Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  "Were you going to ask me why they exist? Because Pas built them to guard Mainframe; but that's sheer speculation. I don't know any more than you do."

  "If anybody lives there. And-and why there's snow on the tops. The tops are closer to the sun, so they ought to be warmer."

  "I don't believe that the sun heats air," Silk told her absently, "not much, and perhaps not at all. If it did, the sun's heat couldn't reach us. If you think about it, you'll soon realize that sunlight doesn't illuminate air either; we could see air if it did, and we can't."

  Behind Silk, Horn said, "No kind of light does then."

  "Correct, I'm sure. The warmth of the sun heats the soil and the waters, and they in return warm the air above them. Up here where there are only widely separated peaks, the air must be cold of necessity. Hence, snow; and in the Mountains That Look At Mountains, snow has weight enough to fall."

  Silk paused, considering. "I never asked Sciathan who lived in the mountains, or whether anyone did. I've seen no cities, but I would think a few people must, people who fled the cities or were driven out. It must be a wild and lawless place; no doubt many like it for just that reason."

  From the hatch Hyacinth called, "Silk, is that you?" and he turned to smile at her.

  "I've been looking all over for you, but nobody'd seen you. Oh, hello, General." As gracefully as ever, Hyacinth stepped from the ladder onto the deck. "Hi, sprats. Got a better view from up here? It's bigger, anyway."

  "You can leave me to my own devices now," Silk told Horn.

  It was snowing in Viron, a hard fall that converted misery to unrelieved wretchedness, snow that rendered every surface slippery and made every garment damp, and rushed into Maytera Mint's eyes each time she faced the wind.

  "We have done what we can, My General." Under stress of weather, the captain stood beside, not before, her. Both had their coat collars turned up against the wind and cold; his uniform cap was pulled over his ears like her striped stocking cap, his right arm inadequately immobilized by a bloodstained sling.

  "I'm sure you have, Colonel, They'll start dying in a few hours, I'm afraid, just the same."

  "I am not a colonel, My General."

  "You are, I just promoted you. Now show me you deserve it. Find them shelter."

  "I have tried, My General. I shall try again, though every house in this quarter has been burned." He was not a tall man, yet he seemed tall as he spoke.

  That about the houses had been unnecessary, Maytera Mint thought, and showed how tired he was. She said, "I know."

  "This was your own quarter, was it not? Near the Orilla?"

  "It was, and it is."

  "I go. May I say first that I would prefer to fight for you and the gods, My General? Viron must be free!"

  She shivered. "What if you lose that arm, Colonel?"

  "One hand suffices to fire a needler, My General."

  She smiled in spite of her determination not to. "Even the left? Could you hit anything?"

  He took a step backward, saluting with his uninjured arm. "When one cannot aim well, one closes with the enemy."

  He had vanished into the falling snow before she could return his salute. She lowered the hand that had not quite gotten to her eyebrow, and began to walk among the huddled hundreds who had fled the fighting.

  I would know every face, she thought, if I could see their faces. Not the names, because I've never been good with names. Dear Pas, won't you let us have even a single ray of sun?

  Children and old people, old people and children. Did old people not fight because they were too feeble? Or was it that they had, over seventy or eighty years, come to appreciate the futility of it?

  Something caught at her skirt. "Are they bringing food?" She dropped to one knee. The aged face might almost have been Maytera Rose's. "I've ordered it, but there's very little to be had. And we've very few people we can spare to look for it, wounded troopers mostly."

  "They'll eat it themselves!"

  Perhaps they will, Maytera Mint thought. They are hungry, too, I'm sure, and they've earned it. "Somebody will bring you something soon, before shadelow." She stood up.

  "Sib? Sib? Mama's over there, and she's real cold."

  She peered into the pale little face. "Perhaps you could find wood and start a fire. Someone must have an igniter."

  "She won't…" The child's voice fell away.

  Maytera Mint dropped to one knee again. "Won't what?"

  "She won't take my coat, Maytera. Will you make her?"

  Oh, my! Oh, Echidna! "No. I cannot possibly interfere with so brave a woman," There was something familiar about the small face beneath the old rabbit-skin cap. "Don't I know you? Didn't you go to our palaestra?"

