by Gene Wolfe
"Just come away from the edge, please, Caldé. For me?"
To soothe Horn, he took a step. "You can't have been up here when I came-I would have seen you. You weren't on the roof of our old gondola either, because I looked back at it. Nettle told you I asked about a hatch, of course."
"A little farther, Caldé. Please?"
"No. This is foolish; but to reassure you, I'll sit down." He did, spreading his robe over his crossed legs. "You see? I can't possibly fall from here, and neither can you, if you sit. I need someone to talk to."
Horn sat, his relief apparent.
"When I was in the cockpit, I wanted to leave it in order to pray-that was what I told myself, at least. But when I was up here alone and might have prayed to my heart's content, I did not. I contemplated my shoes instead, and thought about certain things. They weren't foolish things for the most part, but I feel very foolish for having thought so much about them. Are you going with Auk when he leaves the whorl? That's what he's going to do, you know. The Crew, as Sciathan calls the people of his city, have some of the underground towers Mamelta showed me-intact underground towers-and they're going to give Auk one. I forget what Mamelta called them."
"You never told me about towers, Caldé."
Silk did, striving unsuccessfully to make his description concise. "That isn't all I can recall, but that's all that's of importance, I believe, and now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever told anyone, except for Doctor Crane while we were fellow-captives, and Doctor Crane is dead."
"I never even got to see him," Horn said. "I wish I had because of the way you talk about him. Is the underwater boat like this airship?"
"Not at all. It's all metal-practically all iron, I'm certain. There's a hole at the bottom, too, through which the Ayuntamiento can launch a smaller boat. You'd think that would sink the big one, wouldn't you? But it didn't, and we got away through that hole, Doctor Crane and I." Silk paused, lost in thought. "There are monstrous fish in the lake, Horn, fish bigger than you can imagine. Chenille told me that once, and she's quite correct."
"You wanted to know if I was going with Auk. Nettle and me, because either way we'd do it together."
"Yes, of course."
"I don't think so. He hasn't asked us, but I don't think Nettle would want to if he did. There's my father and mother back home, and my brothers and sisters, and Nettle's family."
"Of course," Silk repeated.
"I like Chenille. I like her a lot. But Auk's not what I call a good man, even if Tartaros did choose him to enlighten. You remember what I told you about him that time? He's still the same, I think. The people he's got with him aren't much better, either. He calls them the best thieves in the whorl, did you know that, Caldé? Because of stealing this airship."
"They're not all thieves," Silk said, "though Auk may like to pretend they are. Most are just poor people from the Orilla and our own quarter. I doubt that many real thieves have the sort of faith something like this requires." He fell silent, by no means sure that he should say more.
"What is it, Caldé?"
"I doubt that all of them will go. Chenille will, I think, though she would be a wealthy woman in Viron; but I wouldn't be in the least surprised to see more than a few of the others hold back."
"You're not going, are you, Caldé?"
Silk shook his head. "I would like to. I don't believe Hyacinth would, however; and these are Auk's people when all is said and done. Not mine."
"Then Nettle and me will come home with you and Hyacinth. Moly wants to go back, too. She wants to find her husband and get back to building their daughter. And there's Patera Incus and Patera Remora."
Silk nodded. "But we will not be numerous enough to keep the Trivigauntis we have on board from reclaiming their airship, even so. Had you thought of that, Horn? Not unless a great many of Auk's followers desert him at the last moment. It had just occurred to me when you laid hold of my shoulders."
Horn frowned. "Can we leave the Trivigauntis in Mainframe, Caldé? I can't think of anything else we can do."
"I can. Or at least, I believe I have, which gave me a very good reason not to step off the edge. Perhaps I needed one more than I knew." Noticing Horn's expression, he added, "I'm sorry if I distress you."
Horn swallowed. "I want to tell you something, sort of a secret. I haven't told anybody yet except Nettle. I know you won't laugh, but please don't tell anybody else."
