Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

I told him that I had been thinking the same thing not long before.

“A wise saying it is. Everyplace wise fellows the same things say. This you know?”

“I suppose that they must, although I’d never thought about it.”

“Wise always the same it is. About men, women, children. About boats, food, horses, dogs, everything. Always the same. No birds in the old nest, wise fellows say, and the good cock out of the old bag. A thief, the thief s tracks sees. The meat from the gods it is, the cooks from devils. All those things in towns all over they say. You young fellows laugh, but us old fellows know. The look-out, the little thing always he sees. Almost always, because to see it sharp he must look. The big thing, too big to look out sharp for it is, and nobody it sees.

Dipping his quill for what might have been the tenth time, he divided the river. “The big stream to starboard it is. Yes? Little to port. The little one fast it runs. Hard to sail up. Yes? Just the same, the way you go it is.” He drew an arrow upon the unknown land beside it, and began to sketch in trees beside it.

After a moment I nodded and said, “Yes. I will.”

Wijzer stopped drawing trees and divided the smaller stream. “Same here, the little one you take. A little boat you got?”

“Much smaller than yours,” I told him. “It’s small enough for me to handle alone easily.”

“That’s good. Good! For a good, strong blow you must wait. You see? Then up here you can sail. Close to the shore, you got to stay. Careful always you must be, and the legend not forget. A good watch keep. Here sometimes Pajarocu is.” He added a dot of ink and began lettering the word beside it: PAJAROCU.

“Did you say it was there only sometimes?” I asked.

Wijzer shrugged. “Not a town like this town of yours it is. You will see, if there you get. Sometimes here it is, sometimes over there. If I tell, you would not me believe. That you coming are they know, maybe it they move. Or another reason. Or no reason. Not like my Dorp, Pajarocu is.” He pointed to Dorp, a cluster of tiny houses on his map. “Not like any other town Pajarocu is.”

Marrow was leaning far over the table to look at it. “That river is practically due west of here.”

Wijzer’s face lost all expression, and he laid aside his quill.

“Couldn’t Horn save time by sailing west from here?”

“That some fellows do, maybe,” Wijzer told him. “Sometimes all right they go. Sometimes not. What here I draw, what Wijzer does it is.”

“But you want to trade from town to town,” Marrow objected. “Horn won’t be doing that.”

I said, “If I were to do as you suggest, sailing due west from here) I would eventually strike the coast of this big island or second continent that Wijzer has very kindly mapped for us. But when I did, I wouldn’t know whether to turn south or north, unless the river mouth was in view.”

Reluctantly, Marrow nodded.

“With the greatest respect to Captain Wijzer, a map like this one, drawn freehand, could easily be in error by, oh, fifty leagues or more. Suppose that I decided it was accurate, and sailed north. It might easily take me a week to sail fifty leagues, tacking up the coast. Suppose that at the end of that week I turned back to search south. And that the river mouth was five leagues beyond the point at which I turned back. How long would it take me to locate it?”

Wijzer smiled; and Marrow said reluctantly, “I see what you mean. It’s just that they’re going to leave as soon as their lander’s ready, and it’s nearly ready now. You read that letter. Anybody who hasn’t arrived before they go will be left behind.”

“I realize that there’s no time to waste,” I told him, “but sometimes it’s best to make haste slowly.” Privately I reflected that I might have the best of both plans by sailing north for a hundred leagues or so, then turning west well south of the place where Wijzer had advised me to.

And I resolved to do it.

How long ago it seems! So much has happened since then, although at times I almost feel that it happened to someone else.

Yet I remember Wijzer clearly. What if he were to walk into court tomorrow? He would ask whether I ever reached Pajarocu, and what could I say? “Yes, but…”

Let me make one thing clear before I go further. I did not trust Wijzer completely. He seemed a trader not greatly different from dozens of others who sail up and down our coast, having begun, perhaps, with a cargo of iron kitchenware and exchanged it for copper ingots, and exchanged the ingots for paper and timber in New Viron, always in search of a cargo that will bring immense profit when it is sold in their home port. I was afraid that Wijzer might be lying to make himself seem more widely traveled than he was, or even that he might not want Silk brought here for reasons of his own. In all this I wronged him, as I now know. He had been to Pajarocu, and he advised me to the best of his ability.

Some people have accused Nettle and me of penning a work of fiction; and even though that is a slander, we did present certain imagined conversations when we knew roughly what had been said and what had been decided-that among Generalissimo Oosik, General Mint, Councilor Potto, and Generalissimo Siyuf, for example. We knew how each of the four talked, and what the upshot of their talk had been, and ventured to supply details to show each at his or her most characteristic.

If this were a similar work, instead of the unvarnished, straightforward account that I intend, I would simply explain why I doubted Wijzer, and leave the reader in suspense as to whether those doubts were justified. It is not. Because it is not, I want to say here plainly that except for some slight exaggerations of coastal features and the omission of many small islands (notably that terrible island on which I fell into the pit) his map was remarkably accurate, at least regarding the areas through which I traveled in my long search for the elusive Pajarocu, called a town.

Before I returned to my boat that evening, I bought a tightly fitted little box of oily desertwood and a stick of sealing wax; once back on board, I studied the map with care, then put it into the box with my copy of the letter, melting the wax in the flame of my lantern and dripping it over every joint, a process that Babbie watched with more interest than I would have expected any beast save Oreb to show.

He was there still, although I had half expected to find him gone when I came back. It was the first time that I left him on the boat alone.

With the robbery still fresh in my memory, it was almost pleasant to have him. Although my boat had never been pillaged before on the few occasions when I had left it tied to a pier with no one on board, I had known that others had been, and that some had lost their boats. To confess the truth, when I returned to mine that first night I had been happy to find the damage and losses no worse than they were. Normally we had taken Sinew or (more often) the twins, so as to have someone to watch the sloop while Nettle and I traded our paper for items we needed but could not grow or make for ourselves, or for spirits, food, and clothing we could trade with the loggers.

“We’ll be going for a sail in the morning,” I told Babbie. “If you want to go ashore, now’s the time.” He only grunted and retreated to the foredeck, his expression (as stubborn as Wijzer’s own) saying You won’t sail off without me.

Naturally it had occurred to me that I might put out that very night, but I was tired and there was scarcely a breath of wind; in all probability it would have meant a good deal of work for nothing.

It might also have altered the course of events radically, if the wind had picked up enough for me to pass the Lizard while it was still dark.