Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Chapter 10

  Caldé Silk

  "Let me go," Maytera Marble insisted Phaesday morning. "They won't shoot me."

  Generalissimo Oosik regarded her through his left eye alone; his right was concealed by a patch of surgical gauze. He shrugged. General Saba, the commander from Trivigaunte, pursed pendulous lips. "We've wasted a shaggy hole too much time on this country house already, when nobody can say-"

  "You're quite wrong, my daughter," Maytera Marble told her firmly. "Mucor can and does. Our Patera Silk is a prisoner in there, just as the Ayuntamiento claims."

  "Spirits!"

  "Only hers, really. I'd never seen anyone possessed until she began doing it to our students. I find it very upsetting." She beckoned Horn. "You've made me a white flag? Wonderful! Such a nice long stick, too. Thank you!"

  General Saba snorted.

  "You don't like my bringing our boys and girls."

  "Children shouldn't have to fight."

  "Certainly not." Maytera Marble nodded solemn agreement. "But they were, and some have been killed. They'd run off with General Mint, you see, almost all of them. I tried to think who might help me after Mucor left, and our students were the only ones I could think of. Horn and a few others are really mature enough already, more grown up than a great many adults. It got them away from the city, too, where the worst fighting was." She looked to Oosik for support, but found none.

  "Where it still is," General Saba snapped. "Where the troops we've got out here are badly needed."

  "They were fighting your girls, some of them, as well as our Army, and some are dead. Have I told you that? Some are dead, some hurt very badly. Ginger's had her hand blown off, I'm told. No doubt some of your girls are hurt as well."

  "Which is why-"

  "You said we're wasting time." Maytera Marble sniffed; she had acquired a devastating sniff. "I couldn't agree more. It will only take a minute to shoot me, if they do. Then you can attack at once. But if they don't, I may be able to talk to the councillors in there. They can order the Army and the Guards who are still fighting you-"

  "The Second," Oosik supplied.

  "Yes, the Second Brigade and our Army." Maytera Marble bowed in humble appreciation of his information. "Thank you, my son. The councillors could order them to give up, but no one knows whether there are really councillors in the Juzgado." Without waiting for a reply, she accepted the flag from Horn.

  "I'm coming with you, Sib."

  "You are not!"

  He followed her nearly as far as the shattered gate just the same, ignoring a pterotrooper who shouted for him to stay back, and watched unhappily as she picked her way through its tumbled stones and twisted bars, somberly clad but conveniently short-skirted in Maytera Rose's best habit.

  Two dead taluses smoked and guttered on the close-mown grassway between the gate and the villa. A few steps past the first, General Saba's adjutant sprawled face down beside her own flag of truce. Disregarding all three, Maytera Marble cut across the lush lawn toward the porticoed entrance, keeping well clear of the fountain to avoid its windblown spray.

  This was Bloody's house, she reminded herself, this grand place. This was where the little man with oily hair had come from, the one she and Echidna had offered to her. It had been practically impossible, for a time, for her to remember being Echidna; now the image of the little man's agonized face had returned, framed by flame as she forced him down onto the altar fire. Would Divine Echidna help her now, in gratitude for that sacrifice? The Echidna she had pictured at prayer over so many years might have condemned her because of it.

  But there had been no shot yet.

  No missile. No sounds at all, save the soughing of the wind and the snapping of the rag on the stick she held. How young she felt, and how strong!

  If she stopped here, if she looked back at Horn, would they shoot, killing her and waking the children? The children were asleep, most of them. Or at least they were supposed to be, back there beneath the leafless mulberries. The summer's unrelenting heat, the desert heat that she had hated so much, had deserted just when the children needed it, leaving them to sleep in the deepening chill of an autumn already half spent, to shiver huddled together like piglets or puppies in unroofed houses with broken windows and slug-pocked, fire-scarred walls, though most of them had liked that better than their studies, they said: had preferred killing Ayuntamientados and pillaging their dead.

  A mottled green face appeared at the window next to the big door. Only the face, Maytera Marble noted with a little shiver of relief. No slug gun, and no launcher.

