The Urth of the New Sun

by Gene Wolfe

Page 5

 

  Tattered streamers hung suspended from the ceiling and, because they were so light and the attraction of our ship hardly felt, seemed in need of no suspension. So far as I could judge, the air was as dry here as in the corridor; yet the ghost of an icy spray beat against my face.

  "Is this strange place your stateroom?" I asked Barbatus. He nodded as he removed his masks, revealing a face that was at once handsome, inhuman, and familiar. "We have seen the chambers your kind makes. They are as disturbing to us as this must be to you, and since there are three of us" "Two," Ossipago said.

  "It does not matter to me. " "Im not offended, Im delighted! Its the greatest of privileges for me to see how you live when you live as you wish. " Famulimuss falsely human face was gone, revealing some huge-eyed horror with needle teeth; she pulled that away as well, and I saw (for one last time, as I then believed) the beauty of a goddess not born of woman. "How fast we learn, Barbatus, that these poor folk well meet, who hardly know what we know best, know courtesy as guests. " If I had attended to what she said, it would have made me smile. As it was, I was far too busy still in looking about that strange cabin. At last I said, "I know your race was formed by the Hierogrammates to resemble those who once formed them. Now I see, or think I see, that you were once inhabitants of lakes and pools, kelpies such as our country folk talk of. "