On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  “Good that is. Home for another good dinner you can stop.” Wijzer looked at me slyly, and I realized with something of a start that he had bright blue eyes like Silk’s.

  “No,” I said, and found it not as hard to say as I expected. “I doubt that I’ll stop there at all, unless I find that I need something I neglected to bring.”

  Marrow grunted his approval.

  “Better you don’t. Rocks there is. But those you must know.” Wijzer added towns up the coast. “Too many islands to draw, but there these rocks and the big sandbar you I must show. Both very bad they are. Maybe them you see, maybe nothing.” He gave me another sly glance. “Nothing you see, me anyhow you believe. Yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know how easy it is to stave a boat on a rock that can’t be seen.”

  Wijzer nodded to himself. “Coming Green is. The sea to go up and down it makes. The tide in Dorp we say. About the tide you know?”

  “Yes,” I repeated.

  “How more water Green makes, then not so much, I will not tell. Not till someone to me it explains. But so it is. About this tide you must think always, because bigger and bigger it gets while you go. Never it you forget. A safe anchorage you got, but in an hour, two hours, not safe it is.”

  I nodded.

  “Also all these towns that to you I show. At all these towns even Wijzer would not put in. But maybe something there is you need. Which ones crazy is, I will not show. All crazy they are. Me you understand? Crazy like this one you got they are. Only all different, too.”

  “Differing laws and customs. I know what you mean.”

  “So if nothing you need, past best to go it is. Now these two up here…” He drew circles around them and blew on the ink. “Where you cross they are. Because over here…” Another wavering line, receding to the south and showing much less detail. “Another Main you got. Maybe a name it’s got. I don’t know.”

  “Shadelow, the western continent,” I proposed.

  “Maybe. Or maybe just a big island it is. Wijzer, not smart enough you to tell he is. An island, maybe, but big it is. This coast? Better well out you stand.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Two or three towns.” He sketched them in, adding their names in a careful script. “What down for you I put, what I them call it is. Maybe something else you say. Maybe something else they do. Here the big river runs.” Meticulously he blacked it in. “It you got to see, so sharp you got to look. What too big not to see is, what nobody sees it is.”

  I told him that I had been thinking the same thing not long before.

  “A wise saying it is. Everyplace wise fellows the same things say. This you know?”

  “I suppose that they must, although I’d never thought about it.”

  “Wise always the same it is. About men, women, children. About boats, food, horses, dogs, everything. Always the same. No birds in the old nest, wise fellows say, and the good cock out of the old bag. A thief, the thief s tracks sees. The meat from the gods it is, the cooks from devils. All those things in towns all over they say. You young fellows laugh, but us old fellows know. The look-out, the little thing always he sees. Almost always, because to see it sharp he must look. The big thing, too big to look out sharp for it is, and nobody it sees.

  Dipping his quill for what might have been the tenth time, he divided the river. “The big stream to starboard it is. Yes? Little to port. The little one fast it runs. Hard to sail up. Yes? Just the same, the way you go it is.” He drew an arrow upon the unknown land beside it, and began to sketch in trees beside it.

  After a moment I nodded and said, “Yes. I will.”

  Wijzer stopped drawing trees and divided the smaller stream. “Same here, the little one you take. A little boat you got?”

  “Much smaller than yours,” I told him. “It’s small enough for me to handle alone easily.”

  “That’s good. Good! For a good, strong blow you must wait. You see? Then up here you can sail. Close to the shore, you got to stay. Careful always you must be, and the legend not forget. A good watch keep. Here sometimes Pajarocu is.” He added a dot of ink and began lettering the word beside it: PAJAROCU.

  “Did you say it was there only sometimes?” I asked.

  Wijzer shrugged. “Not a town like this town of yours it is. You will see, if there you get. Sometimes here it is, sometimes over there. If I tell, you would not me believe. That you coming are they know, maybe it they move. Or another reason. Or no reason. Not like my Dorp, Pajarocu is.” He pointed to Dorp, a cluster of tiny houses on his map. “Not like any other town Pajarocu is.”