"I won't, unless I believe it absolutely necessary."
"You know the cats' meat woman? She comes to sacrifice just about every Scylsday."
Silk nodded. "Very well."
"She likes Maytera. Moly, I mean. She came to see her one time at the palace. I wouldn't have thought she'd walk all the way up the hill, but she did. They were sitting in the kitchen, and the cats' meat woman-"
"Scleroderma," Silk murmured. His eyes were on the purple slopes of far-away mountains. "It's a puffball-it grows in forests."
"She was the one that held General Mint's horse for her before she charged the floaters in Cage Street," Horn continued. "She told Moly, and naturally Moly wanted to know all about it, so they talked about that and the fighting, and how Kypris came to our manteion for the funeral. Then she said she was writing all about it, writing down everything that had happened and how she'd been right in the middle of all the most important parts."
Silk tried not to smile, but failed.
"So she wants her grandchildren to be able to read about everything, and how she met you when you were just out of the schola, and how she walked up to the Caldé's Palace and they let her right in. I thought it was pretty funny too."
"I think it heart-warming," Silk told him. "We may laugh-I wouldn't be surprised if she laughed herself-and yet she's right. Her grandchildren are still small, I imagine, and though they've lived in these unsettled times themselves, they won't remember much about them. When they're older, they'll be delighted to have a history written by their own grandmother from the perspective of their family. I applaud her."
"Well, maybe I should of thought like that too, Caldé, but I didn't. To tell the truth, I got kind of mad."
"You didn't play some trick on her, I hope."
"No, but I started thinking about what had happened and if she'd really been in the middle like she said. Pretty soon I saw she hadn't at all, but you'd been there more than anybody, more even than General Mint. And what Scleroderma said about meeting you when you got out of the schola? Well, I met you then too. You used to come into our class and talk to us, and naturally I'd see you helping Patera Pike at sacrifice. So I decided I'm going to write down everything I can remember as soon as I get some paper. I'll call it Patera Silk's Book, or something like that."
"I'm flattered." This time Silk succeeded in suppressing his smile. "Are you going to write about this, too? Sitting up here talking to me?"
"Yes, I am." Horn filled his lungs with the still, pure air. "And that's another reason for you not to jump off. If you did, I'd have to end it right here." He rapped the deck with his knuckles. "Right up here, and then maybe I'd wonder a little about why you did, and then it would be over. I don't think that would be a very good ending."
"Nor would it be," Silk agreed.
"But that's the way you were thinking of ending it. You were standing too close to the edge to of been thinking about anything else. Whats the trouble, Caldé? Something's-I don't know. Hurt you somehow, hurt you a lot. If I knew what it was, maybe I could help, or Nettle could."
Without rising, Silk turned away; after a moment, he slid across the varnished wood so that he could let his legs dangle over the edge. "Come here, Horn."
"I'm afraid to."
"You aren't going to fall. Feel how smooth the motion of the airship is. Nor am I going to push you off. Did you think I might? I won't, I promise."
Face down, Horn crept forward.
"That's the way. It's such a magnificent view, perhaps the most magnificent that either of us will ever see. When you mentioned your class,
you reminded me that I'm supposed to be teaching you-it's one of my many duties, and one that I've neglected shamefully since you and I talked in the manse. As your teacher, it's my pleasure as well as my duty to show you things like this whenever I can-and to make you look at them as well, if I must. Look! Isn't it magnificent?"
"It's like the skylands," Horn ventured, "except we're a little closer and it's daytime."
"A great deal closer, and the sun has already begun to narrow. We haven't much time left in which to look at this. A few hours at most."
"We could again tomorrow. We could look out of one of those windows. All the gondolas have them."
"This airship may crash tonight," Silk told him, "or it may be forced to land for some reason. Or the whorl below us might be hidden by clouds, as it was when I looked out of one of the windows earlier today. Let's look while we can."
Horn crept a finger's width nearer the edge.
