Litany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  Lemur crouched, slowly and unsteadily, as he sounded the note that would stay with Silk until night; his hands moved haplessly, as though of their own volition, not pawing or clawing or indeed doing anything at all, but writhing as the dead flier's hands were moving (perhaps) even then, in the cold waters of the lake as they awaited the onset of that stiffening which follows death and endures for half a day. (Or a day, or a day and a half, depending upon a variety of circumstances, and always subject to some dispute.) As he crouched, Lemur's eyes never left the mummified councillor on the snowy pallet; and at length, when one knee was on the green-tiled floor, and it seemed that Lemur could not crouch further, his arms fell.

  Then the silver azoth that Si.lk had taken from a drawer in Hyacinth's dressing table, on the night of the same day that the Outsider had revealed to Silk the essence of the universe in which he existed, fell from Lemur's tapestried sleeve and skittered across the floor.

  And Crane dove for it, bumping hard against one of the medical machines that surrounded the dead councillor's bed and sending it crashing down on its side; but quickly and deftly, gray-bearded though he was, he snatched up the axoth.

  Its terrible beam shot forth, and Lemur exploded in a ball of flame. Silk and Mamelta staggered back, covering their faces with their arms.

  Crane dashed past them and was out the door by the time that Silk could see again.

  Mamelta screamed.

  Silk held her arm and dragged her behind him, conscious that he should silence her but conscious also that it would probably prove impossible and that there was not a second to waste in any event.

  The soldiers at the door were firing when Silk opened it. Before he could draw back, they charged down the broad corridor, running at thrice the speed even a fleet boy like Horn could have managed and ten times the best that Silk, handicapped by his ankle and the shrieking Mamelta, could hope to achieve; the two of them had not covered half the distance when there was a flash from the companionway and a double explosion-horribly painful, though not loud to ears still shocked and ringing from Lemur's detonation.

  "We must get there before he shuts the hatch," Silk told Mamelta, and then, when she still would not run, he (to his own later amazement) picked her up bodily, and throwing her over one shoulder like a rolled mattress or a sack of flour, ran himself, stumbling and staggering, once crashing into a bulkhead and nearly falling headlong down the companionway. Someone was shouting, "Wait! Wait!" and he had reached the hatch before he realized that it was himself.

  It was shut, but he dropped Mamelta and wrenched around the handwheels. A roaring wind from below lifted it as he did.

  "Doctor!"

  "Help me!" Crane shouted. "We can get away in the boat."

  Haifa dozen slug guns boomed in the corridor as Silk and Mamelta stumbled down the short companionway into the boat hold, and a slug slammed the hatch like a sledgehammer as he retightened its fastenings.

  Wlien he reached Crane, the little physician was heaving at the longer hatch that covered the boat hole. The three of them threw it back, with chill lake water gushing in after it, helping to lift it as air pressure had opened the much smaller hatch above. For a moment Silk was conscious of floundering in rising water. He spat, managed to get his face clear, and gasped for breath.

  The flood slacked, then held steady for a second or two that seemed a minute at least; he was conscious of the full-throated hoot of the air valve, and of someone (whether it was Mamelta or Crane he could not be sure) struggling and splashing nearby.

  The flow reversed. Slowly at first, then swifter and swifter, sweeping him along, the flood that had practically filled the compartment rushed back to Lake Limna. Helpless as a doll in a maelstrom, he spun in a dizzy whorl of blue light, slowed (his lungs ready to burst), and caught sight of another figure suspended like himself with splayed limbs and drifting hair,

  And then, dimly, of a monstrous mottled face-black, red, and gold-far larger than any wall of the manse, and a gaping mouth that closed upon the splayed figure he had seen. It passed below him as a floater rushing down some reeling mountain meadow might pass a floating thistle seed, and the turbulence of its wake sent him spinning.

  Chapter 13

  THE CALDÉ SURRENDERS

  "Patera? Oh, Patera!"

