Nightside the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  It seemed to her that she was always on the point of overheating any more, in hot weather anyway. Pas, Great Pas, God of Sky and Sun and Storm, bring the snow! Bring the cold wind!

  This endless summer, without snow, with no autumn rains and the season for them practically past now, the season for snow nearly upon us, and no snow. Heat and dust and clouds that were all empty, yellow haze. What could Pas, Lord Pas, Husband of Grain-bearing Echidna and Father of the Seven, be thinking of?

  A girl: “Look—she’s asleep!”

  Another: “I didn’t think they slept.”

  A knock at the Sun Street door of the palaestra.

  “I’ll get it!” That was Asphodella’s voice.

  This was Ratel’s. “No, I will!”

  Fragrant white blossoms and sharp white teeth. Maytera Marble meditated upon names. Flowers—or plants of some kind, at least—for bio girls; animals or animal products for bio boys. Metals or stones for us.

  Both together: “Let me!”

  Her old name had been—

  Her old name had been …

  A crash, as a chair fell. Maytera Marble rose stiffly, one hand gripping the windowsill. “Stop that this instant!”

  She could bring up a list of her nonfunctioning and defective parts whenever she chose. She had not chosen to do so for close to a century; but from time to time, most often when the cenoby lay on the night side of the long sun, that list came up of itself.

  “Aquifolia! Separate those two before I lose my temper.”

  Maytera Marble could remember the short sun, a disk of orange fire; and it seemed to her that the chief virtue of that old sun had been that no list, no menu, ever appeared unbidden beneath its rays.

  Both together: “Sib, I wanted—”

  “Well, neither of you are going to,” Maytera Marble told them.

  Another knock, too loud for knuckles of bone and skin. She must hurry or Maytera Rose might go, might answer that knock herself, an occasion for complaint that would outlast the snow. If the snow ever arrived.

  “I am going to go myself. Teasel, you’re in charge of the class until I return. Keep them at their work, every one of them.” To give her final words more weight, Maytera Marble paused as long as she dared. “I shall expect you to name those who misbehaved.”

  A good step toward the door. There was an actuator in her right leg that occasionally jammed when it had been idle for an hour or so, but it appeared to be functioning almost acceptably. Another step, and another. Good, good! Praise to you, Great Pas.

  She stopped just beyond the doorway, to listen for an immediate disturbance, then limped down the corridor to the door.

  A beefy, prosperous-looking man nearly as tall as Patera Silk had been pounding the panels with the carved handle of his walking stick.

  “May every god favor you this morning,” Maytera Marble said. “How may I serve you?”

  “My name’s Blood,” he announced. “I’m looking at the property. I’ve already seen the garden and so on, but the other buildings are locked. I’d like you to take me through them, and show me this one.”

  “I couldn’t possibly admit you to our cenoby,” Maytera Marble said firmly. “Nor could I permit you to enter the manse alone. I’ll be happy to show you through our manteion and this palaestra—provided that you have a valid reason for wishing to see them.”

  Blood’s red face became redder still. “I’m checking the condition of the buildings. All of them need a lot of work, from what I’ve seen outside.”

  Maytera Marble nodded. “That’s quite true, I’m afraid, although we do everything that we can. Patera Silk’s been repairing the roof of the manteion. That was most urgent. Is it true—”

  Blood interrupted her. “The cenoby—is that the little house on Silver Street?”

  She nodded.

  “The manse is the one where Silver Street and Sun come together? The little three-cornered house at the west end of the garden?”

  “That’s correct. Is it true, then, that this entire property is to be sold? That’s what some of the children have been saying.”

  Blood eyed her quizzically. “Has Maytera Rose heard about it?”

  “I suppose she’s heard the rumor, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t discussed it with her.”

  Blood nodded, a minute inclination of his head that probably escaped his own notice. “I didn’t tell that towheaded butcher of yours. He looked like the sort to make trouble. But you tell Maytera Rose that the rumor’s true, you hear me? Tell her it’s been sold already, sib. Sold to me.”