"Down there's a city bigger than Viron, and those tiny pale dots are its people. See them? They look like that, I believe, because they're staring up at us. In all probability, they've never seen an airship, or seen anything larger than the Fliers that can fly. They'll speculate about us for months, perhaps for years."
"Is it Palustria, Caldé?"
Silk shook his head. "Palustria doesn't even lie in this direction, so it's certainly not Palustria. Besides, I think we've gone farther than that already. We were hoisted up early this morning, and we've been flying south or east ever since. A well-mounted man can ride there in less than a week."
"I've never seen off-center buildings like those," Horn ventured. "Besides, there aren't any swamps. Everybody says Palustria's in the middle of swamps."
"They've turned them into rice fields, or so I'm told-if not all of them at least a large part of them, no doubt the part closest to their city. Their rice crop's failed this year because of the drought. They say it's the first time the rice crop's failed in the entire history of Palustria." For a while Silk sat in silence, staring down at the foreign city below.
"Can I ask you something, Caldé?"
"Certainly. What is it?"
"Why isn't it windier up here? I've never been up on a mountain, but Maytera read something about that to us one time, and it said it was real windy just about all the time. Looking down, it seems like we're going fast. It's not taking us very long at all to go over this, and it's big. So the wind ought to be in our faces."
"I asked our pilot the same thing," Silk told him, "and I was ready to kick myself for stupidity when she told me. Look there, up and out, and you can see one of the engines that's still running. Notice how slowly it's turning? You can almost make out the wooden arms; but when the engines were going fast, those were just a blur, a shimmer in front of each engine."
"Like a mill."
"Somewhat; but while the arms of a windmill are turned by the wind, these are turned by their engines to create a wind that will blow us wherever we wish. They're making very little wind at present-just enough to keep us from tumbling about. We're being carried by a natural wind; but because we're blown along by it, like a dry leaf or one of those paper streamers the wind tore off our victory arch, it seems to us that the air is scarcely moving."
"I think I understand. What if we turned around and tried to go the other way?"
"Then this still air would at once become a gale."
The smooth wooden deck on which Silk was sitting tilted, seeming almost to fall away from under him.
"Patera!"
He felt Horn clutch his robe. The sound of the remaining engines rose. "I'm all right," he said.
"You could've slid off! I almost did."
"Not unless the gondola were to slope much more steeply." A vagrant breeze ruffled Silk's straw-colored hair.
"What happened?" From the sound of Horn's voice; he was far from the edge now, perhaps halfway to the hatch.
"The wind increased, I imagine. The new wind would have reached our tail first; presumably it lifted it."
"You still want to die."
The plaintive note in Horn's voice was more painful than an accusation. "No," Silk said.
"Won't you tell me what's wrong? Please, Caldé?"
"I would if I could explain it." The city was behind them already, its houses and fields replaced by forbidding forests. "I might say that it's an accumulation of small matters. Have you ever had a day when everything went amiss? Of course you have-everyone has."
"Sure," Horn said.
"Can you come a little closer? I can scarcely hear you."
"All right, Caldé.
"I also want to say that it has to do with the Plan of Pas; but that isn't quite right. Pas, you see, isn't the only god who has a plan. I've just understood this one, perhaps while I was still in the cockpit, as it's called, guiding this airship and thinking-when I didn't have to think much about that-about Hyacinth's overpowering our pilot. Or perhaps only when I was talking with General Saba, just before I came up here. It might be fair to say that I understood in the cockpit, but that the full import of what I had understood had come only when I was talking with Nettle and General Saba."
"I think I get it."
"On the other hand, I could say that it was about facts that the Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can and do take place. Which would you like to hear about first?"
"The little things going wrong, I guess. Only please come back here with me, Patera. You said it was hard to hear me. Well, I can hardly hear you."