  Maytera Marble was waving from the front steps of the old manteion on Sun Street. Two troopers in armor stood beside her; their officer, in dress greens, indulgently exhibited his sword to little Maytera Mint. Gulo hurried forward. The officer glanced up. "Patera Silk? You are under arrest." Gulo shook his head and explained. Maytera Marble sniffed, a sniff of such devastating power and contempt that it burned to dust all the pleasure the young officer had enjoyed from Maytera Mint's wide-eyed admiration. "Take Patera Silk away? You can't! Such a holy-"

  A soft snarl came from the crowd that had been clustered about Gulo. Gulo was not an imaginative man, yet it seemed to him that an unseen lion was awakening; and the prayers he had chanted each Sphigxday were not nonsensical after all.

  "Don't fight!" Maytera Mint returned the officer's sword and raised her hands. "Please! There's no need."

  A stone flew, striking the helmet of one of the troopers. A second whizzed past Maytera Marble's head to thump the door, and the trooper who had been hit fired, his shot followed by a scream. Maytera Mint dashed down the steps into the crowd.

  The trooper fired again, and his officer slapped down the muzzle of his slug gun. "Open these," the officer told Gulo. "We had better go inside." More stones flew as they fled into the manteion. The trooper who had been hit fired twice more as Maytera Marble and the other trooper swung its heavy door shut, his shots so closely spaced that they might almost have been one. There was an answering rattle of stones.

  "It is the heat." The officer spoke confidently and even smiled. "They will forget now that we are out of sight." He sheathed his sword. "This Patera Silk is popular."

  Maytera Marble nodded. And then, "Patera!" "I have to go." Gulo was sliding back the bolt. "I-I shouldn't have gone in here at all." He struggled to re- member the other sibyl's name, failed, and concluded lamely, "She was right."

  The officer snatched at his robe an instant too late as Gulo slipped out; angry yells invaded the manteion, then muted as the troopers shut the door and bolted it again. Faintly, the officer could hear Gulo shouting, "People! People!"

  "They won't hurt him, Maytera." He paused to listen, his head cocked. "I do not like arresting…"

  He let the apology trail away, having realized that he no longer had her attention. Her metal face mirrored faint hues: lemon, pink, and sorrel. Following the direction of her gaze, he saw the swirling color of the Sacred Window and knelt. The dancing hues created patterns he could not quite distinguish, glyphs, figures, and landscapes half formed, a face that swam, melted, and coalesced before the goddess spoke in a tongue he almost understood, a language that he too had known in a long-past life in an unimaginable place at an inconceivable time. In this, he was a maggot; her utterance proclaimed that he had once been a man, though the memories she woke were perhaps no more than the dead thoughts of the man he devoured. I will, Great Goddess. I will. He will be safe with us. Behind and above him he heard the chem talking to the fat augur. "A god came while you were outside, Patera. Honored us without a sacrifice. There was no one to interpret. I'm so terribly sony you missed it-" And the augur, "I didn't, Maytera. Not all of it."

  The officer willed them to be quiet. Her divine voice still strummed in his ears, far and sweet; and he knew what she desired him to do.

  TO BREACH THE surface of the lake as Silk did, to rise from suffocation and see afresh the thin, bright streak of the sun and draw one's first breath, was to be reborn. He was not a strong swimmer, and indeed was hardly a swimmer at all; yet exhausted as he was, he managed to stay afloat on the long, slow swell, kicking spasmodically, dimly fearful that each kick might draw the attention of the huge fish.

  There was a distant shout, followed by the
clamor of a pan wildly beaten; he ignored both until the swell heaved him high enough to see the worn brown sails.

  Three half-naked fishermen pulled him onto their boat. "There's someone else," he gasped. "We've got to find him."

  "They already have!" And Crane was grinning at him.

  The tallest and most grizzled of the fishermen slapped him on the back. "Gods look out for augurs. That's what my paw used to tell, Patera."

  Crane nodded sagely. "Augurs and fools."

  "Yes, sir. Them, too. Next time you go sailin', you take a sailor. Let's hope we can find your woman."

