by Gene Wolfe
on, as though the turret gunner were intent on massacring the whole
city.
Scrambling across Xiphias and the surgeon, Silk peered over
Oosik's shoulder. Fiery red letters danced across his glass:
VECTOR UNACCEPTABLE.
Something banged the slanted foredeck above their heads, and
the thunder of the engine rose to a deafening crescendo; Silk felt
that he had been jerked backwards.
Abruptly, their motion changed.
The floater no longer rocked or raced. The noise of the engine
waned until he could distinguish the high-pitched song of the
blowers. It ascended to an agonized scream and faded away. A red
light flared on the instrument panel.
For the second time in a floater, Silk felt that he was truly
floating; it was, he thought, like the uncanny sensation of the
moving room in which he had ridden with Mamelta.
Behind him, Hyacinth gasped. A strangely-shaped object had
risen from Oosik's side. Before Silk recognized it, it had completed
a leisurely quarter revolution, scarcely a span in front of his nose. It
was a large needler, similar to the one in his own waistband; and it
had bobbed up like a cork, unimpelled, from Oosik's holster.
"Look! Look! They're picking us up!" Hyacinth's full breasts
pressed his back as she stared at the glass.
He plucked Oosik's needler out of the air and returned it to its
holster. When he looked at the glass again, it showed a sprawling
pattern of crooked lines, enlivened here and there by crimson
sparks. It looked, he decided, like a city in the skylands, except that
it seemed much closer. Intrigued, he undogged the hatcheover over
Oosik's seat and threw it back. As he completed the motion, both
his feet left the floor; he snatched at the hatch dog, missed it by a
finger, and drifted up like Oosik's needler until someone inside
caught his foot.
The pattern he had seen in the glass was spread before him
without limit here: a twilit skyland city, ringed by sunbright brown
fields and huddled villages; and to one side, a silver mirror anchored
by a winding, dun-colored thread Oreb fluttered from his shoulder
as he gaped and disappeared into the twilight.
"We're flying." Incredulity and dismay turned the words to a sigh
that dwindled with the black bird. Silk coughed, spat congealed
blood, and tried again. "We are flying upside down. I see Viron and
the lake, even the road to the lake."
Quetzal spoke from inside the floater. "Look behind us, Patera
Calde."
They were nearer now, so near that the vast dark belly of the
thing roofed out the sky. Beneath it, suspended by cables that
appeared no thicker than gossamer, dangled a structure like a boat
with many short oars; Silk's lungs had filled and emptied before he
realized that the oars were the barrels of guns, and half a minute
crept by before he made out the blood-red triangle on its bottom.
"Your Cognizance..."
"You don't understand why they're not shooting at us." Quetzal
shook himself. "I imagine it's only that they haven't noticed us yet.
A wind is forcing them to hold their airship parallel to the sun, so
they're peering down at a dark city. At the moment our floater's
presenting its narrowest aspect to them. But we're turning, and soon
they'll be looking straight down at us. Let's duck inside and shut the
hatch."
The glass showed Lake Limna now. Watching its shoreline creep
from one corner to the other, Silk thought of Oosik's needler; their
floater seemed to be tumbling through the sky in the same dilatory
fashion.
Clinging to him, Hyacinth whispered, "You're not afraid at all,
are you? Are we up terribly high?" She trembled.
"Of course I am; when I was out there, I was terrified." He
examined his emotional state. "I'm still badly frightened; but
thinking about what's happening--how it can possibly have come
about except by a miracle--keeps my mind off my fear." Watching
the glass, he tried to describe the airship.
"Pulling us up, lad! That's what she said! Think we could cut it?"
"There's nothing to cut; if there were, they'd know where we were
and shoot us, I believe. This is something else. Was it you who held
my foot, by the way? Thank you."
Xiphias shook his head and indicated the surgeon.
"Thank you," Silk repeated. "Thank you very much indeed,
Doctor." He grasped the operator's shoulder. "You said we were
getting a vector. Exactly what does that mean?"
"It's a message you get if you float too fast, My Calde, either north
or south. You're supposed to slow down. The monitor's supposed to
make you if you don't, but that doesn't work any more on this
floater."
"I see." Silk nodded, encouragingly he hoped. "Why are you
supposed to slow down?"
Oosik put in, "Going too fast north makes you feel as if someone
were shoveling sand on you. It is not good for you, and makes
everyone in the floater slow to react. Going south too fast makes
you giddy. It feels like swimming."
Almost too softly to be heard, Quetzal inquired, "Do you know
the shape of the whorl, Patera Calde?"
"The whorl? Why, it's cylindrical, Your Cognizance."
"Are we on the outside of the cylinder, Patera Calde? Or on the
inside?"
"We're inside, Your Cognizance. If we were outside, we'd fall
off."
"Exactly. What is it that holds us down? What makes a book fall if
you drop it?"