"I'm perfectly safe, Horn." Silk discovered that he was grasping the edge of the deck; he forced himself to relax, placing his hands together as if in prayer. "We might begin anywhere, but let us begin with Maytera Marble. With Moly, as she asks us to call her now. Do you think her name was really Moly-Molybdenum-before she became a sibyl? Honestly."
"That's what she says, Caldé." Horn was moving closer; Silk heard the faint scrub of his coat and trousers against the planking.
"I don't. She hasn't told me she's lying, but I hope she will soon."
"I-I don't think so, Caldé." Horn's tones grew deeper as he asserted his opinion. "She's really careful about that kind of thing."
"I know she is. That's why it's such a torment to her. I'm going to ask Patera Incus to shrive me. I hope that it will lead her to ask him-or Patera Remora, though Incus would be better-to do the same."
"I still-"
"Why are there so few chems now, Horn? There the Plan of Pas has clearly gone awry. He made them both male and female, and clearly intended them to reproduce and so maintain their numbers-perhaps even increase them. Let us assume that he peopled our whorl with equal numbers of each sex, which would seem to be the logical thing for him to do. What went wrong?" It was becoming colder, or Silk more sensitive to the cold. He drew his thick winter robe about him.
"I don't know, Caldé. The soldiers sleep a lot, and naturally they can't, you know, build anybody then."
"Ours do, at least. Most of the soldiers in most other cities are dead. Most have been dead for a century or longer. Pas should have made female soldiers, like the troopers from Trivigaunte. He didn't, and that was clearly an error."
"You shouldn't say things like that, Patera."
"Why not, if I think them true? Would Pas like me better if I were a coward? Some male chems were artisans and farm laborers, from what I know of them, and a few were servants-butlers and so forth. But most were soldiers, and the soldiers fought for their cities and died, or slept as Hammerstone did. The female chems, who were largely cooks or maids, wore out and died childless. Nearly every soldier must have courted a cook or a maid, three hundred years ago. And nearly every such cook and maid must have loved a soldier. How likely is it that such a couple would be reunited by chance after centuries?"
"It could happen." Horn sounded defiant.
"Of course it could. All s
orts of unlikely things can, but they rarely do. Something has been troubling her ever since she and Hammerstone were married, and I believe I know what it is. Let's leave it at that."
"Even if you're right," Horn said, "that's not a very good reason to want to die."
"I disagree, but let's move on. In the cockpit, I realized that Chenille and Hyacinth had fought when both of them were at Orchid's-she was the woman who paid for the funeral at which Kypris spoke to us, not that it matters. My sister-"
"I didn't know you had a sister, Caldé.
Silk smiled. "Forget I said that, please; it was a slip of the tongue. I was about to say that Chenille blacked Hyacinth's eyes, which isn't surprising since she's considerably larger and stronger. Nor do I blame her. If Hyacinth has forgiven her, and she clearly has, I can do no less. But they lied about it, both of them, and I found it very painful. I can't prove they lied, Horn; but if you'd been there, you would have caught the lie just as I did. Hyacinth identified an incident to which Chenille was about to refer before Chenille specified it. That could only mean that Chenille was much more closely involved than she pretended."
A wide river dotted with ice divided the forest below. Silk leaned forward to study it. "You'll say that what I've told you is not a good reason to die. Again, I disagree."
"Caldé…?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"You don't look like her. Like Chenille. She's got that red hair, but it's dyed. Underneath her hair's dark, I think. Your eyes are blue, but hers are brown, and like you said she's real big and strong. You're tall and pretty strong, but…"
"You need not proceed, Horn, if it embarrasses you."
"What I mean is she'd be a lot like Auk if she was a man. You'd be a better runner, but-but…"
"We are alike in certain ways, I suppose."
"That's not it." Horn was less at ease than ever. "Since you've been Caldé everybody talks about the old one. Then last night before those women came you were talking about his will. Nettle told me, and this's her idea, really. He said he had an adopted son, and this son was going to be the next one. What Nettle says is he didn't say to make it happen, he just said it would. Is that right?"