  "I've come to see my son, my son," she called. "My son Bloody. Tell him his mother's here."

  Shallow stone steps led up to a wide veranda. Before she put her foot on the last, the door swung back. Through it she saw soldiers, and bios in silvered armor. (Bios got up like chems, as she put it to herself, because chems were braver.) Behind them stood another bio, tall and red-faced.

  "Good morning, Bloody," she said. "Thank you for bringing those white bunnies. May Kypris smile upon you."

  Blood grinned. "You've changed a little, Mama." Some of the armored men laughed.

  "Yes, I have. When we can talk in private, I'll tell you all about it."

  "We thought you wanted to cut a deal for Hoppy."

  "I do." Maytera Marble surveyed the hall; though she knew little about art, she suspected that the misty landscape facing her was a Murtagon. "I want to talk about that. We've knocked down a good deal of your wall, I'm afraid, Bloody, and I'd like to see your beautiful house spared."

  Two soldiers stood aside, and Blood came to meet her. "So would I, Mama. I'd like to see us spared, too."

  "Is that why you didn't shoot? You killed that poor woman General Saba sent, so why not me? Perhaps I shouldn't ask."

  Blood glanced to his right. "A shag-up over there. We didn't shoot the fussock with the flag, and I want that settled right now. If there's a question about it, there's no point in talking. I didn't shoot her, and didn't tell anybody to. None of the boys did, either, and they didn't get anybody to do it. Is that clear? Will you say Pas to that, nothing back?"

  Maytera Marble cocked and lifted her head, thus raising an eyebrow. "Someone shot her from a window of your house, Bloody. I saw it."

  "All right, you saw it, and Trivigaunte's going to make somebody pay. I don't blame them. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be me or the boys. We didn't do it, and that's not open to argument. I want that settled before the cut."

  Maytera Marble put a hand on his shoulder. "I understand, Bloody. Do you know who did? Will you point them out to us?"

  Blood hesitated, his apoplectic face growing redder than ever. "If…" His eyes shifted toward a soldier almost too swiftly to be seen. "Yes, absolutely." Several of the armored men muttered agreement.

  "In that case it's accepted by our side," Maytera Marble told him. "I'll report to my principals, Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba, that you had nothing to do with it and are anxious to testify against the guilty parties. Who are they?"

  Blood ignored the question. "Good. Fine. They won't attack while I'm talking to you?"

  "Of course not." Silently, Maytera Marble prayed that she was being truthful.

  "You'd probably like to sit. I know I would. Come in here, and I think we can settle this."

  He showed her into a paneled drawing room and shut the door firmly. "My boys are getting edgy," he explained, "and that gets me edgy around them."

  "They're my grandchildren?" Maytera Marble sank into a tapestry chair too deep and too soft for her. "Your sons?"

  "I don't have any. You said you were my mother. I guess you meant you came to talk for her."

  "I am your mother, Bloody." Maytera Marble studied him, finding traces of her earlier self in his heavy, cunning face, as well as far too many of his father. "I suppose you've seen me since you found out who I was or had somebody look at me and describe me, and now you don't recognize me. I understand. You're my son, just the
same."

  He grasped the advantage by reflex. "Then you wouldn't want to see me killed, or would you?"

  "No. No, I wouldn't." She let her stick and white flag fall to the carpet. "If I had been willing to have you die, everything would have been a great deal easier. Don't you see that? You should. You, of all people."

  She paused, considering. "I was an old woman before you found out who I was, and I think I must have looked older. I was already forty when you were born. That's terribly old for a bio mother."

  "She came a few times when I was little. I remember her."

  "Every three months, Bloody. Once in each season, if I could get away alone that often. We were supposed to go out out in pairs. and usually we had to."

  "She's dead? My mother?"

  "Your foster mother? I don't know. I lost track of her when you were nine."

  "I mean y-! Rose. Maytera Rose, my real mother."

  "Me." Maytera Marble tapped her chest, a soft click.

  "It was her funeral sacrifice. The other sibyl said so."