  We’ll be gone before the snow flies, Maytera Marble thought, hearing her future and all their futures in Blood’s tone. Gone before winter and living somewhere else, where Sun Street will be just a memory.

  Blessed snow to cool her thighs; she pictured herself sitting at peace, with her lap full of new-fallen snow.

  Blood added, “Tell her my name.”

  Chapter 2

  THE SACRIFICE

  As it was every day except Scylsday, “from noon until the sun can be no thinner,” the market was thronged. Here all the produce of Viron’s fields and gardens was displayed for sale or barter: yams, arrowroot, and hill-country potatoes; onions, scallions, and leeks; squashes yellow, orange, red, and white; sun-starved asparagus; beans black as night or spotted like hounds; dripping watercresses from the shrinking rivulets that fed Lake Limna; lettuces and succulent greens of a hundred sorts; and fiery peppers; wheat, millet, rice, and barley; maize yellower than its name, and white, blue, and red as well, spilling, leaking, and overflowing from baskets, bags, and earthenware pots—this though Patera Silk noted with dismay that prices were higher than he had ever seen them, and many of the stunted ears were missing grains.

  Here still despite the drought were dates and grapes, oranges and citrons, pears, papayas, pomegranates and little red bananas; angelica, hyssop, licorice, cicely, cardamom, anise, basil, mandrake, borage, marjoram, mullein, parsley, saxifrage, and scores of other herbs.

  Here perfumers waved lofty plumes of dyed pampas grass to strew the overheated air with fragrances matched to every conceivable feminine name; and here those fragrances warred against the savory aromas of roasting meats and bubbling stews, the stinks of beast and men and of the excrements of both. Sides of beef and whole carcasses of pork hung here from cruel-looking hooks of hammered iron; and here (as Silk turned left in search of those who dealt in live beasts and birds) was the rich harvest of the lake: gap-mouthed fish with silver sides and starting eyes, mussels, writhing eels, fretful black crawfish with claws like pliers, eyes like rubies, and fat tails longer than a man’s hand; sober gray geese, and ducks richly dressed in brown, green, black, and that odd blue so seldom seen elsewhere that it is called teal. Folding tables and thick polychrome blankets spread on the trampled, uneven soil held bracelets and ornamental pins, flashing rings and cascading necklaces, graceful swords and straight-bladed, double-edged knives with grips of rare hardwoods or colored leathers, and hammers, axes, froes, and scutches.

  Swiftly though he shouldered his way through the crowd, greatly aided by his height, his considerable strength, and his sacred office, Silk lingered to watch as a nervous green monkey picked fortunes for a cardbit, and to see a weaver of eight or nine tie the ten thousandth knot in a carpet, her hands working, as it seemed, without reference to her idle, empty little face.

  And at all times, whether he stood watching or pushed through the crowd, Silk looked deep into the eyes of those who had come to buy or sell, and tried to look into their hearts, too, reminding himself (whenever such prompts were needed) that each was treasured by Pas. Great Pas, with an understanding far beyond that of mere men, accounted this faded housewife with her basket on her arm more precious than any figurine carved from ivory; this sullen, pockmarked boy (so Silk thought of him, though the youth was only a year or two the younger), standing ready to snatch a brass earring or an egg, worth more than all the goods that all such boys might ever hope to
steal. Pas had built the whorl for Men, and not made men, or women, or children, for the whorl.

  “Caught today!” shouted half a dozen voices, by the goodwill of Melodious Molpe or the accident of innumerable repetitions for once practically synchronized. Following the sound, Silk found himself among the sellers he sought. Hobbled deer reared and plunged, their soft brown eyes wild with fright; a huge snake lifted its flat, malevolent head, hissing like a kettle on the stove; live salmon gasped and splashed in murky, glass-fronted tanks; pigs grunted, lambs baaed, chickens squawked, and milling goats eyed passersby with curiosity and sharp suspicion. Which of these, if any, would make a suitable gift of thanks to the Outsider? To that lone nebulous god, mysterious, beneficent, and severe, whose companion he had been for a time that had seemed less than an instant and longer than centuries? Motionless at the edge of the seething crowd, one leg pressed against the unpeeled poles that confined the goats, Silk ransacked the whole store of dusty knowledge he had acquired with so much labor during eight years at the schola; and found nothing.