  Marrow was leaning far over the table to look at it. “That river is practically due west of here.”

  Wijzer’s face lost all expression, and he laid aside his quill.

  “Couldn’t Horn save time by sailing west from here?”

  “That some fellows do, maybe,” Wijzer told him. “Sometimes all right they go. Sometimes not. What here I draw, what Wijzer does it is.”

  “But you want to trade from town to town,” Marrow objected. “Horn won’t be doing that.”

  I said, “If I were to do as you suggest, sailing due west from here) I would eventually strike the coast of this big island or second continent that Wijzer has very kindly mapped for us. But when I did, I wouldn’t know whether to turn south or north, unless the river mouth was in view.”

  Reluctantly, Marrow nodded.

  “With the greatest respect to Captain Wijzer, a map like this one, drawn freehand, could easily be in error by, oh, fifty leagues or more. Suppose that I decided it was accurate, and sailed north. It might easily take me a week to sail fifty leagues, tacking up the coast. Suppose that at the end of that week I turned back to search south. And that the river mouth was five leagues beyond the point at which I turned back. How long would it take me to locate it?”

  Wijzer smiled; and Marrow said reluctantly, “I see what you mean. It’s just that they’re going to leave as soon as their lander’s ready, and it’s nearly ready now. You read that letter. Anybody who hasn’t arrived before they go will be left behind.”

  “I realize that there’s no time to waste,” I told him, “but sometimes it’s best to make haste slowly.” Privately I reflected that I might have the best of both plans by sailing north for a hundred leagues or so, then turning west well south of the place where Wijzer had advised me to.

  And I resolved to do it.

  -5-

  THE THING ON THE GREEN PLAIN

  How long ago it seems! So much has happened since then, although at times I almost feel that it happened to someone else.

  Yet I remember Wijzer clearly. What if he were to walk into court tomorrow? He would ask whether I ever reached Pajarocu, and what could I say? “Yes, but…”

  Let me make one thing clear before I go further. I did not trust Wijzer completely. He seemed a trader not greatly different from dozens of others who sail up and down our coast, having begun, perhaps, with a cargo of iron kitchenware and exchanged it for copper ingots, and exchanged the ingots for paper and timber in New Viron, always in search of a cargo that will bring immense profit when it is sold in their home port. I was afraid that Wijzer might be lying to make himself seem more widely traveled than he was, or even that he might not want Silk brought here for reasons of his own. In all this I wronged him, as I now know. He had been to Pajarocu, and he advised me to the best of his ability.

  * * *

  Some people have accused Nettle and me of penning a work of fiction; and even though that is a slander, we did present certain imagined conversations when we knew roughly what had been said and what had been decided-that among Generalissimo Oosik, General Mint, Councilor Potto, and Generalissimo Siyuf, for example. We knew how each of the four talked, and what the upshot of their talk had been, and ventured to supply details to show each at his or her most characteristic.

  If this were a similar work, instead of the unvarnished, straightforward account that I intend, I w
ould simply explain why I doubted Wijzer, and leave the reader in suspense as to whether those doubts were justified. It is not. Because it is not, I want to say here plainly that except for some slight exaggerations of coastal features and the omission of many small islands (notably that terrible island on which I fell into the pit) his map was remarkably accurate, at least regarding the areas through which I traveled in my long search for the elusive Pajarocu, called a town.

  Before I returned to my boat that evening, I bought a tightly fitted little box of oily desertwood and a stick of sealing wax; once back on board, I studied the map with care, then put it into the box with my copy of the letter, melting the wax in the flame of my lantern and dripping it over every joint, a process that Babbie watched with more interest than I would have expected any beast save Oreb to show.

  He was there still, although I had half expected to find him gone when I came back. It was the first time that I left him on the boat alone.

