Litany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Pas was dead! Auk could think of nothing else. "No? Then don't kill them. I was going to say that we took new names that would fit. Daddy was Typhon the First, back home. What none of us knew was that he'd let her choose, too. So she picked love, what a surprise. And got sex and everything dirty with it. She didn't meddle very much in the beginning, knowing that-"

  Hearing her voice, Patera Incus had looked up. "You! Augur! Prepare to cast off." Chenille herself was off like a sprinter, disappearing in the dense shadow of a salting shed. A moment later Auk saw her leap-flying in away that he knew would have been impossible had she not been possessed-to land with a roll upon the deck of. The fishing boat.

  "I said prepare to cast off. Are you deaf?" She struck the augur with her left hand and the fisherman with her right, and the sounds of the blows might almost have been the slamming of double doors. Auk drew his needler and hurried after her.

  ANOTHER HOT-ANOTHER scorching-morning. Maytera Marble fanned herself with a pamphlet. There were coils in her cheeks; their plan no longer appeared at her call, but she was almost sure of it. Her main coils were in her legs, with an auxiliary coil in each cheek; there the fluid that carried such strength as she still possessed was brought (or at least ought to have been brought) into intimate contact with her titanium faceplate, which was in turn in intimate contact with the air of the kitchen.

  And the air was supposed to be cooler.

  But no, that couldn't be right. She had once looked- she was almost sure she had looked-distinctly like a bio. Her cheeks had been overlaid with… with some material that would very likely have impeded the transfer of heat. What had she told dear Patera Silk the other day? Three centuries? Three hundred years? The decimal had slipped, must certainly have slipped to the left.

  It had to have. She had looked like a bio then-like a bio girl, with black hair and red cheeks. Like a somewhat older Dahlia in fact, and Dahlia had always been so bad at arithmetic, forever mixing up her decimals, multiplying two decimal numbers and getting one with two decimal points, mere scrambled digits that meant not even His Cognizance could have said what.

  With her free hand, Maytera Marble stirred the porridge. It was done, nearly overcooked. She lifted it from the stove and fanned herself again. In the refectory on the other side of the doorway, little Maytera Mint waited for her breakfast with exemplary patience. Maytera Marble told her, "Perhaps you'd better eat now, sib. Maytera Rose may be ill."

  "All right, sib."

  "That was obedience, wasn't it?" The pamphlet drifted past Maytera Marble's face; it bore a watery picture of Scylla frolicking with sunfish and sturgeon, but carried no cooling. Deep within Maytera Marble, an almost-forgotten sensor stirred dangerously. "You don't have to obey me, sib."

  "You're senior, sib." Normally the words would have been nearly inaudible; this morning they were firm and clear.

  Maytera Marble was too hot to notice. "I won't make you eat now if you don't want to, but I've got to take it off the stove."

  "I want what you want, sib."

  "I'm going to go upstairs. Maytera may require my help." Maytera Marble had an inspiration. "I'll take her bowl up on a tray." That would make it possible for Maytera Mint to eat her breakfast without waiting for the eldest sibyl. "First I'm going to give you porridge, and you must eat it all."

  "If that's what you wish, sib."

  Maytera Marble opened the cupboard and got Maytera Rose's bowl and the old, chipped bowl that Maytera Mint professed to prefer. Climbing the stair would overheat her; but she had not thought of that in time, so she would have to climb. She ladled out porridge until the ladle dissolved into a cloud of digits, then stared at it. She had always taught her classes that solid objects were composed of swarming atoms, but she had been wrong; every solid object, each solid thought, was swarming numbers. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to dip up more porridge, to drop the pamphlet and find the lip of a bowl with her fingers and dump more porridge in.

  The stair was not as onerous as she had feared, but the second story of the cenoby had vanished, replaced by neat rows of wilting herbs, by straggling vines. Someone had chalked up a message: SILK FOR CALDÉ!

  "Sib?" It was Maytera Mint, her voice faint and far. "Are you all right, sib?"

  The crude letters and the shiprock wall fell into digits.

  "Sib?"

