by Gene Wolfe
Auk took off his left boot. "I got to think about that."
Maytera Mint had taught him all about the gods, but it seemed to
him that there were really two kinds, the ones she had told about,
the gods in his copybook, and the real ones like Scylla when she'd
been inside Chenille, and this Tartaros. The real kind were a lot
bigger, but the ones in his copybook had been better, and stronger
somehow, even if they were not real.
"Terrible Tartaros?"
"Yes, Auk, my noctolater, what is it you wish?"
"The answers to a couple questions, if that's all right. Lots of times
you gods answer questions for augurs. I know I'm not no augur. So
is it all right for me to ask you, 'cause we haven't got one here?"
Silence, save for the ever-present splashings, and the woman's
voice, sad and hoarse and very far away.
"How come I can't see your Window, Terrible Tartaros? That's
my first one, if that's all right. I mean, usually they're sort of gray,
but they shine in the dark. So am I blind, too?"
Silence fell again. Auk chafed his freezing feet with his hands.
Those hands had glowed like molten gold, not long ago; now they
were not even warm.
"I guess you're waiting for the other question? Well, what I
wanted to know is how come I hear words and everything? At this
palaestra I went to, Maytera said when we got bigger we wouldn't
be able to make sense out of the words if a god ever came to our
Sacred Window, just sort of know what he meant and maybe catch a
couple of words once in a while. Then when Kypris came, it was just
like what Maytera'd said it was going to be. Sometimes I felt like I
could practically see her, and there was a couple words she said that
I heard just as clear as I ever heard anybody, Terrible Tartaros. She said
_love_ and _robbery_, and I knew it. I knew both those words. And
I knew she was telling us it was all right, she loved us and she'd
protect us, only we had to believe in her. But when you talk, it's like
you were a man just like me or Bustard, standing right here with me."
No voice replied. Auk let out his breath with a whoosh, and put
his freezing fingers in armpits for a moment or two, and then began
to wring out his stockings.
"You yourself have never seen a god in a Window, Auk my noctolater?"
Auk shook his head. "Not real clear, Terrible Tartaros. I sort of
saw Kindly Kypris just a little, though, and that's good enough for me."
"Your humility becomes you, Auk."
"Thanks." Lost in thought, Auk reflected on his own life and
character, the limp stocking still in his hand. At length he said, "It's
never done me a lot of good, Terrible Tartaros, only I guess I never
really had much."
"If an augur sees the face and hears the words of a god, Auk, he
sees and hears because he has never known Woman. A sibyl, also,
may see and hear a god, provided that she has not known Man.
Children who have never known either may see us as well. That is
the law fixed by my mother, the price that she demanded for
accepting the gift my father offered. And though her law does not
function as she intended in every instance, for the most part it
functions well enough."
"All right," Auk said.
"The faces we had as mortals have rotted to dust, and the voices
we once possessed have been still for a thousand years. No augur,
no sibyl in the _Whorl_, has ever seen or heard them. What your
augurs and sibyls see, if they see anything, is the self-image of the
god who chooses to be seen. You say that you could nearly make
out the face of my father's concubine. The face you nearly saw was
her own image of herself, her self as she imagines that self to
appear. I feel confident that it was a beautiful face. I have never met
any woman more secure in her own vanity. In the same fashion, we
sound to them as we conceive our voices to sound. Have I made
myself clear to you, Auk?"
"No, Terrible Tartaros, 'cause I can't see you."
"What you see, Auk, is that part of me which can be seen. That is
to say, nothing. I came blind from the womb, Auk, and because of it
I am incapable of formulating a visual image for you. Nor can I show
you the Holy Hues, which are my brother's and my sisters' thoughts
before they have coalesced. Nor can I exhibit to you any face at all,
whether lovely or terrible. You see the face I envision when I think
upon my own. That is to say, nothing. When I depart, you will
behold once more the luminous gray you mention."
"I'd rather you stayed around awhile, Terrible Tartaros. If
Bustard ain't going to come back, I like having you with me." Auk
licked his lips. "Probably I oughtn't to say this, but I don't mean any
harm by it."
"Speak, Auk, my noctolater."
"Well, if I could scheme out some way to help you, I'd do it."
There was silence again, a silence that endured so long that Auk
feared that the god had returned to Mainframe; even the distant
woman's voice was silent.
"You asked by what power you hear my words as words, Auk, my noctolater."
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, I guess I did."
"It is not uncommon. My mother's law has lost its hold on you,
because there is something amiss with your mind."