  With the robbery still fresh in my memory, it was almost pleasant to have him. Although my boat had never been pillaged before on the few occasions when I had left it tied to a pier with no one on board, I had known that others had been, and that some had lost their boats. To confess the truth, when I returned to mine that first night I had been happy to find the damage and losses no worse than they were. Normally we had taken Sinew or (more often) the twins, so as to have someone to watch the sloop while Nettle and I traded our paper for items we needed but could not grow or make for ourselves, or for spirits, food, and clothing we could trade with the loggers.

  “We’ll be going for a sail in the morning,” I told Babbie. “If you want to go ashore, now’s the time.” He only grunted and retreated to the foredeck, his expression (as stubborn as Wijzer’s own) saying You won’t sail off without me.

  Naturally it had occurred to me that I might put out that very night, but I was tired and there was scarcely a breath of wind; in all probability it would have meant a good deal of work for nothing.

  It might also have altered the course of events radically, if the wind had picked up enough for me to pass the Lizard while it was still dark.

  Who can say?

  * * *

  It is very late, yet I feel I must write a little tonight, must continue this narrative I have not touched for three days or abandon it altogether. How odd to come to it by lamplight and read that I went to sleep instead of putting out from New Viron. I was so confident then that the lander at Pajarocu would fly as soon as it was ready, that it would return to the Whorl as promised, and that I would be on it if only I arrived in time. I was a child, and Marrow and the rest (whom I thought men and women as I thought myself a man grown), were only older children who risked far less.

  The storms are worse. There was a bad one today, though it is nearly spent as my clock’s hands close. Almost all our date palms are gone, they say, and we will miss them terribly. I must remember to find out how long a seedling must grow before it bears. Twelve years? Let us hope it is not as long as that. The people are apprehensive, even the troopers of my bodyguard. Tonight I gathered some around me while the storm raged outside.

  “A few of you seem to think that since the inhumi cross the abyss at conjunction they must leave before conjunction is past,” I said. “Why should they, when there are so many of us here, so much blood for them? I tell you that though some who have tarried here for years will leave as the whorls conjoin, returning to Green to breed, most will remain. Do you doubt me?”

  They were shamefaced, and did not reply.

  “There were many here last year, or so you tell me. And many the year before. Are you in greater danger from them now? Surely not! More will come, but we will be on guard against them; and they, being less experienced, will be a lesser threat to us. Will you sleep at your posts when the first is caught and interred alive in the market? The second? The third? I hope not. Nor should you relax when this conjunction is over, as it soon will be.”

  Brave words, and they served a dress rehearsal for the speeches I must give in the next few months.

  Would it be effective for us to dig up one of the recent inhumations and release him to warn the others? The thought recurs.

  If the inhumas’ eggs hatched in our climate, would not our human kind become extinct? What tricks Nature plays! If they are natural creatures at all.

  But they surely are. Natural creatures native to Green. Why would the Neighbors create something so malign?

  * * *

  Last night I intended to continue my narrative, but failed to advance it by even a finger’s width. I will do better this afternoon.

  I sailed at shadeup, as I had planned. Much to my surprise, Marrow came down to see me off and present me with two parting gifts, small square heavy boxes. The wind was in the southeast, and a very good wind it was for me, so we shook hands and he embraced me and called me his son, and I untied the mooring lines and raised the mainsail.

  Just as Mucor had waited until I was well under way and could not easily return her gift before presenting me with Babbie, and as Sinew had waited before throwing me his precious knife, so Marrow waited before presenting me with his third and final gift. It was his stick, which he flung aboard in imitation of Sinew (I had told him about it) when I was well away from the pier. I shouted thanks, and I believe I picked it up and flourished it, too, though I could not help thinking about Blood’s giving Patera Silk his lion-headed stick.

