CALDE OF THE LONG SUN botls-3

by Gene Wolfe

speak to this captain for me. There were two letters in a pocket of

  my robe. They were on the mantel this morning; my acolyte must

  have put them there yesterday. I haven't read them, and your giving

  me this one has reminded me of them." Somewhat tardily, he thrust

  the letter under his quilt. "One had the seal of the Chapter. It may

  have been another copy of this, though that doesn't seem very

  likely, since this one has today's date. Besides, they wouldn't have

  sent this to Patera Jerboa this evening, in that case."

  "I suppose not, Patera."

  "Don't mention them to the captain. Just say I'd like to have my

  robe--all of my clothes. Ask for my clothes and see what he gives

  you. Bring them to me, my robe particularly. If he mentions the

  letters, say that I'd like to see them. If he won't give them to you, try

  to find out what was in them. If he won't tell you, return to your

  manteion. Tell Patera Jerboa that I, the calde, order him to get

  himself and you--are there sibyls, too?"

  Shell nodded. "There's Maytera Wood--"

  "Never mind their names. That you and he and they are to lock up

  the manteion and leave as quickly as possible."

  "Yes, Patera." Shell stood, very erect. "But I won't go back to our

  manteion straight away, no matter what the captain says. I--I'm

  coming back. Back here to see you and tell you what he said, and try

  to do something more for you, if I can. Don't tell me not to, please,

  Patera. I'll only disobey."

  To his surprise, Silk found that he was smiling. "Your disobedience

  is better than the obedience of many people I've known,

  Patera Shell. Do what you think right; you will anyway, I feel

  certain."

  Shell left, and the room seemed empty as soon as he was out the

  door. Silk's wound began to throb, and he made himself think of

  something else. How proudly Shell had announced his intention to

  disobey, while his lip trembled! It reminded Silk of his mother, her

  eyes shining with team of joy at some only too ordinary childhood

  feat. _Oh, Silk! My son, my son!_ That was how he felt now. These

  boys!

  Yet Shell was no younger. They had entered the schola together,

  and Shell had sat at the desk in front of his own when an instructor

  insisted on alphabetical seating; they had been anointed on the same

  day, and both had been assigned to assist venerable augurs who

  were no longer able to attend to all the demands of their manteions.

  Shell, however, had not been enlightened by the Outsider--or

  had not had a vein burst in his head, as Doctor Crane would have

  had it. Shell had not been enlightened, had not hurried to the

  market, had not encountered Blood...

  He had been as young as Shell when he had talked to Blood and

  plucked three cards out of Blood's hand, not knowing that somewhere

  below a monitor was mad and howling for want of those cards--as young

  or nearly, because Shell might have done it, too. Again

  Silk smelled the dead dog in the gutter and the stifling dust raised by

  Blood's floater, saw Blood wave his stick, tall, red faced, and

  perspiring. Silk coughed, and felt that a poker had been plunged

  into his chest.

  Somewhat unsteadily, he crossed the room to the window and raised

  the sash to let in the night wind, then surveyed his naked torso in the

  minor over the bureau, a much larger one than his shaving mirror

  back at the manse.

  A dressing half concealed the multicolored bruise left by Musk's

  hilt. From what little anatomy he had picked up from the victims he

  had sacrificed, he decided that the needle had missed his heart by

  four fingers. Still, it must have been good shooting by a mounted man.

  With his back to the mirror, he craned his neck to see as much as

  possible of the dressing on his back; it was larger, and his back hurt

  more. He was conscious of a weak wrongness deep in his chest, and

  of the effort he had to make to breathe.

  Clothing in the drawers of the bureau: underwear, tunics, and

  carelessly folded trousers--under these last, a woman's perfumed

  scarf. This was a young man's room, a son's; the couple who owned

  the house would have a bedroom on the ground floor, a corner

  room with several windows.

  Chilled, he returned to the bed and drew up the quilt. The son

  had left without packing, otherwise the drawers would be half

  empty. Perhaps he was fighting in Maytera Mint's army.

  Some part of Kypris had entered her, and that fragment had made

  the shy sibyl a general--that, and Echidna's command. For a

  moment he wondered what fragment it had been, and whether

  Kypris herself had known she possessed it. It was the element that

  had freed Chenille from rust, presumably; they would be part and

  parcel of the same thing. Kypris had told him she was hunted, and

  His Cognizance had called it a wonder that she had not been killed

  long ago. Echidna and her children, hunting the goddess of love,

  must soon have learned that love is more than perfumed scarves and

  thrown flowers. That there is steel in love.

  A young woman had thrown that scarf from a balcony, no doubt.

  Silk tried to visualize her, found she wore Hyacinth's face, and

  thrust the vision back. Blood had wiped his face with a peach-colored

  handkerchief, a handkerchief more heavily perfumed than

  the scarf. And Blood had said...

  Had said there were people who could put on a man like a tunic.

