Return to the Whorl tbotss-3

by Gene Wolfe

  The other way was for them to hide in people. I had read about Patera Jerboa in the book, so I told him about it, and he said I was right. (This was while we were eating the soup. I remember now.) A god could hide in anybody who looked at a Sacred Window or even a glass, and once he was in there he did not have to do anything. If he just went in and kept quiet, it was just impossible for anybody to find out he was there.

  But Scylla and the others found a new place. They found out that if they did it right they could go into animals. What usually happened, Father said, was that someone would bring an animal to sacrifice, for instance a goat. When they were getting ready to kill it, it would naturally be in front of the Window. Scylla or whatever god it was would get into it and break loose from whoever was holding it and run away.

  "Pas soon realized what was happening," Father said, "and warned his worshippers. Thus when an animal went wild, they knew it had been possessed and hunted it down and killed it."

  I said, "So it didn't work."

  "Let us say it often failed. Some of the animals made good their escape, horses and birds particularly. There were other difficulties however. No doubt that was why the technique was almost never used until Scylla, Echidna, Hierax, and the rest were desperate to escape Pas. For one thing, most animals are not long-lived. You mentioned Patera Jerboa."

  I nodded and said yes, I had.

  "He was middle-aged when Pas possessed him, yet he yielded up his fragment of the god thirty years later. A horse may live for fifteen or twenty years, if it's well cared for; but that's extraordinary."

  I said, "They can't talk either, except for Oreb."

  "You are right." Father put down his soup. "But that is part of a larger and more serious problem. No horse or bull or bird has anything like the brain of a human being. If we think of the gods pouring themselves into us as wine is poured from a great cask into bottles, animals are small bottles indeed. If Scylla had possessed me instead of Oreb, the Scylla we would see on the Red Sun Whorl would still be far short of the Scylla who once existed in Mainframe. As it is, the Scylla we see is no more than a sketch of the original Scylla-of the daughter of the tyrant who assumed the name Typhon, the daughter who had pledged herself in secret to one of the sea gods of the Short Sun Whorl that would in time become our Red Sun Whorl."

  I told him I had not known anything about that.

  "She did," Father said. "It was a form of treason, of rebellion against her father. Abaia, Erebus, Scylla and the rest had taken posses sion of the waters, and were plotting to gain the land as well. According to what I was told on one occasion, they still are."

  Juganu said, "Are you saying that our Scylla, the girl who comes out of Oreb, wants to ask this Red Sun goddess for help?"

  "Yes. I thought you knew. She possessed Oreb, as I told you, because she knew he would soon be brought here. She felt sure-she told me this one night-that Pas would not have peopled Blue unless he had some way to go there himself to rule them. `Lord it' was the phrase she used. She was wrong, as I could have told her. In Oreb she searched this whorl for nearly a year, finding nothing better one or two landers with their glasses half intact. They would not or could not accept her-'Upload' was the word she employed. She'd been to the Red Sun Whorl with Jahlee and me, but hadn't let us know she was present. A few nights ago she spoke to me through Oreb, and from the way he talked and what he said, I knew the speaker was not he. She revealed her presence, and implored me to take her there again."

  "Did she say Pas would kill her if he could?"

  Father nodded and sipped from the wine bottle; sometimes it seemed like he was just pretending to eat and drink, and this was one of them. "That is indeed what she said, but I am not certain it's true and I'm not Pas."

  Juganu had been listening to us, and had even swallowed some soup. He was a little and old again, about half the size he had been. "Pas will be angry with you. Isn't he your chief god?"

  Father shook his head. "The Outsider is my chief god."

  I said, "The only god you trust," because I was pretty sure from things like that he had said that I knew who he really was.

  "Whom I don't trust half as much as I ought to, my son."

  The bird lit on Father's shoulder about then. "Bird eat?"

  "Of course. You brought the fish, so you are entitled to some of the soup."

  I said it had already had the head and guts.

  "Yes." Father smiled and shrugged. "Oreb's diet can't have been pleasant for Scylla, though she's never complained about it. Perhaps she is accustomed to it now; and since such things taste good to him, they may taste good to her, I hope so." He held up his spoon so the bird could get some in its beak. I had finished mine, and I do not think his could have been very hot.

  I asked him about Pas. "You said she said she didn't think Pas would let anybody come here unless he could come, too. She must have known him for a long time."

  Father agreed she had. "For three hundred years."

  "Then why wasn't she right about that?"

  He shrugged. "Are you so certain she was wrong?"

  "You said she and the bird couldn't find anyplace."

  "Correct. Pas has not yet come, perhaps. Or perhaps he has, and Oreb simply failed to find the place that Pas found or created. You pointed out that she had long years in which to learn the nature of her father."

  He grinned at me then, and I laughed too.

  "Yet she believed that she and her mother-with Hierax and Molpe, though Molpe cannot have been of much help-would prove strong enough to destroy him. She was clearly wrong about that; she underestimated him, and badly."

