by Gene Wolfe
I said, “We lost one whole level of knowledge when we left the Short Sun Whorl and went aboard the Whorl. We lived in there for about three hundred years, if the scholars are right, but we never got that knowledge back. Now we’re losing another level, as Sinew says.”
He made me a mocking bow.
“If it were just the weapons, that would be bad enough, but there are other problems I haven’t mentioned.”
You said, “We brought knowledge, even if it isn’t enough. People from other cities have landed all over this whorl. If all of us pooled what we know…?”
I nodded. (It seemed to me that I scarcely looked at her; yet I can see her face, scrubbed and serious, as I write.) “It might be, as you say. But to pool it we’d have to have glasses, when we don’t even have a Window for our Grand Manteion.”
Hide put in, “Amberjack says that old Prolocutor’s trying to build a Sacred Window.”
“Trying,” Sinew sneered.
I ignored it. “Or if we cannot make glasses, wings like the Fliers’, or vessels like the Trivigaunti airship.”
But now, darling, I have been reconstructing our suppertime conversation for several hours, exactly as you and I used to try to reconstruct Silk’s when we were writing our book. The work has rekindled many tender memories of those days; but you recall this conversation better than I, I feel sure, and you can fill in the rest for yourself. I am going to bed.
* * *
Three days in which I have had no chance to write in this sketchy half-book I have begun without Nettle’s help. I suppose it is no loss; she will never read it. Or if she does, she will have me at her side, and this account will be superfluous. Yet she may show it to others, as I said. Are not the people of our town entitled to know what became of the emissary they sent for Silk? Why and how he failed? Pig’s blindness, and all the rest? I will proceed, if I do, upon the assumption that it will be read by strangers and perhaps even copied and recopied as our own book-the book that ultimately brought me here-has been.
Our house and our mill stand on Lizard Island, as I should explain. Lizard Island is called by that name because we, seeing it from the lander, at once noted its resemblance to that animal; and not (as some now suppose) because it was first settled by a man named Lizard. No such person exists.
The head is more or less coffin-shaped. All four legs are extended, and their rocky toes splayed. The sandspit that forms the tail curves out to sea, then north, to shelter Tail Bay, which is where we keep our logs. A lengthy ridge of granite gives the lizard a spine. Its highest peak, near the tail, is called the Tor. The spring that turns our mill originates there, giving us a long and very useful fall. Our house is set back some distance from the sea, but the mill stands with its feet in the bay to make it easier to hook and drag out logs.
Let me see. What else?
The Lizard’s head looks to the north. Our mill and our house are on the weather side of the island, their site dictated by the stream. On the lee side is a fishing village that is also called Lizard; it consists of six houses, those of our nearest neighbors. Lizard Island lies well north of New Viron, a day’s sail in good weather.
That night, as I walked along the shingle, I recalled the whole island as I had glimpsed it from the lander twenty years before. How small it had appeared then, and how beautiful! A green and black lizard motionless upon the blue and silver sea. It came to me then, with a force that seemed to snatch away my heart, that if only we could build an airship like General Saba’s I might see it so again.
And be again, if only for an instant, young. What would I not give to be the boy I was once more, with a young Nettle at my side?
Time for court. More this evening, I hope.
* * *
A difficult case, and I must settle each case that comes before me on the basis of custom and common sense, having no knowledge of the law and no law books-not that Vironese law would have any force here.
I was leading up to my departure, and how Sinew came out to speak with me as I walked back up the Tail, leaping from one floating log to the next with energy and dexterity that I could only envy. When he reached me, panting, he asked whether I was still thinking of going. I told him that I no longer had to think about whether I would go-that I had been thinking of how to go and what to take with me, and when to leave.
He grinned, and actually rubbed his hands together like a shopkeeper. “I thought you would! I was thinking it over in bed. You know how you do? All of a sudden I saw it didn’t make sense to wonder, even. You’d already decided, you were just trying to make it easy for Mom and me. Want to know how I knew?”
“Because you saw me take the oath. So did everyone else, I imagine.” Promises meant very little to Sinew, as I had reason to know; but I supposed that he understood how seriously I take mine.
“You know I’ve read your book?”
I told him I knew he said he had.
“When you and Mom were coming here, you were only doing it because Silk had told you to. But when he didn’t go, you went anyway. I remembered that, and as soon as I did, I knew you were really leaving.”
“This isn’t the same thing at all.”
“Yes, it is. You were supposed to come here because some god wanted it, that boss god in the Long Sun Whorl. The old Proloctor and that witchy lady want you to bring him here, and that’s really it, not the maize or even needlers. You’re just the same here as you were up there, just exactly like Mom is.”
I shook my head. “The principal thing is to find Silk and get him to govern New Viron, assuming that he’s still alive. The maize, and the kinds of skills necessary to make glasses and needlers, as well as many other things, are very important, though not central. As for bringing Great Pas, no one so much as mentioned it. If anyone had, he would have been laughed at. It would be much more sensible to talk about bringing back Lake Limna.”
