Gene Wolfe: Nightside the Long Sun

The prosperous-looking man looked at least as surprised as Horn had when Silk had knocked him down.

“I require two—no, three cards,” Silk continued. “Three cards or more. I require them at once, for a sacred purpose. You can provide them easily, and the gods will smile on you. Please do so.”

The prosperous-looking man mopped his streaming brow with a large peach-colored handkerchief that sent a cloying fragrance to war with the stenches of the street. “I didn’t think that the Chapter let you augurs do this sort of thing, Patera.”

“Beg? Why, no. You’re perfectly correct, sir. It’s absolutely forbidden. But there’s a beggar on every corner—you must know the kinds of things they say, and that’s not what I’m telling you at all. I’m not hungry, and I have no starving children. I don’t want your money for myself, but for a god, for the Outsider. It’s a major error to restrict one’s worship to the Nine, as I—Never mind. The Outsider must have a suitable offering from me before shadedown. It’s absolutely imperative. You’ll be certain to gain his favor by supplying it.”

“I wanted—” the prosperous-looking man began.

Silk raised his hand. “No! The money—three cards at least, at once. I’ve offered you a splendid opportunity to gain his favor. You’ve lost that now, but you may still escape his displeasure, if only you’ll act without further delay. For your own sake, give me three cards immediately!” Silk stepped closer, scrutinizing the prosperous-looking man’s ruddy, perspiring face. “Terrible things may befall you. Horrible things!”

Reaching for the card case at his waist, the prosperous-looking man said, “A respectable citizen shouldn’t even stop his floater in this quarter. I simply—”

“If you own this floater, you can afford three cards easily. And I’ll offer a prayer for you—many prayers that you may eventually attain to…” Silk shivered.

The driver rasped, “Shut your shaggy mouth and let Blood talk, you butcher.” Then to Blood, “You want me to bring him along, Jefe?”

Blood shook his head. He had counted out three cards, and now held them in a fan; half a dozen ragged men stopped to gawk at the gleaming gold. “Three cards you say you want, Patera. Here they are. Enlightenment? Was that what you were going to ask the gods to give me? You augurs are always squeaking about it. Well, I don’t care about that. I want a little information instead. Tell me everything I want to know, and I’ll hand over all three. See ’em? Then you can offer this wonderful sacrifice for yourself if you want to, or do whatever you want with the money. How about it?”

“You don’t know what you’re risking. If you did—”

Blood snorted. “I know that no god’s come to any Window in this city since I was a young man, Patera, no matter how you butchers howl. And that’s all I need to know. There’s a manteion on this street, isn’t there? Where Silver Street meets it at an angle? I’ve never been in that part of this quarter, but I asked, and that’s what I was told.”

Silk nodded. “I’m augur there.”

“The old cull’s dead, then?”

“Patera Pike?” Silk traced the sign of addition in the air. “Yes. Patera Pike has been with the gods for almost a year. Did you know him?”

Ignoring the question, Blood nodded to himself. “Gone to Mainframe, eh? All right, Patera. I’m not a religious man, and I don’t pretend to be. But I promised my—well, I promised a certain person—that I’d go to this manteion of yours and say a few prayers for her. I’m going to make an offering, too, understand? Because I know she’ll ask if I did. That’s besides these cards here. So is there somebody there who’ll let me in?”

Silk nodded again. “Maytera Marble or Maytera Mint would be delighted to, I’m sure. You’ll find them both in the palaestra, on the other side of our ball court.” Silk paused, thinking. “Maytera Mint’s rather shy, though she’s wonderful with the children. Perhaps you’d better ask for Maytera Marble, in the first room to your right. She could leave one of the older girls in charge of her class for an hour or so, I would think.”

Blood closed his fan of cards as if about to hand them over to Silk. “I’m not too crazy about chemical people, Patera. Somebody told me you’ve got a Maytera Rose. Maybe I could get her, or isn’t she there any more?”

“Oh, yes.” Silk hoped his voice did not reflect the dismay he felt whenever he thought of Maytera Rose. “But she’s quite elderly, sir, and we try to spare her poor legs whenever we can. I feel sure that Maytera Marble would prove completely satisfactory.”

“No doubt she will.” Blood counted his cards again, his lips moving, his fat, beringed fingers reluctant to part from each wafer-thin, shining rectangle. “You were going to tell me about enlightenment a minute ago, Patera. You said you’d pray for me.”

“Yes,” Silk confirmed eagerly, “and I meant it. I will.”

Blood laughed. “Don’t bother. But I’m curious, and I’ve never had such a good chance to ask one of you about it before. Isn’t enlightenment really pretty much the same as possession?”

“Not exactly, sir.” Silk gnawed his lower lip. “You know, sir, at the schola they taught us simple, satisfying answers to all of these questions. We had to recite them to pass the examination, and I’m tempted to recite them again for you now. But the actualities—enlightenment, I mean, and possession—aren’t really simple things at all. Or at least enlightenment isn’t. I don’t know a great deal about possession, and some of the most respected hierologists are of the opinion that it exists potentially but not actually.”

“A god’s supposed to pull on a man just like a tunic—that’s what they say. Well, some people can, so why not a god?” Watching Silk’s expression, Blood laughed again. “You don’t believe me, do you, Patera?”

Silk said, “I’ve never heard of such people, sir. I won’t say they don’t exist, since you assert that they do, although it seems impossible.”

“You’re young yet, Patera. If you want to dodge a lot of mistakes, don’t you forget that.” Blood glanced sidelong at his driver. “Get on these putts, Grison. Make them keep their paws off my floater.”

“Enlightenment…” Silk stroked his cheek, remembering.

“That ought to be easy, it seems to me. Don’t you just know a lot of things you didn’t know before?” Blood paused, his eyes upon Silk’s face. “Things that you can’t explain, or aren’t allowed to?”

A patrol of Guardsmen passed, their slug guns slung and their left hands resting on the hilts of their swords. One touched the bill of his jaunty green cap to Blood.

“It’s difficult to explain,” Silk said. “In possession there’s always some teaching, for good or ill. Or at any rate that’s what we’re taught, though I don’t believe—In enlightenment, there’s much more. As much as the theodidact can bear, I would say.”

“It happened to you,” Blood said softly. “Lots of you say it did, but from you it’s lily. You were enlightened, or you think you were. You think it’s real.”

Silk took a step backward, bumping against one of the onlookers. “I didn’t call myself enlightened, sir.”

“You didn’t have to. I’ve been listening to you. Now you listen to me. I’m not giving you these cards, not for your holy sacrifice or for anything else. I’m paying you to answer my questions, and this is the last one. I want you to tell me—right now—what enlightenment is, when you got it, and why you got it. Here they are.” He held them up again. “Tell me, Patera, and they’re yours.”

Silk considered, then plucked them from Blood’s hand. “As you say. Enlightenment means understanding everything as the god who gives it understands it. Who you are and who everyone else is, really. Everything you used to think you understood, you see with complete clarity in that instant, and know that you didn’t really understand it at all.”