by Gene Wolfe
“I received enlightenment today,” Silk said. “I’ve told no one except a man I met in the street on my way to the market and you, and neither of you have believed me.”
“Patera—”
“So it’s clear that I’m not telling it very well, isn’t it? Let me see if I can’t do better.” He was silent for a moment, rubbing his cheek.
“I’d been praying and praying for help. Praying mostly to the Nine, of course, but praying to every god and goddess in the Writings at one time or another; and about noon today my prayers were answered by the Outsider, as I’ve told you. Maytera, do you…” His voice quavered, and he found that he could not control it. “Do you know what he said to me, Maytera? What he told me?”
Her hands closed upon his until their grip was actually painful. “Only that he has instructed you to preserve our manteion. Please tell me the rest, if you can.”
“You’re right, Maytera. It isn’t easy. I had always thought enlightenment would be a voice out of the sun, or in my own head, a voice that spoke in words. But it’s not like that at all. He whispers to you in so many voices, and the words are living things that show you. Not just seeing, the way you might see another person in a glass, but hearing and smelling—and touch and pain, too, but all of them wrapped together so they become the same, parts of that one thing.
“And you understand. When I say he showed me, or that he told me something, that’s what I mean.”
Maytera Marble nodded encouragingly.
“He showed me all the prayers that have ever been said to any god for this manteion. I saw all the children at prayer from the time it was first built, their mothers and fathers too, and people who just came in to pray, or came to one of our sacrifices because they hoped to get a piece of meat, and prayed while they were here.
“And I saw the prayers of all you sibyls, from the very beginning. I don’t ask you to believe this, Maytera, but I’ve seen every prayer you’ve ever said for our manteion, or for Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint, or for Patera Pike and me, and—well, for everyone in this whole quarter, thousands and thousands of prayers. Prayers on your knees and prayers standing up, and prayers you said while you were cooking and scrubbing floors. There used to be a Maytera Milkwort here, and I saw her praying, and a Maytera Betel, a big dark woman with sleepy eyes.” Silk paused for breath. “Most of all, I saw Patera Pike.”
“This is wonderful!” Maytera Marble exclaimed. “It must have been marvelous, Patera.” Silk knew it was impossible, that it was only their crystalline lenses catching the light, but it seemed to him that her eyes shone.
“And the Outsider decided to grant all those prayers. He told Patera Pike, and Patera Pike was so happy! Do you remember the day I came here from the schola, Maytera?”
Maytera Marble nodded again.
“That was the day. The Outsider granted Patera Pike enlightenment that day, and he said—he said, here’s the help that I’m—that I’m…”
Silk had begun to weep, and was suddenly ashamed. It was raining harder now, as if encouraged by the tears that streaked his cheeks and chin. Maytera Marble pulled a big, clean, white handkerchief out of her sleeve and gave it to him.
She’s always so practical, he thought, wiping his eyes and nose. A handkerchief for the little ones; she must have a child sobbing in her class every day. The record of her days is written in tears, and today I’m that sobbing child. He managed to say, “Your children can’t often be as old as I am, Maytera.”
“In class, you mean, Patera? They’re never as old. Oh, you must mean the grown men and women who were mine when they were boys and girls. Many of them are older than you are. The oldest must be sixty, or about that. I was—didn’t teach until then.” She called her memorandum file, chiding herself as she always did for not calling it more often. “Which reminds me. Do you know Auk, Patera?”
Silk shook his head. “Does he live in this quarter?”
“Yes, and comes on Scylsday, sometimes. You must have seen him. The large, rough-looking man who sits in back?”
“With the big jaw? His clothes are clean, but he looks as if he hasn’t shaved. He wears a hanger—or perhaps it’s a hunting sword—and he’s always alone. Was he one of your boys?”
Maytera Marble nodded sadly. “He’s a criminal now, Patera. He breaks into houses.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Silk said. For an instant he had a mental picture of the hulking man from the back of the manteion surprised by a householder and whirling clumsily but very quickly to confront him, like a baited bear.