  He had been referring to Mucor, though he, Silk, had not known it

  then--had not known that Mucor existed, a girl who could dress her

  spirit in the flesh of others just as he, a few moments before, had

  been considering putting on the clothes of the son whose room this

  was.

  Softly he called, "Mucor? Mucor?" and listened; but there was no

  phantom voice, no face but his own in the mirror above the bureau.

  Closing his eyes, he composed a long formal prayer to the Outsider,

  thanking him for his life, and for the absence of Blood's daughter.

  When it was complete, he began a similar prayer to Kypris.

  Beyond the bedroom door, a sentry sprang to attention with an

  audible clash of his weapon and click of his heels.

  Shadeup woke Auk, brilliant beams of the long sun piercing his

  tasseled awnings, his gauze curtains, his rich draperies of puce

  velvet, and the grimed glass of every window in the place, slipping

  past his lowered blinds of split bamboo, the warped old boards

  someone else had nailed up, his colored Scylla, and his shut and

  bolted shutters; through wood, paper, and stone.

  He blinked twice and sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I feel better," he

  announced, then saw that Chenille was still asleep, Incus and Urus

  both sleeping, Dace and Bustard sound asleep as well, and only big

  Hammerstone the soldier already up, sitting crosslegged with Oreb

  on his shoulder and his back against the tunnel wall. "That's good,

  trooper," Hammerstone said.

  "Not good," Auk explained. "I don't mean that. Better. Better

  than I did, see? That feels better than good, 'cause when you're

  feeling good you
don't even think about it. But when you feel the

  way I do, you pay more attention than when you're feeling good.

  I'm a dimberdamber nanny nipper." He nudged Chenille with the

  toe of his boot. "Look alive, Jugs. Time for breakfast!"

  "What's the matter with _you?_" Incus sat up as though it had been

  he and not Chenille who had been thus nudged.

  "Not a thing," Auk told him. "I'm right as rain." He considered the

  matter. "If it does, I'll go to the Cock. If it don't, I'll do some

  business on the hill. Slept with my boots on." He seated himself

  beside Chenille. "You too? You shouldn't do that, Patera. Bad on

  the feet."

  Untying their laces, he tugged off his boots, then pulled off his

  stockings. "Feel how wet these are. Still wet from the boat. Wake

  up, old man! From the boat and the rain. If we had that tall ass

  again, I'd make him squirt fire for me so I could dry 'em. Phew!" He

  hung the stockings over the tops of his boots and pushed them away.

  Chenille sat up and began to take off her jade earrings. "Ooh, did

  I dream!" She shuddered. "I was lost, see? All alone down here, and

  this tunnel I was in kept going deeper both ways. I'd walk one way

  for a long, long while, and it would just keep going down. So I'd

  turn around and walk the other way, only that way went down, too,

  deeper and deeper all the time."

  "Recollect that the _immortal gods_ are always with you, my

  daughter," Incus told her.

  "Uh-huh. Hackum, I've got to get hold of some clothes. My

  sunburn's better. I could wear them, and it's too cold down here

  without any." She grinned. "A bunch of new clothes, and a double

  red ribbon. After that, I'll be ready for ham and half a dozen eggs

  scrambled with peppers."

  "Watch out," Hammerstone warned her, "I don't think your

  friend's ready for inspection."

  Auk rose, laughing. "Look at this," he told Hammerstone, and

  kicked Urus expertly, bending up his bare toes so that Urus's ribs

  received the ball of his foot.

  Urus blinked and rubbed his eyes just as Auk had, and Auk

  realized that he himself was the long sun. He had awakened himself

  with his own light, light that filled the whole tunnel, too dazzlingly

  bright for Urus's weak eyes.

  "The way you been carrying the old man," he told Urus, "I don't

  like it." He wondered whether his hands were hot enough to burn

  Urus. It seemed possible; they were ordinary when he wasn't

  looking at them, but when he did they glowed like molten gold.

  Stooping, he flicked Urus's nose with a forefinger, and when Urus

  did not cry out, jerked him to his feet.

  "When you carry the old man," Auk told him, "you got to do it like

  you love him. Like you were going to kiss him." It might be a good

  idea to make Urus really kiss him, but Auk was afraid Dace might

  not like it.

  "All right," Urus said. "All right."

  Bustard inquired, How you feelin', sprat?

  Auk pondered. "There's parts of me that work all right," he

  declared at length, "and parts that don't. A couple I'm not set about.

  Remember old Marble?"

  Sure.

  "She told us she could pull out these lists. Out of her sleeve, like.

  What was right and what wasn't. With me, it's one thing at a time."

  "I can do that," Hammerstone put in. "It's perfectly natural."

  Chenille had both earrings off, and was rubbing her ears. "Can

  you put these in your pocket, Hackum? I got no place to carry them."

  "Sure," Auk said. He did not turn to look at her.

  "I could get a couple cards for them at Sard's. I could buy a good

  worsted gown and shoes, and eat at the pastry cook's till I was ready

  to split."