“But that’s what it comes down to.” Still grinning, Sinew stepped closer, so close I could feel his breath on my face. “Silk got made a part of this Pas, didn’t he? That girlfriend of Pas’s invited him to.”
“I don’t know that, and neither do you.”
“Well, he went off with the flying man and wouldn’t let you tag along. That’s what you and Mom said.”
I shrugged. “That’s what we wrote, because it was all we knew. I don’t know anything more now than I did when we wrote it.”
“Of course he did! You know he did. Who wouldn’t? So if you bring him, we’ll have a boss who’s the partner of this very powerful god up there. You say you couldn’t bring a god back, and naturally you couldn’t. But if this god Pas really is a god he could come here anytime or go anyplace else.”
I said nothing.
“You know I’m right. Are you taking the sloop? We’ll have to build another one if you do. The old boat never was big enough.”
“Yes,” I said.
“See, you’re going. I knew you were. What are you going to say at breakfast? Raise your hands?”
I sighed, having only a moment before definitely deciding to take the sloop. “I had intended to ask each of you individually what I ought to do, beginning with Hide and ending with your mother. I hoped that all of you would have concluded by that time that I must go as I promised, as I have, no matter how badly I’m needed here.” I turned away with a feeling of relief, and resumed my walk along the Tail.
He loped beside me like an ill-bred dog. “What if she said you had to stay?”
“She wouldn’t, and I was hoping that none of you would. But if any of you did, I was going to explain myself again to that person and try to persuade him. I say ‘him’ because it would surely be Hide or Hoof or you. Not Nettle.”
I saw his pleasure by starlight. “I like it. Mom can go live with Aunt Hop. Me and the sprats can take care of things here.”
“Your mother will stay right here to take care of things, including you. You’ll have to run the mill and make any repairs. She’ll handle most of the buying and sel
ling, I imagine, if you and she are wise.”
For a moment I thought that he would object violently, but he did not.
“You know the machinery and the process,” I told him, “or at least you’ve had ample opportunity to learn them. The bleach we’ve got should last you six months or more, if you’re careful, and I hope to be back before then. Don’t waste it. Be careful about extending credit, too, and doubly careful about refusing to extend it. Never buy a log you haven’t seen, or rags that you haven’t handled.” I laughed, pretending a warmth of feeling that I did not feel. “It cost me a lot to learn that, but I’m giving it to you for nothing.”
“Father…?”
“If there’s anything you need to know about the mill or the various papers we make, ask me now. There won’t be time in the morning.”
Together we walked back to the tip of the Tail, where I had given my oath, until we stood at last at the place where soil and stone vanished altogether and the last of the coarse seagroats with them, and there was only sand and shells, with here and there a stick of driftwood cast up by the unresting waves. At last I took out my needier and offered it to him, telling him that there were only fifty-three needles left in it, and that he would be wise not to waste any.
He would not accept it. “You’ll need it yourself, Father, traveling to-to…”
“Pajarocu. It’s a town, but nobody seems to know where it is. Inland, perhaps, though I hope not. They say that they’ve refitted a lander there so they can cross the abyss to the Whorl again, and they’ve invited New Viron to send a passenger.”
“You.”
“I knew Silk better than anybody else.” Honesty compelled me to add, “Except for Maytera Marble, Magnesia as she’s called now.” I offered him my needier again.
“Keep it, I said. You’ll need it.”
“And Maytera Marble is unable to make the journey, they say. She was already very old when we came, twenty years ago.” For a few seconds I tried to frame an argument; then I recalled that no argument of mine had ever changed his mind, and said, “If you don’t take this now, I’m going to throw it into the sea.”
I cocked my arm as though to make good my threat, and he was on me like a snow cat, clawing for the needier. I let him take it, stood up, and brushed off sand. “When it isn’t on my person, I’ve kept it in the mill. Since you boys never go in there unless you’re made to, it seemed safe. It has been. You might want to do the same thing. You wouldn’t want Hoof and Hide to get hold of it.”
He frowned. “That’s good. I will.”
I could have shown him how a needier is loaded and fired, but experience had taught me that trying to teach him anything only made him resentful. Instead, I said, “I may need it, as you say. But I may not, and I’d much rather know that you and your mother and brothers are safe. Besides, a traveler with a weapon like that might be killed for it, as soon as anyone knew he had it.”
Sinew nodded thoughtfully.
“Conjunction in two years. You remember the last one, the storms and the tides. Any logs you’ve got in here then will be a danger to you. And of course there will be-” I searched for a word. “Strangers. Visitors. Very plausible ones, sometimes.”
The reality of conjunction seemed to dawn upon him then. “Don’t go, Father!”
“I must. Not just because I’ve sworn to; I wouldn’t be the first man to break his oath. And certainly not because of Marrow and the others-I’d hurt them far more than they hurt me before it was over-but because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. You and your mother can run the mill as well as I could, and nobody else would have anything like as good a chance of persuading Silk to join us. At supper tonight we agreed that we were sinking into savagery here on Blue, that we’d soon be fighting off the inhumi with the bows and spears we use for hunting now. You may be confident that we could survive as savages and.even regain what we lost, eventually. No doubt-”
The stubborn head shake I had come to know so well.
