Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Sometimes. I like that. Have I ever told you how much I like you, Horn?”

I nodded. “More often than I’ve believed it.”

“I do. The thing that I like is that I can never tell when you’re being truthful. Most of you lie constantly, as Seawrack does. A few of you are practically always truthful, this Silk you like to talk about would seem to have been one of those. Both are boring, but you aren’t. You make me guess over and over.”

I asked what his own practice was, although I knew.

“The same as yours. That’s another reason to like you. Seriously now, you need to think about your woman, not as I would but as you would. She’s a human being, exactly as you are. Don’t settle for an easy answer and put it out of your mind.”

“I do that too much.”

“I’m glad you know it.”

I sat on the gunwale. “What is it you’re trying to get me to say? That I need your advice?”

“I doubt that you do. I merely think that you haven’t thought as much as you should about the situation she’ll face, left alone in Pajarocu.”

“She’ll have Babbie to protect her.”

“So much for a life of woodsy freedom. You wanted to know how to get there. Up the river, right at the first fork and left at the second. I know that’s not what your map shows, but I followed the rivers to get back here. That’s it, and a long fly it was.”

“Do you think they’ll let three of us, all supposedly from New Viron, have places on the lander?”

Krait nodded. “It’s barely half full, I told you that, and they’ll want to go before winter, since nobody’s likely to come after the bad weather sets in. The ones who are there already are getting impatient, too. If they wait much longer, they’ll be losing more than they gain.”

Evensong came. This time I watched her slip through my window. When peace returns (if it does) I’m going to have another sentry in the garden. Or bars on these windows. Bars would be more practical, I suppose, but I cannot forget how I hated the bars on the windows of my manse.

I told her that it would be hours yet, and I wanted to get a few hours sleep before we went out. She said she did, too, but her sister-wives would not let her. She asked who would wake us when it was time, and I told her I would wake myself.

As I now have. We will go soon. I will wake Evensong and give her the note I have prepared, a blank piece of paper with a seal. She will leave by the window, bring her note to the sentry at my door, and demand to be admitted. He will refuse. I will open my door (pretending that their voices have awakened me), look at her paper, get dressed, and leave with her. We will meet the head gardener at the lower gate.

Just writing those words made me think of the garden at my manteion at home. We sprats said Patera Pike’s garden, and then almost without a pause to catch breath, Patera Silk’s. With barely another pause, we are old, the garden a ruin (I sat there for a while just the same), and that spot, in which some nameless much earlier augur had made his garden, a hundred thousand leagues away or some such ridiculous number. “Do you imagine that a man of your age will find another woman as young as she is?” Krait asked me. He wanted her on the lander, of course; I know that now. “Or one as beautiful?” Trying to be gallant, I told him there were no other women as beautiful as Seawrack.

Nor are there.

Evensong is as young-I would not be surprised if she were a year or two younger. Nettle was never beautiful or even pretty, but my heart melted each time she smiled. It would melt again if I could see her smile tonight.

I must have a needier, and get it without taking it from someone who will use it against the enemy.

We cannot surrender. I cannot. Because I could not leave Pig blind, these people were able to bring me here, and so ended any chance of success I might have had. You could argue that I owe them nothing, and in a sense I believe that it is true; but to say that I owe them nothing is one thing, and to say that they deserve to be despoiled, raped, and enslaved is another and a very different thing.

All this time I have tried to be Silk for them. I have thought of Silk day and night-what would he do? What would he say under these circumstances? On what principles would he make his decision? Yet to every such question there is just the one answer: he would do what was right and good, and in doubt, he would side against his own interests. That is what I must do.

What I will do. I will try to be what he tried to be. He succeeded, after all.

I have been pacing up and down this big bedroom. This palatial bedroom my oppressors built for me. Pacing in my slippers, so as not to wake Evensong or let the guard at my door know I am awake. When I came here I was a prisoner-a prisoner who was respected, true. I was treated with great kindness and even reverence by Hari Mau and his friends, but I was a prisoner just the same. I knew it, and so did they.

Let me be honest with myself, tonight and always. With myself most of all. That has changed, had changed even before the war. I am their ruler, their caldé. I could leave here at any time, simply by putting a few things into saddlebags, mounting, and riding away. No one would lift a finger to stop me. Who would dare?

I said I could; but I cannot. A prisoner is free to get away if he can. I am no prisoner, and so I cannot. I said I owed them nothing; let that stand. Better-I owe this town and its collective population nothing, because I was taken from the Whorl against my will. But what about the individuals who make up the town? Do I owe Hari Mau and my troopers nothing? Men I have bled with?

What about Bahar? (I take one example where I might have a hundred.) He was one of those who forced me to come here. At my order he bought a boat, boarded it, and left his native place, reminding me forcefully of a man named Horn I used to know. I have not the slightest doubt that he has been working at his task, and doing it as well as it can be done. Three boatloads of good, simple, cheap food so far, and it would not surprise me if three more docked tomorrow. At my order he went without a word of protest, leaving his shop to his apprentices. Do I owe Bahar nothing?

Say I do. It is wrong, but say it.

What about my wives? Pehla and Alubukhara are with child. I have lain beside every one of them, and whispered words of love that to many men mean nothing at all. Am I, their husband, to be numbered among those men?

I say that I am not . Neither were the teachings I tried to pass along to my sons things that I myself did not believe. I am a bad man, granted. Sinew always thought so, and Sinew was right. I am no Silk, but am I as bad as that? I left Nettle, but I did not leave her to be raped and murdered.

Lastly, Evensong and all the people of Han. Say that she counts only as a wife, that she means no more to me than Chandi. Does she mean less? She has a mother and a father, brothers and sisters, two uncles and three aunts, all of whom she loves. They are at the mercy of a tyrant, and if Gaon loses or surrenders they will remain at his mercy.

If we win, there will be no difficulty about getting a needier, or anything.

I have been writing here, I see, about that town on the river. It seems so very long ago.

Where did I put Maytera’s eye? In the top drawer at the back, to be sure. Should I put it in a saddlebag now? How happy she will be!

And my robe. I must have my robe and the corn. Where is that?

Found it-back of wardrobe. I put Olivine’s eye in the pocket. On Green I learned the secret the inhumi wish nobody to know. I promised not to reveal it, but who will ever read this, besides me? Although I swore, I did not swear not to reveal my oath. I can threaten them as well as save them, and I will do both.