Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  They floated in an infinite emptiness lit by a remote, spool-shaped black sun: Sciathan the Flier, Patera Incus and Patera Remora, the old woman who called herself Moly, Nettle and Horn, the Caldé's wife, and the Caldé. The shrinking red dot that was the lander winked out.

  "Good-bye, Auk my noctolater." The speaker seemed near, though there was a note in his voice that had traveled far; it was a man's voice, deep, and heavy with sorrow.

  "Good-bye, Auk," Silk repeated; until he heard his own voice, he did not realize he had spoken aloud. "Good-bye, sister. Good-bye, Gib. Farewell."

  Maytera Marble murmured, "Heartbroken. Poor General Mint will be simply heartbroken."

  "He goes to a better place than any you have seen."

  "I disliked him, though the harlot Chenille was not devoid of pre-eminent qualities. Notwithstanding, I feel bereft…"

  So softly that Silk supposed that only he could hear her, Hyacinth inquired, "Is that where? Those little dots?"

  "To one or the other," the god replied. "The blue whorl or the green. Auk's lander cannot carry them to both."

  "Auk-ah. Devoted to you, eh? As we, um, all. He was, er, reformed? Devout. If you are not, um, hey?"

  There was no reply. The distant sparks faded. Hyacinth gripped Silk's arm, pointing to the black, spool-shaped sun behind them, from which light streamed. "What is that? Is it-is it…? The lander came out of it."

  "That is our Whorl" Sciathan wiped his eyes.

  "That little thing?"

  Already the little thing was fading; Silk relaxed. "You liked Auk, didn't you? So did I. If I live as long as His Cognizance, I won't forget meeting him in the Cock, sipping brandy while I tried to make out his face in the shadows."

  "When I saw Aer die, I did not weep. That pain was too deep for weeping. Auk is not dead, but no one will call me Upstairs any more. I weep for that."

  "Wish that he stated, um, unequivocally, eh?" Remora had already activated his propulsion module and was drifting toward the circular aperture. "Is-um-Great Pas satisfied? Is this adequate? Sufficient?"

  Silk and Hyacinth followed him. Silk said, "If he were, we Cargo would return to our herds and fields. Auk has bought us a brief respite, that's all. Pas will not be satisfied until the last person in the whorl has gone. It has served its purpose."

  They emerged into the penumbra, shade that seemed blinding light after the darkness. "I don't see how Tartaros showed us the whorl from outside," Hyacinth murmured. "There can't be an eye out there, can there?" When Silk did not reply, "I don't like not walking. My thighs are getting fat, I can feel it."

  Maytera Marble overtook them. "They can't be, dear, you don't eat anything. I'm worried about you."

  "I don't like people seeing up my gown, either. I know it sounds silly, but I don't. Every time I feel like somebody's looking up there my thighs swell up and never go back down."

  "There is no up," Incus called as he accelerated toward them, "nor is there any down. All is a realm of light."

  "The, um, deceased." Remora glanced back at him, vaguely worried. "How shall we explain that, Your Eminence? The, um, faithful, eh? They expect the-ah-dear decedent."

  "Do you desire a visitation by your dead?" Sciathan asked.

  Silk said flimly, "No." Hyacinth's jaw dropped, and for a moment her sculptured face looked foolish.

  Silk decelerated to allow Sciathan to catch up. "I speak only for myself. I've met mine, and know and love them. The temptation to rejoin them would be too great. I know your offer was well intended but no, I do not."

  "There is no physicality," the little Flier explained. "Mainframe recreates them and beams the data to one's mind."

  "Moly, would you escort Hyacinth back to the airship for me, please? I have to confer with Sciathan." Silk took the Flier's arm.

  Horn asked, "Can we come?" Silk hesitated, then shook his head; Oreb launched himself from Horn's shoulder to flap after them upside down.

  One by one the pilot was testing the engines; Horn counted as each coughed, roared to life, and declined to a hum.

  Nettle asked, "Aren't you going to knock?"

  He would have preferred that she do it, but could not say so. "What on?"

  "On the frame, I guess. They're pretty solid."