“I’m sorry, too, Patera, and I’ve been wanting to talk to you about him. Patera Pike shrove him last year. You were here, but I don’t think you knew about it.”
“If I did, I’ve forgotten.” To quiet the hiss of the wide blade as it cleared the scabbard, Silk shook his head. “But you’re right, Maytera. I doubt that I knew.”
“I didn’t learn about it from Patera myself. Maytera Mint told me. Auk still likes her, and they have a little talk now and then.”
Blowing his nose in his own handkerchief, Silk relaxed a trifle. This, he felt certain, was what she had wanted to speak to him about.
“Patera was able to get Auk to promise not to rob poor people any more. He’d done that, he said. He’d done it quite often, but he wouldn’t any more. He promised Patera, Maytera says, and he promised her, too. You’re going to lecture me now, Patera, because the promise of a man like that—a criminal’s promise—can’t be trusted.”
“No man’s promise can be trusted absolutely,” Silk said slowly, “since no man is, or can ever be, entirely free from evil. I include myself in that, certainly.”
Maytera Marble pushed her handkerchief back into her sleeve. “I think Auk’s promise, freely given, can be relied on as much as anybody’s, Patera. As much as yours, and I don’t intend to be insulting. That was the way he was as a boy, and it’s the way he is as a man, too, as well as I can judge. He never had a mother or a father, not really. He—but I’d better not go on, or I’ll let slip things that Maytera’s made me promise not to repeat, and then I’ll feel terrible, and I’ll have to tell both of them that I broke my word.”
“Do you really believe that I may be able to help this man, Maytera? I’m surely no older than he is, and probably younger. He’s not going to respect me the way he respected Patera Pike, remember.”
Rain dripping from the sparkling leaves dotted Maytera Marble’s skirt; she brushed at the spots absently. “That may be true, Patera, but you’ll understand him better than Patera Pike could, I think. You’re young, and as strong as he is, or almost. And he’ll respect you as an augur. You needn’t be afraid of him. Have I ever asked a favor of you, Patera? A real favor?”
“You asked me to intercede with Maytera Rose once, and I tried. I think I probably did more harm than good, so we won’t count that. But you could ask a hundred favors if you wanted to, Maytera. You’ve earned that many and more.”
“Then talk with Auk, Patera, some Scylsday. Shrive him if he asks you to.”
“That isn’t a favor,” Silk said. “I’d do that much for anyone; but of course you want me to make a special effort for this Auk, to speak to him and take him aside, and so on; and I will.”
“Thank you, Patera. Patera, you’ve known me for over a year now. Am I lacking in faith?”
The question caught Silk by surprise. “You, Maytera? Why—why I’ve never thought so. You’ve always seemed, I mean to me at least—”
“Yet I haven’t had the faith in you, and the god who enlightened you, that I should’ve had. I just realized it. I’ve been trusting in merely human words and appearances, like any petty trader. You were saying that the god had promised Patera Pike help, I think. Could you tell me more about that? I was only listening with care before. This time I’ll listen with faith, or try to.”
“There’s more than I could ever tell.” Silk stroked his cheek. He had himself in check now. “Patera Pike was enlightened, as I said; and I w
as shown his enlightenment. He was told that all those prayers he had said over so many years were to be granted that day—that the help he had asked for, for himself and for this manteion and the whole quarter, would be sent to him at once.”
Silk discovered that his fists were clenched. He made himself relax. “I was shown all that; then I saw that help arrive, alight as if with Pas’s fire from the sun. And it was me. That was all it was, just me.”
“Then you cannot fail,” Maytera Marble told him softly.
Silk shook his head. “I wish it were that easy. I can fail, Maytera. I dare not.”
She looked grave, as she often did. “But you didn’t know this until today? At noon, in the ball court? That’s what you said.”
“No, I didn’t. He told me something else, you see—that the time has come to act.”
Maytera Marble sighed again. “I have some information for you, Patera. Discouraging information, I’m afraid. But first I want very much to ask you just one thing more, and tell you something, perhaps. It was the Outsider who spoke to you, you say?”
