Lake of the Long Sun tbotls-2

by Gene Wolfe

  Mamelta, who had lagged behind him by a few steps, now touched his arm. "Is that a hammerstone?" Silk looked back at her. "Hammerstone? Where?"

  "Down there." She indicated the bottom of the shaft by a vague gesture. "Moaning? Something is moaning."

  Silk stopped to listen; the sound was so faint that he could not lie certain he did not imagine it, an eerie keen- ing, rising and falling, always at the edge of his hearing, and often threatening to fade away altogether.

  It was no louder at the bottom, where the soldier lay. Silk gripped the dead man's left arm and rolled him over, in the process discovering that he was no longer as strong as he had been. There was a ragged hole the size of his thumb in the dead man's blue-painted chest.

  When he had recovered breath he said, "You'd better stand back, Mamelta. Chems seldom explode once the moment of death is past, but there's always a risk." Squat- ting, he employed one of the steel gammas forming the voided cross he wore to remove the dead man's faceplate. When bridging connections with the gamma produced no arc, he shook his head.

  "How . . . ? Mamelta is my name, and I told you. Have you told me yours?"

  "Patera Silk." He straightened up. "Call me Patera, please. Were you about to ask how this man died?"

  "He is a machine." She was looking at the dead man's wound. "A robot?"

  "A soldier," Silk told her, "though I've never seen a blue one before. Ours are mottled-green, brown, and black-so I suppose he must have come from another city. In any case he's been dead a long time, while someone in the shrine is alive and in pain."

  A massive door in the side of the shaft stood ajar. Silk opened it and stepped into the shrine, finding himself (to his astonishment) in a circular room a full thirty cubits high, with padded divans and glasses and multicolored readouts on its ceiling, its floor, and its curving wall. Every glass was energized, and in them all bobbed a tattered, skull-like thing that was no longer a face, wailing.

  He clapped his hands. "Monitor!"

  Gabbling sounds issued from the face. An irregular hole opened and closed; the sounds rose to a piercing shriek and a trapdoor in the center of the room flew back.

  "It wants you to go into the nose," Mamelta said.

  Silk crossed to the opening in the floor and stared down. At its bottom, fifty cubits away, swam three bright pinpricks that moved as one; irresistibly reminded of similar lights at the bottom of a grave he had dreamed was Orpine's, he watched until they vanished, replaced by a single spark. "I'm going down there." "Yes. That is what it wants."

  "The monitor? Could you understand him?"

  She shook her head, a minute motion. "I have seen this. Going to the ship that would lift us off the Whorl."

  "This can't be any sort of boat," Silk protested. "This entire shrine must be embedded in solid rock."

  "That is its berth," she murmured, but he had dropped to the floor already and swung his legs into the circular opening revealed by the trapdoor. Rungs set in the wall permitted him to climb down to a lucent bubble through which he looked across a benighted plain of naked rock. As he stared at it, a nameless mental mechanism adjusted, and the sparks swarming under the concave crystal floor were not merely distant but infinitely remote, the lamps and fires of new skylands.

  "Great Pas ..."

  The divine name sounded empty and foolish here, though he had employed it with no doubts of its validity all his life; Great Pas was not so great as this, nor was Pas a god here, outside.

  Silk swallowed, dry-mouthed and swallowing nothing, then traced the sign of addition with the gammadion he wore about his neck. "This is what you showed me, isn't it? The same thing I saw in the ball court, the black velvet and colored sparks below my feet."

  There was, or so it seemed to him, an assent that was not a spoken word.

  It steadied him as nothing else could have. One at a time, he removed his sweating hands from the icy rungs of the ladder and wiped them on his tunic.

  "If you wish for me to die, then I'll die, I know; and I wouldn't have it otherwise. But after you showed me this in the ball court, you asked me to save our manteion, so please let me go back to-to the whorl I know. I'll offer you a white bull, I swear, as soon as I can afford it."

  This time there was no response.

