Return to the Whorl tbotss-3

by Gene Wolfe

  "You good? Good Hoof? Like Silk?"

  I figured there was no use fooling around with who is Silk? I knew shaggy well who Silk was. "No. He's a better man than I'll ever be."

  "Your pa? Tell lie!"

  "If he told them who he is, they'd want to make him calde and Gyrfalcon would kill him."

  "Good Silk!" She laughed, sort of bubbling and giggling.

  "Bad Scylla," I told her. "Why don't you go fishing?"

  "He kill? Kill pa."

  I said, "I don't think so."

  "Good girl! Not kill!"

  "Oh, sure. Well, you wanted Auk to kill that old fisherman for you once. I read all about it."

  "My man!"

  I said, "Maybe. But you don't own me."

  She laughed some more and got me real mad. I said, "Nobody ought to own other people, and if they do they shouldn't kill them unless they've done something terrible. Besides, you tried to kill your father. That's why you've got to hide. You wanted to and if you had you'd be a murderer. I think you are anyway."

  The bird whistled, and I thought she had gone away. We whistled back and forth, then it said, "We slaves. Pas own."

  I said, "That's the way Sinew used to talk."

  "Who?" I think it had surprised her.

  "Our other brother. He's older than Hide and me. Father says he's still alive on Green and has two sprats, but he used to talk like that a lot. Our real father would try to get him to help in the mill, and there would be big fights. Or he would start some kind of work and go away, so our father would have finish it, or Hide and me would."

  "Like slave!" That had gotten to her. "Pas say. I do."

  I said, "He was your father. He fed you and gave you a place to live, and clothes."

  "I fed! Eat sheep. Eat boy."

  "Like Juganu."

  She let the bird talk a while after that, and I tried to get it to come to me, but it would not. "Bad boy! No, no!"

  Pretty I stopped trying. I let out a reef in the mainsail, and trimmed it a little.

  "Kill bird?"

  I said, "You think I'd wring your bird's neck if I could catch it?"

  "Yes!"

  I spat.

  "You would!"

  I showed the bird my slug gun. "See this? If I wanted to kill you, I could just shoot your shaggy bird and throw it over the side. It would take about ten seconds. Only I'm not going to do it. Or wring its neck, either. In the first place you stole it. It's Father's bird. Besides, just because I don't like somebody doesn't mean I want to kill them. That's what you gods used to do, from what I hear. But I'm not like you."

  "No need," she said. "I die."

  "Sure, when the bird does."

  Juganu said, "Tomorrow. Didn't the Rajan tell you?"

  I had not known he was back, but he was right at my elbow.

  "We're going back tomorrow. I wanted to go back at once, but he wouldn't agree. We'll have to find the grave of Typhon's daughter Cilinia. It's in a place called the Necropolis."

  I said, "What for?"

  "That will be the last time. The Rajan said after that I might as well leave you, and I probably will."

  I wanted to know if he knew why Father wanted to go to Cilinia's grave, and the bird said, "Why ask?"

  "He made an agreement with Scylla," Juganu told me.

  "What was it?"

  Juganu shrugged and sat down on the gunwale. His arms had gotten short and round again, and his legs and his feet were not big and flat anymore like they are when they fly. He was just a little old man, naked, with blood on his breath; and I thought how if it had been Jahlee she would have made big tits to tease me. He said, "I thought you might know."

  I said I did not.

  "Would you tell me if you did?"

  "Unless he said not to."

  The bird laughed. I had heard it laugh before, but I did not like it.

  "He made an agreement with that monster in the water," Juganu said again. "Favor for favor. He told me that much. He promised to take Scylla to the grave. That was his part of their bargain, but I don't know hers."

  I was thinking about finding the grave. "It's been three hundred years. That's what they say."

  Father was coming up out of the cabin, and he said, "It's been much longer than that, but I have a friend who knows the place like the back of his hand."

  I am stopping here so that the others can write for a while. It has been a lot of work, a lot more than I expected. So I will let them tell about what Juganu did and all that. I will just help. I will get Daisy to go over this and fix it up, too. Or Hide and Vadsig would.

