Return to the Whorl

by Gene Wolfe

Page 4

 

  The husband nodded. "Days dont matter much. Its sun, or no sun. If you find Silk, howre you going to take him back?"

  "In a lander, I suppose. You said the gods were trying to make you go. "

  Both nodded, their faces grim.

  "So there must be landers left, perhaps landers that have come back for more people. The gods wouldnt try to force you out if there were no way for you to leave. "

  The husband spat out the window again. "They dont work. Thats what I hear. "

  "Ive had some experience of that on Green. " He crossed the kitchen, finding his legs stronger than he had anticipated, and picked up his stick.

  The woman said, "Im going to fry some bacon. Havent done it much on account of the heat. But Im going to fry some soon as I get the stove going. "

  "Thats very kind of you. " As he spoke, he realized that he was more sincere than he had imagined. "Im grateful-really I am. But I dont need food, and certainly dont need luxuries. "

  She had pushed back a curtain that had once been a sheet to search nearly empty shelves, and seemed not to have heard him. "Ill make coffee, too. Coffees dear, but theres enough left for another pot. "

  He recalled the beverage of his childhood. "Mate, please. Id like some. I havent drunk mate in a long while. "

  Her husband said, "You want that seed corn? We got to fetch it out of the barn. " He held a stick of his own, a thick staff more like a club than a cane.

  "Yes, I do. Very much. "

  "All right. " The husband leaned his staff against a chair, and rummaged under the table.

  The woman asked him to pump, and he did so, heaving the big iron handle up and down until the rusty water was past and she had enough clean water to fill her coffeepot.

  The husband pulled out a clumsy tin lantern and lit it from the lamp. "Well go now. Thatll take her a bit. " An inclination of his head indicated the stove.

  The woman murmured, "Coffee, bacon, and bread. " She turned to face them. "That be enough?"

  "More than enough. And Id prefer mate, I really would. "

  The husband opened the door (letting in the ink-black dark), retrieved his staff, and raised his lantern. "Come on," he said, and they went out together.

  "Is it dangerous out here? When the sun has gone out, I mean. " He was thinking of the husbands staff.

  "Sometimes. Horn, thats your name?"

  "Yes," he said. "Im afraid I didnt catch yours. "

  "Didnt throw it. " The husband paused, chuckling at his joke. "You want that seed?"

  "Very much. " Something or someone was watching them, he felt-some cool intelligence greater than his own who could see in darkness as in daylight. He pushed the thought aside, and followed the husband, walking rapidly across dry, uneven soil as hard as iron.

  "Know how to grow corn?"

  "No. " He hesitated, fearful that the admission would cost him the seed. "I tried once, and learned that I didnt-I had thought I did. But the seeds you give me will be planted by men who know a great deal. My task is to bring it to them. "

  "Wont grow in the dark. "

  He recalled speculating that those denied the Aureate Path might grow crops, and smiled. "Nothing does, I suppose. "

  "Oh, theres things. But not corn. " The husband opened a wide wooden door, evoking scandalized protests from chickens. "Sun dont come back, thats the end for us. You comin?"

  He was staring upward into the pitch-black sky. "Theres a point of light up there. One very small point of red light. Is it in the skylands? You have skylands here. "

  "Thats right. "

  "On Blue the night sky is full of stars, thousands upon thousands of them. Im surprised to see even one here. "

  "Thats a city burnin. "

  He looked down, horrified.

  "Some city burns up there just about every time they blow the sun out. You want that corn? You come along. "

  He hurried into the barn.

  "I grow my own seed. Two kinds. You cant let em cross. Or cross with any other kind, either. You know about that?"

  He nodded humbly. "I think so. "

  "Cross em, and youll get good seed. Plant it to grind and feed the stock. Dont plant the next, though. You got to go back to these old kinds and cross again. Six, you said. "

  "Yes. I believe that should be sufficient. "

  "Im going to give you twelve. Six aint enough. " Butter-yellow lantern light revealed dry ears hanging in bunches.

  "This is very, very kind of you. "

  "See here? This black kind?" The husband had detached an ear.

  "Yes. I thought at first that it only looked black because its so dark; but it really is black, isnt it?"