  "Yes. Yes, I was going upstairs, wasn't I? To look in on Maytera Betel." It would not do to worry timorous little Maytera Mint. "I only stepped out here for a minute to cool down."

  "I'm afraid Maytera Betel's left us, sib. To look in on Maytera Rose."

  "Yes, sib. To be sure." These dancing bands of numbers were steps, she felt. But steps leading to the door or to an upper floor? "I must have become confused, Maytera. It's so hot."

  "Be brave, sib." A hand touched her shoulder. "Perhaps you'd like to call me that? We're sisters, you and I."

  Now and again she saw actual stairs, the strip of brown carpet with its pattern worn away that she had swept so often. Maytera Rose's door ended the short corridor: the corner room. Maytera Marble knocked and found that her knuckles had smashed the panel; through the splintered wood she glimpsed Maytera Rose still in bed, her mouth and eyes open and her face dotted with flies.

  She entered, ripped Maytera Rose's threadbare nightgown from neck to hem, and opened Maytera Rose's chest; then she pulled off her habit, hung it neatly over a chair, and opened her own. Almost reluctantly, she began to exchange components with her dead sib, testing each as it went into place, and rejecting a few. This is Tarsday, she reminded herself, but Maytera's gone, so this can't be theft. I won't need these any more.

  The glass on the north wall showed a fishing boat under full sail; a naked woman standing beside the helmsman wore a flashing ring. Maytera, naked herself, averted her eyes.

  SILK'S HEAD THROBBED, and his eyes seemed glued shut. Short and fat yet somehow huge, Councillor Potto loomed over him, fists cocked, waiting for his eyes to open. Somewhere-somewhere there had been peace. Turn the key the other way, and the dancers would dance backward, the music play backward, vanished nights reappear…

  Darkness and a steady thudding, infinitely reassuring. Knees drawn up, arms bent in prayer. Wordless contemplation, free of the need to eat or drink or breathe.

  The tunnel, dark and warm but ever colder. Anguished cries, Mamelta beside him, her hand in his and Hyacinth's tiny needler yapping like a terrier.

  How much did they give you? Blows that rocked him.

  Ashes, unseen but choking.

  "This is the place."

  How much did you tell Blood?

  A shower of fire. Morning prayers in a manteion in Limna that was perhaps thirty cubits,.yet a thousand leagues away.

  "Behind you! Behind you!" Whirl and shoot.

  The dead woman's lantern, its candle three-quarters consumed. Mamelta blowing on a glowing coal to light it.

  "I am a loyal cit-"

  "Councillor, I am a loyal cit-"

  Spitting blood.

  "Those who harm an augur-"

  How much-

  SILK'S RIGHT EYE opened, saw a wall as gray as ash, and closed again.

  HE TRIED TO count his shots-and found himself in the eating house again. "Well, Patera, for one thing mine holds a lot more needles… All of them good and thick, this was the Alambrera in the old days." The door opened and Potto came in with their dinners on a tray, Sergeant Sand behind him with the box and the terrible rods.

  Back! Back! Kneeling in the ashes, digging with his hands. A god who took five needles and still stood at the edge of the lantern light, snarling, blood and slaver running from its mouth. The boom of a slug gun, loud in the tunnel and very near.

  … did you give him?

  Metal rods jammed into his groin. Sand's arm spinning the crank, his expressionless face washed away by unbearable pain.

  He bought your manteion.

  "Yes. I'm a-"

  Indefinitely? He let you stay indefinitely?

/>   "Yes."

  Indefinitely.

  "Yes. I don't know…"

  (Back, oh, back, but the current is too strong.)

  Silk's left eye opened. Painted steel, gray as ash. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, his head aching and his stomach queasy. He was in a gray-walled room of modest size, without windows. He shivered. He had been lying on a low, hard, and very narrow cot.

  A voice from the edge of memory said, "Ah, you're awake. I need somebody to talk to."

  He gasped and blinked. It was Doctor Crane, one hand raised, eyes sparkling. "How many fingers?"

  "You? I dreamed…"

  "You got caught, Silk. So did I. How many fingers do you see?"

  "Three."

  "Good. What day is it?"