“I don’t think so either. There were people here before, or something very like people. They had a civilization higher than ours, but something wiped them out. If it wasn’t the inhumi, what was it?”
“That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about.” There was a pause, perhaps while Sinew collected his thoughts, perhaps only while he moistened his mouth. “You’re trying to bring Pas, all the gods from the Long Sun.”
“No,” I said.
He ignored it, or did not hear it. “That’s good, because gods could help us if they would. But they had gods of their own, the Vanished People who were here first. They might help us, too. There’s a place on Main, way up on Howling Mountain a little before the trees stop. I found it almost a year ago. Maybe I should have told you.”
* * *
I see that I said I had three reasons for not accompanying our five visitors as they proposed. The first (as I indicated) was that I wanted to take leave of my family, and get them to agree to my going, insofar as possible. Nettle would agree because she loved me and Sinew because he hated me, I felt sure; and with their support I had hoped to persuade the twins that it was necessary.
The second was that I wanted to sail my own boat in search of Pajarocu, and not the boat Marrow had offered to let me have, however good it might be. I did not intend to disparage his offer, as he may have thought; it was a generous one, and one that would have resulted in a serious loss if I had accepted it. He showed me that boat, the Sealily, when I spoke with him in town, and I would guess that it was nearly as fast as my own, and rather more capacious and seaworthy.
“I’d never been on the water till we came down here,” Marrow told me, “and I haven’t been but twice now. If you’d come by the shop or my booth and told me someday I’d be having boats built for me, I’d have thought you was cracked. I thought Auk the Prophet was cracked when I talked to him up there, and it would have been the same with anybody who said someday I’d want boats. You didn’t put that in your book, about Auk. That I’d thought he was cracked as old eggs. But I did.”
I told Marrow that Auk was, that he had fractured his skull in the tunnels.
“Used to see him at sacrifice,” Marrow said, leaning heavily on his big carved stick. “Old Patera Pike’s manteion. The wife and I used to go now and then because he traded with us, him and the sibyls. Maytera Rose that was, and young Maytera Mint, only they sent Maytera Marble to do their buying. Shrike wouldn’t go, just sent his wife. They traded with him anyhow because she went all the time. Gone now, both of ’em. I guess you remember Pike’s manteion?”
I did. I do. The plain shiprock walls, and the painted statue of Lord Pas (from which the paint was peeling) will remain with me until the day I die, always somewhat colored by the wonder I felt as a small boy at seeing a black cock struggling in the old man’s hands after he had cut its throat, its wings beating frantically, beating as if they might live after all, live somehow somewhere, if only they could spray the whole place with blood before they failed.
My own bird has flown. Only this lone black feather remains with me, fluttering above this sheet (a sheet that for all I know or all that anyone here knows may have been made in my own mill) spraying the whorl of Blue with the black ink that has done so much good and so much harm. If it had not been for our book, Marrow and the rest would have chosen someone else, beyond argument. As it was, our book-The Book of Silk, or as others would have it, The Book of the Long Sun-spread over this whorl more rapidly than Nettle and I had dared hope. Silk-
“Silk has become an almost mythic figure,” I began to write. The truth is that he has become a mythic figure. I hear rumors of altars and sacrifices. Disciples who have never seen him promulgate his teachings. If it had not been for our book, Hari Mau and the rest would have chosen someone else, or no one.
* * *
Heretofore I have written whatever crossed my mind, I fear. In the future, I will attempt to provide you (whoever you may be) with a connected narrative. Let me say at the
outset, however, what readers I hope for.
First of all for Nettle, my wife, whom I have loved from boy- hood and will always love.
Second, my sons Hoof and Hide. Should he see it, Sinew will read no further, I suppose, than he must to learn that I am its author; and then, unless he is greatly changed, he will burn it. Burning The Book of Horn will smell foul, but if it is to burn, no whiff has yet reached me. Sinew is on Green in any event, and is unlikely to see it. (For so many years I feared that he would try to murder me, but in the end it was I who would have murdered him. He may burn my book if he chooses.)
Third, our descendants, the sons and daughters of our sons and their children. If a dozen generations have passed, be assured that you are one; after a dozen generations it cannot be otherwise.
* * *
How difficult it is to touch the spirits of these people, although I doubt that they are worse than others. Two farmers quarreled over a strip of land. I rode out with them and saw it, and it is of no value save for cutting firewood, and of little for that. Each said he had claimed it since landing, and each said his claim was undisputed until a few months ago. I had each tell me the price he would charge the other to lease it for ten years, then awarded it to the one who would charge the least, and ordered him to lease it, there and then, for the price he had specified. Since the leaseholder’s price had been more than twice as much, he was getting a great bargain, and I told him so. He did not appear to agree.
This is a stopgap at best, however. The whole situation regarding the ownership of land is confused or worse. It must be reformed, and a rational system as secure from corruption as we can make it set in place.
That I intend to do. My principles: that possession long unchallenged need only be recorded, but that unused property is the property of the town. Now to begin.
