Starwater Strains

by Gene Wolfe

  Then he woke, and found that he was but a dwarf, and that a great beast lay beside him. When he tried to rise, it held him; and the paw upon his chest was soft as thistledown, big as a saddle, and strong as iron.

  A woman’s face bent above him, and it was a face much larger than that of any true woman. “O my lover, I have had my way three times with you. Ask a gift, and if it be in my power you shall have it.”

  Through chattering teeth he said, “I am small and stunted.”

  She laughed, and her laugh was deeper than the thunder. “Not in every part.”

  “Spare my life!”

  “I will never take it, but what boon is that once I have kissed you, and you me? Will you not ask another?”

  “Then make me g-great and p-p-powerful,” the poor dwarf stammered, “and small and stunted no more.”

  “I will,” she told him, “for this night only. Suckle at my breast.”

  The breast she presented to him was like to that of a human woman, though greater by five. He gave suck, and at the first drop felt his back straighten. At the second he knew himself as large as she, and at the third—ah, at the third strength filled him; his thews grew thick as pythons, his body supple as a whip.

  He rose, a lion with the head and shoulders of a man. He roared, and the earth shook. Roaring still, he returned to the town that had driven him forth, and his mate went with him. It was a small place now, a little cluster of wretched houses of sun-dried brick. A dozen blows from his paw would have left no brick upon brick, but he swept the roof from one such house and saw the trembling man within: a man too weak with fear to hold his spear, and his moaning wife, and the wailing children she clasped.

  And he pitied them, and went away.

  Then he and his mate bounded whole leagues, and raced across the desert, and reaching the mountains bounded from rock to rock there, glorying until the sun rose.

  But when the sun rose, he found himself a man again, and but a dwarf, and wept.

  The great sphinx who for one night had been his mate then told him how it would be with him, and left him.

  He returned to the town that had cast him out, weary still, and dizzied with the memory of the night. There they told him of the storm that had so terrified them, and showed him the house whose roof had been blown away. He laughed at them for that, and because he laughed they stoned him and he fled into the fields.

  Long he wandered, through many a town and down many a long road; and at length the days were complete, and in a marsh beside the great slow north-flowing river he knelt in mud and water and was sicker than he had ever been, coughing and retching until at last, with a great heave that seemed that it must take his bowels with it, he coughed out an infant, a baby boy who lay howling in the dirty water and opened amber eyes. This boy the dwarf named Kalam, “pen,” because his birth had been foretold, and of what has been foretold his people say, “It was written.”

  He would have picked Kalam up and fled with him, for he feared the crocodiles; instead he retched again, and from jaws almost burst asunder spat another infant, also a boy. This second child he named Wahl, for as he came forth he spattered his brother with mud, and it seemed to the dwarf that Wahl!, which means “mud,” was the child’s first cry.

  Then would he have picked up both brothers if he could; but that affliction with which he had been afflicted held him there, and he coughed forth a third infant, a girl, whom he called Jamil, “beauty,” because he saw her mother’s face in hers.

  Then rose he from the marsh, holding his sons and his daughter in arms scarce long enough for the task, as some other might hold a litter of kittens; and he returned to the plowlands and the grazing lands, where he found, or begged, or stole, the milk and the blood on which he fed them.

  How he brought them up, and how he took them on his wanderings—how Wahl climbed the wall of the pasha’s palace and returned with the pasha’s roast in his mouth—how Jamil, lovely as new-minted gold though her hair was matted with dung, was pitied by the Rani, who gave her a ruby—and how Kalam, the eldest, wrote this tale with his forefinger in the dust—any one of these would make a story too long for we who must end this one.

  We leave them to others. The day came when they stood at the right hand of the dwarf, with their feet upon sand and millet at their backs, and all three stood much taller than he. And upon that day he called across the desert to their mother. Small though he was, his voice was large, and held the pain of a thousand beatings and the pain of a lover who knows that love is past. All the people of all the towns that border on the desert heard him, and spoke in awe, one to another; and some said that a storm approached, and some that the earth groaned, and more than a few muttered of ghosts and ghouls and worse.

  But the dwarf said, “Now, my children, you will see whether your father be mad or no. Your mother, I say, will come to my call as I have oft told you. You will see what manner of creature she is, and if you are wise you will join her, for it is the finest life in the world.” His voice broke at the last word, and he fell silent.

  Then Kalam, the eldest said, “How are we to join her, Father? You have told us many times that she has the feet of a lioness.”

  The dwarf affirmed that it was so.

  “You have said also,” Wahl remarked, “that she is large as many a mountain. How then can we join a creature so huge? We will be as ants to her.”

  “She is of that great size when she wills it,” the dwarf explained, “but scarcely larger than an ox when she wills otherwise. Did you imagine she was of mountain size when we lay together?”

  At this, Jamil said, “How could we join her, Father, when to join her we must leave you? It is you, not she, who has fed, and taught, and cherished us through all our lives. If our blood is hers, is it not yours also?”

  “It is,” the dwarf affirmed.

