Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

“Good that is. Not you ask.”

“I say I won’t ask, because I’m not asking your help for my own sake. I’m asking for everybody in my town, and everybody on this inside-out whorl Pas packed us off to. If that’s not exact enough for you, I’m asking for Horn here. He’s going off alone to a place that neither one of us have ever been to, because there’s a chance we can get Silk to come here.”

Marrow pointed to me with his fork. “Look at him. There he sits, and inside of a week he may drown. He has a wife and three boys. If you know something that might help him, this is your chance to tell him. If you don’t and he dies, maybe I’ll be the only who blames you. One old man in a foreign town, that’s nothing. But maybe you’ll blame yourself. Think about it.”

Wijzer turned to me. “This wife, a beautiful young girl she is?”

I shook my head and explained that you are my own age.

“Me?” He indicated himself, a broad thumb to his chest. “A beautiful young girl I got. In Dorp she is.”

“You must miss her, I’m sure.”

Marrow started to speak, but Wijzer stopped him with an up-raised hand. “Did I say I wouldn’t tell? No!” He belched. “This I will I have said. A trader that his word keeps I am. Who and why to know I wish. My right that is. But who you are I see, Marrow, and why it is they here to you listen.”

He unfolded the letter and rattled it between his fingers. “Good paper. Where this do you get?”

Again, Marrow pointed to me.

I said, “I made it. That’s what I do.”

“The papermaker you are?”

I nodded.

“Not a sailor.” Wijzer frowned. “Why a sailor does he not send?”

Marrow said, “He’s a sailor, too. He’s going instead of somebody else because getting to Pajarocu won’t gain us anything unless he can persuade Silk to come back with him. He’s the only one, or almost the only one, who may be able to.”

Wijzer grunted, his eyes on the letter.

I said, “There are two other people who might have as much influence with Caldé Silk, or more. Do you want to hear about them?”

“If you want, I will listen.”

“Both are women. Maytera Marble might, but she’s old and blind, and believes that she’s taking care of the granddaughter who cares for her. Would you want me to step aside so they could send her?”

Wijzer made a rude noise. “Not as far as Beled she would get.”

“You’re right. The other is Nettle, my wife. She’s a fine sailor, she’s strong for a woman, and she’s got more sense than any two men I know. If I had not offered to go, they were going to ask her, and I feel sure she would have gone.”

Wijzer chuckled. “And you at home to sit and cook! No, you must go. That I see.”

“I want to go,” I told him. “I want to see Silk again, and talk to him, more than anything else in the whorl. I know Nettle feels the same way, and if I succeed, she’ll get to see him and talk to him too. You said Maytera Marble wouldn’t get as far as Beled. Beled’s the town where the Trivigauntis settled, isn’t it?”

Marrow said, “That’s right.”

“It’s that way? North?”

Wijzer nodded absently. “Here of this He-hold-fire I read. Back to the Whorl he will make his lander go. How it is, this he can do? Other men this cannot do.”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Perhaps I can find out when I get to Pajarocu.”

“Horn’s good with machinery,” Marrow told Wijzer. “He built the mill that made that paper.”

“In a box it you make?” Wijzer’s hands indicated the size.

“No. In a continuous strip, until we’re out of slurry.”

“Good! A lander here you got? A lander everybody’s got.”

Marrow said, “We have some, but they’re just shells. The one Horn and I came in…” He made a wry face. “For the first few years, everybody took everything they wanted. Wire, metal, anything. I did it myself.”

“Dorp, too.”

“I used to hope that another would land. That was before the fourth came. I had a plan, and men to carry it out. We would arrive before the last colonist left, and seize control. Search them as they got out, and make them put back the cards they’d taken, any wiring, any other parts. We did, and it took off again.”

Wijzer laughed.

“They-Pas-doesn’t want anyone to go back. You probably know it. So unless a lander’s disabled before it unloads, it goes back to the Whorl so it can bring more people here.”

“A good one at Mura they got,” Wijzer remarked pensively. “This I hear. Only nobody near they will allow.”

“If I had succeeded,” Marrow told him, “I wouldn’t have let anyone near ours either.”

“Dorp, too. Our judges there, but none they got.” Wijzer refolded the letter and handed it back to me. “Pajarocu to go, a sharp watch you must keep, young fellow. The legend already you know? About the pajarocu bird?”

I smiled; no one had called me young in a long time. “I’ll try, and if you know the legend, I’d like to hear it.”

He cleared his throat and poured himself another glass of wine. “The Maker everything he made. Like a man a boat builds it was. All the animals, the grass, trees, Pas and his old wife, everything. About the Maker you know?”

I nodded and said that we called him the Outsider.

“A good name for him that is. Outside him we keep, into our hearts we don’t let him come.

“When everything he’s got made, he got to paint. First the water. Easy it is. Then the ground, all the rocks. A little harder it gets. Then sky and trees. Grass harder than you think it is, the little brush he had got to use, and paint so when the wind blows the color changes, and different colors for different kinds. Then dogs and greenbucks, all the different animals. Birds and flowers going to be tough they are. This he knows. So for the last them he leaves.”

I nodded. Marrow was yawning.

“While the other stuff painting he is, the pajarocu with the big owl up north they got makes friends. Well, that big owl the first bird the Maker paints he is, because so quick it he can do. White for feathers, eyes, legs, and everything. But that owl not much fun he is, so the snake-eater bird next he calls. At the owl the pajarocu bird looks, and all over white he is. Does it hurt the pajarocu wants to know. That big owl, he never laughs. To have a game he wants, so he says yes. A lot it hurts, he says, but over quick it is.

So the pajarocu, over to look he goes. The Maker the snake-killer bird painting is, and two dozen colors using he is. Red for the tail, brown for wings, blue and white in front, yellow around the mouth and the chin, everything he’s got using he is. So the pajarocu hides. When the Maker finished is, the pajarocu nobody can find. Because he has never been painted and nobody him can see, it is.”

Marrow chuckled.

“So the Maker for the owl and the snake-eater bird calls, and them for the pajarocu to look he tells. The owl at night can look, and the snake-eater bird when light it gets. But him they never see, so him they never find. All the time the owl around the night he flies, and cu, cu he says. Never the snake-eater bird talks, till somewhere where the pajarocu might be he comes. Then Pajarocu?”

I said, “That’s a good story, but if I understand you, you’re telling me that even with your directions I may have a lot of trouble finding Pajarocu.”

Wijzer nodded solemnly. “Not a place that wants to be found it is. Traders to steal will come back, they think. If close you get, wrong their friends to you will tell.”

Marrow, who had eaten nearly as much as Wijzer, said, “They have invited us to send someone, one man or one woman to fly back to the Long Sun Whorl and return to this one. You’ve seen their letter, and that’s an accurate copy. How do you explain it?”