  Silk had to consider; it was an effort to remember. At last he said, "Tarsday? Orpine's obsequies were on Scylsday; we went to the lake on Molpsday, and I went down…"

  "Yes?"

  "Into these tunnels. I've been down here a long time. It might even be Hieraxday by now."

  "Good enough, but we're not in the tunnels."

  "The Alambrera?"

  Crane shook his head. "I'll tell you, but it'll take some explaining, and I ought to warn you first that they've probably locked us up together hoping we may say something useful. You may not want to oblige them."

  Silk nodded and found it a mistake. "I wish I had some water."

  "It's all around us. But you'll have to wait till they give us some, if they ever do."

  "Councillor Potto hit me with his fist." Silk caressed the swelling on the side of his head gingerly. "That's the last thing that I remember. When you say they, do you mean our Ayuntamiento?"

  "That's right." Crane sat down on the cot beside him. "I hope you don't mind. I was sitting on the floor while you were unconscious, and it's cold and hard on the buttocks. Why did you go out to the lake? Mind telling me?"

  "I can't remember."

  Crane nodded approvingly. "That's probably the best line to take."

  "It isn't a line at all. I've-I've had very strange dreams." Silk pushed away terrifying memories of Potto and Sand. "One about a naked woman who had strange dreams too."

  "Tch, tch!"

  "I talked with a-it doesn't matter. And I vanquished a devil. You won't believe that, Doctor."

  "I don't," Crane told him cheerfully.

  "But I did. I called on the gods in turn. Only Hierax frightened her."

  "A female devil. Did she look like this?" Crane bared his teeth.

  "Yes, a little." Silk paused, rubbing his head. "And it wasn't a dream-it's not fading. You know her. You must."

  Crane lifted an eyebrow. "I know the devil you drove away? My circle of acquaintances is wide, I admit, but-"

  "She's Mucor, Blood's daughter. She can possess people, and she possessed the woman I was with."

  Suddenly serious, Crane whistled softly.

  "Was it you who operated on her?"

  Crane shook his head. "Blood told you?"

  "He told me he'd had a brain surgeon in the house before you. When I learned what Mucor could do, I understood-or at least, I think I do. Will you tell me about it?"

  Crane fingered his beard, then shrugged. "Can't hurt, I suppose. The Ayuntamiento knows all the important points anyhow, and we've got to pass the time some way. If I do, will you answer a few questions of mine? Honest, complete answers, unless it's something that you don't want them to know?"

  "I know nothing that I wouldn't want the Ayuntamiento to leam," Silk declared, "and I've already answered a great many questions for Councillor Potto. I'll tell you anything concerning myself, and anything I know about other people that wasn't learned under the seal."

  Crane grinned. "In that case I'll start with the most basic one. Who are you working for?"

  "I should have said that I'll answer after you answer my own questions about Mucor. That was the agreement, and I'd like to help her if I can."

  The eyebrow went up again. "Including my first one?"

  "Yes," Silk said. "Very much including that one. That one first of all. Is Mucor really Blood's daughter? That's what she told me."

  "Legally. His adopted daughter. Unmarried men aren't usually allowed to adopt, but Blood's been working for the Ayuntamiento. Were you aware of that?"

  Silk remembered in the nick of time not to shake his head. "No. Nor do I believe it now. He's a criminal."

  "They don't pay him so many cards, you understand. They let him operate without interference as long as there's no serious trouble at any of his places, and do him favors. This seems to have been one of them. A word to the judge from any of the councillors would have been more than enough, and by adopting her he could control her up to the age of consent."

  "I see. Who are her real parents?"

  Crane shrugged again. "She doesn't have any. Not in our whorl, anyhow. And whoever they were, they probably met in a petri dish. She was a frozen embryo. Blood paid a good deal for it, I imagine. I know he paid a small fortune to get that brain man you mentioned."

  Recalling the bare and filthy room in which he had first encountered Mucor, Silk said bitterly, "A fortune to destroy what he had given so much to get."

  "Not really. It was supposed to make her pliable. She was a holy terror, from what I've heard. But when the brain man-he came from Palustria, by the way, which is how we found out what was going on. When he opened up her cranium, he got hit with a new organ." Crane chuckled. "I've read his report. It's in the medical file back at the villa."

