On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  I asked how far we were from the western continent.

  “So many leagues you want? That I cannot tell. On which way bound you are, too, it depends. North by northwest for Pajarocu you must sail.”

  “Have you been there?”

  He shook his head. “Not, I think. To a place they said, yes, I have been. But to Pajarocu?” He shrugged.

  I explained about the letter, and brought my copy from the sloop to show him.

  “One it says.” He tapped the paper. “Your wife they let you bring?”

  Drawing upon Marrow’s argument, I said, “One, if all the towns they have invited send somebody, and if all the people who are sent arrive in time. We don’t believe either one is likely, and neither does anybody else in New Viron. If there are empty places, and we think there will be, Seawrack can come with me. If there aren’t, she can wait in Pajarocu and take care of our boat.” I tried to sound confident.

  The sailor who had set up our table brought a bottle and four small drinking glasses, and sat down with us.

  “My son,” Strik announced proudly. “Number two on my boat he is.”

  Everyone smiled and shook hands.

  “Captain Horn?” the owner’s son asked. “From the town of New Viron you hail?”

  I nodded.

  So did Strik, who said, “To that not yet we come, Captain Horn. Looking for you somebody is?”

  My face must have revealed my surprise.

  “Just one fellow it is. Toter’s age he is.” (Toter was his son.)

  “Us about Captain Horn he asked. Alone in a little boat he sails.” The corners of Toter’s mouth turned down, and his hands indicated the way in which the little boat was tossed about by the waves.

  “When asked he did, Captain Horn we don’t know.” Strik pulled the cork with his teeth and poured out a little water-white liquor for each of us. “This to him we say, and in his little boat off he goes.”

  “You’re from the mainland yourselves? The eastern one, I mean. From Main?” I was trying desperately to recall the name of the town from which Wijzer had hailed.

  “Ya, from Dorp we come. New Viron we know. A good port it is. Word to you from somebody back there he brings, you think?”

  I did not know, and told him so. If I had been compelled to guess, I would have said that Marrow had probably sent someone with a message.

  Seawrack asked how long we would have to sail to find drinking water.

  “Depends, it does, Merfrow Seawrack. Such weather it is.” Strik spat over the side. “Five days it could be. Ten, also, it could be.”

  “It isn’t bad for me.” She gave me a defiant stare. “He makes me drink more than I want to, but the Babbie is always thirsty.”

  I explained that Babbie was our hus.

  “You suffer too.” She sniffed and tasted Strik’s liquor and put it down. “You pour it into your glass, then back into the bottle when you think I’m not looking.”

  I declared that I saw no point in drinking precious water that I did not want.

  “A little water I can let you have,” Strik told us, and we both thanked him.

  Toter told us, “If for two or three days you and your wife due west will sail, a big island where nobody lives you will find. Good water it has. There last we watered. Not so big as Main it is, but mountains it has. A lookout you should keep, but hard to miss it is.”

  “We’ll go there,” Seawrack declared to me, and her tone decided the matter.

  * * *

  Two days have passed, and now I have re-read this whole section beginning with my encounter with the monstrous flatfish with disgust and incredulity. Nothing that I wanted to say in it was actually said. Seawrack’s beauty and the golden days we spent aboard the sloop before Krait came, the water whorl that with her help I glimpsed, and a thousand things that I wished with all my heart to set down here, remain locked in memory.

  No doubt such memories cannot really be expressed, and certainly they cannot be expressed by me. I have found that out.

  Let me say this. Once when I was swimming underwater in imitation of her, I saw her swimming toward me, and she was swift and graceful beyond all telling. There are no words for that, as there are none for her beauty. She caught my hand, and we broke the surface, up from the divine radiance of the sea into the blinding glare of the Short Sun, and the droplets on her eyelashes were diamonds.

  You that read of all this in a year that I will never see will think me wretched, perhaps-certainly I was wretched enough fighting the inhumi and their slaves on Green, fighting the settlers, and before the end even fighting my own son.

