by Gene Wolfe
Page 35
I said, "But you saw something else. Or heard something. "
He nodded. "I thought maybe you and your people here was out because of them. Yes, I saw and I heard things. There was things in this river I never saw before. Maxellindis, when she woke up and I told her about it, said it was the manatees. Theyre pale in moonlight and look human enough if you dont come too close. But Ive seen em since I was a boy and never been fooled once. And there was womens voices, not loud but big. And something else. I couldnt understand what any of em was sayin, but I could hear the tone of it. You know how it is when youre listenin to people over the water? They would say so-and-so-and-so. Then the deeper voice - I cant call it a mans because I dont think it was one - the deeper voiced say go-and-do-that-and-this-and-that. I heard the womens voices three times and the other voice twice. You wont believe it, optimates, but sometimes it sounded like the voices was coming up out of the river. "
With that he fell silent, looking out over the nenuphars. We were well above that part of Gyoll opposite the Citadel, but they were still packed more densely than wildflowers in any meadow this side of paradise.
The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its vastness seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its thousand metal towers ready to leap into the air at a word. Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint disgust of the "unhealthy" growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that men may live, and men die that green things may live, even that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own ax there long ago. All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no doubt it is so; and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds. But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines in the necropolis when the wind swells their branches. They draw their strength from the departed generations of mankind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many trees, are not so high as they.
The Sanguinary Field stands far from the river. We four drew strange looks as we journeyed there, but no one halted us. The Inn of Lost Loves, which had ever seemed to me the least permanent of the houses of men, still stood as it had on the afternoon when I had come there with Agia and Dorcas. The fat innkeeper very nearly fainted when he saw us; I made him fetch Ouen, the waiter.
I had never really looked at him on that afternoon when he had carried in a tray for Dorcas, Agia, and me. I did so now. He was a balding man about as tall as Drotte, thin and somehow pinched looking; his eyes were deep blue, and there was a delicacy to the molding of his eyes and mouth that I recognized at once.
"Do you know who we are?" I asked him.
Slowly, he shook his head.
"Have you never had a torturer to serve?"
"Once this spring, sieur," he said. "And I know these two men in black are torturers. But youre no torturer, sieur, though youre dressed like one. "
I let that pass. "You have never seen me?"
"No, sieur. "
"Very well, perhaps you have not. " (How strange it was to realize that I had changed so much. ) "Ouen, since you do not know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you were born and who your parents were, and how you came to be employed at this inn. "
"My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate, on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me to an inn to be a potboy, and Ive worked in one or another since. "
"Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?"
Ouens face still held a waiters deference, but his eyes were puzzled. "I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her, but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father said. "
"But you know what she looked like. "
He nodded. "My father had a locket with her likeness. Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found out hed pledged it. Id come into a bit of money then helping a certain optimate with his affairs - carrying messages to the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I went to the pawnbrokers and paid the pledge and took it. I still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where theres so many in n out all the time, its best to keep your valuables about you. "
He reached into his shirt and drew out a locket of cloisonne enamel. The pictures inside were of Dorcas in full face and profile, a Dorcas hardly younger than the Dorcas I had known.
"You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can read and write. "
"A bit, sieur. " He looked embarrassed. "Ive asked people, various times, what writing said. I dont forget much. "
"You wrote something when the torturer was here this spring," I told him. "Do you recall what you wrote?"
Frightened, he shook his head. "Only a note to warn the girl. "
"I do. It was, The woman with you has been here before. Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are my mother come again. "
Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. "It was only that she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I used to think that someday Id find such a woman. I told myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father, and he had, after all. But I never did, and now Im not so sure Im a better man. "
"At that time, you did not know what a torturers habit looked like," I said. "But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew. He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and that was why he ran away. "
"Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for him, he did. "
"But you saw the innocence of the girl and wanted to warn her against the torturer and the other woman. You were right about both of them, perhaps. "
"If you say it, sieur. "
"Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her. "
The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly. Now he chuckled. "He looks more like you!"
I am afraid I turned to stare at him.
"No offense intended, sieur, but its true. Hes a bit older, but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isnt a patch of difference. "
I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with that coloring aside, his face might almost have been my own.
"You said you never found a woman like Dorcas - like that one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think. "
His eyes would not meet mine. "Several, sieur. "
"And fathered a child. "
"No, sieur!" He was startled. "Never, sieur!"
"How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the law?"
"Several times, sieur. "
"It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you loved - or perhaps only one who loved you - a dark woman-was taken once?"
"Once, sieur," he said. "Yes, sieur. Catherine was her name. Its an old-fashioned name, they tell me. " He paused and shrugged. "There was trouble, as you say, sieur. Shed run off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never saw her again. "
He did not want to come, but we brought him with us when we returned to the lugger.
When I had come upriver by night on the Samru, the line between the living and the dead city had been like that between the dark curve of the world and the celestial dome with its stars. Now, when there was so much more light, it had vanished. Half-ruinous structures lined the banks, but whether they were the homes of the most wretched of our citizens or mere deserted shells I could not determine until I saw a string on which three rags flapped.