  The thought of the great fish filled Silk's mind, and he shuddered. "It's good of you to look, but I'm afraid…"

  "Couldn't reach her, Patera?"

  "No, but- No."

  "Well, we'll haul her out if we see her."

  Silk stood; at once the rolling of the boat cost him his footing, and he found himself sitting on piled nets.

  "Stay where you are and rest," Crane muttered. "You've been through a lot. So've I. But we've gotten a thorough washing, and that's good. Lots of isotopes released when a chem blows." He held up a gleaming card. "Captain, could you find us something to eat? Or a little wine?"

  "Let me put her about, sir, and I'll see what's left."

  "Money belt," Crane whispered, noticing Silk's puzzled look. "Lemur made me turn out my pockets but never patted me down. I promised them a card to take us back to Limna."

  "That poor woman," Silk said to no one in particular, "three hundred years, for that." A black bird was perched in the rigging of a distant boat; seeing it, Silk recalled Oreb, smiled, and reproached himself for smiling.

  Guiltily he glanced about him, hoping that his unseemly levity had passed unnoticed. Crane was watching the captain, and the captain, the largest sail. One sailor stood in the bow with a foot upon the bowsprit. The other, grasping a rope connected to the long stick (Silk could not recall its name, if he had ever known it) that spread the sail, appeared to be waiting for a signal from the captain-the back of his head seemed uncannily familiar. As Silk altered his position to get a better view of it, he realized that the nets on which he sat were dry.

  CRANE HAD BOUGHT Silk a red tunic, brown trousers, and brown shoes to replace the black ones he had kicked off in the lake. He changed in a deserted alley, throwing his robe, his torn tunic, and his old trousers behind a pile of refuse. "I got Hyacinth's needler back," he said, "and my gammadion and my beads; but not my glasses or any of my other possessions. Perhaps that's a sign."

  Crane shrugged. "They were probably in Lemur's pocket." He had a new tunic and new trousers, too, and he had bought a razor. Glancing toward the mouth of the alley, he added, "Keep your voice down."

  "What did you see?"

  "Couple of Guardsmen."

  "The Ayuntamiento will surely think we're dead," Silk objected. "Until they leam otherwise, we have no reason to fear the Guard."

  Crane shook his head.

  "If they thought we might have survived, they could have come to the surface and looked for us, couldn't they?"

  "Not without telling everybody on the lake abouttheir underwater boat. How do those fit?"

  "They're a trifle large." Silk looked down at himself, wishing that he had a mirror. "Their boat must have come to the surface to collect poor lolar."

  "You're thin," Crane told him. "No, they sent up that little one we saw. They couldn't send it after us because that compartment down in the keel would've flooded again as soon as they undogged the hatch."

  "It flooded when we opened the one in the floor," Silk murmured.

  "That's right. I'd opened the air valve as far as it would go, but it hadn't had much time to build up pressure after you and the woman vented it coming down. Naturally a lot of water came in. It cut down the air space and pushed the pressure up to the water pressure, so the water flowed out again almost right away."

  Silk hesitated, then nodded. "But if they open the upper hatch-the one in the corridor-the compartment will flood again, won't it?" "Sure. Water would rise into the rest of the boat, too. Which is why they couldn't send their little boat after us. I can't imagine how they'll shut the boat door when they can't get into the compartment to do it, but no doubt they'll figure out something."

  Silk leaned against a wall and removed Crane's wrapping from his ankle. "I'm not a sailor, but if it were up to me, I'd go far out in the lake, where there wasn't much chance of being seen-or perhaps into the cave Lemur mentioned when you asked how he had gotten your bag."

  "I wish I hadn't lost that." Crane fingered his beard. "I'd had it twenty years."

  Recalling his pen case, Silk said, "I know how you must feel, Doctor." He flogged the wall with the wrapping.

  "Suppose they did go back into their cave. They'd still have the problem. That underwater boat's too big to drag up on shore."

  "But they could tilt it," Silk said. "Shift everything to one side and force all the water out of the floats on the other. They might even be able to pull it over with a cable attached to the side of the cave."