  Or possibly you may envy me this big white house that we in Gaon are pleased to call a palace, my gems and gold and racks of arms, and my dozen-odd wives.

  But know this: The best and happiest of my hours you know nothing about. I have seen days like gold.

  Seawrack sings in my ears still, as she used to sing to me alone in the evenings on our sloop. Sometimes-often-I imagine that I am actually hearing her, her song and the lapping of the little waves. I would think that a memory so often repeated would lose its poignancy, but it is sharper at each return. When I first came here, I used to fall asleep listening to her; now her song keeps me from sleeping, calling to me.

  Calling.

  Seawrack, whom I abandoned exactly as I abandoned poor Babbie.

  Seawrack.

  -7-

  THE ISLAND

  As we cast off from Strik’s boat, Seawrack said, “That was nice. I wish we saw more boats.” The clear liquor had brought spots of color to her cheeks, and a dreamy smile I found enchanting to her lips. I explained (I can never forget it) that the sea was immense, and that there were only a handful of towns along the coast from which boats might come.

  “If you and I were to take this sloop out on Lake Limna on a day as fine as this,” I said, “we would rarely be out of sight of a dozen sails. Lake Limna is a very big lake, but it’s only a lake just the same. It’s the biggest thing near Viron, but it’s not the biggest thing near Palustria, because it’s not near Palustria at all. The sea is probably the biggest thing on this entire whorl. Besides, Lake Limna is close to Viron, which is a very large city. Half the towns that we talk about here would be called villages if they were near Viron. I would be astonished if we were to see anyone else before we sight land.”

  I was reminded of that little speech this afternoon, when someone told me I was minor god-by which he meant that I had insight into everything. It would be easy to let myself be misled by remarks of that kind, which both the speaker and his hearers must know perfectly well are untrue. They are made out of politeness, and no one would be more shocked than the people who make them to learn that they had been accepted like propositions in logic.

  Up there I nearly wrote: “when I was in the schola.” So accustomed have I become to talking in that fashion, as I must. If I were to speak of Nettle, and the building of our house and mill, or tell these good, happy, worshipful people how after failing as farmers we succeeded as papermakers, they would riot.

  They would riot; and if I were not killed a second time, a good many others would die. I have so much on my conscience already; I do not believe I could bear that, too.

  Nor would the people allow me to leave even if they knew who I really am. The poor people, I mean. Aside from Hari Mau and a few others, it is not the chief men who frequent my court who really need and value me, but the peasant farmers and their families, their women and their children especially. That, at least, seems the common perception.

  It may not be true. The men are less noisy in their praise, less emotional, as one would expect. Still they are attached to me, as I have ample reason to believe. Women and children see me as a presiding councilor, as a chief man richer and more powerful than the chief men who oppress them, someone who will help them in time of trouble. Men see a just judge. Or if not a just judge, a judge who strives to be just. Silk (I mean the real Silk) valued love very highly. He was right,
certainly. Love is a wonder, a magic potion, an act of theurgy or even a continuing theophany. No word is too strong, and in fact no word is really strong enough.

  But love is the last need a group has, not the first. If it were the first, there could be no such groups. Justice is the first need, the mortar that binds together a village or a town, or even a city. Or the crew of a boat. No one would take part in any such thing if he did not believe that he would be treated fairly.

  These people cheat one another at every opportunity-so it seems at times, at least. Under the Long Sun, they were ruled by force and the fear of force. Here on Blue there is no force and no fear sufficient to rule. There is nothing, really, except our book and me. In the Long Sun Whorl they believed that their rajan would take their lives for the least disobedience, and they were right. Here in their new town they must believe that every word and every action proceeds from my concern for them and for justice. And they must be right about that, too.