  He stopped to think and give the bird more soup. It would pick flakes of fish and cut-up potato out with its beak. "Would you like my opinion?"

  I nodded, and Juganu said, "Very much, Rajan."

  "Then I believe Pas knows that as the years pass we will come to realize how much we need him, and bring him. New Viron sent me for Silk. That was foolish, because no mere man could repair all the evil there. Silk did his best for Viron itself, but left it scarcely better than he found it. The same impulse will be applied to Pas in another generation, surely."

  I asked if he thought a god could do it, and he said that the people themselves would have to, even if a god helped them.

  We both wanted to know why Scylla wanted to talk to that other Scylla in the Red Sun Whorl, and he said, "She wants to describe her efforts in the Long Sun Whorl, and to obtain the Greater Scylla's advice. No doubt she is hoping for help as well, though she will not say so. If she were to leave Oreb and return to Mainframe-we would have to visit the Long Sun Whorl, of course-she would be destroyed. At least she believes she would be, and that's deterrent enough. If she simply remains where she is, she will perish when Oreb dies."

  "No cut!" the bird said, which made me and Juganu laugh.

  Father also said, "I am by no means eager to overhear their conversation, if it takes place; but I would like a word with that Greater Scylla myself."

  He got his second wish, but not the first one, when we went back to the boat on the river.

  We sailed through the delta. The river breaks into five big streams there, the captain told us, and so many little ones that nobody could count them. They were always changing anyway, he said, so we had to pick our way along.

  Scylla went out on the bowsprit. It was long and she went almost to the end. I sat on the big carved railing and let my feet hang over. I had left my wound behind on Blue, mostly. There were no bandages anymore and I was not bleeding, but it sort of hurt and I did not feel strong. Father had said I could make things, but he had worried about me making cards or anything like that. So I did a couple little things I did not think would bother him or anybody, a nail was one, and a seashell. The way you did it was to hold your hands together and think about what you wanted, them pull them apart slowly getting whatever it was right. When I had each thing the way I wanted it, I tossed it in the water.

  Then I looked around to see i
f anybody was watching, and I made Hide. That was a lot harder. It was nice to have him with me and be able to sit and talk to him about everything; but it was hard, too, to keep him there, and after a while I let him go. Now he says he cannot remember being there or anything we said.

  What it was, was like I remembered him better than I have really remembered anything in my life. As long as I did, he was there with me. But the delta was interesting, everything very green and wrecked ships up on the islands, some mostly buried in the mud and little shacks that did not even seem to know they were just little shacks made out of driftwood where it had been palaces and forts. You saw walls leaning so far it seemed like they couldn't stand another day. And one time I got to looking at an old statue there that seemed to me like if only I could have talked to her it would have been the most wonderful thing in my life, and then I looked around to say something to my brother, and he was nearly gone. He came back fast and said, "Sorry!" Right after that I let him go.

  The delta was all swampy, and the water was black. Before I guess I thought it was only black because it was night, but now the Red Sun was up and it was still black. Looking at the delta, that bright green everywhere, I got the feeling that I was looking at a body so old moss was growing on the bones and the hard dead meat of it. About then I saw there was nobody around anywhere, that the little driftwood shacks had nobody in them, and what had happened was the stone forts and palaces had lasted because they had been built the best, and the shacks because there had been people in them not so long ago and they had not had time to fall down. But they were empty now, and the houses and buildings that had been between the palaces and the little shacks had rotted away or maybe burned, and there would never be anybody there again, but people like us.

  When we got out of the delta, that was the open sea that they call Ocean. It was like our sea and it was not. If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot. But if you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too. The smell was different. The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say just what was changed. That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the stars. This sea knew night was coming, when everything would die. There was more foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it.

  Out on the bowsprit, the girl started calling. She did not say a name or anything. She did not say any words. It was like people sitting on the sand clicking shells together and sometimes blowing through them. It did not sound bad, it was almost like music. Only you knew she was calling something, and when it came it was going to be bigger than anything and you were not going to like it.

  That went on for a long time, so long that I got worried about us back in our boat. I think Babbie did, too, because a couple times he came up to Father and pulled on his sleeve. Babbie never could talk but you generally knew what he wanted. He had tied a piece of rope around him and put the knives Father gave him through it.

  Here I want to say something else about them. This may not be the best place, but I want to make sure I say it so everybody who reads this understands and this is where I am writing. After I got shot, when Juganu and Babbie were holding me down, Babbie was trying to smile at me. He is not very good at it and does not try much. This time he did, I think because he knew how much it hurt and he wanted me to see that he was not holding me out of meanness, but he liked me and was trying to help. People hunt huses and shoot them and eat them. Sinew used to a lot, and I have done it myself. But after getting to know Babbie the way I did on the boat I could never do it again.

  Anyway, his mouth was sort of open, not just the ends of the lips turned up, and looking in it I saw those knives. They were the big ripping tusks in his bottom jaw. The curve was the same and the shape was almost the same except the knives were longer. The tusks he had here were the knives in the Red Sun Whorl.

