Gene Wolfe: On Blue's waters

So attached to it were and are they that they have refused to duplicate it here on any lesser scale, although duplicating it on its original scale is still far beyond their reach. What they have done instead is to duplicate its plan to perfection-without duplicating, or attempting to duplicate, its substance at all.

There are “streets” paved with grass and fern between “buildings” and “manteions” that are no more than clearings in the forest marked in ways that are, to our eyes, almost undetectable. When the adult citizens we sought to question were willing to talk to us, they talked of gateways, walls and statues that did not in fact exist-or at least, that did not exist here on Blue-and described them in as much detail as if they loomed before us, together with colossal images of Hierax, Tartaros, and the rest, called by outlandish sobriquets and the objects of strange, cruel veneration.

But when the streets are too badly fouled or the river rises, this phantom Pajarocu goes elsewhere, which I think an excellent idea. Our own Viron was built on the southern shore of Lake Limna; when the lake retreated, our people clung to the shiprock buildings that Pas had provided when they ought to have clung to the idea that he had provided instead, the idea of a city by the lake. Many (although certainly not all) of Viron’s troubles may ultimately have been due to this single mistaken choice.

Listen to me, Horn and Hide. Listen all you phantom readers. Buildings are temporary, ideas permanent. Rude as they are in so many ways, the people of Pajarocu understand it thoroughly, and in that respect they are wiser than we.

Since I have taken the time to characterize the people of Gaon and Han, let me do the same for the people of Pajarocu. You have seen them already in my words, since you have met He-pen-sheep and She-pick-berry. They are short for the most part and frequently bowlegged, dark and hard-featured, with piercing eyes and long coarse hair that is always black unless the years have done their work or they have shaved their heads, as many young men and boys do.

Seawrack complained that people in Pajarocu were forever talking, but compared with us they are actually rather silent. The adults never laugh unless they are talking to children, which made me think them humorless for a time-the exact reverse of the truth. They are muscular and agile, both the men and the women; and many are extremely thin, so that one sees their muscles as though the skin had been peeled away. There is a disease among them that causes the throat to swell. At first I believed it a disease of women only, because the first few sufferers I saw were all women; but He-hold-fire had it, as did various other men.

No doubt that is enough, and it may be too much; but I am going to add a few more items as they occur to me. In Viron, Nettle, we men wear trousers and you women gowns. In Pajarocu, women often wear trousers like men, and I was told that in the winter they never wear gowns. In good weather-and even in weather that you and I would think quite cool-a man may wear no more than a strip of soft greenbuck skin suspended from a thong, or nothing. Men and women bathe together in the river. I saw this on a day when the weather was warmer than it had been and the Short Sun shone brightly. Seawrack and I joined them, which only one little boy and the many strangers who thronged the town thought odd at all.

Oreb wanted something to eat, which gave me a fine chance to roam through this palace and make certain everyone is asleep. The only person I saw who was not was the sentry before my door. He was surprised at my black robe, I believe, but he showed it only by a slight widening of his eyes. If it were not for my wound, I would climb out the window when I take my departure, although it is hard to imagine that my own sentry will try to stop me.

If Evensong can climb up, I can climb down, surely, weak though I feel. I will leave my door locked, and they will think I am sleeping late. Very likely no one will venture to knock before noon, and by then I will be far away. When this account halts in the middle of a word, you are to understand that Evensong has returned with news of the boat that I sent her to buy.

No, I will have to wait a bit to give her time to get into bed and get to sleep.

“Bad thing!” says Oreb. “Thing fly!” So there are inhumi about, just as in Pajarocu. I do not believe they will attack Evensong, whom they all know. But what a thought! If only we protected one another, they would all be idiots or worse. As it is, they always get enough to keep them going.

I put my head out the window and tried to see them, although I would have been horrified if I had. The azoth is in my sash, next to Princess Choora. (I wonder how she likes her company?) No needier, but that should be more than enough. I am inclined to take my sword as well. I cannot cut firewood on a boat with the azoth-it would sink her at the first attempt. When I’m not using my sword, I can stow it on the boat, provided Evensong finds one for me. How I wish that I had the black-bladed sword the Neighbor gave me now!

I wish that I had been able to choose the boat for myself, too. Evensong’s choice will be too large, almost certainly. Sinew crossed the western sea in a boat that would scarcely carry Nettle and me, with a few bales of paper.

If Evensong does not buy one at all, I will send somebody else tomorrow night. Jahlee? Old Mehman would surely be better. The inhumi do not understand such things, even when they make use of them.

My inhumi have done some good things for us. Cutting loose the barges to break that bridge on the upper river was masterly. The Man saw no risk in moving gravel for his new road by water; but his troopers, who were very hungry already, went hungrier still.

Starting rumors and sending false messages, too. We dug up two of them for that. It was only just.

They are cunning, but like all cunning people they put too much faith in cunning. That was how it was in Pajarocu, when they allowed me to inspect their lander, never dreaming that I was the one man in thousands who would recognize it as Auk’s.

That is just how it has been here, at times. Three dead so far, Jahlee says, but she cannot know of all those whose lives have been lost.

In Pajarocu, I got my first warning from Seawrack. I woke and found her clinging to me and trembling. Whispering, I asked her what was wrong. “They’re hunting the night.” Her teeth were chattering so that she could scarcely speak. A bad dream, I thought, and many times the inhumi had seemed no more than a bad dream to me, so that I half expected Krait to vanish at sunrise. I tried to tell Seawrack that she had spent too many years under the sea, and that the creatures she had feared there could not reach her here.

Then I sat up, crawled out from under the foredeck, and looked around, hoping that she would join me and look too. I saw a man on one of the other boats some distance away; I thought I recognized him as one of those who had shown Seawrack, Sinew, Krait, and me through the lander the day before, and would have hailed him if I had not been afraid of waking others who were sleeping in their boats just as Seawrack and I had been sleeping in ours. He stooped and I heard a scuffle that quickly subsided; I supposed that it had been no more than the noise he had made taking off his boots, and told Seawrack there was nothing to fear.

The next day was the warm and sunny one I mentioned, and was a market day besides. She and I went out to have another look at the invisible town, and bargained for food and a few other things. Returning to the sloop we saw twenty or thirty men, and what appeared to be every woman and child in the town, swimming in the river. After stowing our purchases we joined them. Seawrack’s missing arm and yellow hair attracted a great deal of attention, and the children (who were all good swimmers) were amazed to find that she, with only one arm, could swim much faster than the fastest of them.