  The child nodded.

  "Maytera Marble's group. What's your name?"

  "Villus, Maytera." A deep inhalation for words requiring boldness. "I was sick, Maytera. I got bit by a big snake. I really did. I'm not lying."

  "I'm sure you're not, Villus."

  "That's why she won't, so tell her I'm well!" The small coat stood open now, displaying what appeared to be an adult's sweater, far too large.

  "No, Villus. Button those again before you freeze." Her own fingers were fumbling with the buttons as she spoke. "Find wood, as I told you. There must be a little left, even if it's charred on the outside. Make a fire."

  As she stood, the wind brought faint boomings that might almost have been thunder. Distant, she decided, yet not distant enough. It probably meant the enemy had broken through, but it would be worse than futile for her to rush back knowing nothing. Bison would send a messenger with news and a fresh horse. These two… "Are you all right?"

  "We'll keep." An old man's voice, an old man with his arm around a woman just as old. The old woman said, "We're not hurt or anything." "We been talking about that." (The man again.) "We'd stay warmer moving around." "We were pretty tired when we got here."

  "I'm trying to get you some food," Maytera Mint told them.

  "We could help, couldn't we, Dahlia? Help pass it out, or anything you want done."

  "That's good of you. Very good. Do either of you have an igniter?"

  They shook their heads.

  "Then you might look for one, ask other people. I set a little boy to gathering fuel a moment ago. If we could build a few fires, that would help a great deal."

  "All this burned." The old man made an unfocused gesture with his free hand. "Should be coals yet." His wife confirmed, "Bound to be, snow or no snow." "I smell smoke." Sniffing, he struggled to stand, and Maytera Mint helped him up. "I'll have a look," he said.

  Here I am, Maytera Mockorange. I am the sibyl I dreamed of becoming, moving among sufferers and helping them, though I have so little help to give.

  She visualized Maytera Mockorange's severe features. The girl who would soon assume the new name Mint had yearned for renunciation and pictured herself walking through the whorl she would give up like a blessing; Maytera Mockorange had warned her of missed meals and meager food, of hard beds and hard thankless work. Of year after year of loneliness.

  They had both been right.

  Maytera Mint fell to her knees with folded hands and bowed head. "O Great Pas, O Mothering Echidna, you have given me my heart's desire." A feeling she had never known thrilled her: her body alone knelt in the snow; her spirit was kneeling among violets, baby's breath, and lily-of-the-valley, in a bower of roses. "I have won life's battle. I am complete. End my life today, if that is your pleasure. I shall rush into the arms of Hierax exulting."

  "We tried, Maytera."

  It had been a woman's voice to her left, and its words had not been addressed to her. To another sibyl then? Maytera Mint got to her feet.

  "Cold," the woman was saying, "and there's not a scrap of flesh on her poor bones."

  Three-no, four people. Two fat people sitting in the snow, with a starved face between the round, ruddy ones. The figure in black bending over them was the sibyl, clearly. What had been that young one
's name? "Maytera? Maytera Maple? Is that you?"

  "No, sib." She straightened up, turning her head farther than seemed possible, eyes glowing in a tarnished metal face. "It's me, sib. It's Maggie."

  "It-it-I-oh, sib! Moly!" And they were hugging and dancing as they had on the Palatine. "Sib, sib, SIB!"

  Another distant boom.

  "Moly! Oh, oh, Moly! May I call you Maytera Marble, just once? I've missed you so!"

  "Be quick. I'm about to become an abandoned woman."

  "You, Moly?"

  "Yes. I am." Maytera Marble's voice was firm as granite. "And don't call me Moly, please. It's not my name. It never was. My name's Magnesia. Call me Maggie. Or Marble, if it makes you happy. My husband will-never mind. Have you met my granddaughter, sib? This is she, but I don't think she'll talk right now. You must excuse her."

  "Mucor?" Maytera Mint knelt beside the emaciated girl. "Our Caldé described you to me, and I'm an old friend of your grandmother's."

  "Wake up." Mucor's pinched face grinned without meaning. "Break it." There was no hint of intelligence in her stare. She said nothing further, and the silence of the snow closed about them until the fat woman ended it by saying, "This's my husband, General. Shrike's his name."

