Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

Sobering thoughts.

[Needless to say, we are making the greatest efforts to preserve this record, both by the care we take in printing and conserving individual copies and by disseminating it.-Hoof and Hide, Daisy and Vadsig.]

I wish that one of the first people to settle the Long Sun Whorl had left us a record of it. Perhaps one did, a record preserved now in some skyland city far from Viron. That book, or a copy of it, may have been brought here already if it exists, as I sincerely hope it does.

Many in and around our town were very happy to have Scleroderma’s short account of our departure, and overjoyed to have the one that Nettle and I wrote. It sounds boastful, I know; but it is true. They gave us cards, and even exchanged things they themselves had made or grown-things that had cost them many days of hard work-for a single copy. Yet to the best of my knowledge (and I believe I would surely have heard) none of them began an account of the founding of New Viron, the land raffle, and the rest of it. After considering this at some length, I have decided to salt this account of mine with facts that Nettle and my sons already know, but that may be of interest or value to future generations. Even today, who here in Gaon would know of the high wall that surrounds Patera Remora’s manteion and manse, for example, if I failed to mention it?

When I recall our sail up the coast, which seemed so idyllic as far as I have yet described it, I am struck by the speed with which so many new towns have sprung up here on Blue. The people on each lander have tended to settle near the place where they landed, since their lander could not be moved again once they had pillaged it, and it still constituted an essential source of supplies. In addition to which, they had no horses or boats, and would have had to walk to their new destination. Thus we built New Viron within an hour’s walk of the lander in which we arrived, and I am sure the people on other landers acted much as we did, save for those who landed too near us and have been forced into servitude by their captors; like us, they would have had little choice.

We were lucky, perhaps. There was no lake or river where we settled to provide fresh water, but there were a couple of well-diggers among us, and a ten-cubit well there provided better and purer water in abundance. To the west we have a fine harbor and a sea full of fish, and on the lower slopes of the eastern mountains, more timber than a hundred cities the size of Viron could ever need. The mountains themselves are already providing us with iron, silver and lead, as I believe I have mentioned before.

Most cannot have been so fortunate. Gaon has little access to the sea; ten leagues from where I sit, the River Nadi reaches us from the Highlands of Han in a succession of rapids and falls we call the Cataracts. Downstream are the Lesser Cataracts, then tropical forests and swamps, as well as a seemingly endless string of foreign towns, many of them hostile to us and some hostile to everyone. In theory, it might be possible to sail from here to the sea; but no one has ever done so, and it seems likely no one ever will.

Still, we have fresh water and fish from our river, timber, three kinds of useful cane, reeds for matting and the like, and a rich, black, alluvial soil that yields two generous crops per year. Even quite near town, the jungle swarms with game, and there are wild fruits for the picking. It seemed a poor place to me when I arrived, but no one needs warm and solid houses with big stone fireplaces here. Metals are imported and costly, which in the long run may prove the gods’ blessing.

The gods (I should say) are very naturally those we knew in the Whorl . Echidna gets more sacrifices than all the rest together, but is generally shown as a loving mother holding the blind Tartaros on her lap while her other children swarm around her vying for her attention. A snake or two peeps from her hair, and her image in the temple has a snake coiled around each ankle. (Our people are not in the least afraid of snakes, as I ought to have explained. They seem to think them almost supernatural, if not actually minor gods, and set out bowls of milk laced with palm wine for them. Even a mother-goddess with a roving collection of pet snakes seems entirely normal. I have not been told of a single case of snakebite while I have been here.)

In my last session I intended to write about the settling of Blue, but I see that I wandered from the topic to describe this town of Gaon.

I nearly wrote “this city,” but Gaon is nothing like the size of Viron or the foreign cities I saw from General Saba’s airship. Viron had more than half a million people. While I have no way of knowing exactly how many we have in Gaon, I doubt that there are a tenth that many.

The pirate boat came from no town, but from a little freshwater inlet where drooping limbs had concealed it from me until it put out. I shall never forget how it looked then, so black against the warm green of the trees and the cool blue and silver sea. Hull and masts and yards had all been painted black, and its sails were so dark a brown that they were nearly black, too. When I think back upon it here at my bedroom writing table, now that I am no longer afraid of it, I realize that its owners must have expected someone to hunt it, and wanted it to vanish from sight the moment the sun went down. It was half the sloops’ beam, or a trifle less, and must have been more than twice our length, with two masts carrying three-cornered sails so big that a good gust should have laid it over at once. There were eight or nine on board, I think, mostly women. One in the bow shouted for me to haul down. I got out the slug gun Marrow had given me instead, loaded it, and put extra cartridges in my pocket.

“ Haul down! ” she shouted again, and I asked what she wanted.

Her answer was a shot.

I put the slug gun to my shoulder. I have seldom fired one, but I tried very hard then to recall everything that I had ever heard about them-Sinew’s advice, and that of a hundred others-how to hold the slug gun and aim, and how to shoot well and swiftly. I still recall my trepidation as I pushed off the safety catch, laid the front sight on the pirate boat, and squeezed the trigger.

The report was an angry thunder, and the slug gun seemed to convulse in my hands, nearly knocking me off my feet; but my first shot was as ineffectual as theirs, as well as I could judge. Before I could fire a second time, Babbie was beside me gnashing his tusks.

The sound of the shot had awakened my intelligence as well as Babbie, however; I put down my slug gun and turned the sloop into the wind until we were sailing as near it as I dared, and trimmed sail while trying my best to ignore the shots aimed at me. When I looked back at the long black craft pursuing us, I saw that I had been right. She could not hold our course, which was nearly straight out to sea.

The sloop was pitching violently, and dipping her bowsprit into the waves that had been lifting her by the stern when the wind was quartering. I returned to the slug gun nonetheless, and after two or three more shots learned to fire at the highest point of each pitch, just before the stern dropped from under me. Before I had to reload, I had the satisfaction of seeing the woman who had been shooting at me tumble headlong into the sea.

“We’re going to Pajarocu!” I told Babbie while I reloaded my gun with the cartridges from my pockets, and he nodded to show that he had understood.

My intuition had outrun my reason. But as I fired again, I realized it had been right. With one of their comrades dead, the crew of the black boat would certainly try to keep us in sight until shadelow, and during the night to position themselves between the mainland and us, assuming that we were bound to some northern port and would turn northeast as soon as we believed we were no longer observed. If we did, and they were lucky, they would have us in sight at shadeup.