  "We burned parts of her," Maytera Marble conceded. "But mostly those were parts of me in her coffin. Of Marble, I mean, though I've kept her name. It makes things easier, with the children particularly. And there's still a great deal of my personality left."

  Blood rose and went to the window. The dull green turret of a Guard floater showed above a half-ruined section of wall. "You mind if I open this?"

  "Certainly not. I'd prefer it."

  "I want to hear if they start shooting, so I can stop it." She nodded. "My thought exactly, Bloody. Some of the children have slug guns, and nearly all the rest have needlers. Perhaps I should have taken them, but I was afraid we'd need them on the walk out." She sighed, the weary hish of a mop across a terazzo floor. "The worst would have hidden theirs anyway, though none of the children are really bad."

  "I remember when she lost her arm," Blood told her. "She used to pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One day it was a hand like your-"

  "It was this one." Maytera Marble displayed it.

  "So I asked her what happened. I didn't know she was my mother then. She was just a sibyl that came sometimes. My mother would have tea and cookies."

  "Or sandwiches." Maytera Marble supplemented his account. "Very good sandwiches, too, though I was always careful not to eat more than a fourth of one. Bacon in the fall, cheese in winter, pickled burbot and chives on toast in spring, and curds and watercress in summer. Do you remember, Bloody? We always gave you one."

  "Sometimes it was all I got," Blood said bitterly

  "I know. That's why I never ate more than a founh."

  "Is that really the same hand?" Blood eyed it curiously.

  "Yes, it is, It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody, because you have to do it one-handed. It was particularly hard for me, because by then I already had a great many new parts. Or rather, I had reclaimed a great many old ones. They worked better, that was why I wanted them, but I wasn't used to the new assembly yet, which made changing hands harder. It would have been wasteful to burn them, though. They were in much better condition than my old ones."

  "Even if it is, I'm not going to call you Mother."

  Maytera Marble smiled, lifting her head and inclining it to the right as she always did. "You have already, Bloody. Out there. You called me Mama. It sounded wonderful."

  When he said nothing, she added, "You said you were going to open that window. Why don't you?"

  He nodded and raised the sash. "That's why I bought your manteion, do you know about that? I wasn't just a sprat nobody wanted any more. I had money and influence, and I got word my mother was dying. I hadn't spoken to her in fifteen, twenty years, but I asked Musk, and he said if I really wanted to get even it might be my last chance. I saw the sense in that, so we went, both of us."

  "To get even, Bloody?" Maytera Marble lifted an eyebrow.

  "It doesn't matter. I was sitting with her, see, and she needed something, so I sent Musk. Then I said something and called her Mom, and she said your mother's still alive, I tried to be a mother to you, Blood, and I swore I wouldn't tell."

  Turning from the window to face Maytera Marble, he added, "She wouldn't, either. But I found out."

  "And bought our manteion to torment me, Bloody?"

  "Yeah. The taxes were in arrears. I'm real close to the Ayuntamiento. I guess you know that already or you wouldn't have come out here shooting."

  "You have councillors here, staying with you. Loris, Tarsier, and Potto. That was one reason I wanted to talk."

  Blood shook his head. "Tarsier's gone. Who told you?"

  "Like your foster mother, I've sworn not to tell."

  "One of my people? Somebody in this house?"

  "My lips are sealed, Bloody."

  "We'll get into that later, maybe. Yeah, I've got them staying here. It's not the first time, either. When I found out about you-if you're who you say you are-I talked to Loris, just one friend to another, and he let me have it for taxes. Know how much it was? Twelve hundred and change. I was going to leave you hanging, keep talking about tearing the whole thing down. Then Silk came out here. The great Caldé Silk himself! Nobody would believe that now, but he did. He solved my house like a thief. By Phaea, he was a thief."

  Maytera Marble sniffed. It was at once a devastating and a confounding sniff, the sniff of a destroyer of cities and a confronter of governments; Blood winced, and she enjoyed it so much that she sniffed again. "So are you, Bloody."