“Yes. I don’t know a great deal about him, however, even now. He’s one of the sixty-three gods mentioned in the Writings, but I haven’t had a chance to look him up since it happened, and as I remember there isn’t a great deal about him anyway. He told me about himself, things that aren’t in the Writings unless I’ve forgotten them; but I haven’t really had much time to think about them.”
“When we were outside like him, living in the Short Sun Whorl before this one was finished and peopled, we worshipped him. No doubt you knew that already, Patera.”
“I’d forgotten it,” Silk admitted, “but you’re right. It’s in the tenth book, or the twelfth.”
“We chems didn’t share in sacrifices in the Short Sun Whorl.” Maytera Marble fell silent for a moment, scanning old files. “It wasn’t called manteion, either. Something else. If only I could find that, I could remember more, I think.”
Without understanding what she meant, Silk nodded.
“There have been many changes since then, but it used to be taught that he was infinite. Not merely great, but truly without limit. There are expressions like that—I mean in arithmetic. Although we never get to them in my class.”
“He showed me.”
“They say that even the whorl ends someplace,” Maytera Marble continued, “immense though it is. He doesn’t. If you were to divide him among all the things in it, each part of him would still be limitless. Didn’t you feel awfully small, Patera, when he was showing you all these things?”
Silk considered his answer. “No, I don’t think I did. No, I didn’t. I felt—well, great. I felt that way even though he was immeasurably greater, as you say. Imagine, Maytera, that His Cognizance the Prolocutor were to speak to me in person, assigning me some special duty. I’d feel, of course, that he was a far greater man than I, and a far, far greater man than I could ever be; but I’d feel that I too had become a person of significance.” Silk paused, ruminating. “Now suppose a Prolocutor incalculably great.”
“I understand. That answers several questions that I’ve had for a long while. Thank you, Patera. My news—I want to tell you why I asked you to meet me.”
“It’s bad news, I assume.” Silk drew a deep breath. “Knowing that the manteion’s at risk, I’ve been expecting some.”
“It would appear to indicate—mistakenly, I feel sure, Patera—that you’ve failed already. You see, a big, red-faced man came to the palaestra while you were away. He said that he’d just bought it, bought the entire property from the city.” Maytera Marble’s voice fell. “From the Ayuntamiento, Patera. That’s what he told me. He was here to look at our buildings. I showed him the palaestra and the manteion. I’m quite sure he didn’t get into the cenoby or the manse, but he looked at everything from the outside.”
“He said the sale was complete?”
She nodded.
“You’re right, Maytera. This sounds very bad.”
“He’d come in a floater, with a man to operate it for him. I saw it when we were going from the palaestra to the manteion. We went out the front, and along Sun Street past the ball court. He said he’d talked to you before he came here, but he hadn’t told you he’d bought it. He said he’d thought you’d make trouble.”
Silk nodded slowly. “I’d have hauled him out of his floater and broken his neck, I think, Maytera. Or at least I would have tried to.”
She touched his knee. “That would have been wrong, Patera. You’d go to the Alambrera, and into the pits.”
“Which wouldn’t matter,” Silk said. “His name’s Blood, perhaps he told you.”
“Possibly he did.” Maytera Marble’s rapid scan seldom functioned now; she fell silent as she searched past files, then said, “It’s not a common name at all, you know. People think it’s unlucky. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a single boy called Blood.”
Silk stroked his cheek, his eyes thoughtful. “Have you heard of him, Maytera? I haven’t, but he must be a wealthy man to have a private floater.”
“I don’t think so. If the sale is complete, Patera, what can you do?”
“I don’t know.” Silk rose as he had before. A step carried him out of the arbor. A few drops of rain still fell through sunshine that seemed bright, though the shade had more than half covered the sun. “The market will be closing soon,” he said.
“Yes.” Maytera Marble joined him.