  "You take it and pull off six. Not no more. I need it. "

  The ear was small and rough, the seeds small too, but smooth and hard. He rubbed and tugged six free.

  The husband retrieved the black ear. "See this?" It was a second ear, slightly bigger and much lighter in color. "Thiss the other kind I got. Red and white. You see that?"

  He nodded.

  "The red ones and the white ones are both the same. Dont matter what color you take. "

  "I understand. "

  "You can have three red and three white, if you want em. Make you feel better. Color dont make no difference though. "

  "I will, just to be on the safe side. "

  "Figured. You plant em in the same hill so theyll cross. You dont feed that or grind it either. Plant it. Cornll be yellow or white. Not never red nor black. "

  He nodded, struggling to detach the first grain.

  "Plant it, and next year youll have a real good crop. "

  "Thank you. I pray that I can get this seed youre giving me back to Blue safely. "

  "Your lookout. Thing is, every year you got to grow some black and some red-and-white off by themselves. Got to keep em apart and dont let no other corn near em. Do like that, and you can grow more seed next year for the year after. "

  "I understand. " He held his hand closer to the lantern, seeing in the mingled grains waving green fields, sleek horses both black and white, and fat red cattle.

  The husband retrieved the seed ear. "Were goin out now. "

  "All right. " Carefully depositing the twelve grains of corn in a pocket, he helped the husband close the big door.

  "Wolves come in closer, darkdays," the husband said almost conversationally. "Kill my sheep. Not many left. "

  He said, "Im sorry to hear that," and meant it.

  "Got two dogs watchin them. Good dogs. Kick up a fuss if theres wolves around, but I dont hear em. Now this Silk. "

  It had come too suddenly. "Yes. Yes-Silk. "

  "He was their head man down in the city. "

  "Calde. Yes, he was. "

  "He was good out here. Got my slug gun off him. Years ago it was. Still got it, and three shells Im savin. Hes not there no more. City people run him out. "

  "I see. Do you know where he went? Please-this is very important to me. "

  "Nope. " The husband set the lantern on the ground between them. "He was head man a long time. Had a wife. Pretty womans what I heard. "

  "Yes, she was. Beautiful. "

  "Whore, too. Thats what they said. That why you want to find him?"

  "No, I want him. I want to take him to New Viron, as I saidand Hyacinth too, if shell come. Dont you have any idea where they are?"

  The husband shook his head.

  "Im sure youd tell me if you knew. You and your wife have been extremely kind to me. Is there anything that I can for you in return? Some sort of work I could do?"

  The husband said nothing, standing in silence with legs slightly separated. His heavy, knobbed staff, grasped in his right hand at the balance, tapped the thickly callused palm of his left. The odors of coffee and frying bacon diffused from the open window of the kitchen, tantalizing them both.

  "You want me to leave. "

  The husband nodded. "Go. Go or fight, old man. You got your
stick. I got mine, and Im tellin you. You goin?"

  "Yes, I am. " He held up the dead branch he had picked up the night before and flexed it between his hands. "I certainly wont fight you-it would be the height of ingratitude, and Ive offered to leave several times already. I would greatly prefer to leave in friendship. "

  "Get!"

  "I see. Then I must tell you something. I could defeat you with this, and beat you with it afterward if I chose. I wont-but I could. "

  The husband took a measured step toward him. "Itd break, and youre older than me. "

  "Yes, I suppose I am. But this stick wouldnt break, not the way Id use it. And if you really believe the difference in our ages would give me an insurmountable handicap, it is base-very base-of you to threaten me. "

  When the better part of a minute had passed, he took a step backward. "Thank your wife for me, please; she was kind to a stranger in need. So were you. Tell her, if you will, that I left of my own accord, having no wish to deplete your meager store of food. "

  He turned to go.

  He could not have said afterward whether he had heard the blow or merely known that it would come. He swayed to his right. Whistling down, the knobbed head scraped his arm and bruised the side of his knee. He pivoted as it struck the ground beside his left foot, pinned it with his foot, thrust his bloodstained stick into the husbands face and threw it aside. Half a second and the knobbed staff was in his hands. A quick, measured blow knocked the husband flat. Another put out the lantern.