  What will become of them when I leave? For a long time I was unable to think about it. Now that I have, the answer is obvious. Just as in New Viron, they will steal, cheat and tyrannize until one chief man rises above all the rest. Then he will not bully and cheat, but take whatever he wants and kill all who oppose him. He will be their new rajan, and their original city will have been transferred from the Whorl to this beautiful new whorl we call Blue, complete in every significant detail.

  Meanwhile, here I am. They cannot help seeing that I am doing nothing that one of them could not do. Self-interest is necessary to every undertaking and to everyone-or that is how it seems to me, although I am quite sure Maytera Marble would argue passionately. They must be brought to understand that any action of theirs that makes their town worse is bound to be against their own interests.

  It is better to have no cards in a town in which no one steals than to have a case of cards in a town full of thieves. I must remember that, and tell them so as soon as a suitable occasion arises. An honest person in an honest town can gain a case full of cards by honest means, and enjoy it when he has it. In a town of thieves, cards must be guarded night and day; and when the cards are gone, as they will be sooner or later, the thieves will remain.

  * * *

  Looking over what I wrote last night, I see I strayed from my topic, as I too often do. I meant to say (I believe) that the man who called me a minor god meant that I am always right, when he ought to have meant that I always try to do what is right. What else can the distinction between a minor god and a major devil be?

  The lesser gods (as Maytera Mint taught us before Maytera Rose displaced her, and long before she became General Mint) were Pas’s friends. He invited them to board the Whorl with his family and himself. The devils came aboard by stealth and trickery, like Krait, who came aboard our sloop that night, proving yet again to me (if not to Seawrack) that quite often I do not know what I am talking about.

  The near calm that had succeeded the storm had endured throughout the remainder of the day. What woke me, I think, was the rattle of Babbie’s feet on the planks, followed by a sudden still- ness. I sat up.

  The sea was so calm that the sloop seemed as steady as a bed on shore. Seawrack was sleeping on her side, as she frequently did, her mouth slightly open. The mainsail, which I had double-reefed and left set, found no breath of air to flutter in; nor did the mainsail halyards tap the mast, or move at all. Beyond the shadow of the little foredeck, the sloop was bathed in the baleful light of Green, which made it seem almost an illusion, a ghost vessel that would, when day at last returned, sink into the air.

  Aft, I saw a dark mass that seemed too large as well as too splayed for Babbie, rather as if someone had thrown a cloak or a blanket over him. I crawled out from under the foredeck, got to my feet, and drew Sinew’s hunting knife; and a cold, calm voice- the voice of a boy or young man-said, “You won’t need that.”

  I went aft as far as the mast. To tell the truth, I was afraid that there might be more than one, and was as frightened as I have ever been in my life.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I haven’t come for your blood.” The inhumu must have looked up as he spoke; I saw his eyes gleam in the ghastly green light.

  Seawrack called, “What is it? Oh!”

  “If you do not stay where you are,” the inhumu said, “I will kill your pet. I will have to, since I don’t intend to fight all three of you together.”

  “That’s nothing to me,” I told him, lying consciously and de- liberately. “If you haven’t come for our blood, go away. I won’t try to stop you, and neither will she.” I had stowed my slug gun in one of the chests; it would not have been less available to me if it had been back on the Lizard.

  “Where bound?”

  I shook my head. “I won’t tell you.”

  “I could find out.”

  “Then you don’t have to learn it from me.”

  “Tell me at once,” the inhumu demanded, “or I’ll kill your hus.”

  “Go right ahead.” I took a step toward him. “You said you didn’t want to fight all three of us. The prospect of fighting you alone doesn’t bother me. If I have to fight you, I will. And I’ll kill you.”

  His wings spread in less than a second and he rose like a kite, leaving poor Babbie huddled and trembling in front of the steers- man’s seat.

  “I had to take a little blood to quiet him.” The inhumu had settled on our masthead, from which he grinned down at me like a very devil.

  When I did not reply, he added, “You have a most attractive young woman.”