"I can't remember the name, Your Cognizance," Silk said, "but it's
the tendency that keeps a stone in a sling until it is thrown."
Hyacinth had released him; now her hand found his, and he
squeezed it. "As long as the boy keeps twirling his sling, the stone in
it can't fall out. The Whorl turns--I see! If the stone were a--a
mouse and the mouse ran in the direction the sling was going, it
would be held in place more securely, as though the sling were being
twirled faster. But if the mouse were to run the other way, it would
be as if the sling weren't twirling fast enough. It would fall out."
"Gunner!" Oosik was staring at the glass. "Your gun should bear."
As he flicked off his own buzz gun's safety, the red triangle crept
into view.
"Trivigaunte," Hyacinth whispered. "Sphigx won't let them make
pictures of anything. That mark's on their flag."
Auk stood, unable for a moment to recall where he was or why he
had come. Had he fallen off a roof? Salt blood from his lips trickled
into his mouth. A man with arms and legs no thicker than kindling
and a face like a bearded skull dashed past him. Then another and
another.
"Don't be afraid," the blind god whispered. "Be brave and act
wisely, and I will protect you." He took Auk's hand, not as Hyacinth
had put her own hand into Silk's a few minutes before, but as an
older man clasps a younger's at a crisis.
"All right," Auk told him. "I ain't scared, only kind of shook up."
The blind god's hand felt good in his own, big and
strong, with long
powerful fingers; he could not think of the blind god's name and was
embarrassed by his failure.
"I am Tartaros, and your friend. Tell me everything you see. You
may speak or not, as you wish."
"There's a big hole with smoke coming out in the middle of the
wall," Auk reported. "That wasn't there before, I'm pretty sure.
There's some dead culls around besides the ones Patera killed and
the one I killed. One's a trooper, like, only a mort it looks like. Her
wings broke, I guess, maybe when she hit the ground. Everything's
brown, the wings and pants and a kind of a bandage, like, over her
boobs."
"Brown?"
Auk looked more closely. "Not exactly. Yellowy-brown, more
like. Dirt color. Here comes Chenille."
"That is well. Comfort her, Auk my noctolater. Is the airship still
overhead?"
"Sure," Auk said, implying by his tone that he did not require a
god to coach him in such elementary things. "Yeah, it is." Chenille
rushed into his arms.
"It's all right, Jugs," he told her. "Going to be candy. You'll see.
Tartaros is a dimber mate of mine." To Tartaros himself, Auk
added, "There's this hoppy floater that's falling in the pit, only slow,
while it shoots. That's up there, too. And there's maybe a couple
hundred troopers like the dead mort flying around, way up."
The blind god gave his hand a gentle tug. "We emerged from a
smaller pit into this one, Auk. If you see no other way out, it would
be well to return to the tunnel. There are other egresses, and I know
them all."
"Just a minute. I lost my whin. I see it." Releasing Chenille, Auk
hurried over, jerked his hanger from the mire, and wiped the blade
on his tunic.
"_Auk_, my son--"
He shooed Incus with the hanger. "You get back in the tunnel,
Patera, before you get hurt. That's what Tartaros says, and he's
right."
The floater was descending faster now, almost as though it were
really falling. Watching it, Auk got the feeling it was, only not
straight down the way other things fell. Until the last moment, it
seemed it might come to rest upright; but it landed on the side of its
cowling and tumbled over.
Something much higher was falling much faster, a tiny dot of
black that seemed almost an arrow by the time it struck the ruined
battlement of the Alambrera's wall, which again erupted in a gout of
flame and smoke. This time masses of shiprock as big as cottages
were flung up like chaff. Auk thought it the finest sight he had seen
in his life.
"Silk here!" Oreb announced proudly, dropping onto his shoulder.
"Bird bring!" A hatch opened at the front of the fallen floater.
"Hackum!" Chenille shouted. "Hackum, come on! We're going
back in the tunnel!"
Auk waved to silence her. The wall of the Alambrera had taken
its death blow. As he watched, cracks raced down it to reappear as
though by magic in the shiprock side of the pit. There came a growl
deeper than any thunder. With a roar that shook the ground on
which he struggled to stand, the wall and the side of the pit came
down together. Half the pit vanished under a scree of stones, earth,
and shattered slabs. Coughing at the dust, Auk backed away.
"Hole break," Oreb informed him.
When he looked again, several men and a slender woman in
scarlet were emerging from the overturned floater; its turret gun,
unnaturally canted but pointing skyward, was firing burst after burst
at the flying troopers.
"Return to the woman," the blind god told him. "You must protect
her. A woman is vital. This is not."
He looked for Chenille, but she was gone. A few skeletal figures
were disappearing into the hole from which he and she had emerged
into the pit. Men from the floater followed them; through the
billowing dust he could make out a white-bearded man in rusty
black and a taller one in a green tunic.
"Silk here!" Oreb circled above two fleeing figures.