  He stared about him; some of the pinpricks of light were red, some yellow as topaz, some violet, many like diamonds. Here and there he saw what appeared to be mists or clouds of light-whole cities, surely. The somber plain was pitted like the cheeks of a child who had survived the pox, and far more barren than the sheer cliffs of the Pilgrims' Way; no tree, no flower, no least weed or dot of moss sprouted from its rock.

  Silk remained where he was, staring down at the gleaming dark, until Mamelta, from a higher rung, touched the top of his head to get his attention; then he started, peered up at her in surprise, and looked away, dismayed by his glimpse of her unclothed loins.

  "What you found? I have found where it belongs. Give it to me."

  "I'll bring it," he told her. When he tried to climb, he discovered that his hands were cold and stiff. "You mean the card?"

  She did not reply.

  All the rooms were small, though the widest was lined with innumerable divans and was higher than the principal tower of the Grand Manteion, facing the Prolocutor's palace on the Palatine. In a room above that very tall cylindrical room, Silk's heel slipped on a small white rotted thing, and he learned where the pervasive odor of decay originated. A dozen such flecks of dead flesh were scattered over the floor. He asked Mamelta what they were, and she bent to examine one and said, "Human."

  Crouching to look at another, he recognized the coarse black dust in which it lay; the polished metal cabinet that had presumably held thousands or tens of thousands originally had, like the room in which Mamelta and so many other bios had stood sleeping, been sealed with the Seal of Pas; that seal had been broken, and the embryos flung wantonly about. At the schola, Silk had been taught to regard the mere misuse of any divine name as blasphemous. If that was true, what was this? Shuddering, he hurried after Mamelta.

  In a compartment so small that he could not help brushing against her, she pointed to a frame and dangling wires. "This is the place. You won't know how to tag it. Let me."

  Curious, and still half-stunned by the looting of Pas's treasures, he gave her a card. She attached three clips, then studied a glass overhead. "This is a different kind," she said. Stooping, she inserted it in the frame at ankle height. "Let me see them all."

  He did; and she tested each as she had the first, working slowly and appearing unsure of her decisions at times, but always making the correct one. As she worked, a broken gray face took shape in the glass. "Is it time?" the face inquired-and again: "Is it time?" Silk shook his head, but the face continued to inquire.

  Mamelta told Silk, "If you have more, you must give them to me."

  "I don't. There were seven left after Orpine's rites, two left from Blood's sacrifice, and the one that you saw me find. I've given them all to you to repair this poor monitor. I never knew that money ..."

  "We must have more," Mamelta said.

  He nodded. "More if I'm to save my manteion, certainly. Far more than ten. Yet if I take back those ten cards, he'll be as he was when we arrived." Exhausted, Silk leaned against the wall, and would have sat if he could.

  "Have you eaten? There is food on board."

  "I must go back down." He sternly repressed the sudden pleasure her concern gave him. "I have to see it again. The monitor- Is this really a kind of boat?"

  "Not like the Loganstone. This is smaller."

  "Its monitor was correct, in any event-what I saw from the bow was something I was meant to see. But you're correct as well. I should eat first. I haven't eaten since- since the morning of the day we went to the lake; I suppose that was yesterday now. I ate half a pear then, very quickly before we said our morning prayers. No wonder I'm so tired."

  Small dishes swathed in a clouded film that Mamelta ate w
ith obvious enjoyment grew almost too hot to hold as soon as the film was peeled away, and proved to be pressed from hard, crisp biscuit. Still shivering and grateful for the warmth, they devoured the dishes themselves as well as their contents, sitting side-by-side on one of the many divans; all the while, the monitor inquired, "Is it time? Is it time?" until Silk, at least, ceased to hear it. Mamelta presented him with a deep green twining vegetable whose taste reminded him of the gray goose he had offered to all the gods on the day he had come to Sun Street; he gave her a little dusky-gold cake in return, though she appeared to feel that it was too much.

  "Now I'm going to go down into the bow again," he told her. "I may never return to this place, and I couldn't bear it if I hadn't gone again to prove to myself forever that I saw what I saw."

  "The belly of the Whorl?"

  He nodded. "If that's what you wish to call it, yes-and what lies beyond the belly. You can rest up here if you need to, or leave if you'd rather not wait for me. You're welcome to my robe, but please leave my pen case here if you go. It's in the pocket."