  "Lily." Blood swallowed. "Only your Silk's no better, is he? Not a dog's right better. So I saw a chance to turn a few cards and have a little fun by making the whole wormy knot of you squirm. I'd got your manteion for twelve hundred like I told you, just a little thankyou from Councillor Loris, and I was going to tell Silk thirteen hundred, then double that." Blood crossed the room to an inlaid cabinet, opened it, and poured gin and water into a squat glass.

  "Only when I'd talked to him a little, I made it thirteen thousand, because he really thought those old buildings in the middle of that slum were priceless. And I said I'd sell them back to him for twenty-six thousand."

  Blood chuckled and sat down again. "I'm not really a bad host, Mama. If I thought that you'd drink it, I'd stand you a drink, even after you called me a thief."

  "I was speaking of fact, Bloody, not calling names. Here in private you may call me a trull or a trollop any other such filthy sobriquet. That is what I am, or at any rate what I've been, although no man but your father ever touched me."

  "Not me," Blood told her. "I'm above all that."

  "But not above defrauding that poor boy because he valued the things given to his care, and was so foolish as to imagine you wouldn't lie to an angur."

  Blood grinned. "If I were above that, Mama, I'd be as poor as he is. Or as he was, anyhow. I don't remember how much time I gave him to come up with the gelt. A couple of weeks, maybe, or something like that. Then when I had him crawling, I said that if he brought me something next week or whatever, I might let him have a little more time. Then after a couple days, I sent Musk to tell him I had to have it all right away. I figured he'd come out here again and beg me for more time, see? It looked like it was going to be a nice little game, the kind I like best."

  Maytera Marble nodded sympathetically. "I understand. I suppose all of us play wicked little games like that from time to time. I have, I know. But yours is over, Bloody. You've won. You have him here, a prisoner in your house. The person who told me that the councillors were here told me that, too. You have me as well. You say you wanted to avenge yourself on the foster mother we found for you, and you bought our manteion so you could avenge yourself on me, because I gave you life and tried to see that you were taken care of."

  Blood stared at her and licked his lips.

  "You've won both games. Perhaps all three. So go ahead, Bloody. A single shot should kill me, and I saw a lot of slug guns out there in your foyer. Then the Trivigauntis can kill you fo
r killing General Saba's adjutant, or Generalissimo Oosik can shoot you for shooting me. Possibly you'll be given your choice. Would you rather die justly? Or unjustly?"

  When Blood did not reply, she added, "Perhaps you ought to ask your friend Musk about it. He advises you, from what you've said. Where is he, anyway?"

  "He stayed behind after we brought the doves. He said he had a couple things to take care of, and he doesn't get into town very often. I thought maybe your side picked him up when he tried to come home.

  Maytera Marble shook her head.

  Blood took a liberal swallow from his glass. "I wasn't going to shoot you, Mama, and I didn't shoot her. You agreed to that already. Let's pin it down. In about an hour, the Guard could knock this house down and kill everybody. I know that. They're not doing it because they know we've got Silk in here. Isn't that right?"

  Maytera Marble nodded. "Free him, turn him over to me, Bloody, and we'll go away and leave you alone."

  "It's not that easy. He's here all right, right here in my house. But it's the councillors and their soldiers who've got him, not me."

  "Then I must speak with them. Take me to them."

  "I'll bring them in here," Blood told her, "they're all over." Under his breath he added, "It's still my hornbussing house, by Phaea's feast!"

  Potto opened the door at the top of the cellar steps and crooked his finger at Sand. "Bring him up, Sergeant. We're getting them all together."

  Sand saluted with a crash of titanium heels, his slug gun vertical before his face. "Yes, Councillor!" He nudged Silk with the toe of his right foot, and Silk rose.

  He fell as he attempted to mount from the second step to the third, and again halfway up. "Here," Sand told him, and returned Xiphias's stick.

  "Thank you," Silk murmured. And then, "I'm sorry. My legs feel a trifle weak, I'm afraid."

  Potto said cheerfully, "We're going to try to give you back to your friends, Patera, if we can get them to take you." Grabbing the front of Remora's ruined robe, he jerked Silk up the remaining step. "You'd like to lie down again, wouldn't you? Get in a little nap? Maybe something to eat? Help us, and you'll get it."