  Silk pushed the curtain to one side as Horn raised his fist. "Hyacinth isn't here. Were you looking for me?"

  Both nodded.

  "Very well, what can I do for you?"

  Horn cleared his throat. "You promised me you wouldn't go up on the roof again, Caldé. Remember?"

  "Of course. I've kept my promise."

  "Me and Nettle have been up there," Horn said, and Oreb applauded with joyful wings.

  Nettle said, "It's not scary when you can float." Her eyes appealed to Horn, who added, "We want you to go up with us."

  "You're releasing me from my promise?"

  Horn nodded. "Yeah."

  "Say yes, Horn." Silk looked thoughtful. "You bear the repute of your palaestra."

  "Yes, Caldé. Caldé, is Patera Remora really going to be our new augur?"

  "No." Absentmindedly, Silk glanced around the cubicle for his propulsion module before remembering that he had returned it. "He cannot become your new augur, since he is augur there already. He'll take up his duties when we get home. How do you keep from floating away? That might not be frightening, I'll allow; but I would think it serious."

  "Bird save!"

  "Yes, if I'm adrift you must tow me to safety."

  "There's supplies in the last gondola," Horn explained as Silk pushed off from the doorway. "We found a coil of rope in there. The table in the chartroom's bolted down, so we tie onto the legs."

  "It's better than having that thing on your back," Nettle told Silk. "You just float around without having to worry about anything. When you're tired of it, you pull yourself in."

  Horn added, "But I don't get tired of it."

  "There's something you want me to see." They had floated through the officers' sleeping quarters; Silk stopped, bulging the canvas partition, and opened the door to the messroom.

  "Just-just everything you can see from out there."

  "Something to ask, in that case."

  In the chartroom, Silk knotted the finger-thick line about his waist in accordance with Horn's instructions and pushed off from the table, out through the open hatch.

  The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night.

  Horn gestured. "See, Caldé? We don't have to sit on the edge, but we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It's kind of blue at first, then so bright you can't be sure."

  Nettle emerged from the hatch. "I still don't understand what Mainframe is, Caldé. Just all those things with the lights running over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can't rain? How would they get the rain to come down?"

  "This is Mainframe," Silk told her. "You are seeing it."

  "The big square things?"

  "With what underlies its meadows and lawns; Mainframe is dispersed among them all. Imagine millions of millions of tiny circuits like those in a card-billions of billions, actually. The warmth of each is less than the twinkle of a firefly; but there are so many that if they were packed together their own heat would destroy them. They would become a second sun. As things are it is always summer here, thanks to those circuits."

  "That's what you call the little wiggly gold lines in card?" Nettle inquired. "Circuits? They don't do anything."

  "They would, if they were returned to their proper places in a lander. We will have to return some ourselves soon."

  Horn was watching Silk narrowly. "Did Sciathan tell you all that?"

  "Not in so many words, but he said enough to let me infer the rest. What was it you wanted
to ask?"

  "A whole bunch of stuff. You know, Caldé, for my book. Is it all right if I call you Caldé?"

  "Of course. Or Patera, or Silk, or even Patera Caldé, which is what His Cognizance calls me. As you like."

  "I heard Chenille tell Moly that when she was Kypris she made you call her Chenille anyway. It must have seemed funny."

  Nettle said, "I'm not writing a book, Caldé, but I've got stuff I want to ask, too. I'm helping Horn with his, I guess. I'll have to, probably. Did you make the dead people come back and talk to us like they did?"

  "Mainframe did that, Nettle." Silk smiled. "Believe me, I'm unable to compel it to do anything. I asked Sciathan to ask it on our behalf, but he explained that it was unnecessary. Mainframe knows everything that takes place here; as soon as I formulated my request, Mainframe took it under consideration. I'm delighted that it was granted, immensely grateful."

  "But not back home." Nettle waved vaguely at the deck some ten cubits below. "It doesn't hear everything there."