  A little food remained, with some of the crisp dish; but he found that he did not want either. He stood up, brushing crumbs from his ash-smeared tunic. "When I come back, we-I alone, if you don't want to come-will have to return to the tunnels to recover the azoth I left there when I met the soldiers. It will be very dangerous, I warn you. There are terrible animals."

  Mamelta said, "If you have no more cards, there may be other repairs I can make." He turned to go, but she had not finished speaking. "This is my work, or at least a part of my work."

  The ladder was the same, the pinpricks of unimaginably distant light the same, yet new. This otherwhorldly boat was a shrine after all, Silk decided, and smiled to himself. Or rather, it was the doorway to a shrine bigger than the whole whorl, the shrine of a god greater even than Great Pas.

  There were four divans in the bubble below the end of the ladder. While eating with Mamelta, he had noticed thick woven straps dangling from the divan on which they sat; these divans had identical straps; seeing them, he thought again of slaves, and of the slavers said to ply the rivers that fed Lake Limna.

  Reflecting that straps stout enough to hold slaves would hold him as well, he dropped to the upper end of the nearest divan and buckled its uppermost strap so that he could stand on it, virtually at the center of the bubble, while grasping the last rung.

  By the time he looked out again, something wholly new was happening. The plain of rock had blanched unwatched, and was streaked with sable. Craning his neck to look behind him, he saw a thin crescent of blinding light at the utmost reach of the plain. At that moment it seemed to him that the Outsider had grasped the entire whorl as a man might grasp a stick-grasped it in a hand immensely greater, of which no more than the tip of the nail on a single finger had appeared.

  Terrified, he fled up the ladder.

  Chapter 11. SOME SUMMATIONS

  "Auk ? Have you forgotten me?"

  He had thought himself utterly alone on the windswept Pilgrims' Way, trudging back to Limna. Twice before he had stopped to rest, sitting on white stones to scan the skylands. Auk was frequently outdoors and alone nightside, and it was something he enjoyed doing when he had the time: tracing the silver threads of rivers from which he would never drink, and exploring mentally the innumerable unknown cities in which the pickings were (as he liked to imagine) considerably better. Despite Chenille's insistence, he had not believed that she would actually remain in Scylla's shrine all night; but he had never supposed that she might overtake him. He pictured her as she had been when they reached it, footsore and exhausted, her face shining with sweat, her raspberry curls a mass of sodden tangles, her voluptuous body drooping like a bouquet on a grave. Yet he felt sure it had been her voice that had sounded behind him. "Chenille!" he called. "Is that you?"

  "No."

  He rose, nonplussed, and shouted, "Chenille?"

  The syllables of her name echoed from the rocks.

  "I won't wait for you, Chenille."

  Much nearer: "Then I'll wail for you at the next stone. "

  The faint pattering might have been rain; he glanced up at the cloudless sky again. The sound grew louder-running feet on the Pilgrims' Way behind him. As his eyes had traced the rivers, they followed its winding path across the barren, jutting cliff.

  The clear skylight revealed her almost at once, nearer than he had supposed, her skirt hiked to her thighs and her arms and legs pumping. Abruptly she vanished in the shadow of a beetling rock, only to emerge like a stone from a sling and shoot toward him. For an. instant he felt that she was running faster and faster with every stride, and would never slow or stop, or even stop gaining speed. Gaping, he stood aside.

  She passed like a whirlwind, mouth wide, teeth gleaming, eyes starting from their sockets. A moment more and she was lost among stunted trees.

  He drew his needler, checked the breech and pushed off the safety, and advanced cautiously, the needler in his hand ready to fire. The moaning wind brought the sound of tearing cloth, and her hoarse respirations.

  "Chenille?"

  Again, there was no reply.

  "Chenille, I'm sorry."

  He felt that some monstrous beast awaited him among the shadows; and although he called himself a fool, he could not free himself from the presentiment.

  "I'm sorry," he repeated. "It was a rotten thing to do. I should have stayed there with you."

