Gene Wolfe: On Blue's waters

I should have anticipated that some of us would believe the inhumi, and side with them. They were proud and stupid men, too proud and too stupid to believe that they could have been so badly deceived. Many, I would guess, had believed that the lander could not fly, and had hoped to loot its cards when it failed. When it took off, crushing us into our rough wooden cradles with a speed that seemed liable to persist long after we were dead, they were ripe to believe anything that He-hold-fire told them. The monitor, too, said we were bound for the Whorl .

The inhumi would not let us into the cockpit, as it was called on the Trivigaunti airship. I do not know what it should be called on a lander.

Yes, I do. Silk said Mamelta had called it the nose, and that is what you and I called it when we wrote, Nettle. We on the lander simply said “the front” or “up front.”

There were three inhumi among us, besides Krait. They called themselves the first three travelers to reach Pajarocu, and said that He-hold-fire had put them in charge of us. One was the one I had seen on the other boat, I believe. I demanded to know why they would not let us into the nose one at a time. I should have killed him (it was he I was arguing with) but I hesitated until it was too late. He looked like a man, and I was still not certain I was correct. Krait pretended to side with me, which made me doubt my conclusions. I reproach myself now, as I should.

All this took longer than I have indicated-a day, at least.

Except for Sinew, the others thought I was insane, or most did. They offered to tie my hands, but those who had believed Sinew and me would not allow it.

But I am far past our leaving Blue already, and that was as much as I intended to write. Before I leave Gaon as well, I should explain that Sinew had cut the halyards while Seawrack was ashore picking berries, and returned to Pajarocu in his hollow-log boat, arriving in the nick of time to be taken on the lander, the final passenger to board it. My heart leaped for joy when I saw him and heard the airlock slam shut behind him. I am ashamed of that even now-I thought that he was going to his death and that we all were-but how glad, how very glad, I was to see him!

I feel sure that Seawrack made what repairs she could and that she and Babbie tried to sail the sloop back up the river. They must have arrived much too late, if indeed they arrived at all. She has returned to the sea now, for which I would be the last to blame her.

That is enough. The inhumi struck me, tearing my cheek with claws. Everyone knew after that, and Sinew stabbed him for it. I had forgotten how it was when Patera Quetzal died, although I would have sworn that I remembered everything. He appeared to be a human man still, for some time after his death agony.

The illusion is the last to die. I must bundle up this paper and put it into my bag at once. Good-bye, Nettle. Good-bye to all of you.

After what I wrote last night, what right do I have to take up the quill again? None, to be honest; but it will be two or three pages at most. I am going to write as long as we are in quiet water, but no longer. Evensong wants to trim the little sail and steer, and this is an opportunity for her to learn. (I am pretending not to watch her.)

Yes, she is with me, having deceived me most thoroughly and hidden herself in our little hut until we were well away from Gaon. “Good girl!” proclaims Oreb. “Clever girl,” I tell him.

She knew what I planned when I sent her to buy this boat. I asked how she knew, and she said that if I had really intended it for a spy I would have had the spy buy it. I had no answer for that. She was right.

She bought it after a long search for the owner and a great deal of haggling, then stocked it with a variety of things she felt we might need: blankets and even pillows, wine, a lot of simple food, and cookware. We have no box of sand in which to build a fire, but as long as we remain on the Nadi we should be able to land some- where.

“Good boat,” proclaims Oreb every few minutes. It is, small and slender (almost too slender) and quick to answer the helm, a boat for fast travel, not for freight; but we have no need to carry fifty or a hundred thick bales of paper. Babbie, Seawrack, Krait, Sinew, and I would sink it; but we are but three, and Oreb takes up very little room.

What Nettle will make of Evensong-or make of me for bringing her home with me-I cannot conceive; and yet I am very glad that she is here. I have told her several times (too many, she says) that I am not the ruler of New Viron. She said she always wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I explained that I am no farmer, that I tried farming and failed at it, that my wife and I have built a mill where we make paper. And she told me that was even nicer.

What more can I do or say?

All this reminds me of what Seawrack told Smew-that she was my travel wife. It shocked him as nothing else did; so I was glad that she had said it, even though I was terrified that he would repeat it to Netde. Outsider, you great and mysterious god behind all the gods, grant that he does someday. It will mean that he has come home.

Are the gods merely farther from us here? Or is it die Vanished Gods-those of die Vanished People-who rule here, as Sinew theorized?

Or are diere no gods here on Blue at all, as so many of us are beginning to assume? Sinew may merely have been trying to discomfit me; it was something he did almost as much as Krait, and rather more skillfully. Even so, he may have been correct. Silk once said that the Outsider was so far from us that he was always both behind and beyond us.

Or at least, that is the sort of thing Silk would have said; I cannot remember his actually saying it, although he may have.

In Gaon, they love racing their horses above all other amusements, and I watched them race whenever it seemed to be expected I would. The harrowed course they gallop along is shaped like an egg, so that we distinguished spectators who had the best view of the start had the best view of the finish, as well. For a short race they gallop around the egg once, but for a longer race, it may be two, three, four, or even five times. Imagine then an eternal race, in which we run on such a track, observed by gods. The god we see before us is not the god nearest us. The god nearest us is the one we have only just left behind.

And whether we realize it or not, it is he to whom we run.

Perhaps Silk would mean something like that.

I have been looking at the sky. I don’t think I have ever seen a clearer, brighter blue since I came to Gaon. By the favor of the Outsider, Green and the stars (and the Whorl, too) are covered by this lovely cerulean impalpability during the day, so that we cannot see outside.

So that we can go about our daily business and not be afraid.

Where Pas used rock, the Outsider uses this and lets us look out on clear nights; and that is the difference between them.

We have lines, hooks, long cane poles, sinkers and bobbers, and even a landing net. It appears that the previous owner used this boat for fishing, mostiy. I have baited my hook with a scrap I pulled from the meat Evensong bought, and we shall see.

“May Scintillating Scylla and all the gods smile upon you, my daughter,” I told Evensong a moment ago. It is Scylsday; and I am an augur of Viron once more, at least in appearance, having left off my headcloth and shortened my hair with Choora. I never went to the schola, but I heard so much about it as a boy that at times I feel I did, for a year or three at least, long, long ago.

My father wanted me to help him in his shop, and to keep it when he died. I intended to do anything in the whorl except that- yet something very much like it came to pass, just as he wished. Some god favored him.