  Was I wrong to think of it? Marrow has his bad side, I am sure; and I am perfectly certain he would be the first to admit it. Blood, who was Maytera Rose’s son, had his good side, too. Silk always insistcd on it, and I have not the least doubt that Silk, who was nearly always right, was right about that as well. The head of a large enterprise-even a criminal enterprise-cannot be wholly bad. If he were, his subordinates could not trust him. Orchid signed the paper he gave her without reading it, and accepted the money he gave her to buy the yellow house, knowing that he would extort as much money from her and her women as he could-but knowing, too, that he would not destroy her.

  Marrow’s stick, as I ought to have said somewhat sooner, was of a heavy wood so dark as to be nearly black, and had a silver band below the knob with his name on it. I do not believe that he meant to give it to me until the moment arrived, and I liked him and it all the better for it. I showed Babbie that I had something to beat him with now, and as a joke ordered him to put up the jib; but he only glared, and I hauled it up myself Sometime after that I saw him fingering the halyard, and was amazed.

  A little after noon, as I recall, we passed Lizard. Course due north, wind moderate and west by south. I had promised myself that I would stand far out, and I did, and likewise that I would not peer ashore in the hope of catching sight of Nettle or the twins. That promise, as I quickly discovered, was worth very little. I stared, and stood upon the gunwale, and stared some more, and waved. All of it was to no purpose, since I saw no one.

  Did anyone see me? The answer must surely be yes. Sinew did, and launched our old boat, which he must have spent the days since my departure in repairing and refitting. I did not see him or it, and nothing that he had said before I left had suggested he might do anything of the kind.

  Marrow’s other gifts proved to be a small box of silver jewelry with which to trade, and an even smaller box of silver bars. These last I hid with great care, promising myself that I would not trade them unless I was forced to. I would (as I then thought) find somebody at Pajarocu who would watch the sloop for me while I went for Silk. When the lander returned, Silk and I could sail back to New Viron in it; and I would have the silver bars for my trouble, and to help him if their help were required.

  Wijzer had cautioned me against stopping at every port I came to, but his advice had been unnecessary. I was acutely conscious that putting in anywhere would cost me at least a day and might easily cost two or three, and resolved to sail north until resupply was urgent, put in at the nearest town, and turn west. That plan held only until I
passed the first. Thereafter it always seemed that something was needed (water particularly) or advisable, and we put in at almost every town along the way. As Babbie came to trust me, the nocturnal nature of all hus asserted itself, so that he drowsed by day but woke at shadelow-a most useful arrangement even when we were not in port. The wind was so steady and so reliably out of the west or the southwest that I generally lashed the tiller and let the sloop sail herself under jib and reefed mainsail. Before I lay down each night, I instructed Babbie to wake me if anything unusual occurred; like Marrow he grunted his assent, but he never actually woke me, to the best of my memory. I have forgotten how many towns we put in at altogether. Five or six in six weeks’ sailing would be about right, I believe.

  * * *

  A visitor has presented me with a great rarity, a little book called The Healing Beds printed more than a hundred years ago in the Whorl. It is a treatise on gardening, with special emphasis on herbs, the work of a physician; but although it is pleasant to page through it, studying its quaint hand-colored illustrations and reading snatches of text, it is not of that book I intend to write today, but of its effect on this one.

  It has made me acutely aware that this book of mine, which I have intended for my wife and sons, may very well be read long after they-and I-are gone. Even Hoof and Horn [sic], who must just be entering young manhood now, will someday be as old as Marrow and Patera Remora. There is argument about the length of the year here, and how well it agrees with the year we knew in the Long Sun Whorl, but the difference must be slight if there is any; in fifty years, Horn and Hide [sic] may well be dead. In a hundred, their sons and daughters will be gone too. These words, which I pen with so little thought-or hope-or expectation-may possibly endure long beyond that, endure for two centuries or even three, valued increasingly and so preserved with greater care as the whorl they describe fades into history.

  Sobering thoughts.