Auk nodded. "Yeah, I know. I fell off our tall ass when he got hit
with a rocket, and I guess I must've landed on my head. Like, it
don't bother me that Bustard's dead, only he's down here talking to
me. Only I know it would've in the old days. I don't worry about
Jugs, either, like I ought to. I love her, and maybe that cull Urus's
trying to jump her right now, but she's a whore anyhow." Auk
shrugged. "I just hope he don't hurt her."
"You cannot live in these tunnels, Auk, my noctolater. There is
no food for you here."
"Me and Bustard'll try to get out, soon as I find him," Auk promised.
"If I were to possess you, I might be able to heal you, Auk."
"Go ahead, then."
"We would be blind, Auk. As blind as I. Because I have never had
eyes of my own, I could not look out through yours. But I shall go
with you, and guide you, and use your body to heal you, if I can.
Look upon me, Auk."
"There's nothing to see," Auk protested.
But there was: a stammering light so filled with hope and pleasure
and wonder that Auk would willingly have seen nothing else, if only
he could have watched it forever.
"If you're actually Patera Silk," the young woman at the barricade
told him, "they'll kill you the minute you step out there."
"No step," Oreb muttered. And again, "No step."
"Very possibly they would," Silk conceded. "As in fact they almost
certainly will--unless you're willing to help."
"If you're Silk you wouldn't have to ask me or my people for
anything." Uneasily she studied the thin, ascetic face revealed by the
bright skylight. "If you're Silk, you are our commander and even
General Mint must answer to you. You could just tell us, and we'd
have to do whatever you said."
Silk sh
ook his head. "I am Silk, but I can't prove that here. You
would have to find someone you trust who knows me and can
identify me, and that would consume more time than I have; so I'm
begging you instead. Assume--though I swear to you that this is
contrary to fact--that I am not Silk. That I am--this, of course, is
entirely factual--a poor young augur in urgent need of your
assistance. If you won't help me for my sake, or for that of the god I
serve, do so for your own, I implore you."
"I can't launch an attack without an order from Brigadier Bison."
"You shouldn't," Silk told her, "with one. There's an armored
floater behind those sandbags. I can see the turret above them. If
your people attacked, they would be advancing into its fire, and I've
seen what a buzz gun can do."
The young woman drew herself up to her full height, which was a
span and a half less than his own. "We will attack if we are ordered
to do so, Calde."
Oreb bobbed his approbation. "Good girl!"
Looking at the sleeping figures behind the barricade, children
of fifteen and fourteen, thirteen and even twelve, Silk shook his head.
"They're pretty young." (The young woman could not have been
more than twenty herself.) "But they'll fight if they're led, and I'll
lead them." When Silk said nothing, she added "That's not all. I've
got a few men, too, and some slug guns. Most of the women--the
other women, I ought to say--are working in the fire companies.
You were surprised to find me in command, but General Mint's a woman."
"I am surprised at that, as well," Silk told her.
"Men want to fight a male officer. Besides, the women of
Trivigaunte are famous troopers, and we women of Viron are in no
way inferior to them!"
Recalling Doctor Crane, Silk said, "I'd like to believe that our
men are as brave as theirs, as well."
The young woman was shocked. "They're slaves!"
"Have you been there?"
She shook her head.
"Neither have I. Surely then it's pointless for us to discuss their
customs. A moment ago you called me Calde. Did you mean
that...?"
"Lieutenant. I'm Lieutenant Liana now. I used the title as a
courtesy, nothing more. If you want my opinion, I think you're who
you say you are. An augur wouldn't lie about that, and there's the
bird. They say you've got a pet bird."
"Silk here," the bird informed her.
"Then do as I ask. Do you have a white flag?"
"For surrender?" Liana was offended. "Certainly not!"
"To signal a truce. You can make one by tying a white rag to a
stick. I want you to wave it and call to them, on the other side. Tell
them there's an augur here who's brought the pardon of Pas to your
wounded. That's entirely true, as you know. Say he wants to cross
and do the same for theirs."
"They'll kill you when they find out who you are."
"Perhaps they won't find out. I promise you that I won't volunteer
the information."
Liana ran her fingers through her tousled hair; it was the same
gesture he used in the grip of indecision. "Why me? No, Calde, I
can't let you risk yourself."
"You can," he told her. "What you cannot do is maintain that
position with even an appearance of logic. Either I am calde or I am
not. If I am, it is your duty to obey any order I give. If I'm not, the
life of the calde is not at risk."
A few minutes later, as she and a young man called Linsang
helped him up the barricade, Silk wondered whether he had been
wise to invoke logic. Logic condemned everything he had done since
Oosik had handed him Hyacinth's letter. When Hyacinth had
written, the city had been at peace, at least relatively. She had no
doubt expected to shop on the Palatine, stay the night at Ermine's,
and return--
"No fall," Oreb cautioned him.
