Litany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  "Ah!" Lemur turned to Crane. "You've looked into the matter, I see.".

  Crane nodded. "Fliers are actually a bit smaller than most troopers. I'm small, as everybody keeps reminding me. But I'm bigger than most fliers."

  "You sound as though you've seen some close up."

  "Through a telescope," Crane said. "Want to object that I had nothing to compare them to?"

  "To oblige you, yes."

  "I didn't need anything. A small man isn't proportioned like a big one, and as a small physician I'm very much aware of that. A small man's head is bigger'in proportion to his shoulders, for instance."

  Silk fidgeted. "If someone may be dying…"

  "That someone could be you, Your Cognizance." Lemur laid a heavy hand upon Silk's shoulder. "Purely as an hypothesis, let's say that I plan to pull your head off as soon as you've conveyed the Pardon of Pas to this unfortunate. If that were the case, shortening our discussion would materially shorten your life."

  "As a citizen I'm entitled to a public trial, and to an advocate. As an augur-"

  The pressure of Lemur's fingers increased. "It's too bad you're not an advocate yourself, Your Cognizance. If you were you'd realize that there's a further, unwritten provision. It is that the urgent needs ofViron must be served. As we speak a mendacious and malcontented radical faction is attempting to overthrow our lawfully constituted Ayuntamiento and substitute for it the rule of one inexperienced-but deep, and I admit that freely-augur, stirring up the populace by alleging a lot of superstitious taradiddle about enlightenment and the supposed favor of the gods. Am I crushing your shoulder?" "It is certainly very painful."

  "It can easily become more so. Did you really speak to a goddess in a house of ill repute? Say no, or I'll crush it."

  "A goddess in the sense that the god who enlightened me is a god? Doctor Crane insists that there is no such being. Whether he's right or not, I'm inclined to doubt that there are any more such gods."

  Lemur tightened his grip, so that Silk would have fallen to his knees if he could. "I want to tell you in some detail, Your Cognizance, how I hit upon the notion of using a bird of prey to bring down a flier for our examination. How I saw a hawk take a merganser at twilight and conceived the idea. How I combed Viron, with the utmost secrecy, for the right man to carry it out. And how I found him."

  Silk moaned, and Crane said, "And so on and so forth. Let him go, and I'll tell you how we learned of it."

  "Let him go!" It was Mamelta, dashing out of the dimness and throwing herself on Silk. "You damned robot! You THING!" She was naked save for a blood-smeared rag knotted about her waist, her full breasts and rounded thighs trembling, her bare skin the color of old ivory.

  Lemur released Silk and cuffed her almost casually; white bone gleamed where his long nails had torn her forehead, until blood streamed forth to cover it.

  Crane crouched beside her and snapped open his brown bag.

  "Very good, Doctor," Lemur said. "Patch her up by all means. But not here." He threw her over his shoulder and stalked away.

  "Come on." Agilely for a man of his age, Crane mounted the steps to the trapdoor Lemur had opened for them and tugged at one of its wheels.

  "We can't leave her," Silk said. He moved his shoulder experimentally and decided no bones had been broken.

  "We can't help her while we're prisoners ourselves."

  Lemur's mocking voice echoed from the other end of the hold. "A man is dying, and this woman is bleeding like a stuck pig. Don't either of you care?"

  "I do," Silk called, and hobbled in the direction of the voice.

  Beyond the bow of the yawl, the flier lay on a blanket spread on the steel floor, his sun-browned face twisted in agony. Beside him stretched a second trapdoor, far larger than the one through which they had come-large enough, as Silk realized with some astonishment, to admit the yawl. An instrument panel stood against the bulkhead at the end of the compartment.

  Lemur dropped Mamelta next to the flier. In a deafening roar that reminded Silk of the talus, he called, "Rejoin us, Doctor. You can't open that hatch." To Silk he added, "I tightened those locking screws, you see. And I'm a great deal stronger than both of you together, as well as a great deal heavier."

  Silk had already knelt at the flier's head. "I convey to you, my son, the forgiveness of all the gods. Recall now the words of Pas, who-"

  "That's enough." Lemur took him by the shoulder again. "We want the doctor first, I think. If he won't come, you must bring him."

  "I'm here," Crane announced.

  "This is our flier," Lemur said. "His name's Iolar. He has told us a little, you sec, though nothing of value, not even the name of his city. I would have to agree that he's scarcely taller than you, and he may well be a trifle lighter. Yet he is flier enough, or almost enough."

  Crane did not reply. After a moment he took scissors from his bag and began to cut away the flightsuit. Silk tore a strip from his robe, wound it twice about Mamelta's head, and tied it.

  Lemur nodded approvingly. "She will live to be grateful for your efforts, I'm sure, Patera. So will.lolar, I hope. Are you listening, Doctor Crane?"

  Crane nodded without looking up. "I'm going to have to roll you over. Put your arms above your head. Don't try to roll yourself. Let me do it."

  "You see," Lemur continued conversationally, "Iolar came down right here, in the lake. In one way, that was extremely convenient for us. We sent our little boat to the surface and scooped up him and his wings without help from the Civil Guard. Or from Blood, I should add, and very much to the discomfiture of them both." Lemur chuckled.

  "That was early yesterday morning. As it chanced, I was ashore at the time, so Loris directed the recovery. Whether I could've managed things better, I can't say. Loris is not Lemur, but then who is? In any event one vital part was not retrieved, although the flier himself was, with most of the wings and harness and so on that permitted him to fly. He calls it a propulsion module, or PM. Isn't that so, Iolar?"

  Crane glanced up at Lemur, then looked quickly back to his patient.

  "Precisely so, Doctor. Without the device, our troopers will still be able to fly in a manner of speaking. But only to glide, as a gull does when it rides the breeze without moving its wings. It should be possible for such a trooper to launch himself from a cliff or a tower and fly a great distance, given a strong and favoring wind. Only under the most extraordinary conditions, liowcver, could lie take off from a level field. Under no conceivable conditions could he fly into the eye of any wind, even the weakest. Is this too technical for you, Patera? Doctor Crane's following me, I believe."

  Silk said, "So am I, I think."

  "At first the deficiency appeared only temporary. Iolar had a propulsion module-he admitted as much. Presumably it was torn free by the impact when he struck the water. We could fish it up, which we tried to do all that day, or he could tell us how to make them. This last, I am sorry to say, he refuses to do."

  Crane said, "You must have some sort of medical facility on this boat. Something better than this."

  "Oh, we do," Lemur assured him. "In fact, we had him there for a while. But. he didn't repay our kindness, so we brought him back here. Is he conscious?"

  "Didn't you hear me talking to him a minute ago? Of course he is."

  "Fine. Iolar, listen to me. I'm Councillor Lemur, and I am speaking to you. I may never do this again, and what I'm about to say will be more important to you than anything you've ever heard before, or that you're ever apt to hear. Do you hear me now? Say something or move your head."

  The flier lay face down, his face turned toward the long steel hatch in the deck. His voice, when it came, was weak and strangely accented. "I hear."

  Lemur smiled and nodded. "You've found me to be a man of my word, haven't you? Very well, I'm giving you my word that everything I'm about to say is true. I'm not going to try to trick you again, and I'm not inclined to be patient with you any longer. These are the men Potto and I told you about. This doctor i
s an admitted spy, just like you. Not a spy of ours, you may be sure. A spy from Palustria, or so he says. This augur is the leader of the faction that has been trying to seize control of our city. If Doctor Crane says you're going to die, you've won our argument. I'll let the augur bring you Pas's Pardon, and that's that. But if Doctor Crane says you'll live, you'll be surrendering your life if you continue to refuse. Have I made myself clear? I'm not going to waste any more of my time, or Potto's, in trying to force the facts we need from you. We're building new equipment to find your propulsion module on the bottom. We'll get it, and you'll have died for nothing. If we don't find it, we still have the eagle. She knows her business now, and all we'll have to do to get a propulsion module is send her after the next flier we see."

  Lemur pointed a finger at Crane. "No threats, Doctor. No promises. Truth will cost you nothing, and a lie gain you nothing. Is he going to live?"

  "I don't know," Crane said levelly. "He's got a couple of broken ribs-they haven't punctured the lung, or he might be dead already. At least four thoracic vertebrae are in pretty bad shape. There's damage to the spinal cord, but I don't think it's been severed, although I can't be sure. Given proper care and a first-rate surgeon, I'd say he might have a good chance."

  Lemur looked sceptical. "A complete recovery?"

  "I doubt it. He might be able to walk."

  "Now then." Lemur's voice dropped to a whisper. "Which will it be? In two or three hours we could have you ashore. Those black canisters all of you wear-how do they work?"

  Silence filled the hold. Silk, bent over Mamelta, saw her eyelids flutter, and clasped her hand. Crane shrugged and snapped his bag shut, the sound as abrupt and final as the report of Auk's needler in the Cock.

  "I didn't think you would," Lemur told the flier almost conversationally. "That's why I put out. Patera, you can start your rigmarole, if you want to. I don't care. He'll be dead almost before you finish it."

  "What are you going to do?" Crane asked.

  "Put him off the boat." Lemur strode to the instrument panel. "As a man of science you might be interested in this, Doctor. This compartment is at the bottom of our boat, as I told you. It's tightly sealed, as you discovered a few minutes ago when you tried to open the hatch. At present," he glanced at one of the gauges, "we're seventy cubits below the surface. At this depth, the water pressure around our hull is roughly three atmospheres. Has anyone explained to you how we rise and sink?"

  "No," Crane said. "I've wondered." He glanced at Silk as though to see whether he, too, was curious; but Silk was chanting and swinging his beads over the head of the injured flier.

  "We do it with compressed air. If we want to go deeper, we open one of our ballast tanks. That lets lake water in, so we lose buoyancy and sink. When we want to surface, we valve compressed air into that tank to force the water out. The tank becomes a float, so we gain buoyancy. Simple but effective. When I open this valve, more air will flow into this compartment." Lemur turned it, producing a loud hiss.

  "If I were to let it in fast, you'd find it painful, so I've only cracked the valve. Swallow if your ears hurt."

  Silk, who had been giving Lemur some small fraction of his attention, paused in his chant to swallow. As he did, the injured flier wliispered, "The sun…" His eyes, which had been half-shut, opened wide, and he struggled to turn his face toward Silk. "Tell your people!"

  No audible response was permitted until the liturgy was complete, but Silk nodded, swinging his beads in the sign of subtraction. "You are blessed." While bobbing his head nine times, as the ritual demanded, he made the sign of addition.

  "When the pressure here reaches three atmospheres, as it soon will, we can open that boat hole without flooding the compartment." Lemur chuckled. "I'll loosen up the fittings now."

  Crane started to protest, then clamped his jaw.

  "We're losing control," the flier whispered to Silk, and his eyes closed.

  With his free hand, Silk stroked the flier's temple to indicate that he had heard. "I pray you to forgive us, the living." Another sign of addition. "I and many another have wronged you often, my son, committing terrible crimes and numerous offenses against you. Do not hold them in your heart, but begin the life that follows life in innocence, all these wrongs forgiven." With his beads, he traced the sign of subtraction again.

  Mamelta's hand found Silk's again and closed upon it. "He… Am I dreaming?"

  Silk shook his head. "I speak here for Great Pas, for Divine Echidna, for Scalding Scylla, for Marvelous Molpe, for Tenebrous Tartaros, for Highest Hierax, for Thoughtful Thelxiepeia, for Fierce Phaea, and for Strong Sphigx. Also for all lesser gods." Lowering his voice, Silk added, "The Outsider likewise forgives you, my son, for I speak here for him."

  "He's going to die?"

  Silk put a finger to his lips. In a surprisingly gentle tone, Crane said, "Lemur's going to kill him. He's opted for it. So would I."

  "So do I." Mamelta touched the black cloth with which Silk had bandaged her head. "They said we were going to a wonderful world of peace and plenty, where it would be noon all day. We knew they lied. When I die, I'll go home. My mother and brothers… Chiquito on his perch in the patio."

  Crane took out his scissors again. He was cutting away the cloth when Lemur threw open the hatch.

  It was-to Silk the thought was irresistible-as if the Outsider himself had entered the hold. Where the dark steel hatch had been a moment before, there was a rectangle of liquid light, translucid and coolly lambent. The light of the Long Sun, penetrating the clear water of Lake Limna even to a depth of seventy cubits, was refracted and diffused, filling the opening that Lemur had so suddenly revealed and invading the hold with a supernal dawn of celestial blue. For a few seconds, Silk could scarcely believe that the ethereal substance was water. Leaning across the flier with his right hand (still grasping his beads) braced upon the coaming, he dipped his fingers into it.

  Crane said, "A little air escaped. Did you feel it?"

  Staring down into the crystal water, Silk shook his head. A school of slender silver fish materialized at one end of the hatchway, and in the space of a breath appeared to drift to the other, ten cubits or more beneath the steel plate on which he knelt.

