Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

She nodded. Her eyes were dull once more, and fixed upon something far away.

“This is my fault, because I didn’t explain the situation as fully as I should have. It’s actually my fault twice. My fault for not explaining, and my fault that certain people in New Viron want Silk to be their caldé. The same thing is true, I’m told, in Three Rivers and some other towns, and that’s my fault, too. My wife and I wrote our book, and it has been more widely read, and much more often copied, than we had ever dreamed it would be.”

“What about the women troopers from Trivigaunte?” Maytera inquired.

“No. Though their men may feel differently. But they want him in Urbasecundus, and in other towns even farther from here. I said my wife and I wrote that book, and it sounds as if I’m trying to divide the blame. I’m not; our book would never have been written if I had not been determined to write it before I died. Nettle saw how hard it was and offered her help, which I gladly accepted. But the fault is mine alone.”

I waited for Mucor to speak, which was nearly always a mistake.

“Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, though I didn’t think so at the time. It was to be a book about Silk, Silk’s Book, and mostly it was. But you’re in it, both of you, and so are General Mint and Maytera Rose. Maybe I should have said all three of you are in there.”

“Really?” Maytera asked.

“Yes. So too are your son Blood, and His Cognizance, and the inhumu that we called His Cognizance Patera Quetzal back in Old Viron. And Corporal Hammerstone, and Patera Incus. Do you remember Patera Incus?”

“Yes, Horn. Yes, I do. My husband thought the whorl of him.” I had been away from her for too long to tell whether she was smiling or frowning.

“But it was mostly about Patera Silk,” I continued, “and I tried to show how good and wise he was, and how he made mistakes sometimes but was never too proud to acknowledge that he’d been wrong. Most of all, how he never gave up, how he kept working for peace with the Ayuntamiento and peace with Trivigaunte, no matter how badly things were going or how impossible any peace seemed. I believed that a book like that would help everyone who read it, not just now or next year, but long after Nettle and I were gone. Nettle thought so, too, and wanted to help create a gift that we could give our children’s children, and their children.”

Maytera’s hand groped toward me. “You’re a good boy, Horn. Too lively and fond of mischief, but good at heart. I always said so, even when I had to take my switch to you.”

I thanked her. “There was something else, Maytera. I felt he deserved it, deserved a book telling everyone what he had done, and I felt sure that if I didn’t write down all the things I knew about him, nobody would.”

Maytera said, “He deserved your tribute, dear.” And Mucor, “He does.”

“So I tried. It was a lot of work for me and even more for Nettle, because she had to copy what I’d written over and over. But when we were finished and I read it as somebody who hadn’t known him would, I realized I hadn’t done him justice, that he had been greater than I had been able to show. Ever since it began to be read, people have been telling us that we exaggerated, that he couldn’t have been as great and good a man as my wife and I said he was. We’ve always known that all the error was on the other side.”

Maytera Marble sniffed. One of the parts she had taken when Maytera Rose died had been that sniff, so expressive of skepticism and contempt. “You think you’ve got to go because they’d never have known about young Patera Silk if you and that girl hadn’t written about him.”

“Yes, I do.”

“That was how I used to treat Maggie, our maid. Every time she did some little favor for me, I made it her task, and added to it. Oh, I knew it was wicked, but I did it just the same.”

Hoping to bring her to herself again, I said, “Did you really, Maytera Marble?”

She nodded, and something in the movement of her head told me that it was still Maytera Rose who gave her assent. “I said to myself that if she was ninny enough to let me impose on her like that, she deserved everything she got. I was right, too. Both ways… Horn?”

“Yes, Maytera. I’m still here. What is it?”

“You don’t owe my granddaughter and me any more favors. You’ve been very, very generous with us, and the only help that my granddaughter’s been able to give you has been to tell you to help yourself. Now I need to ask you for another favor, one that I want almost as much as I want a new eye-”

“I’ll get two if I can, Maytera.”

“You’re going to go anyway? In spite of what Patera Silk said?”

I was, of course, because I had to. I temporized by saying that there were many other things in the Long Sun Whorl that were needed in New Viron.

“We must be realistic, Horn. Are you realistic?”

I said that I tried to be.

“You may not be able to find a new eye for me, much less two. I-I understand that. So do you, I feel sure.”

I nodded and said, “I also understand that because we told everyone about Silk, I’m the one who must go back for him when he’s needed so badly here. When I got to New Viron I asked Marrow for a copy of a certain letter he had shown me. Do you remember Marrow, Maytera?”

Her old woman’s fingers smoothed her dirty black skirt over her thin metal thighs. “I used to go to his shop twice a week.”

“He’s not a bad man, Maytera. In fact, he’s a very good man as men are judged in New Viron today. He has been a good and generous friend to me ever since I agreed to go back and get Silk. But when his clerk came in to copy that letter, he wore a chain.”

She said nothing, and I was afraid she had not understood me. I said, “I don’t mean jewelry, a gold or silver chain around his neck. His hands were chained. There were iron bands around each wrist, and the chain ran between them.”

She said nothing. Neither did Mucor.

“They make those chains short enough that a man wearing one can’t fire a slug gun properly. He can’t work the slide to put a fresh round into the chamber without letting go of the part that his right hand holds.”

“You needn’t explain any more, Horn. Not about the gun or the chains, I mean.”

I did anyway. I had lived on Lizard too long, perhaps, seeing few people other than you yourself, Nettle darling, and our sons. I said, “I watched him write, copying it out for me, and I couldn’t help seeing how careful he was to keep it back, keep it from smearing his ink. It wasn’t a big chain, Maytera. It wasn’t a heavy chain at all, just a little, light chain with seven little links. The men who unload boats wear much heavier ones. He probably thinks that he’s being treated kindly, and in a way he is.”

“I quite understand, Horn. You don’t have to tell us any more.”

“Once-this is two or three years ago-I talked to a man in town who was boasting about how beautiful a girl he had was. He even offered to take me to his house so that I could see her.”

“Did you go?”

I had but I denied it, one of those lies we tell without knowing why. “I asked him if the chain didn’t get in the way when they made love, and he said no, he made her hold her hands over her head.”

“Is this about Silk? Yes, I suppose it is.” Maytera was silent for a moment. “Like Marl. Marl was a friend of mine back home. Like the clerk, except that he didn’t have to wear a chain. All right, I understand why you think you must bring Silk here. In your place, I suppose I would, too.”

“Even though he doesn’t want to? He wanted very badly to go with us when we left. You must remember that, Maytera-how much he wanted to go with us, how eager he was. He hated all the evil he saw in the Whorl, and he must have hoped that people would be better in a new place.”