Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Only Lastvoice stood. His chant had stopped, but he did not flee. Sandwalker thought he saw in his eyes a despair like that of the exhausted beast that at last turns and bares its throat to the jaws of the tire-tiger. “Come,” Sandwalker said, pushing aside the girls and taking his mother’s arm; but in his ear the Old Wise One said, “No.”

Behind them feet were splashing in the river water. It was Eastwind, and when Lastvoice saw him said, “You ran.”

Eastwind answered: “Only for a moment. Then I remembered.” He sounded shamed. Lastvoice said, “I shall speak no more,” and turned his back on them all, looking out to Ocean.

Sandwalker said: “We’re going. Don’t try to stop us.”

“Wait.” Eastwind looked at Cedar Branches Waving. “Tell him to wait.”

She said to Sandwalker, “He, too, is my son. Wait.”

Sandwalker shrugged and asked bitterly, “Brother, what do you want of us?”

“It is a matter for men, not women; and not,” Eastwind looked at the last Shadow child, “for such as he. Tell them to go to the bank and upriver. No marshman, I swear, will hinder them.”

The women went, but the last Shadow child only said, “I will wait on the bank,” and Eastwind, defeated, nodded.

“Now, Brother ,” said Sandwalker, “what walks here?”

“While the stars remain in their places,” Eastwind answered slowly, “the starwalker judges the people; but when a star falls the river must be clouded with his blood, that it may forget. His disciple does this, aided by all nearby.”

Sandwalker looked a question.

“I can strike,” Eastwind said, “and I will strike. But I love him, and I may not strike hard enough. You must help me. Come.”

Together they swam the river, and on the farther bank found a tree of that white-barked kind Sandwalker had once dreamed grew in a great circle about Eastwind. The roots trailed in the bitter water, and selecting a branching one less thick than a finger, Eastwind bit it through, pulled it up dripping to give to Sandwalker. It was as long as his arm, the lower part heavy with small shellfish and smelling of ooze. While Sandwalker examined it, Eastwind took another for himself, and with them they flogged Lastvoice until no further blood ran as he floated, though the sharp little shells sliced the white flesh of his back. “He was a hill-man,” Eastwind said. “All starwalkers must be born in the high country.”

Sandwalker dropped his bloody flail into the water. “Now what?”

“It is over.” Eastwind’s eyes were wet with tears. “His body is not eaten, but allowed to drift to Ocean, a total sacrifice.”

“And you rule the marsh now?”

“My head must be burned as his was. Then—yes.”

“And why should I let you live? You would have drowned our mother. You are no man, and I can kill you.” Before Eastwind could answer Sandwalker had seized him, bending him backward by the hair.

“If he dies,” the Old Wise One’s voice whispered to Sandwalker, “something of you dies with him.”

“Let him die. It is u part of me I wish to kill.”

“Would he slay you thus?”

“He would have drowned us all.”

“For what was in his mind. You slay him now for hate. Would he have slain you so?”

“He is like me,” Sandwalker said, and he bent Eastwind back until the water was on his forehead and lapping at his eyes.

“There is a way to know,” the Old Wise One said, and Sandwalker saw that the last Shadow child had come out into the river again. When he saw Sandwalker looking at him, he repeated, There is a way.”

“Very well, how?”

“Let him up,” the Shadow child said, and to Eastwind, “You eat us but you know we are a magic people.”

Gasping, Eastwind answered, “We know.”

“By our power I made the stars to fall; but I now do a greater magic. I make you Sandwalker and Sandwalker you,” said the Shadow child, and as quickly as a striking snake darted forward and plunged his teeth into Eastwind’s arm. While Sandwalker watched, his twin’s face went slack and his eyes looked at things unseen.

That which swam in my mouth swims in his veins now,” the Shadow child said, wiping Eastwind’s blood from his lips. “And because I spoke to him and he believed me, in his thought he is you.”

Sandwalker’s arm was sore from flogging Lastvoice, and he rubbed it. “But how will we know what he does?”

“He will speak soon.”

“This is a game for children. He should die.” Sandwalker kicked Eastwind’s feet so that he fell into the water, and held him there until he felt the body go limp. When he straightened up he said to the last Shadow child, “I spoke.”

“Yes.”

“But now I don’t know if I am Sandwalker or Eastwind in his dream.”

“And neither do I,” said the Shadow child. “But there is something happening down there on the beach. Shall we go and see?”

The mist was burning away. Sandwalker looked where the Shadow child pointed and saw that where the river joined moaning Ocean a green thing was bobbing in the water. Three men with their limbs wrapped in leaves stood on the sand near it, pointing at the stranded body of Lastvoice and talking a speech Sandwalker did not understand. When he came close to them they extended their hands, open, and smiled; but he did not understand that open hands meant (or had meant, once) that they held no weapons. His people had never known weapons. That night Sandwalker dreamed that he was dead, but the long dreaming days were over.

It was a brown box, a dispatch box, of decayed dark brown leather with brass reinforced corners. The brass had been painted a brownish green when the box was new; but most of the paint was gone, and the dying sunlight from the window showed dull green tarnish around the bright scars of recent gouges. The slave set this box carefully, almost soundlessly, beside the junior officer’s lamp.

“Open it,” the officer said. The lock had been broken a long time ago; the box was tied shut with hard-reeved ropes twisted from reclaimed rags.

The slave—a high-shouldered, sharp-chinned man with a shock of dark hair—looked at the officer and the officer nodded his close-cropped head, his chin moving a sixteenth of an inch. The slave drew the officer’s dagger from the belt over the back of his chair, cut the ropes, kissed the blade reverently and replaced it. When he had gone the officer rubbed his palms on the thighs of his knee-length uniform trousers, then lifted the lid and dumped the contents on to his table.

Notebooks, spools and spools of tape. Reports, forms, letters. He saw a school composition book of cheap yellow paper, the cover half torn off, picked it up. An unskilled hand had monogramed it: V. R. T. The initials were ornate and very large but somehow wrongly formed, as though a savage had imitated them from letters indicated to him on a sign.

Birds I have seen today. I saw two birds today. One was a skull-shrike, and the other was a bird that the shrike had…

The officer tossed the composition book to the back of the table. His eyes, straying, had identified amid the clutter the precise, back-slanted writing favoured by the Civil Service.

SIR: The materials I send you…

…is my own opinion.

…from Earth.

The officer raised his eyebrows slightly, put down the letter, and picked up the composition book again. At the bottom of the cover, in smudged, dark letters, he read: Medallion Supplies, Frenchman’s Landing, Sainte. Anne. Inside the back cover: