Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  If I found it hard to be fair to Auk, I found it harder still to be fair to Hyacinth, whose extraordinary beauty was at once her blessing and her curse. She had little education, far too much vanity, and a savage temper. When Nettle was present, she displayed herself to me, posing, bending over to exhibit her decolletage, raising her skirt to adjust her hose, and so forth. In Nettle's absence, she cursed me if I so much as glanced at her. She saw all human relationships in terms of money, power, and lust, and understood Silk less well than Tick understood her.

  Very few of us, I would say, have known such a woman as General Mint; and it is almost impossible to convey an accurate impression of her to those who have not. She was small, with a smooth little face, a sharp nose, and a dart of brown hair that divided her forehead almost to the eyebrows. In conversation her voice was the soft and timorous one we recalled from her classroom; but when the need for quick, decisive action arose, the little sibyl was cast off immediately. Her glance was fire and steel then, and at the sound of her voice wounded troopers who had seemed too weak to stand snatched up weapons and joined the advance. Unless restrained by her subordinates, she led her troops in person, striding boldly ahead of the boldest and never slackening her pace as she shouted encouragement to those behind her. If it had not been for Bison and Captain Serval, she would certainly have been killed by the second day.

  As a tactician, she understood better than most the need for a simple workable plan which could be put into effect before conditions changed; that and the astounding loyalty she inspired were the keys to her success. Although she is better known as General Mint, I have titled her Maytera, just as I have referred to her sib as Maytera Marble throughout my account. Fewer than I had expected have found fault with Silk's assertion that she took her warlike character from the Goddess of Love, although it seems implausible to me. Nettle suggests that many women, thus inspired by love of their city and their gods, might exhibit the same dauntless courage. Certainly love will face the inhumi at midnight, as we say now.

  Although neither of us spoke to Blood, both of us saw and heard him when he visited the manteion, and saw him and Musk when they offered their white rabbits. Blood's conversations with Silk and Maytera Marble were detailed to us by them; they, I would guess, saw more good in him than Nettle or I would have.

  Neither of us ever saw Doctor Crane, but Maytera Marble had met him and liked him, as Silk had. Chenille, who had known him intimately, said that he looked on injury and illness as a butcher looks on pigs and steers; and I have tried to convey something of that. From what Silk said of him, he believed in Sphigx no more than any other god, and had her reality been proven to him, he would only have turned from ridiculing those who credited it to ridiculing her.

  I have taken Incus's character from Remora's description and our own observations during the flight to Mainframe. He was physically unimpressive, and perhaps for that reason frequently impelled to assert his importance, but not lacking in courage. On the airship I watched him 'enchant' a slug gun by slipping his finger behind the trigger, then snatch it from the trooper as she struggled to fire it.

  Many readers have demanded that I include an account of our passage through the tunnels to the lander and our flight through the abyss. Again I invite them to pen their own, as Scleroderma did. (Her grandson has it and permits visitors to copy it.) I intend to say no more here than is necessary to illuminate the character of the inhumu Nettle and I knew as Patera Quetzal, His Cognizance the Prolocutor of Viron. No doubt many will object to my writing character in such a context, urging that a monster of that kind can no more have character than a hus; but those who trap hus and tame them have told me they differ at least as much as dogs.

  To us Quetzal was not an inhumu, but a venerable old man, wise and compassionate, Silk's supporter and steadfast friend. When Nettle and I returned to the tunnel it was to him that we brought Silk's message. When they had heard it, many wanted to return to the surface to look for Silk and help him search for Hyacinth. Quetzal forbade it, pointing out that it was contrary to Silk's own instructions, and led us down the tunnel in the direction of the lake.

  Then I remembered something that Remora had told me on the airship: how Quetzal had vanished when Spider forced him into the cellar of Blood's ruined villa. When we had walked a long way down the tunnel and even the hardiest had grown weary, and Quetzal himself had fallen behind nearly all of our straggling company, I was able to ask about it.

