough, or because it had gotten wet. We had brought a little food from Wichote as well, most notably the famous pudding I have already mentioned and a sack of cornmeal; but after the first week on the river the cornmeal was gone and the pudding (which had once seemed as permanent as a stone) showed signs of unwelcome shrinkage. Seawrack took fish in the river for Babbie and me, fish which she caught with her hands and at first refused to eat. She also went in search of wild berries-these were very welcome indeed when they could be found-while Babbie and I hunted with the slug gun.

  To the very few of you who read this who may venture upon the western sea, I say this. Hunger and cold will be the chief dangers you face, and they will be far worse than the hostility of the people of Shadelow, and a thousand times worse than its most dangerous beasts.

  (It was not so on Green; perhaps someday I will write about that after all, even though Green’s monstrous beasts would never be credited. If I do it I will have to represent them as slower, as well as smaller, than they actually are.)

  Hunger and cold tormented us, as I have said, and each made the other far worse. In cold weather a starved person is scarcely ever warm, even with a blanket and a fire; and a healthy person exposed to cold soon becomes ravenously hungry. When I sailed from Lizard Island, I took a few changes of clothing, a warm wool blanket, and bales of paper to trade for more supplies at New Viron-paper that was stolen from me almost at once. For my needier Sinew threw me his knife, and Marrow very generously provided me with food, the slug gun and ammunition, and the silver jewelry I have occasionally mentioned. I bought more food (with vinegar, cooking oil, black and red pepper, and dried basil), the sweeps, a new harpoon, and a few other odds and ends, after which I considered myself adequately equipped.

  I-we-were not. I am tempted here to write at great length about gloves, stockings, and boots. There were times when I would have traded the sloop for a warm wool cap and a stout pair of warm leather gloves; but to dwell on this item or that would be to obscure the real point.

  One cannot stock a boat with sufficient food for such a voyage as I so lightly undertook. If its entire cargo consisted of food, that would not be sufficient. All that one can do is to load up with as much as the boat can reasonably carry, choosing foods (vegetable foods, particularly) that will keep for weeks or months. We fished and hunted, as I have indicated; but an exclusive diet of fish and meat is not healthy and quickly becomes maddeningly monotonous. The best gift that Marrow gave me was not my slug gun, but the barrel of apples. Before we reached Pajarocu, I wished heartily that it had been a half dozen. I must add that each day spent hunting and gathering wild fruits or nuts was a day lost, and that we often got little or nothing.

  Possibly I should also say here that when the barrel was empty I broke it up and used its staves for firewood. If I had kept it and stored Seawrack’s smoked breakbull in it, much that was spoiled by wetting would have been saved.

  There was little cloth in the market at Wichote, although furs and hides were plentiful. Seawrack and I got fur caps that came down well past our necks and ears, butter-soft leather tunics of greenbuck hide (I wore mine under the stiffer garment that He-pen-sheep had made for me), big fur robes, and clumsy fur mittens, as well as blankets much thicker and warmer than the one I brought from Lizard. These purchases will show the sort of clothing that will be essential on the voyage. Add to them sturdy trousers-several pairs-at least two pairs of seaboots, and a dozen pairs of wool stockings.

  One should also bring needles and thread with which to repair one’s clothing. I was fortunate in that I had several of the large needles I used to sew sails and a big ball of coarse linen thread. Finer needles and finer thread would be advisable, to-as well as a pair of scissors.

  With boat’s stores I was tolerably well provided. The second anchor I had bought in New Viron, particularly, proved invaluable. I had also laid in a bolt of sailcloth, tar, varnish, and paint, and came to regret that there was not more of all four. There cannot be too much rope on a boat bound on a trip of great duration.

  After the first fork, the current became our chief obstacle, and one about which we could do very little. Even on the lower reaches, where it was almost undetectable, it would slowly bear the sloop backward toward Wichote, although the water appeared quite motionless. After the first fork, we had to creep along very near one bank or the other, which meant we could not tack. We had to wait for a good, strong wind not worse than quartering, or crawl forward with the sweeps. On more than one occasion, and more than two, we thus waited and crawled and waited again for days at a time. There were even times when I walked three hundred strides upriver (that being the greatest distance that we had rope for) and hitched a block to a tree, after which we hauled the sloop forward-”we” being Babbie and I, very largely. I do not recall a good, strong, favoring wind that lasted a full day during the entire trip.

