Return to the Whorl tbotss-3

by Gene Wolfe

  "There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it. There are women in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the feignings of the sea goddess, but of real women. Some are as tall as towers, some no larger than children. Their hair is green and streams behind them when they swim, their nipples black, and their eyes and lips and nails as red as blood.

  "Steps wet and black with river water lead from the river to a street of crumbling tenements. There are women in nearly every room of those tenements, women who will sell their bodies for a round piece of stamped metal. Some are beautiful, and many are less than beautiful in ways you may find attractive."

  He said more about that, but I do not remember most of it, and I am not going to write it.

  Then he said, "Follow the street higher, and you meet with the iron gates of their necropolis. It is to that necropolis, that silent city of the dead, that we go; but first we must visit the lander beyond it, the ancient lander where the torturers ply their trade. The torturers are men, but there are fair women among their prisoners. They are helpless and afraid, confined to underground cells and grateful-those who have not lost their reason-to anyone who befriends them. Many were the concubines of the calde of the city, and these are the fairest of the fair. Day after day they groom and perfume themselves for the rescuer of whom they dream, the rescuer who for most will never come. Tall and fair they think him, and a thousand times they have practiced the kisses they will give him… the caresses that have made him their own…"

  Father stopped talking, and it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way from where I was. I opened my eyes and saw daylight and stars, like there were stars painted on the ceiling instead of the white flowers, and broken stuff like glass. I sat up just as the bird flew through the break, and the first person I saw was the girl that had been inside it. Here I wish I could really say how she looked. It was not exactly happy and was not exactly angry either. She looked the way a person does when all the deciding and worrying is over, and her eyes could have burned right through you.

  Father sat up then, and Juganu. Juganu looked the same as on the river boat, but Father looked the way he had in Capsicum's big house, only younger. Before he had looked a lot like our real father, and Hide says that is the way he always looked on the Red Sun Whorl. Now he did not. He looked serious, but he had two eyes again and they just shone. He got up as if he did not weigh anything, and helped me up.

  The girl said, "That it?" and pointed.

  Naturally I looked where she pointed. There was a little paved place down below with a post in the middle, and on the other side of it a pretty big wall that had fallen down in one place to where it was just a pile of slabs.

  On the other side was a cemetery so big it seemed like the whole whorl had to be dead and buried in it. There were graves with every kind of monument, statues of men crying and women crying and I guess of the people who were dead and all sorts of things, and pillars with things on top. Between them were trees and bushes and grass, and little narrow paths that looked white. I found out later that they were made of bones. It all went on for a long way down the side of the big hill, and past it you could barely make out the buildings Father had talked about, and the river.

  The girl had taken hold of his arm and was trying to pull him over to the hatch in the middle of the floor, but he would not go. She said, "We here! Why wait?"

  He said, "For shadelow, of course. Do you imagine that we can simply go down there and wander about?"

  He always wore that black robe that he had the corn in, but it was different, and it started changing more right then while I looked. The main thing was that it kept getting blacker and blacker. It got so black I thought it could not get any blacker, then it kept on getting blacker after that until it looked like what Azoth did when the blade came out and cut through that boat. Finally it was like it was not there at all, but like you were blind in the part of your eye that was looking at it.

  There was a hood, too, with red trim on it.

  Juganu went over and lifted the hatch while Father and the girl were arguing and said he was going down but if he got caught he would not tell about us. Father explained that they could not hold him anyway, and helped him make one of the black robes for himself and a big straight sword that was sharp on both sides, and told him the name of his friend and told him to send him up if he met him.

  Juganu went, and for a long time nothing happened. Father talked to the girl, but I did not pay much attention. Mostly I looked at the other landers around ours, and the river and the city. I will not try to tell about it, because I could not. You could not imagine it, no matter how hard you tried. Some of the buildings were like mountains, but in it they were not huge or even big, they were just bumps. Father used to talk sometimes about the jungle where Sinew was, how dangerous it was. But that city looked worse to me, leagues and leagues and leagues of stone and brick, and millions and millions and millions of people that were worse than any animal. I would have gone home right then, if I could.

  The bird came back saying, "Good place! Good hole!" I never did like it much, and I think it was afraid of me because I look like my brother but I am somebody else. Anyway, I liked it less after that, and I am not sorry that it went with him.

  Then a boy came up. He was one of the apprentices. From the way Father had talked, I thought he was going to be my age, but he was younger. He was pretty big already, though. You could see he was going to be tall.

  We sat on the floor then, Father, the girl, the boy, and me. The boy asked Father about his book, whether he was still writing it. Father said, "No, I've put it aside forever. If my sons or my wife wish to read what I have written, they may. But if they want it finished, they will have to finish it themselves. What about yours? The last time we spoke, you said you were going to write someday. Have you begun it?"

  The boy laughed and said, no, he was going to wait until he had more time and more to put in it. Then he said something I have remembered a lot. He said, "I won't put you in it, though. No one would believe you."