  "Walk beside me, my son." He put a hand on my shoulder; I recall how light and boneless it felt through the thin jacket I wore, as if he had laid a strip of soft leather beside my neck. "I can't keep up any more. Will you support me? You're young and strong. Patera Caldé likes you, did you know that?"

  I said I hoped he did, and that he had always been kind to me.

  "He likes you. He speaks of you warmly, and of you, my child. You're both good children. Good children, I say. But men and women with children are children to me. No fool like an old man! You women are wiser when you're old, my child. You're grown, both of you. I doubt you know it, but you are."

  We thanked him.

  "I can hardly get along. Like the fat woman. Can't leave her, can we? Can't leave them back there, and she's too heavy to carry." He was wearing an ordinary augur's robe; but he bore the baculus, his rod of office, which he used as a staff.

  I said that we would have to stop soon for Scleroderma's sake, and many others, and offered to go ahead if he would tell me what to look for.

  "I want you to sleep, my son." He seemed to suck his gums and reconsidered. "No, to keep watch. Can you stay awake?"

  I assured him that I could.

  "Good. Someone must, and I can't. I'm always nodding off, ask young Remora. I can't keep up this pace myself, but I have to keep urging everybody to walk faster. What tricks the gods play! Have you a weapon, my child?"

  Nettle shook her head; I explained that she had brought a needler from the airship but had given it to me, and offered to return it to her.

  "Keep it. Keep it! You'll need it when you stand guard." He turned his head. He had a long and very wrinkled neck that would have betrayed his true nature at once had I known then of the hooded inhumi. As it was, I was suddenly frightened because there was nothing of warmth or kindness in his look. It was as though I were seeing a mask, or the features of a corpse propped erect. He said, "You won't shoot me, will you?"

  Naturally I assured him that I would not.

  "Because I'll walk. I always do. They see me around the Palace all night long. They say it's my spirit, that I step out of my skin and walk all night. Do you believe it, my child?"

  Nettle nodded. "If Your Cognizance says so."

  "I don't." I had the impression that he was leaning most of his weight upon my shoulder, yet he was certainly not heavy. "Never believe such stuff. I can't sleep, and so I wander about dazed and tired, that's all. My son, would you tell those in front to go faster? I haven't the breath."

  I shouted, "His Cognizance says we must walk faster!" or something of the kind.

  "Thank you. Now we can stop. Let the fat woman and her man catch up." He turned, motioning to them urgently.

  Nettle whispered, "We're in danger down here. We must be, or he wouldn't be in such a hurry."

  She had spoken in my ear, and I myself had hardly heard her, yet Patera Quetzal (as I thought of him) said, "We are, my daughter, but I don't know how much. When you don't know, you have to act as though it were great."

  Wishing to return to my question, I asked him, "Were you in very much danger from Spider, Your Cognizance?"

  He shook his head, not as a man does, turning it from side to side, but swaying it while holding it nearly upright. "From him? None. No, a lot, since he would have wasted my time. I'd a lot to do, so I left." He laughed, an old man's high-pitched cackle. "Vanished in the darkness. Is that what young Remora told you? He told somebody that, I know. Want to know how to do it?"

  He turned his back and raised his b
lack robe to cover his head, standing with his hands and the baculus out of sight in front of him. That stretch of tunnel was as well lit by the creeping green lights the first settlers brought as any, yet he seemed almost to have disappeared, baculus and all. I said, "I see, Your Cognizance. I mean, I don't."

  Scleroderma and her husband caught up with us then, she waddling very slowly and dolefully, he limping in a way that showed how his feet hurt. Nettle told them that Quetzal was worried about them.

  "I'm worried about him," Scleroderma said, and holding onto her husband and me as though we were a couple of trees lowered herself to the shiprock floor and kicked off her shoes. Her husband said, "You sprats walk too fast. How's His Cognizance supposed to keep up?" He sat down beside his wife and pulled off his as well.

  Recalling that Quetzal had been concerned for their safety, I motioned for Nettle to sit and sat down myself. Scleroderma said accusingly, "I heard you yell at them in front, trying to get them to go faster."

  I explained that Quetzal had instructed me to, and Nettle asked, "Where is he? He was here with us a minute ago.

  "Up ahead," Shrike told her. "Haven't seen him in quite a while."

  We rested for perhaps an hour, during which Nettle and I worried that we were becoming permanently separated from the rest. For a long way, however, it was impossible for our route to diverge from theirs; the tunnel ran nearly straight, slanting gently, and in fact pleasantly, downward. At length we came upon a side tunnel; but we found a note there signed by Hart, saying that His Cognizance had instructed him to write it, that they would follow the main tunnel, and that anyone who found the note was to leave it to direct others.

  After another half league or so, we heard a baby crying and faint snores; and soon we caught up with our friends from the quarter and my mother, brothers, and sisters, all of them sound asleep. Scleroderma and her husband lay down at once, and I got Nettle to lie down as well, telling her to sleep if she could. She had no more than pillowed her head on my jacket than she was sleeping as soundly as Scleroderma.

  I sat down, took off my shoes and rubbed my feet, and tried to decide what I ought to do. I had promised Quetzal I would stay awake, and I recalled very clearly what Silk had told me about the dog-like creatures the soldiers called gods and the convicts bufes. But I was tired and hungry, and longed to rest; and though Quetzal had asked me to protect the company, which by then numbered more than four hundred, he had said nothing about anyone's protecting me while I slept an hour or two.

  After turning the matter over for what seemed a very long while in the dilatory fashion in which I weigh problems when I'm fatigued, I decided I would watch faithfully until someone woke, charge him or her to take my place, and sleep myself.

  Then it almost seemed that I was asleep already, because it seemed that I could hear the soft sigh of wings, as if a big owl were flying along the tunnel a considerable distance from where I sat. I sat up straight and listened with all my might, but heard nothing more. Soon afterward, it struck me that Quetzal had said he often had difficulty sleeping. Thinking he might watch for me if he were wakeful, I stood up and padded among the sleepers looking for him; but he was not there.

  I cannot describe the consternation I felt. Over and over I told myself that I must surely be mistaken, that someone had lent him a blanket or coat that covered his black robe; and so I peered into the same faces that I had peered into a few minutes before, until I sincerely believe that I could have described everyone present and said where each of them lay. We had among us a dozen infants, a large contingent of children, and a good many women; but not more than forty men, including Patera Remora and Shrike. I told myself very firmly then that a woman or even a girl could guard us as well as I could. She would only have to wake me if danger threatened.

  Eventually it occurred to me to ask myself what Silk would have done in my situation. Silk would have prayed, I decided, and so I knelt, folded my hands and bowed my head, and implored the Outsider to take pity on my plight and cause one at least of those sleeping around me to wake up, very carefully specifying that a woman or a girl would be entirely acceptable to me.

  When I raised my head, someone was sitting up in the midst of the sleepers; when I saw her dark and deathly eyes, I knew at once the mocking fashion in which the Outsider had answered my prayer. "Mucor," I called softly. "Please come over here and talk to me."

  Her face floated upward like a ghost's and seemed almost to drift along the tunnel; she was wearing a sibyl's black gown.

  "Mucor," I inquired, "where is your grandmother? She was here before." Very tardily it had occurred to me that Maytera Marble rarely slept, and would be the ideal person to relieve me so that I could.

  "Gone," Mucor said. I expected to get nothing more out of her, having learned at the Caldé's Palace how seldom she spoke. But after a few seconds she added, "She went with the man who isn't there."

  It was encouraging, but there seemed little use in asking who the man who wasn't there was. I asked instead if she would send her spifit to learn where her grandmother was and whether she was in need of help. Mucor nodded, and we sat side-by-side in silence for what I felt sure was at least a quarter-hour. I was nearly asleep when she said, "She's carrying him. Crying. She'd like somebody to come."

  "Your grandmother?"

  I must have spoken more loudly than I had intended, because Nettle sat up and asked what was wrong.