Auk caught up with them as they started down the helical track;
Silk was hobbling fast, helped by a cane and the woman in scarlet.
Auk caught her by the hair. "Sorry, Patera, but I got to do this."
Silk's hand went to his waistband, but Auk was too quick--a push
on his chest sent him reeling backward into the lesser pit.
"Listen!" urged the blind god beside Auk; he did, and heard the
rising whine of the next bomb a full second before it struck the
ground.
Silk looked down upon the dying augur's body with joy and regret.
It was--had been--himself, after all. Quetzal and a smaller,
younger augur knelt beside it, with a woman in an augur's cloak and
a third man nearly as old as Quetzal.
Beads swung in sign after sign of addition: "I convey to you,
Patera Silk my son, the forgiveness of all the gods."
"Recall now the words of Pas--"
It was good; and when it was over, he could go. Where? It didn't
matter. Anywhere he wished. He was free at last, and though he
would miss his old cell now and then, freedom was best. He looked
up through the shiprock ceiling and saw only earth, but knew that
the whole Whorl was above it, and the open sky.
"I pray you to forgive us, the living," the smaller augur said, and
again traced the sign of addition, which could not--now that he
came to think of it--ever have been Pas's. A sign of addition was a
cross; he remembered Maytera drawing one on the chalkboard
when he was a boy learning to do sums. Pas's sign was not the cross
but the voided cross. He reached for his own at his neck, but it was
gone.
The older augur: "I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna,
for Scalding Scylla."
The younger augur: "For Marvelous Molpe, for Tenebrous Tartaros,
for Highest Hierax, for Thoughtful Thelxiepeia, for Fierce
Phaea, and for Strong Sphigx."
The older augur: "Also for all lesser gods."
The shiprock gave way to earth, the earth to a clearer, purer air
than he had ever known. Hyacinth was there with Auk; in a slanting
mass of stones, broken shiprock rolled and slid to reveal a groping
steel hand. Glorying, he soared.
The Trivigaunti airship was a brown beetle, infinitely remote, the
Aureate Path so near he knew it could not be his final destination.
He lighted upon it, and found it a road of tinsel down a whorl no
bigger than an egg. Where were the lowing beasts? The spirits of the
other dead? There! Two men and two women. He blinked and
stared and blinked again.
"Oh, Silk! My son! Oh, son!" She was in his arms and he in hers,
melting in tears of joy. "Mother!" "Silk, my son!"
The Whorl was filth and stink, futility and betrayal; this was
everything--joy and love, freedom and purity.
"You must go back, Silk. He sends us to tell you."
"You must, my lad." A man's voice, the voice of which Lemur's
had been a species of mockery. Looking up he saw the carved brown
face from his mother's closet.
"We're your
parents." He was tall and blue-eyed. "Your fathers
and your mothers."
The other woman did not speak, but her eyes spoke truth.
"You were my mother," he said. "I understand."
He looked down at his own beautiful mother. "You will always be
my mother. Always!"
"We'll be waiting, Silk my son. All of us. Remember."
* * *
Something was fanning his face.
He opened his eyes. Quetzal was seated beside him, one long,
bloodless hand swinging as regularly and effortlessly as a pendulum.
"Good afternoon, Patera Calde. I would guess, at least, that it may
be afternoon by now."
He lay on dirt, staring up at a shiprock ceiling. Pain stabbed his
neck; his head, both arms, his chest, both legs, and his lower torso
ached, each in its separate, painful way.
"Lie quietly. I wish I had water to offer you. How are you
feeling?"
"I'm back in my dirty cage." Too late, he remembered to add _Your
Cognizance_. "I didn't know it was a cage, before."
Quetzal pressed down on his shoulder. "Don't sit up yet, Patera
Calde. I'm going to ask a question, but you are not to put it to the
test. It is to be a matter for discussion only. Do you agree?"
"Yes, Your Cognizance." He nodded, although nodding took
immense effort.
"This is my question. We are only to speak of it. If I were to help
you up, could you walk?"
"I believe so, Your Cognizance."
"Your voice is very weak. I've examined you and found no broken
bones. There are four of us besides yourself, but--"
"We fell, didn't we? We were in a Civil Guard floater, spinning
over the city. Did I dream that?"
Quetzal shook his head.
"You and I and Hyacinth. And Colonel Oosik and Oreb. And..."
"Yes, Patera Calde?"
"A trooper--two troopers--and an old fencing master that
someone had introduced me to. I can't remember his name, but I
must have dreamed that he was there as well. It's too fantastic."
"He is some distance down the tunnel now, Patera Calde. We
have been troubled by the convicts you freed."
"Hyacinth?" Silk struggled to sit up.
Quetzal held him down, his hands on both shoulders. "Lie quietly
or I'll tell you nothing."
"Hyacinth? For--for the sake of all the gods! I've got to know!"
"I dislike them, Patera Calde. So do you. Why should either of us
tell anyone anything for their sake? I don't know. I wish I did. She