  On the other side of the goat pen, a well-marked young donkey trotted in a circle, reversing direction each time its owner clapped, bowing (a foreleg stretched forward, its wide forehead in the dust) when he whistled. Such a trained animal, Silk reflected, would make a superb sacrifice to any god; but the donkey’s price would be nearer thirty cards than three.

  A fatted ox recalled the prosperous-looking man called Blood, and Blood’s three cards might well obtain it after a session of hard bargaining. Many augurs chose such victims whenever they could, and what remained after the sacrifice would supply the palaestra’s kitchen for at least a week, and feed Maytera Rose, Maytera Mint, and himself like so many commissioners as well; but Silk could not believe that a mutilated and stall-fed beast, however sumptuous, would be relished by a god, nor did he himself often indulge in meats of any kind.

  Lambs, unrelieved black for Stygian Tartaros, Deathly Hierax, and Grim Phaea, purest white for the remainder of the Nine, were the sacrifices most frequently mentioned in the Chrasmologic Writings; but he had offered several such lambs already without attracting a divine presence to the Sacred Window. What sort of thanks would such a lamb—or even an entire flock of such lambs, for Blood’s cards put a sizable flock within his reach—be now to the veiled god who had, unbribed, so greatly favored him today?

  This dog-headed ape, trained to light its master’s way with cresset or lantern, and (according to a badly lettered placard) to defend him from footpads and assassins, would cost at least as much as the donkey. Shaking his head, Silk walked on.

  A Flier—perhaps the same Flier—sailed serenely overhead, his widespread, gauzy wings visible now, his body a dark cross against the darkening streak of the sun. The burly, bearded man beside Silk shook his fist, and several persons muttered maledictions.

  “Don’t nobody ever want it to rain,” the nearest of the sellers of beasts remarked philosophically, “but everybody wants to go on eatin’.”

  Silk nodded his agreement. “The gods smile on us, my son, or so it is written. It’s a wonder they don’t laugh aloud.”

  “Do you think they’re really spyin’ on us, Patera, the way the Ayuntamiento keeps tellin’ us? Or do they bring on rain? Rain and storms, that’s what my old father used to say, and his before him. I’ve noticed myself that it’s true pretty often. Lord Pas must know that we could use some these days.”

  “I really don’t know,” Silk confessed. “I saw one around noon today, and it hasn’t rained yet. As for spying upon Viron, what could a Flier see here that any foreign traveler couldn’t?”

  “Nothin’ I know about.” The seller spat. “That’s supposed to bring on rain, too, Patera. Let’s hope it works this time. Lookin’ for a good sacrifice, are you?”

  Silk’s face must have betrayed his surprise, because the seller grinned, revealing a broken front tooth. “I know you, Patera—that old manteion on Sun Street. Only you went right on past the sheepfold today. Guess they haven’t been workin’ out for you.”

  Silk endeavored to appear indifferent. “I’ll recognize the beast I want when I see it.”

  “‘Course you will—so let me show you mine.” The seller raised a soiled finger. “No, wait a bit. Let me ask you one question first. I’m just an ignorant man, Patera, but isn’t a child the best sacrifice of all? The very best gift that a man or even a whole city can make to the gods? The greatest and the highest?”

  Silk shrugged. “So it’s written, though no such victim has been offered here within living memory. I don’t believe that I could do it myself, and it’s against the law in any case.”

  “Exactly what I’m gettin’ at!” Like a conspirator, the seller glanced warily from side to side. “So what’s nearest to a child, eh? Only on the right side of the law? What is it, I ask you, Patera—you and me bein’ flash grown men and not no sprats—that half those high-bred females up on the Palatine is givin’ suck to on the side? A catachrest, isn’t that it?”

  With a showman’s flourish, the seller reached beneath the stained red cloth that draped his table and produced a small wire cage containing an orange-and-white catachrest. Silk was no judge of these animals, but to him it appeared hardly more than a kitten.