  Mucor pointed down the tunnel, saying, "Not far."

  Nor was she. We had hardly lost sight of our friends when we met Maytera Marble, more or less dressed in an augur's robe so long it swept the tunnel floor, with Quetzal in her arms. Her face could not display emotion, as I have tried to make clear; but every limb expressed the most heart-rending anguish. "He's been shot," she told us. "He won't let me do anything to stop the bleeding." Her voice was agonized.

  As slowly as a flower's, Quetzal's face turned toward us; it was terrible, not merely swollen or sunken, but misshapen, as if death's grip had crushed his chin and cheekbones. "I am not bleeding," he said. "Do you see blood, my children?"

  I suppose we shook our heads.

  "You can't stop my bleeding if I'm not bleeding."

  I offered to carry him, but Maytera Marble refused, saying he weighed nothing. Later I was to find that she was not far wrong; I had lifted younger brothers who weighed more.

  Nettle asked who had shot him.

  "Troopers from Trivigaunte." He tried to smile, achieving only a grimace. "They're down here now, my child. They were digging trenches east of the city looking for a tunnel near the surface, and found one. They think Silk's with us." He gasped. "But they'd try to stop us anyway. Sphigx commands it."

  I said, "We have to do the will of Pas."

  "Yes, my son. Never forget what you just said."

  By that time we had nearly reached the sleepers. Nettle ran ahead and woke up Remora, knowing that where there is no doctor an augur makes the best substitute; but Quetzal would not let him see his wound. "I'm an old man," he said. "I'm ready to die. Let me go fast." Yet he did not die until the following day, when we had begun to cross the abyss.

  Remora brought him the Peace, and when it was over Quetzal gave him his gammadion, saying, "Your turn now, Patera. You were cheated by Scylla, but you'll have to guide the Chapter in the Short Sun Whorl."

  (So it came to be. Although there are many other holy men here, His Cognizance Patera Remora heads what people from other cities call the Vironese Faith. I am adding this note because I know that not all of my readers came from Viron, and as Nettle's copies are themselves copied, still more will be unfarniliar with the Chapter.)

  But I am running ahead of my account. When Quetzal would no more answer our questions than permit us to treat his wound, we asked Maytera Marble what had happened.

  "I was lying awake," she said, "thinking things over. How we'd seen Mainframe, and about dear Chenille and Auk, and Patera Silk and Hyacinth. Wondering, too, whether my husband was still alive, and,
well, various things.

  "I saw His Cognizance get up and start down the tunnel, so I told Mucor not to worry, I'd be back soon, and went after him and asked where he was going. He said he was afraid there might be danger ahead, so since he couldn't sleep he was going to see. I said he shouldn't risk himself like that, that he should send Macaque or one of the other boys."

  She broke down at that point, sobbing uncontrollably, and cried for so long that many of her listeners left to talk among themselves; but Nettle and I stayed, with Remora, Scleroderma, and a few others.

  When she had regained her self-possession, she continued, "I wanted him to send someone else. He ordered me to go back, and I said thanks be to Pas that I'm a laywoman now and don't have to obey, because I'm not going to let you run off alone like this, Your Cognizance, and get killed. I'm going with you. He said he knew these tunnels because he'd come down here alone to make the Ayuntarniento talk to him when they didn't want to, and he knew the dangers. But I wouldn't leave."

  Nettle said, "This isn't your fault, Maggie. I don't know how it happened, but I know you, and it can't be." The rest of us seconded her.

  Maytera Marble shook her head. "After we'd walked a long, long way we came to a crossing where four tunnels met. I asked which way we were going, and he said he was turning right, but I had to go back. Then he went into the right-hand tunnel. It was the darkest, the one he went into was. I followed him, and for a little while I saw him up ahead, but he wouldn't slow down. We were both practically running. Then I really did run as fast as I could, but I lost sight of him. I walked on and on, and there were these tunnels off to the side but I always kept to the one I was in. Then there was a big iron door and I couldn't go any farther, so I went back. I got to the place-"