Gene Wolfe: Nightside the Long Sun

The palaestra’s warped and weathered door would not open until Horn had wrestled manfully with its latch. As always, Silk delivered the smaller boys to Maytera Marble first. “We won a glorious victory,” he told her.

She shook her head in mock dismay, her smooth oval face, polished bright by countless dustings, catching the sunlight from the window. “My poor girls were beaten, alas, Patera. It seems to me that Maytera Mint’s big girls grow quicker and stronger with each week that passes. Wouldn’t you think our Merciful Molpe would make my smaller ones quicker, too? Yet it doesn’t seem she does it.”

“By the time they’re quicker, they’ll be the big girls, perhaps.”

“That must be it, Patera. While I’m only a small girl myself, snatching at every chance to put off the minuends and subtrahends for as long as possible, always willing to talk, never willing to work.” Maytera Marble paused, her work-worn steel fingers flexing the cubit stick while she studied Silk. “You be careful this afternoon, Patera. You must be tired already, after scrambling around up there all morning and playing with the boys. Don’t fall off that roof.”

He grinned. “I’m finished with my repairs for today, Maytera. I’m going to sacrifice after manteion—a private sacrifice.”

The old sib tilted her gleaming head to one side, thus lifting an eyebrow. “Then I regret that my class will not participate. Will your lamb be more pleasing to the Nine, do you think, without us?”

For an instant Silk was tempted to tell her everything there and then. He drew a deep breath instead, smiled, and closed the door.

Most of the larger boys had already gone into Maytera Rose’s room. Silk dismissed the rest with a glance, but Horn lingered. “May I speak with you, Patera? It’ll just take a minute.”

“If it is only a minute.” When the boy said nothing, Silk added, “Go ahead, Horn. Did I foul you? If I did, I apologize—it certainly wasn’t intentional.”

“Is it…” Horn let the question trail away, staring at the splintering floorboards.

“Speak up, please. Or ask your question when I come back. That would be better.”

The tall boy’s gaze moved to the whitewashed mud-brick walls. “Patera, is it true that they’re going to tear down our palaestra and your manteion? That you’re going to have to go someplace else, or noplace? My father heard that yesterday. Is it true?”

“No.”

Horn looked up with new hope, though the flat negative had left him speechless.

“Our palaestra and our manteion will be here next year, and the year after that, and the year after that as well.” Suddenly conscious of his posture, Silk stood straighter, squaring his shoulders. “Does that put your mind at rest? They may become larger and better known, and I hope that they will. Perhaps some god or goddess may speak to us through our Sacred Window again, as Pas once did when Patera Pike was young—I don’t know, though I pray for it every day. But when I’m as old as Patera Pike, the people of this quarter will still have a manteion and a palaestra. Never doubt it.”

“I was going to say…”

Silk nodded. “Your eyes have said it for you already. Thank you, Horn. Thank you. I know that whenever I’m in need I can call on you, and that you’ll do all that you can without counting the cost. But, Horn—”

“Yes, Patera?”

“I knew all that before.”

The tall boy’s head bobbed. “And all the other sprats, too, Patera. There are a couple of dozen that I know we can trust. Maybe more.”

Horn was standing as straight as a Guardsman on parade now. With a slight shock of insight, Silk realized that this unaccustomed perpendicularity was in imitation of his own, and that Horn’s clear, dark eyes were very nearly level with his.

“And after that,” Horn continued, “there will be others, new boys. And men.”

Silk nodded again, gravely reflecting that Horn was already a grown man in every way that mattered, and a man far better educated than most.

“And I don’t want you to think I’m mad about it—knocking me over like that, Patera. You hit me hard, but that’s the fun of the game.”

Silk shook his head. “That’s merely how the game is played. The fun comes when someone small knocks down someone larger.”

“You were their best player, Patera. It wouldn’t have been fair to them if you hadn’t played as well as you can.” Horn glanced over his shoulder at Maytera Rose’s open door. “I have to go now. Thanks, Patera.”

There was a line in the Writings that applied to the game and its lessons—lessons more important, Silk felt, than any Maytera Rose might teach; but Horn was already almost to the doorway. To his back, Silk murmured, “‘Men build scales, but the gods blow upon the lighter pan.’”

He sighed at the final word, knowing that the quotation had come a second too late, and that Horn, too, had been too late; that Horn would tell Maytera Rose that he, Patera Silk, had detained him, and that Maytera Rose would punish him nevertheless without bothering to find out whether it was true.

Silk turned away. There was no point in remaining to listen, and Horn would fare that much worse if he tried to intervene. How could the Outsider have chosen such a bungler? Was it possible that the very gods were ignorant of his weakness and stupidity?

Some of them?

The manteion’s rusty cash box was bare, he knew; yet he must have a victim, and a fine one. The parents of one of the students might lend him five or even ten bits, and the humiliation of having to beg such poor people for a loan would certainly be beneficial. For as long as it took him to close the unwilling door of the palaestra and start for the market, his resolution held; then the only-too-well-imagined tears of small children deprived of their accustomed supper of milk and stale bread washed it away. No. The sellers would have to extend him credit.

The sellers must. When had he ever offered a single sacrifice, however small, to the Outsider? Never! Not one in his entire life. Yet the Outsider had extended infinite credit to him, for Patera Pike’s sake. That was one way of looking at it, at least. And perhaps that was the best way. Certainly he would never be able to repay the Outsider for the knowledge and the honor, no matter how hard or how long he tried. Small wonder, then …

As Silk’s thoughts raced, his long legs flashed faster and faster.

The sellers never extended a single bit’s credit, true. They gave credit to no augur; and certainly they would not extend it to an augur whose manteion stood in the poorest quarter of the city. Yet the Outsider could not be denied, so they would have to. He would have to be firm with them, extremely firm. Remind them that the Outsider was known to esteem them last among men already—that according to the Writings he had once (having possessed and enlightened a fortunate man) beaten them severely in person. And though the Nine could rightly boast …

A black civilian floater was roaring down Sun Street, scattering men and women on foot and dodging ramshackle carts and patient gray donkeys, its blowers raising a choking cloud of hot yellow dust. Like everyone else, Silk turned his face away, covering his nose and mouth with the edge of his robe.

“You there! Augur!”

The floater had stopped, its roar fading to a plaintive whine as it settled onto the rutted street. A big, beefy, prosperous-looking man standing in its passenger compartment flourished a walking stick.

Silk called, “I take it you are addressing me, sir. Is that correct?”

The prosperous-looking man gestured impatiently. “Come over here.”

“I intend to,” Silk told him. A dead dog rotting in the gutter required a long stride that roused a cloud of fat blue-backed flies. “ Patera would be better mannered, sir; but I’ll overlook it. You may call me ‘augur’ if you like. I have need of you, you see. Great need. A god has sent you to me.”