  Half a chain farther, and the shadows closed about him. The beast still waited, nearer now. He mopped his sweating face with his bandanna; and as he wadded it into his pocket, he caught sight another, quite naked, sitting on one of the white stones in a patch of skylight. Her black dress and pale undergarments were heaped at her feet, and her tongue lolled from her mouth so far that she appeared to lick her breasts.

  He halted, tightening his grip on the needler. She stood and strode toward him. He backed into deeper shadow and leveled the needler; she passed him without a word, stalking through the leafless spinney straight to the edge of the cliff. For a second or two she paused there, her arms above her head.

  She dove, and after what seemed too long an interval he heard the faint splash.

  He was halfway to the edge before he pushed the safety back up and restored the needler to his waistband. Heights held no fear for him; still, he knew fear as he stood at the brink of the cliff and stared down, a hundred cubits or more, into the skylit water.

  She was not there. Wind-driven combers charged at the tumbled rocks like a herd of white-maned horses, but she was not among them.

  "Chenille?"

  He was about to turn away when her head burst through from a wave. "I'll meet you, " she called, "there." An arm that for an instant seemed but one of many pointed down the rocky beach toward the scattered lights of Limna. "Arms?" The question was Oreb's, and had come from a clump of straggling bushes to Auk's right.

  He sighed, glad of any company and ashamed to be glad. "Yeah. Too many arms." He mopped his sweating face again. "No, that's gammon. It was like in a mirror, see? Chenille held her arms up out of the water, and it reflected 'em so it looked like there was more underneath, that's all. You find Patera?"

  "Shrine eat."

  "Sure. Come over and I'll give you a lift to Limna."

  "Like bird?"

  "I guess. I won't hurt you if that's what you mean, but you're Patera's, and I'm going to give you back to him if we ever find him."

  Oreb fluttered up from the bushes to a landing on Auk's shoulder. "Girl like? Now like?""Chenille? Sure." Auk paused. "You're right. That's not her, is it?"

  "No, no!"

  "Yeah, right." Auk nodded to himself. "It's some kind of devil that only looks like Chenille. Shag, I don't know whether it likes birds or not. If I had to guess, I'd say it probably likes 'em for breakfast and lunch, but maybe it'd like something a little more solid for dinner. Anyhow, we'll dodge it if we can."

  Worn out though he was, it seemed to him that h
is lagging feet flew over the next hill and all the rest, when he would have preferred that entire months be consumed in climbing and descending each. An hour passed in weary walking seemed less than a minute to him; and though Oreb kept him company on his shoulder, he had seldom felt so alone.

  "I've found it!" Chenille's voice sounded practically at his ear; he jumped and Oreb squawked. "Can you swim? Are you carrying valuables that would be damaged by water?"

  "A little," Auk admitted. He had stopped in his tracks to look for her; it was difficult to keep his hand away from his needler. When he spoke again, he was afraid that he might stammer. "Yeah, I am. Couple things."

  "Then we must have a boat." Like mist from the lake, she rose between him and the rocky beach-he had been looking in the wrong direction. "You don't comprehend the littlest part of this, do you? I'm Scylla." It was, to Auk's mind, an assertion of such preeminent significance that no being of which he could conceive would have the audacity to make it falsely. He fell to his knees and mumbled a prayer.

  "It's 'lovely Scylla,' " his deity told him, " 'wonderful of waters', not 'woman of the water.' If you must mouth that nonsense, do it correctly."

  "Yes, Scylla."

  She caught him by the hair. "Straighten up! And stop whining. You're a burglar and a thug, so you may be useful. But only if you do precisely as I direct." For a moment she glared at him, her eyes burning into his. "You still don't understand. Where can we find a boat? Around that village, I suppose. Do you know?"

  Standing, he was a head taller than she, and felt that he ought to cower. "There's boats there for rent, lovely Scylla. I've got some money." "Don't try to make me laugh. It will do you no good, I warn you. Follow me."

  "Yes, Scylla."

  "I don't care for birds." She did not trouble to look back at Oreb as she spoke. "They belonged to Daddy, and now to Moipe and ones like that to little Hierax. I don't even like having my people named for them. You know I'm oldest?"