  "No, it doesn't; but it discovers more than I would have believed. Since Echidna's theophany, I've assumed the gods knew only what they saw and heard through Sacred Windows and glasses, which seems to be very near the truth. Those are Mainframe's principal sources, too; but it has others-the Fliers' data, for example."

  Horn said, "I've got a tough one, Caldé. I'm not trying to show you up or anything.

  "Of course not. What is it?"

  "Tartaros told Auk the short sun whorl would be like ours, only there wouldn't be any people, or no people like us. Auk told Chenille, and I asked her. She said it means there'll be grass and rocks and flowers, only not like we're used to. Why is that?"

  Nettle shook her head in disbelief. "That's not hard at all. Because Pas picked them out for us to make it easy."

  "Or difficult," Silk muttered.

  "I don't understand."

  "Suppose there were no plants or animals-we'll leave the rocks aside. Auk's lander is stocked with seeds and embryos, as you saw. He'll be able to grow whichever ones he wants; and if the whorl he chooses had none of its own, those would be the only plants and animals with which he would have to deal. As things are, he'll have a much more interesting time of it-as well as a much harder one."

  The hum of their engines deepened, and the three of them drifted toward the prow of the second gondola until the ropes that united them with the first were taut. "We're under way," Horn announced. Oreb agreed: "Go home!"

  "As soon as we're gone, I don't think I'll believe I was here." Nettle sighed. "Grandma came for a talk. I said stay with me and we'll take you back, but she said she couldn't."

  "Patera Remora's mother came to see him," Horn told Silk. "He's been smiling at everybody. He told her he had his own manteion now, and he'd sacrifice and shrive and bring the Peace, and wouldn't have to work in the Palace any more. And she said it's what she'd wanted for him all the time."

  "Hyacinth's mother visited her, too."

  Nettle looked surprised. "I didn't think her mother was dead, Caldé."

  "Neither did Hyacinth."

  Hand over hand they pulled themselves forward again, until they were standing on the deck, although standing very lightly; Silk freed himself from the loop of rope.

  Nettle said, "Caldé, you never did answer my question about the roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade's so close here, and we can't see the sun."

  "The Pylon makes it," Horn declared, "or anyhow it shoots it into the sky. Isn't that right, Caldé? Then the sun burns it but instead of smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn't shoot out more, the shade would burn up and there'd be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe would fry, because it's so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon and goes all the way to the West Pole."

  "Long way," Oreb elaborated.

  "We, too, have a long way to go," Silk said, addressing neither Horn nor Nettle, "but at last we've begun."

  "I understand about the roofs now," Nettle said.

  He looked around at her. "Do you? Tell me."

  "We used to go to the lake every summer when I was little. Then… I don't know, something happened, and it seemed like we never had enough money."

  "Taxes went up after the old Caldé died," Horn told her. "They went up a lot."

  "Maybe that was it. Anyway, one year when I was nine or ten we waited till everybody else had gone home, and went when it was cheaper, and after that we never went any more."

  Silk nodded.

  "It would be nice, sometimes, in the afternoons, and we'd swim, but it was pretty cold in the morning. One morning I got up when everybody else was still asleep and walked to the lake just to look at it. I think I knew this was the last year, and we wouldn't come any more. Maybe we were going home that day."

  "This isn't about roofs," Horn said; but Silk put a finger to his lips.

  "The lake was all covered with ghosts, white shapes coming up out of the water and reaching for the air, getting bigger and stronger all the time. I was thinking about ghosts a lot then, because Gam had, you know, gone to Mainframe, the one I talked to today. We were supposed to say she was in Mainframe, but we didn't think it meant anything. Aren't you going to say that it wasn't really ghosts, Horn?"

  He shook his head.

  "It wasn't, it was fog. There was an old lady fishing off the pier, and I guess she liked me because when I asked she said there was water in the air over the lake, and when it got cold enough it came together and made tiny little drops that take a long, long while to fall, and that was what you saw. I'd never wondered where fog came from before then."

  "Fog good."

  "That's right, you're a marsh bird. Don't they come from Palustria, Caldé? The swamps around there?"

  Silk nodded. "I believe so."