  "Scleroderma! Scleroderma, I didn't recognize you."

  "Well, I knew you right off. I said that's General Mint and I held her horse when she charged them on Cage Street, I did, and if you'd gone like you ought to you'd know her too."

  The fat man tugged the brim of his hat.

  "I went up to the Caldé's Palace to see Maytera, only she wasn't home and half the wall down, so I've been taking care of her granddaughter ever since, poor little thing. Did those bad women carry you off, Maytera? That's what I heard."

  "You'd better call me Maggie," Maytera Marble said, and pulled her habit over her head.

  "Maytera!"

  "I am not a sibyl any more," the slender, shining figure declared. "I have become an abandoned woman, as I warned you I would." She dropped the voluminous black gown over Mucor's head, and pulled it down around her. "Put your arms into the sleeves, dear. It's easy, they're wide."

  "There was a old man that helped me with her," Scleroderma explained, "but he went to fight, then the bad women came and we had to scoot."

  If it had not been for the shock of seeing Maytera Marble nude, Maytera Mint would have smiled.

  "I think it means he's dead, but I hope not. Aren't you cold, Maytera?"

  "Not a bit." Maytera Marble straightened up. "This is much cooler and more comfortable, though I'm sure I'll miss my pockets." She turned to Maytera Mint. "I've been consorting with other abandoned women, a dozen at least. I'm afraid it's rubbed off."

  Maytera Mint swallowed and coughed, wanting to bat the snowflakes away, to sit down with a mug of hot tea, to awaken and find that this little pewter-colored creature was not the elderly sibyl she had thought she knew. "Did they capture-"

  With nimble fingers, Maytera Marble wound the long top of Maytera Mint's blue-striped stocking cap about her neck like a scarf. "This way, dear, then you won't be so cold, that's what it's for. You tuck the end in your coat." She tucked it. "And the tassel keeps it from coming out. See?"

  "These women!" Maytera Mint had spoken more loudly than she had intended, but she continued with the same vehemence, telling herself, I am a general after all. "Are you referring to enemy troopers or Willet's spies?"

  "No, no, no. Dear Chenille, who's really quite a nice girl in her way, and the Caldé's wife. She's no better than she ought to be if you know what I mean. And the women our thieves brought. They were more interesting than the poor women, though the poor women were interesting too. But the thieves' women didn't mind taking their clothes off, or not very much. Dear Chenille actually enjoys it, I'd say. Her figure's prettier than her face, so I find it understandable." Scleroderma said, "So's yours, Maytera," and her husband nodded enthusiastically.

  Another explosion punctuated the sentence. Cocking her head, Maytera Mint decided it had been nearer than the last; there had been something portentous about the sound.

  "…Cognizance told us," Scleroderma finished.

  Maytera Mint asked, "Did you say His Cognizance?" Then, before anyone could answer, put her finger to her lips.

  The stammering popping reports seemed to come from above her head. They were followed after an interval by the remote crash of shells.

  "What is it, General?" Scleroderma asked.

  "I heard guns. A battery of light pieces. You don't often hear the shots, just the whine of the shells and the explosions. These are near, so they may be ours."

  Maytera Marble took Mucor's hand and got her to her feet. "Will you excuse us? I want to take her to the fire."

  "Fire?" Maytera Mint looked around.

  "Right over there. I just saw it. Come along, darling."

  Scleroderma and Shrike were getting to their feet as well, not swiftly but with so much effort, scrambling, and grunting that they gave the impression of frantic action.

  The messenger should be here by now, Maytera Mint told herself, and stepped in front of Scleroderma. "You said His Cognizance was here? You must tell me before you go. But before you do, have you seen a mounted trooper leading another horse?"

  Scleroderma shook her head.

  "But His Cognizance was here?"

  The fat man said, "Stopped an' had a chat, nice as anybody. I wouldn't of known, only the wife, she knows all that. Goes twice, three times most weeks. Just a little man older'n my pa. Had on a plain black whatchacallit, like any other augur." He paused, his eyes following Maytera Marble and Mucor. "Crowd around any harder, an' they'll shove somebody in."