  "Like, there's this dimber punch," Auk explained to Urus. "I

  learned it when I wasn't no bigger than a cobbler's goose, and I

  always did like it a lot. You don't swing, see? Culls always talk

  about swinging at you, and they do. Only this is better. I'm not sure

  it still works, though."

  His right fist caught Urus square in the mouth, knocking him

  backward into the shiprock wall. Incus gasped.

  "You sort of draw your arm up and straighten it out," Auk

  explained. Urus slumped to the tunnel floor. "Only with your weight

  behind it, and your knuckles level. Look at them." He held them

  out. "If your knuckles go up and down, that's all right, too. Only it's

  a different punch, see?" Not as good, Bustard said. "Only not as

  good," Auk confirmed.

  I kin walk, big feller, he don't have to carry me, nor kiss me

  neither.

  The dead body at his feet, Auk decided, must be somebody else.

  Urus, maybe, or Gelada.

  Maytera Marble tried to decide how long it had been since she had

  done this, entering _roof_ and when that evoked only a flood of

  dripping ceilings and soaked carpets, _attic_.

  A hundred and eighty-four years ago.

  She could scarcely believe it--did not wish to believe it. A

  graceful girl with laughing eyes and industrious hands had climbed

  this same stair, as she still did a score of times every day, walked

  along this hall, and halted beneath this odd-looking door overhead,

  reaching up with a tool that had been lost now for more than a century.

  She snapped her new fingers in annoyance, producing a loud and

  eminently satisfactory clack, then returned to one of the rooms that

  had been hers and rummaged through her odds-and-ends drawer

  until she found the big wooden crochet hook that she had sometimes

  plied before disease had deprived her of her fingers. Not these

  fingers, to be sure.

  Back in the hall, she reached up as the girl who had been herself

  had and hooked the ring, wondering whimsically whether it had

  forgotten how to drop down on its chain.

  It had not. She tugged. Puffs of dust emerged from the edges of

  the door above her head. The hall would have to be swept again.

  She hadn't been up there, no one had--

  A harder tug, and the door inclined reluctantly downward,

  exposing a band of darkness. "Am I going to have to swing on you?"

  she asked. Her voice echoed through all the empty rooms, leaving

  her sorry she had spoken aloud.

  Another tug evoked squeals of protest, but brought the bottom of

  the door low enough for her to grasp it and pull it down; the folding

  stair that was supposed to slide out when she did yielded to a hard pull.

  I'll oil this, she resolved. I don't care if there isn't any oil. I'll cut

  up some fat from that bull and boil it, and skim off the grease and strain

  it, and use that. Because this _isn't_ the last time. It is _not_.

  She trotted up the folding steps in an energetic flurry of black bombazine.

  Just look how good my leg is! Praise to you, Great Pas!

  The attic was nearly empty. There was never much left when a

  sibyl died; what there was, was shared among the rest in accordance

  with her wishes, or returned to her family. For half a minute,

  Maytera Marble tried to recall who had owned the rusted trunk next

  to the chimney, eventually running down the whole list--every sibyl

  who had ever
lived in the cenoby--without finding a single tin trunk

  arnong the associated facts.

  The little gable window was closed and locked. She told herself

  that she was being foolish even as she wrestled its stubborn catch.

  Whatever it was that she had glimpsed in the sky while crossing the

  playground was gone, must certainly be gone by this time if it had

  ever existed.

  Probably it had been nothing but a cloud.

  She had expected the window to stick, but the dry heat of the last

  eight months had shrunk its ancient wood. She heaved at it with all

  her strength, and it shot up so violently that she thought the glass

  must break.

  Silence followed, with a pleasantly chill wind through the window.

  She listened, then leaned out to peer up at the sky, and at last

  (as she had planned the whole time, having a lively appreciation of

  the difficulty of proving a negative after so many years of teaching

  small boys and girls) she stepped over the sill and out onto the thin

  old shingles of the cenoby roof.

  Was it necessary to climb to the peak? She decided that it was,

  necessary for her peace of mind at least, though she wondered what

  the quarter would say if somebody saw her there. Not that it

  mattered, and most were off fighting anyhow. It wasn't as noisy as it

  had been during the day, but you could still hear shots now and

  then, like big doors shutting hard far away. Doors shutting on the

  past, she thought. The cold wind flattened her skirt against her legs

  as she climbed, and would have snatched off her coif had not one

  hand clamped it to her smooth metal head.

  There were fires, as she could see easily from the peak, one just a

  few streets away. Saddle Street or String Street, she decided,

  probably Saddle Street, because that was where the pawnbrokers

  were. More fires beyond it, right up to the market and on the other

  side, as was to be expected. Darkness except for a few lighted

  windows up on Palatine Hill.

  Which meant, more surely than any rumor or announcement, that

  Maytera Mint had not won. Hadn't won yet. Because the Hill would

  burn, would be looted and burned as predictably as the sixth term in

  a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole. With the

  Civil Guard beaten, nothing--

  Before she could complete the thought, she caught sight of it, way

  to the south. She had been looking west toward the market and