  18. HOW HE CAME TO BLUE

  "Yer come ter see auld Pig. 'Twas good a' yer, bucky." Pig's beard and shaggy hair were gone, but his head was still huge.

  "No, Pig." Pig's visitor shook his own much smaller head, knowing that Pig could not see it. "I came so that you might see me."

  Pig touched the bandage above his nose, the self-sterilizing pad that had replaced his gray rag. "They winna take h'it h'off, bucky. Gang ter do h'it yerself?"

  He looked at the nurse in the glass, who nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Pig. I am."

  His fingers located the knot, and he slipped one slender blade of the surgical scissors beneath it. "Silk found scissors like this in the balneum, and later Doctor Crane used scissors of the same kind when he treated Silk. I don't know why that should touch me, but it does." Savoring the sensation, he cut.

  "Bucky…"

  "If you cannot see, you will be no worse than you were."

  The nurse said, "And we'll find out why, and fix it." There was a warmth in her voice that made each word a benediction.

  Pig said nothing, but his big hands were shaking.

  "You haven't had much practice lately, Pig." The bandage was loose, lying limply across Pig's eyes. "That's what they told me, and I must tell you the same thing. If you can see-"

  Apropos of nothing, Oreb announced, "Good Silk."

  "What you see may be blurred until you re-learn how to interpret visual images."

  The room had darkened as he spoke, the lights on the ceiling fading to mere specks of gold; he looked at the glass and saw the nurse manipulating a control. She nodded, and he lifted the bandage away.

  "Bucky…?" One of Pig's hands found his.

  "Your eye is still closed, Pig."

  "He kens h'it, bucky. Sae braw? He's nae!" Pig's eyelids fluttered.

  "Braver than I would be."

  Pig's head rolled on the pillow.

  The nurse said, "It doesn't exactly go with his coloring."

  Pig's right hand left the sheet in a peremptory gesture. "Wants ter see yer, ter see ther twa a' yer tergether. Dinna never want ter forget yer."

  "See bird?"

  "Aye." Naked now, the wide, thin-lipped mouth curved upward. "Pig sees yer, ter, H'oreb. Bucky…?" Pig choked, coughed, and at last recovered.

  "You have a blue eye now, Pig. Like my own."

  When the nurse's glass had faded to silver-gray, Pig ventured, "Yer gang ter stay wit' me, bucky?"

  He nodded, knowing Pig could see his nod and glorying in it. "Until Hari Mau finds me, and makes me go with him."

  "Bird go?"

  "Yes, Oreb. Certainly, if you want it. I'll be flattered."

  "Pig ter, bucky?"

  He was taken aback. "Would you want to?"

  "Aye." Pig's voice was firm.

  Slowly, he shook his head.

  "Seen me Nears."

  "That has nothing to do with it. I am flattered, Pig. I'm humbled. But unless a god were to tell me otherwise, my answer must be no, for both our sakes."

  "Auld Pig'd gae, bucky."

  "I realize that-you would go, and endeavor to help and protect me in every way possible."

  "Yet did sae fer him."

  "Of course. I am your friend, as you are mine." He paused, his right forefinger tracing small circles on his cheek.

  "'Twill be a lang walk ter na braithrean wi'hout yer."

  He nodded, an
d gloried a second time. "You'll go back to them, at the other end of the whorl?"

  "'Tis me h'only kin."

  "Mercenaries. You were a mercenary trooper, Pig?"

  "Ho, aye! Was he? He was! Fightin' ter make 'em gae, bucky. Paid ter. Moss-trooper, ter, an' there was nae better."

  "Perhaps you'll find someone on the way, Pig. A woman who loves you. Or friends who like you as much as I do."

  "Found yer h'already, bucky."

  "Yes," he said sadly. "You have. And if I could take you back to New Viron with me, I would do so in an instant. The problem-one problem at least-is that I am not going there. I am going to a town very far from there, to which I promised Hari Mau I would go."

  "Dimber wi' me."

  "I will be a prisoner, Pig. They want me to judge their disputes, and arrange compromises for them. There are many disputes in which both sides are in the wrong, and many more in which no compromise acceptable to both parties is possible."