  The seller leaned forward, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Stolen, Patera. Stolen, or I couldn’t possibly sell it, even to you, for—.” He licked his lips, his restless gaze taking in Silk’s faded black robe and lingering on his face. “For just six little cards. It talks. It walks on its hind legs sometimes, too, and it picks up things to eat with its little paws. It’s exactly like a real child. You’ll see.”

  Looking into the animal’s melting blue eyes (the long, nycterent pupils were rapidly narrowing in the sunlight) Silk could almost believe him.

  The seller tested the point of a long-bladed knife with his finger. “You recollect this, don’t you, Tick? Then you better talk when I tell you to, and not try to get away, neither, when I let you out.”

  Silk shook his head.

  If he had seen the motion, the seller ignored it. “Say shop. Talk for the rev’rend augur, Tick. Say shop!” He prodded the unhappy little catachrest with the point of his knife. “Shop! Say it!”

  “Never mind,” Silk told the seller wearily. “I’m not going to buy him.”

  “It’d make you a fine sacrifice, Patera—the finest you could have, inside of the law. What was it I told you? Seven cards, was that it? Tell you what. I’ll make it six, but only for today. Just six cards, because I’ve heard good things about you and hope to do more business with you in the future.”

  Silk shook his head again.

  “Told you Tick was boilin’, didn’t I? I knew it, and believe me I put crimp on the lad that did it, or I wouldn’t have got Tick here half so cheap. Talked about rollin’ him over to Hoppy and all that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Silk said.

  “So now I’m goin’ to let you steal him off me. Five cards, Patera. You can—talk, you little faker, say somethin’—you can go through the whole market, if you like, and if you can find a nice catachrest like this any cheaper, bring me there and I’ll match the price. Five cards, we’ll say. You won’t be able to touch one half this good for five cards. I promise you that, and I’m a man of my word. Ask anybody.”

  “No, my son.”

  “I need the money bad, Patera. I guess I shouldn’t say that, but I do. A man has to have some money to buy animals so he’s got somethin’ to sell, see?” His voice fell again, so low this time that it was scarcely audible. “I put mine into a few cold ’uns. You take my meanin’, Patera? Only they warmed up an’ went bad on me ’fore I could move ’em. So here’s what I say—five cards, with one of ’em chalked. How’s that? Four down, see, right now. And a card next time I see you, which I will on Molpsday after this comin’ Scylsday, Patera, I hope.”

  “No,” Silk repeated.

  “Word,” the little catachrest said distinctly. “Shoe word
, who add pan.”

  “Don’t you call me a bad man.” Sliding the slender blade between the wires, the seller prodded the catachrest’s minute pink nose with the point of his knife. “The rev’rend augur’s not interested in seein’ any cully bird, you flea-bit little pap-sucker.” He glanced up hopefully at Silk. “Are you, Patera? It is a talkin’ bird at that. Naturally it doesn’t look exactly like a child. It’s a good talker, though—a valuable animal.”

  Silk hesitated.

  “Berry add word,” the catachrest told him spitefully, gripping the wire mesh of his cage. “Pack!” He shook it, minute black claws sharper than pins visible at the tips of his fuzzy white toes. “Add word!” he repeated. “Add speak!”

  No god had spoken through the Sacred Window of the old manteion on Sun Street since long before Silk had been born, and this was an omen beyond question: one of those oracular phrases that the gods, by means no mere human being could ever hope to understand, insert at times into the most banal speech. As calmly as he could manage, Silk said, “Go ahead and show me your talking bird. I’m here, so I might just as well have a look at it.” He glanced up at the narrowing sun as if on the point of leaving. “But I’ve got to get back soon.”

  “It’s a night chough, Patera,” the seller told him. “Only night chough I’ve had this year.”

  This cage as well appeared from under the table. The bird crowded into it was large and glossy black, with bright red legs and a tuft of scarlet feathers at its throat; the “add speak” of the catachrest’s omen was a sullen crimson, long and sharp.

  “It talks?” Silk asked, though he was determined to buy it whether it could or not.