Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

“I apologize,” I told her. “I didn’t intend to. If that isn’t what you meant, what did you mean?”

Sinew began, “Did she really-?”

She cut him off. “What I’m trying to say is, there are two people on this boat you don’t think are people at all, Babbie and Krait. You don’t think they are, but you’re wrong. You’re wrong about both of them.”

Sinew muttered, “He doesn’t think I’m anybody either.”

“Yes, he does!” In the chill starlight, I could see her turn to face him. “You’ve got it exacdy backwards. No wonder you’re his son.”

While Sinew was wrestiing with that, she added, “It’s the other part he doesn’t like, the thingness. You try to be less of a person and more of a thing because you think that’s what he wants, but it’s really the other way.” Her voice softened. “Horn?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Tell me. Tell us both. What does it take to make a person for you?”

I shrugged, although she may not have seen it. “I’m not sure; maybe I’ve never thought enough about it. Maytera Marble is a person, even if she’s a machine. An infant is a person, even if it can’t talk.”

I waited for Seawrack to reply, but she did not.

“A while ago you said that it was talking for you. The sea goddess spoke to you. So she was a person no matter how large she was or how she looked, and I have to agree. Then you said that Babbie is a person. But Babbie can’t talk. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Sinew asked, “Babbie’s the hus?”

“Yes. Mucor gave him to me. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen Mucor, but you must have heard your mother and me mention her many times.”

“She could just sort of be there. Look out of mirrors and things.”

“That’s correct.”

Seawrack said, “She sounds like me. Is she very much like me, Horn?”

“No.”

Sinew asked, “Can she do that stuff?”

I was not quite certain that he was addressing me, but I said, “Do you mean Seawrack? I’m no expert on what Seawrack can do. If she says she can, she can.”

“I can’t,” Seawrack told me, “but Mucor reminds me of me, just the same.”

“In one way, I agree. Both of you have been very good friends to me.”

Again almost whispering, Sinew said, “I’ve been hearing about Mucor ever since I was a sprat, only I thought she was just a story. You know? Way out here, she’s real. When I was in town,” (he meant New Viron) “somebody said you’d been to see the witch. That was her, wasn’t it? You went to see her like you’d go to see Tamarind.”

“Yes.”

“Babbie can talk,” Seawrack insisted. “He talks to me and to you all the time, it’s just that you hardly ever pay attention.”

Babbie stood and shook himself, then lay down again with his broad, bristle-covered back against my legs and his head in my lap. I said, “Can you really speak, Babbie?” and felt his head move in reply.

“You think Krait is a-a monster, like an inhumi. I don’t like him either, he’s not nice, but he’s a person.”

Sinew asked her, “Is Krait the boy that looks like me?”

“Yes, our son.”

I should have made some attempt to straighten that out, but I did not. The hisses and whisperings of water and wind closed around us once more while I sat silent and tense, waiting for Sinew to fly into one of his rages. The back of my neck prickled, and the left side of my face cringed under the regard of his unseen eyes.

“Father?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“About Mucor. Is she listening to us now?”

“I have no way of knowing. I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

“In your book-”

Confident that he had never read it, I remained silent; and eventually he began to explain what we had been talking about to Seawrack. “In the book, every so often Patera Silk would wonder if Mucor was around, so he’d call her. He’d say her name, and if she was there she’d answer some way. Ask him to do it now.”

I was stroking Babbie’s head; Seawrack’s hand found mine there, and its lightest touch thrilled me. “Will you Horn? Do you want to?”

“No,” I said. “If Sinew wants Mucor called, let him call for her himself.”

Sinew was silent.

Seawrack told me, “Babbie’s a person. Whether you know it or not, he is. So am I.”

“I never doubted it.”

“When you go away and leave us, Babbie will go into the trees looking for things to eat.” Her fingers left mine as she pointed. “He talks now, and he picks up things to look at. You said ‘hind legs,’ and he does. He stands up when you tell him to, like to row.”

I nodded. He had been invaluable at the sweeps.

“And he does anyway sometimes when he thinks we’re not paying attention, so he can use his hands. When he goes into the trees, it will be a real person going in there. But he won’t be a real person in there for very long.”

I muttered, “If you and Sinew will wait for me in Wichote as I suggested, he could stay there with you. That would solve everything.”

“With the sea singing down at the end of the water? I never have told you how it was for me when you died.”

I heard Sinew’s indrawn breath.

“I thought he was dead,” she told him. “I was absolutely sure he was, so sure that I didn’t dare to go near his body. I watched for a long, long time, and he lay so still and never moved once. When it got dark I went down to the beach and took off my clothes and threw them into the water, and talked to the little waves. And they came up the beach, up and up, washing my feet and legs. My knees. Pretty soon they were laughing over my head, and I couldn’t drown.”

Sinew choked and coughed.

“Do you like that meat?”

“It’s good,” he assured her politely, “but it takes a lot of chewing.”

“Just bite it off and swallow. That’s the best way.”

None of us spoke much after that, or if we did, I have forgotten what was said.

When we had gone a little farther up the river and anchored in midstream for the night, Sinew called softly, “Mucor? Mucor?” I had never realized until then how much his voice resembled Krait’s. (Perhaps I should have written, how very near Krait’s it came in certain moods.)

Seawrack touched my knee and whispered, “He sounds just like you.”

I have been away from this untidy stack of manuscript a long while, and tonight I would like to make up for all of my neglect before I pack it away. In another week the rains should end, and they may end even sooner; I have been questioning the farmers in court, and all say they recall years in which the rainy season ended a week early. It is not completely inconceivable that it will end tonight, although the rain beats against my shutters at this moment with such violence that tiny droplets find their way through, a coarse mist that dribbles from the windowsill and wets the carpet. I have had to move my writing table to escape it.

I must be brief. There really is very little time left for all this.

When the rains end, Hari Mau will fall upon the enemy, a general advance by all our troops after a flanking action by the mercenaries. If he wins, we will win the war-and in fact the war will be effectively over. Hari Mau will be a hero, and I have seen enough of the whorl to know that everyone in Gaon will demand he rule. To give him his due, I do not think that he would kill me. I know him well; and there is nothing sneaking or ungrateful, and certainly nothing murderous, in his character. But I will be murdered by his friends, and everyone will be his friend.

(I remember how it was in Viron when we won.)

His friends will expect him to pardon them, and I would guess that they will not be disappointed. If we win, I will die.