by Gene Wolfe
audibility, as one stepped over a burning rabbit.
She mounted the steps again, groping for a way to begin. "The
message is very clear. Extraordinarily clear. Unusual."
A murmur from the crowd.
"We--mostly we find separate messages for the giver and the
augur. For the congregation and our city, too, though often those
are together. In this victim, it's all together."
The presenter shouted. "Does it say what my reward will be from
the Ayuntamiento?"
"Death." She stared at his flushed face, feeling no pity and
surprised that she did not. "You are to die quite soon, or at least the
presenter will. Perhaps your son is meant."
She raised her voice, listening to the buzz gun; it seemed strange
that no one else heard it. "The presenter of this pair of rabbits has
reminded me that the rose, our departed sib's nameflower, signifies
love in what is called the language of flowers. He is right, and
Comely Kypris, who has been so kind to us here on Sun Street, is
the author of that language, by which lovers may converse with
bouquets. My own nameflower, mint, signifies virtue. I have always
chosen to think of it as directing me toward the virtues proper to a
holy sibyl. I mean charity, humility, and--and all the rest. But
_virtue_ is an old word, and the Chrasmologic Writings tell us
that it first meant strength and courage in the cause of right."
They stood in awed silence listening to her; she herself listened
for the buzz gun, but it had ceased to sound if it had ever really
sounded at all.
"I haven't much of either, but I will do the best I can in the fight to
come." She looked for the presenter, intending to say something
about courage in the face of death, but he had vanished into the
crowd, and his son with him. The empty cage lay abandoned in the
street.
"For all of us," she told them, "victory!" What silver voice was this,
ringing above the crowd? "We must fight for the goddess! We will
win with her help!"
How many remained. Sixty or more? Maytera Mint felt she had
not strength enough for even one. "But I have sacrificed too long.
I'm junior to my dear sib, and have presided only by her favor." She
handed the sacrificial knife to Maytera Marble and took the second
rabbit from her before she could object.
A black lamb for Hierax after the rabbit; and it was an indescribable
relief to Maytera Mint to watch Maytera Marble receive it and
offer it to the untenanted gray radiance of the Sacred Window; to
wail and dance as she had so many times for Patera Pike and Patera
Silk, to catch the lamb's blood and splash it on the altar--to watch
Maytera cast the head into the fire, knowing that everyone was
watching Maytera too, and that no one was watching her.
One by one, the lamb's delicate hoofs fed the gods. A swift stroke
of the sacrificial knife laid open its belly, and Maytera Marble
whispered, "Sib, come here."
Startled, Maytera Mint took a hesitant step toward her; Maytera
Marble, seeing her confusion, crooked one of her new fingers.
"Please!"
Maytera Mint joined her over the carcass, and Maytera Marble
murmured, "You'll have to read it for me, sib."
Maytera Mint glanced up at the senior sibyl's metal face.
"I mean it. I know about the liver, and what tumors mean. But I
can't see the pictures. I never could."
Closing her eyes, Maytera Mint shook her head.
"You must!"
"Maytera, I'm afraid."
Not so distant as it had been, the buzz gun spoke again, its rattle
followed by the dull boom of slug guns.
Maytera Mint straightened up; this time it was clear that people
on the edge of the crowd had heard the firing.
"Friends! I don't know who's fighting. But it would appear--"
A pudgy young man in black was pushing through the crowd,
pracfically knocking down several people in his hurry. Seeing him,
she knew the intense relief of passing responsibility to someone else.
"Friends, neither my dear sib nor I will read this fine lamb for you.
Nor need you endure the irregularity of sacrifice by sibyls any
longer. Patera Gulo has returned!"
He was at her side before she pronounced the final word,
disheveled and sweating in his wool robe, but transported with
triumph. "You will, all you people--everybody in the city--have a
real augur to sacrifice for you. Yes! But it won't be me. Patera Silk's
back!"
They cheered and shouted until she covered her ears.
Gulo raised his arms for silence. "Maytera, I didn't want to tell
you, didn't want to worry you or involve you. But I spent most of
the night going around writing on walls. Talking to--to people.
Anybody who'd listen, really, and getting them to do it, too. I took
a box of chalk from the palaestra. _Silk for calde! Silk for
calde! Here he comes!_"
Caps and scarves flew into the air. "_SILK FOR CALDE!_"
Then she caught sight of him, waving, head and shoulders
emerging from the turret of a green Civil Guard floater--one that
threw up dust as all floaters did, but seemed to operate in ghostly
silence, so great was the noise.
"_I am come?_" the talus thundered again. "_In the service of Scylla!
Mightiest of goddesses! Let me pass! Or perish!_" Both buzz guns
spoke together, filling the tunnel with the wild shrieking of ricochets.
Auk, who had pulled Chenille flat when the shooting began,
clasped her more tightly than ever. After a half minute or more the
right buzz gun fell silent, then the left. He could hear no answering
fire.