  Looking up at him, it struck me that he was a devil in sober fact, that all the legends of devils found their origins in him and in the vile race he represented. “Yes,” I said, glancing at Seawrack, who had left the shelter of the foredeck. “You’re right. She certainly is.”

  “A valuable possession.”

  “Not mine,” I told him. “Not now and not ever.”

  Seawrack herself said, “But he belongs to me.” She joined me at the foot of the mast, and linked her arm in mine. “The Mother gave him to me. What of it?”

  “Nothing at all, if we’re friends. I don’t prey upon my friends, or pry into their affairs. It’s not our way. Dare I ask where you two are going?”

  I said, “No.”

  Seawrack’s arm tightened. “You told that other boat.”

  “But I’m not going to tell him. I’m not even going to ask why he wants to know.”

  As I returned Sinew’s knife to its sheath, I pointed to the chest. “There’s a slug gun in there. I’m going to get it out. If you’re still up there when I do, I’m going to kill you. You can fight or run. It’s up to you.”

  I opened the chest without taking my eyes off him, and he flew as I reached into it. For a few seconds a great, silent bat fluttered against the stars before disappearing into the blackness between them.

  “That was a…” Seawrack hesitated. “I don’t remember the names, but you told me about them and I wasn’t sure they were real.”

  “An inhumu. He was male, I believe, so inhumu. Females are inhuma. Their race is the inhumi. Those words come from another town, because we didn’t know they existed in Viron and had no name for them but ’devil.’ Anyway ’the inhumi’ is what everybody here calls them.”

  She had dropped to her knees next to Babbie. “He’s sick, isn’t he?”

  “He’s lost blood. He needs rest and a great deal of water. That’s a shame because we haven’t got much, but if he doesn’t get it he’s likely to die. He may die anyway.”

  “They drink blood. You said that. We have-we had worms that did, too. But you could pull them off, and some fish liked them.”

  “We call those leeches.” I was collecting Babbie’s pan and a bottle of water.

  “He wasn’t like that.”

  “No,” I agreed, “they’re not. Do you know of anything they are like?”

  She shook her head.

  I knelt beside her and poured water into the pan, then held it s
o Babbie could drink from it, which he did slowly but thirstily, drinking and drinking, and snuffling into the water as if he would never stop.

  “He’s very strong,” Seawrack said. “He was. I’ve-you know. Played with him. He was strong, and he has those big teeth. The inhumi must be strong too.”

  “I suppose they are. Certainly they’d have to be strong, very strong indeed, to fly. But they are light, too, and soft, which lets them reshape themselves the way they do. People say that a strong man can throw one to the ground and kill it in most cases. I’d guess that this one clung to Babbie’s back where he couldn’t reach it until it had weakened him-but I’ve never fought one myself.”

  “Will it come back?”

  I shrugged, and went forward to fetch an old sail with which I hoped to keep Babbie warm. While I was tucking it around him, Seawrack said, “Couldn’t another one come, too?”

  “It’s possible,” I told her. “I’ve heard that they almost always return to houses where they have fed. I’m not sure it’s true, however. Even if it is, an animal on a boat may not count. They generally leave animals alone.”

  “Your slug gun. Aren’t you going to get it?”

  I did, and loaded it. At home, I had grown accustomed to locking my needier away when the twins were small; plainly, I was not at home anymore. “We built our house on Lizard Island very solidly for fear of the inhumi,” I told Seawrack. “Double-log walls and heavy, solid doors. Very small shuttered windows with iron bars across them. It’s not possible for you and me to protect this sloop like that, but the better prepared we are for them, the less likely it will be that we’ll have to put our preparations to use.”

  She nodded solemnly. “Show me how to use your gun.”

  “You can’t. It takes two hands to control the recoil and cycle the action. A needier is what you need, but I gave mine to Sinew, so we haven’t got one. I can give you his knife if you want it.”