  Once he turned back to look at the lighted windows of the farmhouse he was leaving; but only once.

  "Need practice!" exclaimed a man older than himself who popped unbidden into his mind. "Ruins you, fighting! Spoils your technique!"

  He had white whiskers and jumped about in an alarming way, but his thrusts and cuts were as precise as a surgeons with lancet and scalpel, and incomparably faster.

  I cant practice now, Master Xiphias. I need this to feel my way along.

  That had been the old mans name. He repeated it under his breath, then said more loudly, "Xiphias. Master Xiphias. "

  Some distance away, a bird called, "Silk? Silk?"-its hoarse cry shaped by chance or, as was more probable, his own mind, into the familiar name.

  "Yes," he said aloud. "Silk. Patera Silk. And old Patera Pike, who must have been eighty. Also the sibyls, Maytera Rose, Maytera Marble, and General Mint. "

  The whorl had turned upside down, and suddenly-ever so suddenly-there had been Patera Quetzal, Patera Gulo, and Patera Incus; and Auk and Chenille, Hammerstone, Mucor, Willet, the lovely Hyacinth, and dozens of others. Running and shooting for Maytera Mint, who had continued to wear her sibyls black bombazine gown, with a needler and an azoth in the big side pockets in which she had carried chalk.

  Gingers hand blown off, and Maytera Marbles cut off. "My minds slipping," he confided aloud; it was comforting to hear a human voice, even if it was only his own. This rutted, grassless ground on which he walked was probably a road, a road going whoknew-where.

  "Its like that first book Nettle tried to sew, the thread has broken and the pages have fallen out. They are gone now-all gone, except for Nettle and me. And Maytera, out there on her rock with Mucor, Marrow, and a few others. Old classmates. Sisters and brothers. "

  Calf, Tongue, and Tallow had wanted help from him, a great deal of help that his mother had urged him to provide, when he and Nettle had nothing to eat. It was a bitter memory, one that he counseled himself to forget.

  "Got to practice!" That was Xiphias in the Blue Room.

  How can I get to be a good swordsman, sir? I dont have anybody to practice with.

  The sword out at once and pushed into his hand. Xiphiass old, veined hands (still astonishingly strong) positioning him before a pier glass. "See him? Fight him! Good as you are, every bit! Up point, and guard! Parry! Hilt, boy! Use the hilt! Think youve got it?"

  He had said yes and thought no. Now he halted, making quartering cuts with the lighter end of the knobbed staff and parrying each the moment that he made it.

  "Not so bad," he muttered. "Better than I did down on Green, though that sword was a better weapon. "

  "No cut," a harsh voice overhead advised. Startled, he terminated his practice; and something large, light, and swift lit upon his shoulder. "Bird back!"

  "Oreb, is that you?"

  "Good Silk. "

  "It cant be! By Bright Pass four eyes, I wish I could see you. "

  "Bird see. "

  "I know you do, but thats not much help to me. Not unless somethings lying in wait for us like the convicts did for Auk. Is there anything of that kind?"

  "No, no. "

  "Armed men? Or wolves?"

  "No man. No wolf. "

  He recalled the new word that the husband had used. "What about godlings, Oreb? Can you see any of those?"

  The bird fluttered, his beak clacking nervously.

  "You see those. You must. Are they close by?"

  "No close. "

  "Id ask you what they are, if I thought there was any hope of getting a sensible answer out of you. "

  "No talk. "

  "Its unlucky to speak of them? Is that what you mean?"

  A hoarse croak.

  "Ill take that for a yes, and take your advice, too-for the time being at least. Are you really Oreb? The Oreb who used to belong to Patera Silk?"

  "Good bird!"

  "Youre a good talker at any rate, just as Oreb was. Did he teach you? Thats what I heard long ago about you night choughs, that when one of you learns a new word he teaches the rest. "

  "Man come. "

  "Toward us?" He sought to peer ahead into the darkness, but might as effectively have peered into a barrel of tar. Recalling the husbands slug gun and three remaining shells, he turned to look behind him; the darkness there was equally impenetrable.