  If I had been the girl, I would have given up after an hour or so. Maybe not even that long. She did not, and after a while I just wanted to get away from there. I went down in the waist, which was what you call the middle of a boat, and watched Juganu wrestle a sailor.

  When I went back up on the foredeck, she was still singing. The bird was on her shoulder, and Father was out on the bowsprit too, maybe four cubits behind her. He called me over, and when I had come as far as the grating, he told me to tell the captain to strike all sail. I took Babbie with me, and the captain did it. After that we just drifted, rolling a little. We were on the open sea, out of sight of land.

  People started coming up out of the water up ahead. I borrowed the second mate's telescope to look at them, and they were all women. The ones closest to us were smaller, and the ones farther away were bigger, so they all seemed like they were about the same size. Some of the farthest-back ones were as tall as Father, Juganu, and. me put together. A lot had on black robes and cowls, but some were naked, especially the big ones farther back. The closest ones talked and sang, and called to us. I have never seen or even heard about anything else that was like that.

  The girl kept singing to them, and they got quieter and started to come toward us. It was like they were standing on something under the water that moved. The sailors were scared, and I saw them charging the swivel gun and told Babbie not to let them use it, and went forward again. By that time they were all around our boat. Two sort of rose up and talked to the girl and Father then, their robes getting longer and longer as they came up out of the water until they would have dragged behind them clear across the deck if they had been walking on the boat. There was something under them that the women were standing on, if those women had any feet.

  I went out on the grating deck again to look at the women, and one looked at me and smiled, and she had little sharp pointed teeth like tacks. Her eyes were all one color and sort of glowed or gleamed under the cowl. I went back as far as the foremast then, which is why I did not really hear anything they said or that Father and the girl said. I wanted to make myself a sword like Azoth, and I did, but it would not work for me, so I put a regular steel blade on it.

  After a while the women went back into the water, and Father and the girl came to tell me to tell the captain he could sail again and we would be leaving him for good. He gave me a ruby, too, that I had seen one of the big naked women give him. He said it was real, and the captain would still have it when we had gone. I told him about the woman who had looked at me and smiled and said, "Was that Scylla?" The girl was mad about it.

  After that we went home to our boat on Blue.

  It was night went we got back, and I said I would take the first watch, because I knew that with all I had to think about I would not sleep for a while. I told Juganu he could have my bunk if he wanted it, but pretty soon he came up and flew away. I knew he was going to look for blood to eat, and I wondered who he would find.

  Babbie was the only one on deck with me, but Babbie was asleep. So after that I just sat at the tiller the way you do with my slug gun across my lap and looked at the sea and the sky. It was calm and you could see a lot of stars. Green was up above the mainmast, and it seemed like if we put up the main top it would touch it. Our Green is not as big as theirs, but ours was plenty bright. The nicest thing was to see the reflections of all the stars dancing on the water.

  I thought about a lot then. You can imagine. Most of it was things I have already written down. I thought about shooting Juganu when he came back, too; I really wanted to. But I knew the shot would wake up Father and he would know. Even if it did not, he would ask me, and I would not be able to lie to him about it very long.

  Then the bird came and talked to me. That was not as nice as it sounds. For one thing, it was afraid. It would not come near enough for me to touch it. For another, I was talking to the girl too. She was not there to see, but she was there. The bird was up forward on the cabin deck, which is what we call the roof of the little cabin (it is planked and tarred like a regular deck and plenty strong enough to stand on) about halfway between me and Babbie. I could see it hopping around. I could not
see the girl, but I knew she was in there. This is hard to explain.

  Out on the water there were the stars and quite a bit of light from Green; for nighttime it was really pretty bright, but there was sort of a shadow between the side and the water. Green was halfway up over to starboard. So to port there was this shadow, and I felt like she was down there, watching and listening, and she could make the bird talk for her when she wanted to.

  I had whistled to it, and it had whistled back. I could whistle better than it could, but it could whistle louder than I could, so for a little while we had fun like that. I would whistle "Tomcod's Boat," and the bird would whistle back the first three or four notes.

  "Like bird?"

  "Sure," I said. "But I'd like you better if you liked me better." I knew it would not understand, but it was somebody to talk to.

  "Good bird!"

  I said, "Sometimes, maybe."

  That made it mad and it said, "Good bird!" and "Bad boy!"

  "If you're such a good bird, what were you doing out on the bowsprit with Scylla?"

  That was the first time. The bird said, "I bad?" but I knew it was not really the bird talking.

  I admit I had to think about it. In the first place I did not like her. Then too, I felt like Father and Juganu and I, and even Babbie and the bird, had been real on the big river boat, but she had not been. I had not liked that. Then on our boat I felt like we were really real but she was not real at all. She could not make us see her or talk without Father's bird. Maybe none of it had to do with her being bad, but I felt like it did. So I said, "Well, you're sure not good, Scylla."

  "Good girl!"

  "Sure you are," I said. To tell the truth I was hoping she would leave the bird in charge and never come back.