"In the guild we have the ideal of poverty," I said to Drotte as we leaned on the gunnel. "But those people do not need the ideal; they have achieved it. "
"I should think theyd need it most of all," he answered.
He was wrong. The Increate was there, a thing beyond the Hierodules and those they se
rve; even on the river, I could feel his presence as one feels that of the master of a great house, though he may be in an obscure room on another floor. When we went ashore, it seemed to me that if I were to step through any doorway there, I might surprise some shining figure; and that the commander of all such figures was everywhere invisible only because he was too large to be seen.
We found a mans sandal, worn but not old, lying in one of the grass-grown streets. I said, "Im told there are looters wandering this place. That is one reason I asked you to come. If there were no one but myself involved, I would do it alone. "
Roche nodded and drew his sword, but Drotte said, "Theres no one here. Youve become a great deal wiser than we are, Severian, but still, I think youve grown a little too accustomed to things that terrify ordinary people. "
I asked what he meant.
"You knew what the boatman was talking about. I could see that in your face. You were afraid too, or at least concerned. But not frightened like he was in his boat last night, or like Roche or Ouen there or I would have been if wed been close to the river and knew what was going on. The looters youre talking about were around last night, and they must keep a watch out for revenue boats. They wont be anywhere near water today, or for several days to come. "
Eata touched my arm. "Do you think that girl - Maxellin-dis - is she in danger, back there on the boat?"
"Shes not in as much danger as you are from her," I said. He did not know what I meant, but I did. His Maxellindis was not Thecla; his story could not be the same as my own. But I had seen the revolving corridors of Time behind the gamin face with the laughing brown eyes. Love is a long labor for torturers; and even if I were to dissolve the guild, Eata would become a torturer, as all men are, bound by the contempt for wealth without which a man is less than a man, inflicting pain by his nature, whether he willed it or not. I was sorry for him, and more sorry for Maxellindis the sailor girl.
Ouen and I went into the house, leaving Roche, Drotte, and Eata to keep watch from some distance away. As we stood at the door, I could hear the soft sound of Dorcass steps inside.
"We will not tell you who you are," I said to Ouen. "And we cannot tell you what you may become. But we are your Autarch, and we tell you what you must do. "
I had no words for him, but I discovered I did not need them. He knelt at once, as the castellan had.
"We brought the torturers with us so that you might know what was in store for you if you disobeyed us. But we do nowish you to disobey, and now, having met you, we doubt they were needed. There is a woman in this house. In a moment you will go in. You must tell her your story, as you told it to us, and you must remain with her and protect her, even if she tries to send you away. " - -I will do my best, Autarch," Ouen said.
"When you can, you must persuade her to leave this city of death. Until then, we give you this. " I took out the pistol and handed it to him. "It is worth a cartload of chrisos, but as long as you are here, it is far better for you to have than chrisos. When you and the woman are safe, we will buy it back from you, if you wish. " I showed him how to operate the pistol and left him.
I was alone then, and I do not doubt that there are some who, reading this too-brief account of a summer more than normally turbulent, will say that I have usually been so. Jonas, my only real friend, was in his own eyes merely a machine; Dorcas, whom I yet love, is in her own eyes merely a kind of ghost.
I do not feel it is so. We choose - or choose not - to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain cave is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his "forest books," and the winds - the messengers of the Increate - are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.
Agia, whom I might have loved, has chosen instead to become a female Vodalus, taking all that lives most fully in humanity as her opponent. I, who might have loved Agia, who loved Dorcas deeply but perhaps not deeply enough, was now alone because I had become a part of her past, which she loved better than she had ever (except, I think, at first) loved me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Resurrection
Almost nothing remains to be told. Dawn has come, the red sun like a bloody eye. The wind blows cold through the window. In a few moments, a footman will carry in a steaming tray; with him, no doubt, will be old, twisted Father Inire, eager to confer during the last few moments that remain; old Father Inire, alive so long beyond the span of his short-lived kind; old Father Inire, who will not, I fear, long survive the red sun. How upset he will be to find I have been sitting up writing all night here in the clerestory.
Soon I must don robes of argent, the color that is more pure than white. Never mind.
There will be long, slow days on the ship. I will read. I still have so much to learn. I will sleep, dozing in my berth, listening to the centuries wash against the hull. This manuscript I shall send to Master Ultan; but while I am on the ship, when I cannot sleep and have tired of reading, I shall write it out again - I who forget nothing - every word, just as I have written it here. I shall call it The Book of the New Sun, for that book, lost now for so many ages, is said to have predicted his coming. And when it is finished again, I shall seal that second copy in a coffer of lead and set it adrift on the seas of space and time.
Have I told you all I promised? I am aware that at various places in my narrative I have pledged that this or that should be made clear in the knitting up of the story. I remember them all, I am sure, but then I remember so much else. Before you assume that I have cheated you, read again, as I will write again.
Two things are clear to me. The first is that I am not the first Severian. Those who walk the corridors of Time saw him gain the Phoenix Throne, and thus it was that the Autarch, having been told of me, smiled in the House Azure, and the undine thrust me up when it seemed I must drown. (Yet surely the first Severian did not; something had already begun to reshape my life. ) Let me guess now, though it is only a guess, at the story of that first Severian.