  “I cannot speak for my brothers,” Jamil told him, “but for myself, dear Father, I will remain with you.”

  “The time for choosing is not yet,” the dwarf told her.

  “I make no pother of it,” Wahl declared. “But I will remain with you as well—should the monster come. How could I, a man, join in the frolics of such a creature?”

  “And I,” announced Kalam, “go. Not with the monster-mother, but out into the world of men. I have been a beggar and a thief, but there are better things. The ships in Abu Qir are always wanting crew, and it would be a rare captain who could find no use for a crewman well able to wield the pen. I wish you well …” His eyes softened.

  “As I, you,” said the dwarf, his father.

  “And if you wait here all night, I will wait too with my sister and you. But when the sun rises, I go north to the docks.”

  “I may follow you, in time,” said his brother. “I have not decided.”

  “If our father waits here for a year,” declared Jamil, “I will wait with him, save when I go to fetch him food and drink.”

  “But I—” began Kalam. And fell silent, for far off, he heard the howl of a wild wind among the desert peaks. Louder it grew, and louder. The millet bowed and stood straight and bowed again.

  And she came.

  Kalam stepped forward. His features changed, becoming those of a man more noble than any man, though his own still. His first bound carried him so far that he was almost lost to sight; he turned and grew, so that they saw him still, and the power that was in him, and the glory. When he smiled, the love that went out from him washed over them like a wave.

  Wahl passed him to stand beside their mother; and, oh, but he was terrible and great! Even as she, and the strength of him was like the strength of the river, irresistible.

  “Go,” dwarf said, and he gave Jamil a push.

  “I will stay with you, Father.”

  “But not obey me? Go!”

  She did as he bid, though with many a backward glance. Ten steps, twenty, a hundred. She has not changed, the dwarf thought. Yet she had. Taller and more graceful, with hair black as storm cloud and tawny skin.
“Go!” he said again.

  She stopped instead, turned, and beckoned to him.

  And he bounded after her.

  Michael thought about this story all the way home, for it had made clear to him certain things about which he had wondered, but raised questions, too. At home he went to his link and called his teacher.

  Her face appeared in his screen. “What is it, Mick?”

  “Have I seen you anyplace else?”

  “I don’t know. Have you?”

  “I don’t know either,” Michael admitted.

  “I’m a simulation, Mick. There was a real teacher once, a very good teacher who looked about like this.”

  Michael nodded.

  “Many of my programs and subroutines are based upon her. So is my face.”

  Michael thought a long time about that, and at last he said, “What’s an incunabulum?”

  in-cu-nab-u-lum in-kyoo-’nab-ya-lam (in + cunabula L. infancy, origin) A book printed in the second millennium.

  Michael was working part-time at the bookstore when R. T. Hurd came in. A friend, R. T. Hurd explained, had mentioned the brown book. He wanted to make an offer, but he would have to examine the book first. Michael switched off the motion alarm and took the brown book from the window. R. T. Hurd opened it reverently and turned its pages with care, and at length wrote his offer on a kneeboard keyboard and signal-signed it.

  When he had gone, Michael replaced the brown book in its window and switched the motion detector back on. R. T. Hurd’s offer he carried upstairs and left on the owner’s desk. It was not until he and Michael had locked the store for the day that Michael realized he had left the brown book open at a new place. And it was not until he came to work the next day that he read the pages he himself had freshly exposed.

  THE TALE OF PRINCE KNOW-NOTHING

  When the world was young, there lived a certain prince who did not know he was a prince. Two thousand years before, his many-greats-grandfather had been a glorious king, renown for courage and wisdom throughout all the world. Many sons and daughters had he fathered; and although some had perished without issue, others had as many children as he, and two had more. Because they had been the sons and daughters of the king, they had been men and women of wealth, masters of great houses and broad lands and coffers of gold and jewels. But as the years turned to centuries, and generations were born and aged and died, the wild thyme grew up around all these things, which vanished from the sight of men; so that when Prince Know-Nothing was born, his mother did not know he was a prince or that she herself was a princess. Nevertheless the blood royal ran strong in his veins, because his father had been a prince also, though neither of them knew it. (But someone did.)

  Thus the young prince lived as other boys lived. He was strong and brave, but there were many other boys who were stronger and braver than he—or if they were not, they were at least louder in their boasts, which is much the same thing among boys. And although he was wiser than they, at his age wisdom consists largely in honoring one’s parents and careful listening to the counsel of those older than oneself; thus his wisdom, though it made him well-liked and kept him from harm in a hundred ways, brought him only mockery whenever it became apparent.

  “Once upon a time,” said his teacher, “there was a king who had but a single child, the princess, and twelve golden plates. They were very beautiful, with knights and dragons and elves around their borders—”

  “What is a princess?” asked Prince Know-Nothing, and the other children all laughed.

  “If everyone else knows,” said his teacher, “everyone else can tell you.” And she asked the girl with the pink hair ribbon to tell Prince Know-Nothing what a princess was.