He was trying not to. The barricade had been heaped up from
anything and everything: rubble from ruined buildings, desks and
counters from shops, beds, barrels, and bales piled upon one
another without any order he could discern.
He paused at the top, waiting for a shot. The troopers behind the
sandbag redoubt had been told he was an augur, and might know of
the Prolocutor's letter by this time. Seeing Oreb, they might know
which augur he was, as well.
And shoot. It would be better, perhaps, to fall backward toward
Liana and Linsang if they did--better, certainly, to jump that way if
they missed.
No shot came; he began a cautious descent, slightly impeded by
the traveling bag. Oosik had not killed him because Oosik had taken
the long view, had been at least as much politician as trooper, as
every high-ranking officer no doubt had to be. The officer commanding
the redoubt would be younger, ready to obey the orders of
the Ayuntamiento without question.
Yet here he was.
Once invoked, logic was like a god. One might entreat a god to
visit one's Window; but if a god came it could not be dismissed, nor
could any message that it vouchsafed mankind be ignored, suppressed,
or denied. He had invoked logic, and logic told him that he
should be in bed in the house that had become Oosik's temporary
headquarters--that he should be getting the rest and care he needed
so badly.
"He knew I'd go, Oreb." Something closed his throat; he coughed
and spat a soft lump that could have been mucus. "He'd read her
letter before he came in, and he's seen her." Silk found that he could
not, even now, bring himself to mention that Oosik had lain with
Hyacinth. "He knew I'd go, and take his problem with me."
"Man watch," Oreb informed him.
He paused again scanning the sandbag wall but unable to
distinguish, at this distance, rounded sandbags from helmeted
heads. "As long as they don't shoot," he muttered.
"No shoot."
This stretch of Gold Street had been lined with jewelers, the
largest and richest shops nearest the Palatine, the richest of all
clinging to the skirts of the hill itself, so that their patrons could
boast of buying their bangles "uphill." Most of the shops were empty
now, their grills and bars torn from their fronts by a thousand arms,
their gutted interiors guarded only by those who had died defending
or looting them. Beyond the redoubt, other richer shops waited, still
intact. Silk tried and failed to imagine the children over whose
recumbent bodies he had stepped looting them. They would not, of
course. They would charge, fight, and very quickly die at Liana's
order, and she with them. The looters would follow--if they
succeeded. This body (Silk crouched to examine it) was that of a boy
of thirteen or so; one side of his face had been shot away.
He had not been on Gold Street often; but he was certain that it
had never been this long, or half this wide.
Here a trooper of the Guard and a tough-looking man who might
have been the one who had questioned him after Kypris's
theophany lay side-by-side, their knives in each other's ribs.
"What is it, my son?"
"Hurry up, will you!"
He broke into a trot, though not without protest from his ankle.
When he had feared a shot at any moment, this lowest slope of the
Palatine had been very steep; now he was scarcely conscious of its grade.
"Here. Grab my hand."
The Guard's redoubt was only half the height of the rebel
barricade, although it was (as Silk saw when he had scrambled to the
top) rather thicker. Its front was nearly sheer, its back stepped for
the troopers who would fire over it.
The one who had helped him up said, "Come on. I don't know
how long he'll last."
Silk nodded, out of breath from his climb and afraid he had torn
the stitches in his lung. "Take me to him."
The trooper jumped from the sandbag step; Silk followed more
circumspectly. There were sleepers here as well, a score of armored
Guardsmen lying in the street wrapped in blankets that were
probably green but looked black in the skylight.
"They going to rush us, over there?" the trooper asked.
"No. Not tonight, I'd say--tomorrow morning, perhaps."
The trooper grunted. "Slugs'll go right through a lot of that stuff in
their fieldwork. I been lookin' it over, and there's a lot of furniture
in there. Boards no thicker than your thumb in junk like that. I'm
Sergeant Eft."
They shook hands, and Silk said, "I was thinking the same thing as
I climbed over it, Sergeant. There are heavier things as well,
though, and even the chairs and so forth must obstruct your view."
Eft snorted. "They got nothin' I want to see."
That could not be said of the Guard, as Silk realized as soon as he
looked past the floater. A talus had been posted at an intersection a
hundred paces uphill, its great, tusked head (so like that of the one
he had killed beneath Scylla's shrine that he could have believed
them brothers) swiveling to peer down each street in turn. Liana
would have been interested in it, he thought, if she did not know
about it already.
"In here." Eft opened the door of one of the dark shops; his voice
and the thump of the door brightened lights inside, where troopers
stripped of parts of their armor and more or less bandaged lay on
blankets on a terrazzo floor. One moaned, awakened by the noise
or the lights; two, it seemed, were not breathing. Silk knelt by the