  "What I was going to say was that the fog got thicker and thicker that day, and got everything wet. So if they have a lot of fogs here… We're not hardly there, though, any more. But you know what I mean. Only you wouldn't want it inside, so you'd have roofs, and they do."

  Horn said, "The fountains get the grass wet, too, like it does at home on a windy day. It's not as much as you'd think, because there's a thing that sucks in air at the bottom and takes the water out for the pump. If they shut that off, it would water everything."

  Silk tossed aside his rope and watched it settle to the deck. "We have weight once more."

  "Yeah, I know. I mean yes."

  "I should consider this better before I speak, Horn, but I find it exhilarating. When we arrived and could float-could fly, after a fashion, after Sciathan secured propulsion modules for us-I found that exhilarating as well. I'm contradicting myself, I suppose."

  Horn looked to Nettle, who said, "I don't think so."

  "It's not easy for me to sort out, and even less easy for me to explain. Sciathan is a Flier, in love with flight and pardonably proud of his wings and his special status among the Crew. Until we got here, I was confident that I understood his feelings."

  Horn looked puzzled. "Everybody flies here, Caldé."

  "Exactly. They have to, and we flew in the same way. Or floated. Floated may be the better term. It's easy, so much so that all three of us floated here without modules; but we floated under a lowering shade that never brought night or rose to bring a new day."

  "It's getting to be daylight here." Horn gestured toward the sky-filling brown bulk of the airship.

  "We've reached the foothills of the Mountains That Look At Mountains," Silk said, "and if we had tried to float this far, we'd have settled to the ground. But Sciathan flies over these hills, and across the mountains, too-or soars from valley to valley, if he chooses."

  "Bird fly!"

  "Yes. Sciathan flies like Oreb here, or the eagle that brought down poor Iolar. I had a taste of that when I piloted this airship." For a moment Silk's smile was radiant.

  Saba's head emerged from the hatch. "Hello, Caldé! Going to take a reading?"

  "I wouldn't know how."

  She s
wung herself easily onto the deck. "I do, and I've got the protractor so I can show you. It's early yet, but I wanted to climb up here while it didn't take so much lifting." She chuckled. "I heard you talking about flying. I command a thousand pterotroopers, but I can't fly like they do. Neither could you, we're both too heavy. Even this girl would have to lose a little to be much good."

  "I was about to explain to Horn and Nettle that while wings are wonderful-and they are, truly, truly wonderful-feet are wonderful too. Doctor Crane, if he were still alive, could amputate my legs, and then I'd be light enough to fly the way your troopers do, and perhaps even as Sciathan does; but as much as I envy them, I wouldn't want him to. It would be marvelous to fly as they do, so it's not surprising that we envy them; but imagine how much someone without legs must envy us."

  "I don't have to imagine. Some of my dearest friends have lost their legs."

  Horn asked, "Are you going to be pilot some on the way back, Caldé? You like it so much I think you ought to. You were good at it, too."

  Saba said, "For somebody without training, he was better than good. He'll be taking over in four hours."

  Horn looked relieved.

  "When we're past the mountains," Silk told him, and walked forward to the prow of the gondola.

  Saba trotted after him. "I wouldn't do that, Caldé. We still haven't got all the altitude we want, and mountains can give you some tricky winds."

  "I'll be fine; but you must remain where you are."

  Behind Saba, Nettle called, "Horn's afraid you're going to jump, Caldé. That's all it is"

  "I'm not."

  "When General Saba said you were going to be the pilot, he felt a lot better, because he thought you wouldn't want to miss it. We both did."

  Looking down upon the green and rising slopes far below, where hillside meadows yielded to forested heights, Silk smiled. "You don't have to worry. I love life and Hyacinth too much to jump. Besides, if I jumped I wouldn't be able to wrestle with your questions, Nettle-though that might be good for both of us. Have you more?"

  "I was going to ask you about the mountains." Timorously, she edged past Saba to grasp Silk's hand. "It scares me to look at them. You know how lampreys look in the market? Those round mouths with rings and rings of teeth? These look like that to me, under us and up in the skylands too. Only a million times bigger."