  He sighed. "I cannot give them all that they hope for, and their disappointment is certain to turn to violence in time, unless I can escape them."

  "Would yer do h'it, bucky? Gang awa'?"

  Solemnly, he nodded. "I would. I will-if I can. I've promised Hari Mau that I'll go with him to his town, and that I will judge it to the best of my poor ability. But not that I'll remain there indefinitely. I will keep my promise if they'll let me. But when I've done what I can, I'm going home. I've been halfway around Blue already, and home cannot be farther than that."

  "Need auld Pig then, bucky."

  He sighed again. "No doubt I will, but I won't have you. In the first place, Hari Mau and his friends will learn where I am very quickly-if not today, certainly tomorrow. They'll hold me to my promise then, and insist we leave. You must have expert care for months. Your flesh may not accept your new eye. There are things that can be done should that occur, but they are difficult things and require an expert physician.

  "In the second, you would be more of a prisoner than I, and in considerably greater danger, a focus for the discontents of every man I ruled against. I said that you will require months of care, because that is what your surgeon told me, and what they tell me here. If you were to come with me, I doubt that you'd live for months."

  Something in Pig's face had changed. He said, "And in the third, Horn?"

  "Patera!"

  Oreb whistled shrilly.

  "I would be a positive danger to you," Pig said. "Strength and a stout heart are hazardous qualities where they cannot prevail."

  "Yes." He wiped his eyes.

  Naked and subtly altered, the face was still Pig's; Silk's wellremembered voice issued from its lips. "Still, you would take me if you could."

  "Yes. Yes, I would. If we reached New Viron, I would not have failed. Or even if you reached it alone."

  "You do not wish to fail." Pig's big hand tightened on his.

  He said, "I would give my life not to fail," and meant it.

  "You already have."

  "You must he here, on this acceleration couch." Hari Mau bent over him. "You must be strapped in, as well. I apologize, though it is essential."

  "I know, I've been on them before. I'm worried about Oreb."

  Hari Mau's smiled widened. "There under your arm he will be safe. The lighter one is, the less strain. Oreb is very light." A wide strap snapped closed, pressing the azoth into the tense muscles under it. "For yourself you are not afraid, Rajan Silk?"

  If they wished to call him that, that was what they wished to call him. Not wanting to stare, he looked from Hari Mau's bearded face to the woven matting that had replaced-what? He tried to remember the interior of the lander that had brought him from Blue to Green, but he could recall only the long rows of crude brown couches, the cramped little galley that had fed them sparsely and badly, the shooting and the shouting, the twisted steel grip of Sinew's knife protruding from the back of a man whose name was forgotten.

  Hari Mau repeated, "For yourself you are not afraid?"

  "Of dying?" He shook his head. "No, not of that. In a way it would be a relief, a mitigation of failure. May I confide in you?"

  "Of course! I am your friend."

  "What I fear is showing fear. I am afraid I'll scream when thethe push comes, and the explosion."

  Hari Mau brought cotton for his ears, and he stuffed it in them gratefully. "You must put your head under your wing, Oreb, and pretend you are going to sleep. Keep out as much of the noise as you can."

  "No hear?"

  "Yes," he said firmly. "No hear," and watched with approval as Oreb tucked his head beneath his wing.

  He had wanted a couch near the others, perhaps next to Hari Mau's, but Han Mau had hustled him away, farther down, nearer the front of the lander, nearer the strange place to which Silk had once gone from which one could-while still in the whorl-see the stars. He was…

  He craned his neck in a vain effort to see behind him.

  Two or three rows farther down. Three rows at least, he decided, and more likely four. At least this lander was not jammed like the one in which he and Nettle had come to Blue.

  Where was she now? He tried to imagine her and what she was doing, but found that he could only picture a much younger Nettle renting folding stools. I am distracted, he told himself as a slight tremor shook the lander. Under such circumstances as this, I am bound to be distracted.

  Matting, woven of the split stems of some tropical plant. It would be warm in Gaon. He shivered.

  Someone had ripped open the very walls to steal wire. If he and Hari Mau and all the rest were lucky, that someone would have left the insulation strewn about so it could be replaced and confined behind the matting. If they were not, it was gone and had been replaced with something else, the coarse and dirty hair of slaughtered cattle or something of the sort.