  Lemur said, "Move, Patera," and picked up the flier.

  Crane shouted, "Watch out! Don't hold him like that!"

  "Afraid I'll damage him further, Doctor?" Lemur smiled and lifted the flier effortlessly above his head. "It won't matter.

  "What about it, lolar? Anything to say? This is the last chance."

  "Thank the woman," the flier gasped. "The men. Strong wings."

  Lemur threw him down. The lambent water that filled the hatchway erupted in Silk's face, drenching and mo- mentarily blinding him. By the time he could see again, the flier had nearly passed out of sight. A brief glimpse of his agonized face, his startled eyes and open mouth, from which bubbles like spheres of thin glass streamed, and he was gone.

  Lemur slammed down the hatch with a deafening crash and tightened its fastenings. "When I open the one that we came through, the pressure here will equalize with the pressure in the rest of the ship. Keep your mouths open, or it may blow out your eardrums."

  He led them up a different companionway this time, and along a broader corridor (in which they passed Councillors Galago and Potto deep in conversation), and at last through a doorway guarded by two soldiers. "This is what you were looking for, Doctor," he told Crane, "although you may not have known it. In this stateroom you will behold our true, biological selves. I'm over there." He pointed toward a circle of gleaming machines; Crane hurried toward it. Silk, limping and supporting Mamelta, followed more slowly. Councillor Lemur's bio body lay upon an immaculate white pallet, an equally immaculate white sheet drawn to his chin. His eyes were closed, his cheeks sunken; his chest rose and fell gently and slowly; the faint wheeze of his breath was barely audible. A wisp of white hair escaped the circlet of black synthetic and network of multicolored wires that bound his br
ows. Snakelike tubes from a dozen machines (clear, straw-yellow, and darkly crimson) ducked beneath the sheet.

  "No treacherous bios in here," Lemur told them. "We're nursed by devoted chems, and the machines that maintain us in life are maintained by citems. They love us, and we love them. We promise them immortality, and we will deliver it: a never-ending supply of replacement parts. They repay us with infinite prolongation of our merely mortal lives." Crane was inspecting one of the machines. "Your life-support equipment seems very impressive. I wish I had it."

  "My kidneys and liver have failed. So we have devices to perform those functions. There's a booster on my heart that's capable of taking over its function completely whenever that becomes necessary. Pulses of oxygen, of course." Crane sucked his teeth and shook his head.

  Mamelta said softly, "This is the first time I haven't been cold."

  "The air in here is completely reprocessed every seventy seconds. It is filtered, irradiated to destroy bacteria and viruses, and maintained at a relative humidity of thirty-five percent, within a quarter degree of the normal temperature of the bio body."

  Looking down at the recumbent councillor. Silk told him, "I'd never have thought I'd feel sorry for you. But I do."

  "I'm seldom conscious of lying here. This is me." Lemur struck his chest, and the sound was that of the ringing hammer Silk had heard in the dark. "Vigorous and alert, with perfect hearing and vision. All that I lack is good digestion. And at times," Lemur paused significantly, "patience."

  Crane was bending over the recumbent figure; before Lemur could move to stop him, he pushed up one gray eyelid with his thumb. "This man is dead."

  "Don't be absurd!" Lemur started toward him, but Silk, acting immediately upon an impulse of which he was scarcely aware, stepped into his path. And Lemur, perhaps responding to some childhood injunction to respect an augur's habit, stopped short.

  "Look." Crane reached with thumb and forefinger into the empty socket and drew out a pinch of black detritus that might almost have been a mixture of earth and tar. After exhibiting it to Lemur, he dropped it on the pristine sheet, where it lay like so much filth, and wiped his fingers on the thin white pillow, leaving dingy, mephitic streaks. Lemur made a sound, not loud, that Silk had never heard before (though Silk had already, young as he was, heard so much grief). It was a snuffling, and in it a whine like the cry of a small shaft driven faster and faster-the sound of a drill that has struck a nail, and, impelled by a madman, spins on harder and harder and faster and faster until it smokes, destroying itself by its own boundless, ungovemed energy. Some hours later. Silk would think of that sound and recall the clockwork universe the Outsider had shown him on the Phaesday before in the ballcourt; for it was the sound of that universe dying, or rather of a part of it dying, or rather (he would decide sleepily) of the whole of it dying for someone.