  In the long hours of idleness Seawrack and I became more intimate than we had ever been before, more intimate even than we had been during those first idyllic days when her poor stump of arm had not yet healed and she used to confide to me that the fingers she no longer possessed touched something hard or soft, smooth or rough.

  There was none of that now; if those soft and graceful phantom fingers groped or stroked anything, I was not apprised of it; but she talked about her life beneath the sea, of people she had known and liked or known and feared there (not all or even most of them actual, I believe), the freshwater springs on the seafloor at which she had drunk, the pranks she had played upon unsuspecting men in boats, and the pets she had adopted but eventually discarded, lost, or eaten.

  “It seemed completely normal to me then,” she said, and I knew in my heart that it still did-that it was her life aboard the sloop with me that seemed the aberration. “I knew most people lived on the land, and I think I knew, somewhere behind my ears, that I had too, a long time ago. It wasn’t something I thought a lot about.”

  She was silent for a moment, staring out at the last gleams of sunshine on the water.

  “There were certain places around Mother where I slept, and I would go into them when it got dark. The sea is more dangerous after dark. So often you don’t see hungry things until you bump into them, or they bump into you, and a lot of those hungry things have ways of seeing in the dark with noises that I can’t do.”

  She seemed to catch her breath, scanning the forest shadows. “So when it got dark I would go into one of my sleeping places. The water was always warm and still in them, with Mother’s smell in it. I’d curl up and go to sleep, knowing that Mother was so big that nothing frightened her, and that most of the dangerous things and people were afraid of her. You probably think it was awful. But it wasn’t awful, not then. It was really very, very nice.”

  Babbie stretched out beside her, resting his chin on her thigh and looking up at her with eyes like two dark red beads that tried terribly hard to melt, although they had been made for maniacal ferocity.

  “The land was like that for me, when I thought about it at all. Like the dark, I mean. I felt that it was always dark up there, and the people there weren’t really people at all, that they weren’t really people. Mother wasn’t human, though. Isn’t that what you say?” Feeling very much like Babbie, I nodded.

  “She always seemed human to me. She still does, and I think it’s because in the sea being people means something different. In the sea, it’s talking. If you talk, you are a person, so she was and so was I, because in the sea there’s a lot of noise but not very many talking voices. In a place like that town where we stayed waiting for market day, there are so many people talking all the time that nobody wants to hear any
more talk. After that, being human becomes something else, like walking on your hind feet.”

  I smiled. “Human chickens?”

  “And having two arms and two hands instead of wings. So I’m almost human. Isn’t that right?” She began to comb her long, golden hair, holding the comb in her mouth when she needed her hand for other matters.

  “Your hair changes color,” I told her.

  “When it’s wet. It looks black then.”

  “No, it doesn’t. When it’s wet it’s a tawny gold, like the beautiful old gold you wore for me when you first came on board.”

  She laughed, pleased. “But when I go down deep, it’s black.”

  “If you go down deep enough, I suppose it must be. But now it’s changing color, and every color is more beautiful than the last, and makes me forget the last and wish that it would stay the new color always.”

  I watched the comb, and the shimmering highlights it left behind. “There’s gold so pale that it’s almost like silver, like this ring you gave me, and pure yellow gold, and red gold, and even the tawny color your hair has when it’s wet-the color I thought it was for the first few days.”

  “I was still spending a lot of time in the water then,” she said pensively.

  “I know. And now you’re afraid of it, even when you catch fish for us. I see you nerving yourself to go in, to take the plunge as people say.”

  “I’m not afraid I’ll drown, Horn. I never, ever will. Sometimes I wish I could.”

  Obtuse though I was, I knew what she meant. “You’d die.” I tried to make my voice gentle. “Isn’t that worse than going back to your old life in the sea?”

  We watched Krait haul on the painter to bring the sloop nearer shore, then walk out onto the bowsprit, jump down, and vanish among the crowding trees. The sun was sinking behind the mountains already, wrapping the river that had become our whorl in silent purple shadows.

  “He’s one, isn’t he?” Seawrack sighed, put away her comb.

  “One what?”