The skylands, which had been nearly invisible earlier, could be seen distinctly as dawn spread across them: distant forests, said to be enchanted, and distant cities, said to be haunted—subtle influences for good or ill, governing the lives of those below. “He’s not a foreigner,” Silk said, “or at least he doesn’t talk like any foreigner I’ve ever met. He sounded as though he might have come from this quarter, actually.”
Maytera Marble nodded. “I noticed that myself.”
“There aren’t many ways for our people here to become rich, are there, Maytera? I wouldn’t think so, at least.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“It doesn’t matter. You wanted me to speak with this man Auk. On a Scylsday, you said; but there are always a dozen people waiting to talk to me then. Where do you think I might find Auk today?”
“Why, I have no idea. Could you go and see him this evening, Patera? That would be wonderful! Maytera Mint might know.”
Silk nodded. “You said that she was in the manteion, waiting for the fire to die. Go in and ask her, please, while you’re helping her purify the altar. I’ll speak with you again in a few minutes.”
Watching them from a window of the cenoby, Maytera Rose grunted with satisfaction when they separated. There was danger there, no matter how Maytera and Patera might deceive themselves—filthy things she could do for him, and worse that he might do to her. Undefiled Echidna hated everything of that kind, blinding those who fell as she had blinded her. At times Maytera Rose, kneeling before her daughter’s image, felt that she herself was Echidna, Mother of Gods and Empress of the Whorl.
Strike, Echidna. Oh, strike!
* * *
It was dark enough already for the bang of the door to kindle the bleared light in one corner of Silk’s bedroom, the room over the kitchen, the old storeroom that old Patera Pike had helped clean out when he arrived. (For Silk had never been able to make himself move his possessions into Pike’s larger room, to throw out or burn the faded portraits of the old man’s parents or his threadbare, too-small clothing.) By that uncertain glow, Silk changed into his second-best robe. Collar and cuffs were detachable in order that they might be more easily, and thus more frequently, laundered. He removed them and laid them in the drawer beside his only spare set.
What else? He glanced in the mirror; some covering for his untidy yellow hair, certainly. There was the wide straw hat he had worn that morning while laying new shingles on the roof, and the blue-trimmed black calotte that Patera Pike had worn on the coldest days. Silk de
cided upon both; the wide straw would cast a strong shadow on his face, but might blow off. The calotte fit nicely beneath it, and would supply a certain concealment still. Was this how men like this man Auk felt? Was it how they planned?
As reported by Maytera Marble, Maytera Mint had named half a dozen places in which he might come across Auk; all were in the Orilla, the worst section of the quarter. He might be robbed, might be murdered even though he offered no resistance. If Blood would not see him …
Silk shrugged. Blood’s house would be somewhere on the Palatine; Silk could scarcely conceive of anyone who rode in a privately owned floater living anywhere else. There would be Civil Guardsmen everywhere on the Palatine after dark, Guardsmen on foot, on horseback, and in armed floaters. One could not just kick down a door, as scores of housebreakers did in this quarter every night. The thing was impossible.
Yet something must be done, and done tonight; and he could not think of anything else to do.
He fingered his beads, then dropped them back into his pocket, removed the silver chain and voided cross of Pas and laid them reverently before the triptych, folded two fresh sheets of paper, put them into the battered little pen case he had used at the schola, and slipped it into the big inner pocket of his robe. He might need a weapon; he would almost certainly need some sort of tool.
He went downstairs to the kitchen. There was a faint stirring from the smelly waste bin in the corner: a rat, no doubt. As he had often before, Silk reminded himself to have Horn catch him a snake that might be tamed.
Through the creaking kitchen door, he stepped out into the garden again. It was almost dark, and would be fully dark by the time he reached the Orilla, eight streets away. The afternoon’s rain had laid the dust, and the air, cooler than it had been in months, was fresh and clean; perhaps autumn was on the way at last. He should be tired, Silk told himself, yet he did not feel tired as he unlocked the side door of the manteion. Was this, in sober fact, what the Outsider wanted? This rush to battle? If so, his service was a joy indeed!