  "You're right." Maytera Mint trotted through the snow to the fire. "People! This little fire can't warm even half of you. Collect more wood. Build another! You can light it from this one." They dispersed with an alacrity that surprised her.

  "Now then!" She whirled upon Scleroderma and Shrike. "If His Cognizance is here, I must speak to him. As a courtesy, if for no other reason. Where did he go?"

  Shrike shrugged; Scleroderma said, "I don't know, General," and her husband added, "Said we'd have to leave this whorl, then the Caldé come an' got him. First time I ever seen him."

  "Caldé Silk?"

  Scleroderma nodded. "He didn't know him either."

  The Trivigauntis had released their prisoners, as General Saba had promised; no other explanation made sense, and it was vitally important. Maytera Mint looked around frantically for the messenger Bison would surely have dispatched minutes ago.

  "He was lookin' for the Caldé," Shrike explained, "only it was Caldé Silk what found him."

  "There aren't as many as there were." Maytera Mint stood on tiptoe, blinking away snow.

  "You told 'em to go find wood, General."

  "General! General!" Beneath the shouted words, she heard the stumbling clatter of a horse ridden too fast across littered ground. "This way!" She waved blindly.

  Scleroderma muttered, "Just listen to those drums. Makes me want to go myself."

  "Drums?" Maytera Mint laughed nervously, and was ashamed of it at once. "I thought it was my heart. I really did."

  Through the snow, Bison's messenger called, "General?" She waved as before, listening. Not the cadent rattle of the thin cylindrical drums the Trivigauntis used, but the steady thumpa-thumpa-thump of Vironese war drums, drums that suggested the palaestra's big copper stew-pot whenever she saw them, war drums beating out the quickstep used to draw up troops in order of battle. Bison was about to attack, and was letting both the enemy and his own troopers know it.

  "General!" The messenger dismounted, half falling off his rawboned brown pony. "Colonel Bison says we got to take it to 'em. The airship's back. Probably you heard it, sir."

  Maytera Mint nodded. "I suppose I did."

  "They been droppin' mortar bombs on us out of it all up and down the line, sir. Colonel says we got to get in close and mix up with 'em so they can't."
/>   "Where is he? Didn't you bring a horse for me?"

  "Yes, sir, only the Caldé took it. Maybe I shouldn't of let him, sir, but-"

  "Certainly you should, if he wanted it." She pushed the messenger out of her way and swung into the saddle. "I'll have to take yours. Return on foot. Where's Bison?"

  "In the old boathouse, sir." The messenger pointed vaguely through the twilit snow, leaving her by no means certain that he was not as lost as she felt.

  "Good luck," Scleroderma called. And then, "I'm coming."

  "You are not!" Maytera Mint locked her knees around the hard-used pony, heedless of the way the saddle hiked her wide black skirt past her knees. "You stay right here and take care of your husband. Help Maytera-I mean Maggie-with the mad girl." She pointed to the messenger, realizing too late that she was doing it with the hilt of her azoth. "Are you certain he's in the boathouse? I ordered him to stay back and not get himself killed."

  "Safest place, sir, with them bombs droppin' on us."

  A floating blur resolved itself into two riders in dark clothing upon a single white horse. A familiar voice shouted, "Go! Follow that officer-he'll take you to shelter. Get away from that fire!"

  The voice was Silk's. As she watched in utter disbelief he galloped through the fire. For a moment she hesitated; then the boom of slug guns decided her.

  "I like this part though," Hyacinth whispered, hugging Silk tighter than ever, "just don't let it trot again."

  He did not, but lacked the breath to say so. Reining up, he shielded his eyes with the right hand that snatched at the pommel whenever he was distracted; the group he had glimpsed through the snow might be a woman with children, and probably was. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his heels into the white gelding's flanks. It was essential not to trot-trotting shook them helpless. More essential not to lose the stirrups that fought free of his shoes whenever they were not gouging his ankles. The gelding slipped in the snow; for an instant he was sure Behind him, Hyacinth shrieked, "Up, stand up! That way!" She sounded angry; and briefly and disloyally, he wished that she possessed the clarion voice that Kypris had bestowed upon Maytera Mint-though it would have been still more useful to have it himself.