  "A new organ? What was it?"

  "I didn't mean that it wasn't a brain. It was. But it wasn't like anything the brain man had worked on before. It wasn't a human brain for medical purposes, or an animal's brain, either. He had to go by guess and good gods, as they say. And in the end he made a botch of it. He as much as admitted it."

  Silk wiped his eyes.

  "Oh, come now. It was.ten years ago, and we spies are supposed to be of sterner stuff."

  "Has anybody ever cried for her, Doctor?" Silk asked. "You, or Blood, or Musk, or the brain surgeon? Anyone at all?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Then let me cry for her. Let her have that at least."

  "I wouldn't think of trying to slop you. You haven't asked why Blood didn't get rid of her."

  "No."

  "She's his daughter, according to what you just told me-his daughter legally, at least."

  "That. wouldn't stop him. It was because the brain man said her subrogative abilities could regenerate some time after she'd healed. It was only a guess, but judging from your story about a devil, they have. And the Ayuntamiento knows it now, thanks to you. It's going to make Viron more dangerous than ever."

  Silk daubed at his eyes again with a comer of his robe and wiped his nose. "More formidable, you mean. That may trouble your government in Palustria, but it doesn't bother me."

  "I see." Crane slid backward on the cot until he could prop his spine against the steel wall. "You promised you'd tell me who you were working for, if I told you about Mucor. Now you're going to say you're working for His Cognizance the Prolocutor, or something like that. Is that it? Hardly what I'd call fair play."

  "No. Or perhaps, in a way, I am. It's a nice ethical point. Certainly I'm doing what His Cognizance would wish me to do, but I haven't told him-haven't informed the Chapter formally, I should say. I really haven't had time, the old excuse. Would you have believed me if I'd said I was a spy for His Cognizance?"

  "I wouldn't and I don't. Your Prolocutor's got spies, plenty of them. But they aren't holy augurs. He's not so foolish as that. Who is it?"

  "The Outsider."

  "The god?"

  "Yes." Silk sensed that Crane's eyebrow had been raised again, though he was not looking at Crane's face; he filled his lungs and expelled the air through his mouth. "No one believes me-except for Maytera Marble, a little-so I don't expect you to, either, Doctor. You least of all. But I've already told Councillor Potto, and I'll tell you.
The Outsider spoke to me last Phaesday, on the ballcourt at our palaestra." He waited for Crane's snort of contempt.

  "Now that's interesting. We ought to be able to talk about that for a long time. Did you see him?"

  Silk considered the question. "Not in the way I see you now, and in fact I feel sure it's impossible to see him like that. All visual representations of the gods are ultimately false, as I told Blood a few days ago; they're more or less appropriate, not more or less like. But the Outsider showed himself to me-his spirit, if one can speak of the spirit of a god-by showing me innumerable things he had done and made, people and animals and plants and myriad other things that he cares very much about, not all of them beautiful or lovable things to you, Doctor, or to me. Huge fires outside the whorl, a beetle that looked like a piece of jewelry but laid its eggs in dung, and a boy who can't speak and lives-well, like a wild beast.

  "There was a naked criminal on a scaffold, and we came back to that when he died, and again when his body was taken down. His mother was watching with a group of his friends, and when someone said he had incited sedition, she said that she didn't think he had ever been really bad, and that she would always love him. There was a dead woman who had been left in an alley, and Patera Pike, and it was all connected, as if they were pieces of something larger." Silk paused, remembering.

  "Let's get back to the god. Could you hear his voice?"

  "Voices," Silk said. "One spoke into each ear most of the time. One was very masculine-not falsely deep, but solid, as if a mountain of stone were speaking. The other was feminine, a sort of gentle cooing; yet both voices were his. When my enlightenment was over, I understood far, far better than I ever had before why artists show Pas with two heads, though I believe, too, that the Outsider had a great many more voices as well. I could hear them in back of me at times, although indistinctly. It was as if a crowd were waiting behind me while its leaders whispered in my ears; but as if the crowd was actually all one person, somehow: the Outsider. Do you want to comment?"