  It is exactly the way I feel about Father. I knew how right it was as soon as I heard it, and it is still right. The others are going to write all the other parts of this, about the wedding and all that. My part is almost over with. So I am going to try to say it, to tell you about Father the way he seemed to me right here. Even if you do not believe me, even if you think that what I say cannot have been true, you will know anyway that I thought it was. It will let you see him the way we did, a little.

  Father was good.

  That is the hard part to explain to everyone, and it is the thing my aunt is trying to explain, too. If you meet her and she starts telling you about him, how scary he could be, and things moving themselves and the Vanished People coming down the street and knocking on her door, that is what you have to remember if you want to understand.

  If somebody frightens people, everybody thinks he has to be bad. But when you were around Father you were practically always scared to death, scared that he might really find out one day the way you were and do something about it.

  I was not going to tell why I did not like his bird, but I will just to get you to understand. It was not really a nice bird at all. It was dirty, and it did not sing. It was noisy sometimes when I did not want it to be, and it would eat fish guts and rotten meat. After I got to know Father (this was in Dorp and on Wijzer's boat) I could see that the bird was exactly like me, except that it was a bird and I was a person. Father knew exactly how bad we were but he loved us just the same. Deep down, I think he loved everybody, even Jahlee and Juganu. He loved some people more than others, our mother especially. But he loved everybody, and until you meet somebody like him, you will never know how scary that was.

  He was good, like I said up there. He was
probably the best man alive, and I think that when somebody is really, really good, as good as he was, the rules change.

  "A long time ago," he told the boy, "this girl was a sort of princess here on your whorl. Her name was Cilinia. Have you heard of her?"

  The boy said he had not.

  "She died here many years ago-many centuries, I believe. Now she must find her grave."

  "You're ghosts." The boy looked around at us. He was not afraid, or if he was he did not show it. But he did not smile, either. He did not have a good face for smiling, anyway. "When you were here before you said you weren't."

  "That was because you meant the spirits of the dead," Father explained. "My son and I are not dead, and neither is Juganu, the man who sent you to us. This girl is, however, and we must help her. Will you help us?"

  He did, too. He took us to an old stone building where there were lots of coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of them were not, and a lot were empty.

  "Here," the girl said, and she went into the darkest corner. I did not think there was anything there, but Father was making a light with his hand, and she was right. There was a little coffin only about half the size of the others in there, pushed way over. There were spiderwebs all over it, so it was a lot easier to miss than to see.

  She looked down at it awhile, and Father asked if it would be better if he put out his light. She said no, but he closed his hand until it was almost dark. Finally she said it was no good, we would have to take the lid off for her. It took a special tool, but Father made one and gave it to the boy. He said that since the boy was the only one who was really here, it at would be better if he did it.

  The boy asked, "I'm just pretending you're really here?" But Father had stepped back into a corner and would not answer him. (It seemed right then like Father was not much more than a shadow and a little gleam of light, like there was a chink in the wall there that let the sunlight in.) Finally I said, "That isn't quite it either. You better take out those screws like Father told you." I am not sure the boy heard me, though.

  He did it anyway. I do not think the tool Father had made felt right, because he kept stopping to look at it. He would use it awhile, maybe taking out one. Then he would stop and study it, and shut his eyes, and study it some more. So it took a while, but eventually the last one was out and he looked around for Father and asked if he should take the top off.

  Father was on his knees drawing the sign of addition over and over the way he did sometimes and did not answer, but the girl said, "Yes! Oh, yes! Do it!" That was funny, because I could see the boy could hear her but could not see her.

  I went over so I could look inside, and the bird sat on my shoulder. It was about the first time he was that friendly, and I was not so sure I liked it. I am still not sure.

  Only it was not as easy as we thought it was going to be. The lid stuck and I had to kneel down at the other end and wrestle with it. The boy could see me then and hear me too, and I could see he felt better about that. It told me something about the way we were in the Red Sun Whorl that I had not known before. We got more real there when we did things with people who were really there. When we did not, we got less real, even to each other.

  Maybe even to ourselves, but I am not sure about that.

  Just the same, I think that when Father wanted to bring us back that was what he did. He thought about us, and not at all about the Red Sun Whorl, and somehow, by what he said and the way he acted, he made us think that way, too.

  We got the lid off after a lot of fooling around. We thought for a while there might be some kind of secret catch, but it was just stuck. There were metal corners on the box part and on the lid, and they had rusted together. When they came loose, the girl got a lot more real and even pushed us away. Her face was just terrible. It was like the only thing in the whole whorl she wanted was inside the coffin.

  Maybe it was, but she did not get it right then. There was a casket (I guess that is what you call it) inside all soldered out of sheet lead. The boy had a little knife and he cut the lead for her, along the big end and down both sides. We grabbed hold of it then and were able to peel it back.