Rising, he peered over the talus's broad shoulder. Chems littered
the tunnel as far as the creeping lights illuminated it. Several were
on fire. "Soldiers," he reported.
"Men fight," Oreb amplified. He flapped his injured wing uneasily.
"Iron men."
"The Ayuntamiento," Incus cleared his throat, "must have called
out the _Army_." The talus rolled forward before he had finished, and
a soldier cried out as its belts crushed him.
Auk sat down between Incus and Chenille. "I think it's time you
and me had a talk, Patera. I couldn't say much while the goddess
was around."
Incus did not reply or meet his eyes.
"I got pretty rough with you, and I don't like doing that to an
augur. But you got me mad, and that's how I am."
"Good Auk!" Oreb maintained.
He smiled bitterly. "Sometimes. What I'm trying to say, Patera, is
I don't want to have to pitch you off this tall ass. I don't want to have
to leave you behind in this tunnel. But I will if I got to. Back there
you said you went out to the lake looking for Chenille. If you knew
about her, didn't you know about me and Silk too?"
Incus seemed to explode. "How can you sit here talking about
_nothing_ when _men_ are _dying_ down there!"
"Before I asked you, you looked pretty calm yourself."
Dace, the old fisherman, chuckled.
"I was _praying_ for them!"
Auk got to his feet again. "Then you won't mi
nd jumping off to
bring 'em the Pardon of Pas."
Incus blinked.
"While you're thinking that over," Auk frowned for effect and felt
himself grow genuinely angry, "maybe you could tell me what your
jefe wanted with Chenille."
The talus fired, a deafening report from a big gun he had not
realized it possessed; the concussion of the bursting shell followed
without an interval.
"You're _correct_." Incus stood up. His hand trembled as he jerked a
string of ranling jet prayer beads from a pocket of his robe. "You're
right, because Hierax has _prompted_ you to recall _me_ to my duty.
I--I _go_."
Something glanced off the talus's ear and ricocheted down the
tunnel, keening like a grief-stricken spirit. Oreb, who had perched
on the crest of its helmet to observe the battle, dropped into Auk's
lap with a terrified squawk. "Bad fight!"
Auk ignored him, watching Incus, who with Dace's help was
scrambling over the side of the talus. Behind it, the tunnel stretched
to the end of sight, a narrowing whorl of spectral green varied by fires.
When he caught sight of Incus crouched beside a fallen soldier,
Auk spat. "If I hadn't seen it... I didn't think he had the salt." A
volley pelted the talus like rain, drowning Dace's reply.
The talus roared, and a gout of blue flame from its mouth lit the
tunnel like lightning; a buzz gun supported its flamer with a long,
staccato burst. Then the enormous head revolved, an eye emitting a
pencil of light that picked out Incus's black robe. "_Return to me!_"
Still bent over the soldier, Incus replied, although Auk could not
make out his words. Ever curious, Oreb fluttered up the tunnel
toward them. The talus stopped and rolled backward, one of its
extensile arms reaching for Incus.
This time his voice carried clearly. "_I'll_ get back on if you take
_him_, too."
There was a pause. Auk glanced behind him at the metal mask
that was the talus's face.
"_Can he speak!_"
"_Soon_, I hope. I'm _trying_ to repair him."
The huge hand descended, and Incus moved aside for it. Perched
on the thumb, Oreb rode jauntily back to the talus's back. "Still
live!"
Dace grunted doubtfully.
The hand swept downward; Oreb fluttered to Auk's shoulder.
"Bird homer'
With grotesque tenderness fingers as thick as the soldier's thighs
deposited him between bent handholds.
"Still live?" Oreb repeated plaintively.
Certainly it did not seem so. The fallen soldier's arms and legs, of
painted metal now scratched and lusterless, lay motionless, bent at
angles that appeared unnatural; his metal face, designed as a model
of valor, was filled with the pathos that attaches to all broken things.
Singled out inquiringly by one of Oreb's bright, black eyes, Auk
could only shrug.
The talus rolled forward again as Incus's head appeared above its
side. "I'm going to--he's not _dead_," the little augur gasped. "Not
completely."
Auk caught his hand and pulled him up.
"I was--was just reciting the _liturgy_ you know. And I saw--The
gods provide us such graces! I looked into his _wound_, there where
the chest plate's sprung. They train us, you know, at the schola, to
repair Sacred Windows."
Afraid to stand near the edge of the talus's back, he crawled
across it to the motionless soldier, pointing. "I was quite good at it.
And--And I've had occasion since to--to _help_ various chems.
_Dying_ chems, you understand."
He took the gammadion from about his neck and held it up for
Auk's inspection. "This is Pas's voided cross. You've seen it many
times, I'm sure. But you can undo the catches and open up a chem
with the pieces. _Watch_."
Deftly he removed the sprung plate. There was a ragged hole near
its center, through which he thrust his forefinger. "Here's where a
flechette went in."
Auk was peering at the mass of mechanisms the plate had
concealed. "I see little specks of light."