  Crane nodded, still watching the mouth of the alley. "I suppose so. Are you ready?"

  WHEN CRANE HAD gone, Silk opened the window. Their room was on the third floor of the Rusty Lantern, and provided a magnificent view of the lake, as well as a refreshing breeze. Leaning across the sill, Silk looked down into Dock Street. Crane had wanted to get out of sight, or so he had said; but he had called for pen and paper as soon as they had taken this room, and gone out into the street again, leaving Silk behind, after scribbling a not very lengthy note. Looking up and down Dock Street now, Silk decided that if it did no harm for Crane to go out again, it could surely do none for him to study the street from a window this high.

  Limna was peaceful, the innkeeper had said; but there had been rioting in the city the night before, rioting put down harshly by the Guard. "Silk's men," the innkeeper had told them wisely. "They're the ones stirring it up, if you ask me."

  Silk's men.

  Who were they? Deep in thought, Silk stroked his cheek, feeling two days' beard beneath his fingertips. The men who had chalked up his name, no doubt. There were some in the quarter who would do that and more, beyond doubt, and even assert that they were acting under his direction. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that some of them might be the men who had knelt in Sun Street for his blessing when he had told Blood he had been enlightened-men so desperate that they would accept any leader who appeared to have the favor of the gods.

  Even himself.

  Two Guardsmen in mottled green conflict armor were coming up Dock Street with slug guns at the ready. They were showing themselves, clearly, in the hope that the sight of them by day would prevent disturbances tonight-would prevent men with clubs and stones, and hangers like Auk's and a few needlers, from fighting troopers in armor, armed with slug guns. For a moment Silk considered calling out to them, telling them that he was Patera Silk, and that he was ready to give himself up if that would end the fighting. The Ayuntamiento could hardly kill him without a trial if he surrendered publicly; it would have to try him, and even if he could not prove his innocence he would have the satisfaction of declaring it.

  The manteion was not yet safe, however. He had promised to save it if he could, and it was in more danger than ever now. Musk had given him how long? A week? Yes, one week from Scylsday. But had Musk really been speaking for Blood as he had claimed, or for himself? Legally, the manteion was Musk's: to give himself up now would be to turn his manteion over to Musk.

  Something deep in Silk's being recoiled at the thought. To Blood, perhaps, if it could not be helped. But never, surely never, to someone-to… Why, the very possibility had moved the Outsider to enlighten him in order to prevent it. He would kill Musk if If there was no other way, and he could bring himself to do it. He turned away from the window and stretched himself on his bed, recalling Councillor Lemur and the way Lemur had died. As Presiding Officer of the Ayuntamiento, Lemur had been
Caldé, in fact if not in name; and Crane had killed him. It had been Crane's right to do that, perhaps, since Lemur had intended to execute Crane without a trial.

  And yet a trial would have been a mere formality. Crane was a spy and had admitted it-a spy from Palustria. Had Crane then really had the right to kill Lemur? And did that matter?

  Belatedly, it struck Silk that the note that Crane had written so hurriedly had almost certainly been a message to the government of his city-to the Caldé of Palustria, or whatever they called him. To the prince-president. Crane would have described the Ayuntamiento's underwater boat (Crane had considered it extremely important) and the peculiar teardrop shape that was the cross section of a wing that could fly.

  There were steps in the hall outside, and Silk held his breath. Crane had told him to unbar the door only to three quick taps, but it did not matter. The Guard would come, would search this inn and every other inn, beyond question, as soon as the Ayuntamiento chose a new Presiding Officer and that Presiding Officer decided there was a chance that he and Crane (and even poor Mamelta, for the new Presiding Officer could not be sure that Mamelta was dead either) might have survived. Crane had defended the cost of this room in the best inn in Limna by saying that the Guard would be less ready to disturb them if they appeared rich; but spurred by urgent orders from the Ayuntamiento, the Guard would not hesitate to disturb anyone, no matter how rich.