  There was not much inside, just some dirt and hair and old bones, and a little jewelry. Not much. I thought the boy would take the rings and so forth, but he did not. After I had seen the inside I looked back up at the girl to see what she thought of it, and she said, "I died young. It can't have been long after I was scanned for the Whorl." She was talking to Father then, not to me, and she had stopped talking like his bird.

  He opened his hand all the way. It got so bright it hurt my eyes. The bird has this thin filmy sort of eyelid he uses in bright sun, and next time I looked at him he had it.

  Then Father said, "I imagine so, Cilinia." From the way he said it, you knew it was the last thing he would ever say to her. I wish I knew how to do that with my voice. I have tried it, but for me it never sounds right.

  Father had gotten a lot solider-looking when the light got bright. I do not know about me and the bird, I was not paying much attention to us just then, but the girl got all wispy.

  After that, she went. It was like she was water in a bowl, and the dirt in the lead casket was the ground, and somebody we could not see was pouring her out. Maybe the light was.

  When she was gone, Father closed his hand again. The boy wanted to know if he should put the lid back. Father said yes, and, "I can't say what may happen if you open it again. Probably nothing. Still, I advise you not to."

  The boy said he would not. He screwed the lid back down, which did not take nearly as long as it had to get it off, and we shoved it back in the corner again.

  When it was done, the bird said, "Bad thing. Bad girl." You could tell it was not quite sure she was gone.

  I thought that was funny and said something about it to Father, and he said, "Nor am I. Back on Blue, she may possess Oreb just as she did; and in fact, I think it more likely than not, though I hope I am wrong."

  After that we went back outside. It was practically night, what old people call shadelow, the time when there are shadows everyplace. There was a great big rosebush growing right by the door of the stone building with about a hundred purple roses on it. I had not noticed the smell when we came in, or anyway I do not think I did. But when we went out I noticed it a lot. The night seemed to bring it out, and it was almost like it followed us. Maybe we got it on our clothes. It was sweet but heavy, the kind of smell you like at first, but after a little while it makes you tired. Now, just about anytime I smell anything like that I think about the girl, and the dirt that was inside the lead box. She was right at the mean stage a lot of girls get in, but she would probably have gotten over it when she got older. She might have turned out to be a pretty nice person after all.

  While we were walking, the boy told Father he wanted him to see his dog. He said he had wanted to show it to him the last time Father was here, but Father had not gotten to see it, so could he show him now? Father said sure.

  That got me to thinking about what we were doing now instead of the girl and whether she had really gone away. I mean died, because that is what it was, I know. So I asked if we were just going back to the tower to see this dog, and I said that if that was all it was maybe it would be better for us to go home.

  Father said, "We've accomplished the task we set out to do, but the most difficult part of our trip remains, my son. We must persuade-or force-Juganu to return with us."

  I wanted to say, "Don't you think Juganu will want to go?" but that would have been dumb because I could see from what he had said that he did not. So I said, "You told him what would happen if he didn't."

  Father did not say anything. If you asked him a question that really was a question he just about always answered some way, I think because he was so polite. But if you just said something like that to show you would like to know something, pretty often he did not say anything back. By that time I knew all about that so I did not do it very ofte
n anymore.

  The boy said, "Do you want to look for your friend first, or see Triskele?"

  "Both," Father told him.

  After that, nobody said anything until we got to the little gate. Then the boy knocked and called out, "We are returning, Brother Porter!"

  That was the torturer at the gate, a big fat man with a big sword. He stared at us through the little window, and it was the first time it soaked through to me that I should have had a black robe and a sword too, like Father had helped Juganu make.

  So I made them as fast as I could while he was looking at me, and it was probably a mistake. The sword was not sharp, for one thing, and the robe was really just kind of a black sheet tied around my neck, and I still had on the tunic that Mother had made for me back home. Brother Porter opened the gate for us anyway, but he was trembling so bad that Father stayed behind to talk to him and sort of tell him it was all right.

  The boy and I went on. Father made a little motion to say we ought to, and I think that was right, because the boy helped me with my robe and I found out I could make my sword sharp by pinching my fingers together and running them down the edge. I tried to make my tunic go away, too, but it would not, so the boy showed me how to pull my robe together and keep it that way, the way a real torturer would. We went back in the tower after that and down into the Juzgado part, because I had asked the boy if there were women torturers, and he said no. So I was pretty sure that was where Juganu would be. I thought maybe I could find him and get him to go back, and that would save a little time. Besides the boy said it was where his dog was.

  Pretty soon we heard Juganu's voice. It was noisy down there, with somebody yelling or screaming all the time. But in a way it was quiet, too, because nobody was listening. When somebody talked the way Juganu did, just the way a person usually does so that somebody else will hear him and understand what he said, it sort of stood out. We went to the room he was in and looked through a little window pretty much like the one in the gate, and he was in there with a nicelooking woman.