  No, they did not eat their cattle in Gaon. Hari Mau had said so. Cattle were the mother goddess, were Nurturing Echidna, just like snakes. Snakes were understandable, of course. It was that way in Viron, too, to some extent. But cattle? Though cattle were associated with both Echidna and Pas, now that he thought of it. Rain from Pas, grass from Echidna; it was an old saying. Rain, the intercourse of the gods.

  In Gaon, Hari Mau had said, cattle were offered to Echidna, but never eaten. The entire animal was burned on the altar. That said something about the size of altars in Gaon, and the supply of wood as well, surely.

  The monitor's face appeared in a glass to his right, nearly human, though blurred about the mouth. "We'll cast off for the planet called Blue in thirty seconds. Your couch is secured."

  "Yes," he said unnecessarily. "Yes, I think so." He wanted to ask whether they would get there, whether they would arrive and whether they would make a safe landing, but did not.

  "If you suffer from heart disease, it would be best for you to remain in the Whorl," the monitor reminded him.

  "I don't." There was a momentary roar, deafening even through the cotton. The lander trembled with a violence that its builders could not possibly have intended. He asked, "Is everything all right?"

  "I am verifying our capabilities, Patera Silk."

  It was maddening to be thus mistaken by a mere machine; what was almost worse, Oreb had taken his head from beneath his wing to listen. "Good Silk!"

  "I am not Silk," he told the monitor. "You have been misinformed."

  "Your name is on my passenger list, Patter Silk."

  "Supplied by Hari Mau, of course." He could not keep the bitterness from his voice.

  "I will first cast off from the Whorl," the monitor was saying. Higher up, others were saying the same thing. "When I have attained sufficient altitude, I will fire my engines. As soon as they are silent, you may move about the lander, Hari Mau. You will be unwell. Please employ the housekeeping tube to keep your area clean."

  It struck him that it had been at least two minutes since the monitor had said they would leave in thirty seconds. He groped for his housekeeping tube and found that it was mi
ssing.

  "It will activate upon access. You are responsible for your own area, Hari Mau."

  That was because he had insisted that he was not Silk, he decided. Aloud he said, "I have no housekeeping tube, Monitor, and I will not be sick. I've traveled on landers before. I even flew here on this one. On no occasion was I sick."

  "No sick," Oreb confirmed.

  "I will first cast off from the Whorl, Potter Sulk." The blur around the monitor's mouth was spreading over its face like a cancer; the lower half of that face moved to the right, then jerked back into place. "When I have attained attitude, fire my engines. You may move about my. Plus deploy the housekeeping." The monitor's blurred gray face flickered, then vanished.

  This was death, death's overture. This lander had been damaged too badly to fly. Although they had flown to the Pole in it, it could never return to Blue. It would explode when the rockets fired or crash when it tried to land, or leave them floating in the abyss to starve, visited perhaps by inhumi.

  "I got there. I did it. I got back to Viron, where I could look for Silk." Suddenly aware that he was speaking out loud, he clenched his teeth.

  "Good Silk!"

  "Put your head under your wing, or you will be deafened. You may well be deafened anyhow."

  Obediently, Oreb tucked his scarlet-capped head beneath a jet black wing.

  "No, fly." It was a whisper. "Stay here."

  It had been the best part of his life, the days when he had been with General Mint, with Silk in the Calde's Palace. How few they had been! How very, very few. The hours in Silk's palace, and the hours in the boat with Seawrack. "I've been happy twice," he told the bird in a voice that he himself could scarcely hear. A shellback comb floated before his eyes. He murmured, "Most men are not happy even once," and was violently, messily ill.

  Sitting in what had been the lowest part of the lander, he seemed suspended in the sky. The Short Sun blazed to his left, mercifully obscured by the darkened canopy. To his right, stars shone, and Blue lay at his feet like a lost toy. Home.

  Hari Mau joined him, strapping himself into the seat. "No one should see this twice, but I cannot get enough. It is like women."

  He smiled. "Yes, in a way I suppose it is."