  “It’s a girl that’s very pretty on Halloween and has a pretty white dress with a big skirt,” explained the girl with the pink hair ribbon.

  Their teacher agreed that was a good definition, but she was afraid that it wasn’t quite rigorous enough, so she asked the smartest boy in the whole class to tell Prince Know-Nothing what a princess was, too.

  “It’s the one the knight marries,” the smartest boy in the whole class said at once.

  “That’s a good definition, too,” the teacher agreed. “But princesses don’t always marry knights. Sometimes they marry princes.”

  Here the page ended, and since the book was locked away in its window again, Michael was unable to turn it. He went home, and when the book remained in its window day after day and week after week, he knew that R. T. Hurd’s offer had been refused.

  Years passed, and there came a year in which he, and not the old owner, took inventory; and when it was nearly done, he got out the brown book so that he might look at it again. He was listing books by their UAISBN numbers, and he hoped to find one on it, although he did not. He considered listing it by title, but he knew only too well that there were often half a dozen books with a single title. He was puzzling over this when a young woman with bright blue eyes came in and remarked that she would like to look at the book, since it was out of its window.

  “I generally leave it there, where it’s secure,” Michael explained. “It’s alarmed, you know, and the glass filters out the ultraviolet. But I had to take it out now, or anyway I thought it did. Maybe I just wanted to touch it again.” And he explained about inventory, and looking for a UAISBN in the brown book.

  “You have a lot more books here than most bookstores I’ve been in,” the young woman said. “Usually they want you to look on the screen. And then they’ll print up one for you if you want it. But till you want one, they don’t actually have many books.”

  “We can print anything you want, to order,” Michael explained, “but we find we sell more books when the customer can handle an actual copy. I don’t mean that we keep copies of ephemera—best-sellers, and that sort of book. We don’t have to. But there are a lot of very good books most people have never heard of, and we like to have copies of those, of the books we recommend.”

  The young woman looked thoughtful.

  “Then too, we do a good deal of business in used books. You can often buy a used copy more cheaply, for one thing.”

  “Aren’t there old editions that are nicer?”

  Michael nodded. “Sometimes. Quite often, in fact. There are different papers, and for art books …” He shrugged. “When the plates have been produced under the supervision of the artist, that’s something stores can’t duplicate. Though we try.”

  “Can you make me a copy of this?” The young woman indicated that brown book.

  Michael shook his head. “There’s no number. That’s the problem.”

  When she had gone, he returned the brown book to its window and went back to his inventory, feeling empty in a strange, sad way, and very much alone. I should get a cat, he thought. We used to have a cat. A lot of stores have cats.

  It was time to close, or nearly; and yet the inventory remained not quite finished. In the end he entered “Browne’s Book—Wonders of” for the book in the window, and did the rest, turned off the lights, and pulled shut the big front door, hearing it lock behind him. Deep within the store ALARM—ALARM—ALARM flashed dimly and slowly, indicating that the system was powered, and on guard. How many times had he come out of this door?

  It was not that he did not love the store; he did, just as he had loved his parents. And yet …

  He would get a cat—a nice cat with white paws and an interesting name. (But a cat would not be enough either.)

  The bus floated by. He had missed it, and there would be no more for half an hour. He inspected his windows. The Race for Saturn’s Moons was no longer selling. It should be relegated to a shelf and replaced. Perhaps with Fear of the Future or The Fall of the Republic.

  Here was the brown book again, opened at a new place.

  THE TALE OF THE BOY AND THE BOOKSHOP

  Long, long ago in a faraway land, there was a boy we will call Wishedfor. He had been born late in his parents’ lives, after many years in which they had praye
d devoutly for a son, and they treasured him above all else. One might think such a boy would be spoiled. He was not, for Allah had blessed them with a poverty not too great. He grew, and as he grew, showed himself wise and generous, strong of limb and clear of eye. He helped his mother wash and cook and sweep, and when he was old enough to assist his father, he did not cease to do so, but turned his labors from the amendment programs to household tasks as soon as he and his father returned from the archives, for his mother was not strong.

  At length she died, and his father called him to his side. “O my son,” quoth his father, “thou art the light of my eyes. Not a day passes but I thank Allah for what he gave. Which is noblest, my son? Is it the gifts Allah gives to us, or the gifts we miserable mortals give to Allah, who has given us life? Consider well.”

  For some minutes the boy sat deep in thought; at length he said, “Gold and silks, skimmers and golights are but muck. The value of a gift cannot be reckoned from the price the giver gave or the price his gift might fetch in the market. Is that not so, O my father?”

  Sadly, the old man nodded. “Proceed.”

  “How then is the value of a gift to be reckoned? It must be according to the heart of its giver. The most valuable gift is that given with unbounded love from a pure heart. Mere mortals, alas, are never pure of heart. Nor is our love boundless, though we may think so. Allah is pure of heart, as we are not. Allah’s love is without bound, as ours cannot be. Therefore it seems to me, O my father, that the gifts Allah gives to mortals must ever be greater than those we mere mortals present to Allah.”