"Certainly you do!" Incus was triumphant. "What you're seeing is
what _I_ saw under this plate when _I_ was bringing him the Pardon of
Pas. His primary cable had been severed, and those are the ends of
the fibers. It's _exactly_ as if your spinal cord were cut."
Dace asked, "Can't you splice her?"
"_Indeed!_" Incus positively glowed. "Such is the mercy of Pas! Such
is his _concern_ for us, his adopted sons, that here upon the back of
this valiant talus is the one man who can _in actual fact_ restore him to
health and strength."
"So he can kill us?" Auk inquired dryly
Incus hesitated, his eyes wary, one hand upraised. The talus was
advandng even more slowly now, so that the chill wind that had
whistled around them before the shooting began had sunk to the
merest breeze. Chenille (who had been lying flat on the slanted
plate that was the talus's back) sat up, covering her bare breasts with
her forearms.
"Why, ah, _no_," Incus said at last. He took a diminutive black
device rather like a pair of very small tongs or large tweezers from a
pocket of his robe. "This is an opticsynapter, an _extremely_ valuable
tool. With it--Well, look there."
He pointed again. "That black cylinder is the triplex, the part
corresponding to _your_ heart. It's idling right now, but it pressurizes
_his_ working fluid so that he can move his limbs. The primary cable
runs to his microbank--this big silver thing below the triplex--conveying
instructions from his postprocessor."
Chenille asked, "Can you really bring him back to life?"
Incus looked frightened. "If he were _dead_, I could not, Superlative
Scylla--"
"I'm not her. I'm me." For a moment it seemed that she might
weep again. "Just me. You don't even know me, Patera, and I don't
know you."
"I don't know you either," Auk said. "Remember that? Only I'd
like to meet you sometime. How about it?"
She swallowed, but did not speak.
"Good girl!" Oreb informed them. Neither Incus nor Dace
ventured to say anything, and the silence became oppressive.
With an arm of his gammadion, Incus removed the soldier's skull
plate. After a scrutiny Auk felt sure had taken half an hour at least,
he worked one end of a second gamma between two thread-like wires.
And the soldier spoke: "K-thirty-four, twelve. A-thirty-four,
ninety-seven. B-thirty-four..."
Incus removed the gamma, telling Dace, "He was scanning, do
you follow me? It's as if _you_ were to consult a physician. He might
listen to your chest and tell you to cough."
Dace shook his head. "You make this sojer well, an' he could kill
all on board, like the big feller says. I says we shoves him over the
side."
"He _won't_." Incus bent over the soldier again.
Chenille extended a hand to Dace. "I'm sorry about your boat,
Captain, and I'm sorry I hit you. Can we be friends? I'm Chenille."
Dace took it in his own large, gnarled hand, then rel
eased it to tug
the bill of his cap. "Dace, ma'am. I never did hold nothin' agin you."
"Thank you, Captain. Patera, I'm Chenille."
Incus glanced up from the soldier. "You asked whether I could
restore _life_, my daughter. He isn't dead, merely unable to actuate
those parts that require fluid. He's unable to move his head, his
arms, and his legs, in other words. He can _speak_, as you've heard. He
_doesn't_ because of the shock he's suffered. That is my _considered_
opinion. The problem is to reconnect all the severed fibers correctly.
Otherwise, he'll move his _arms_ when he _intends_ to take a
step." He tittered.
"I still say--" Dace began.
"In _addition_, I'll attempt to render him _compliant_. For our safety.
It's not _legal_, but if we're to do as _Scylla_ has commanded..." He
bent over the recumbent soldier again.
Chenille said, "Hi, Oreb."
Oreb hopped from Auk's shoulder to hers. "No cry?"
"No more crying." She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip. "Other
girls are always tellirig me how tough I am, because I'm so big. I
think I better start trying to live up to it."
Incus glanced up again. "Wouldn't you like to borrow my robe,
my daughter?"
She shook her head. "It hurts if anything touches me, and my back
and shoulders are the worst. I've had men see me naked lots.
Usually I've had a couple, though, or a pinch of rust. Rust makes it
easy." She turned to Auk. "My name's Chenille, Bucko. I'm one of
the girls from Orchid's."
Auk nodded, not knowing what to say, and at length said, "I'm
Auk. Real pleased, Chenille."
That was the last thing he could remember. He was lying face down
on a cold, damp surface, aware of pervasive pain and soft footsteps
hastening to inaudibility. He rolled onto his back and sat up, then
discovered that blood from his nose was dribbling down his chin.
"Here, trooper." The voice was unfamiliar, metallic and harshly
resonant. "Use this."
A wad of whitish cloth was pressed into his hand; he held it
gingerly to his face. "Thanks."
From some distance, a woman called, "Is that you?"
"Jugs?"
The tunnel was almost pitch dark to his left, a rectangle of black
relieved by a single remote fleck of green. To his right, something
was on fire--a shed or a big wagon, as well as he could judge.
The unfamiliar voice asked, "Can you stand up, trooper?"