Gene Wolfe: On Blue's waters

“Hold me.”

I was already, but I held her more tightly. “We were in the freight compartments. They had never been intended for passengers; but they could be pressurized, I suppose because the Crew might have to transport animals at times, and of course the inhumi had to keep us alive or we were of no value. They controlled the forward part of the lander, with three human slaves from Pajarocu who were supposed to be operating it. The slaves had slug guns, and the inhumus had needlers, some of them.”

I waited for her to ask me about Pajarocu, but she did not.

“Krait tried to divert the lander to the Whorl , but he couldn’t-it was already too late. He promised me that Sinew and I would not be drained. On Green they have thousands of human slaves whose blood they take only rarely, as long as the slaves can work and fight for them.”

Evensong trembled in my arms.

“Krait told me why they have to have it as he lay dying. He didn’t intend to give me power over them, you understand. I’m certain he wasn’t thinking of that in his final moments. He was thinking of the thing that linked him to me, and me to him-of the bond of blood between us.”

She said nothing.

“For a long, long time I didn’t realize what he had done either. If I’d understood the power of Krait’s secret while Sinew and I were on Green, things might have gone differently.”

“No cry,” Oreb urged me from my knee.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Perhaps… Perhaps I did realize it. But Krait’s death was so recent then, and I felt that I’d be betraying him. Before I knew it, it was too late.” Under my breath I added, “I still feel I’m betraying him, in a way.”

Evensong murmured, “Tell me. You must tell me, my husband. My only ever lover. You must tell me tonight.”

“Once I watched some men who had a wicker figure of the wallowers they were hunting. Two walked inside it, while two others hid behind it. That’s the kind of thing the inhumi must have done before the Vanished People reached Green-reshaped themselves to look like the animals they hunted, disguised their odor by smearing themselves with the excrement of their prey, and uttered the same cries, moving as their prey did until they were close enough to strike.”

They were uttering our own human cries at that moment, or something like them, talking among themselves in the air, their voices faint, pitched high, and floating. I wondered whether they could hear me.

“If only we cared about each other sufficiently. If only all of us loved all the others enough, they would go back to that. We would still think them horrible creatures, and they would still be dangerous, as the crocodiles in this lower river water are. But they would be no worse.”

“That is the secret, what you said?”

“No. Of course not.”

They were circling above us, I knew, and sometimes they flew so low that I could actually feel the wind from their wings upon my face. I decided that they might well overhear anything we said, and I counseled myself to keep that in mind each time I spoke.

“You must tell me!” Evensong demanded.

“I must not-that is the truth, the fact of our situation. They know that I know; I’ve proved it to them. They also know that you don’t, that you know where the others are buried but do not know the secret they would die to protect. They have to kill me, or feel that they do, even though I’ve sworn never to reveal it.”

She started to protest and I silenced her with a kiss.

When we parted, I said, “They don’t have to kill you, not as things stand. In fact, if they killed you like that, without reason, I would consider myself free to speak out about them.” It was a lie, and may have been the last that I will ever tell, the final lie of so many thousands. I hope so.

For a while we tried to sleep; but I, at least, could only stare up at the flying inhumi I glimpsed at almost every breath between Green’s shining disk and ourselves. After an hour or more I stood up and called out to them (addressing them as Jahlee, Juganu, and so forth) in the hope that we could come to some agreement under which they would spare us. They neither replied nor came to our fire, although I invited them to. There seemed to be about twenty at that time.

Eventually we went back to the boat and lay down in its little hut of plaited straw, leaving our fire to die. Evensong fell asleep almost at once. I prayed, not on my knees as I felt I should (the hut was too low for that) but lying on my back next to her. Every so often I crawled outside with my azoth, looked up the sky, fingered the demon, and crawled back into the hut as before. Tired as I was (and I was very tired, having slept for only an hour that afternoon), I was striving to convince myself that I was protecting us-protecting her-in some unclear way.

That I was not, I was well aware. By not returning to Gaon the moment I discovered she was on board, I had put her into deadly danger; and my presence kept her there.

After a time that seemed long to me, three or four hours I would guess, when I was practically asleep, too, I heard myself calling Babbie.

Certain that I had been dreaming and had spoken aloud in a dream that I could no longer remember, I rubbed my eyes and rolled onto my hands and knees. The inhumi had gone. I had no idea how I knew that, but I knew it with as much certainty as I have ever known anything.

I crawled out of the hut. Our little fire had sunk to a glow so faint that I would not have seen it if I had not known where to look. Oreb was gone, too, and I was afraid that the inhumi had killed him.

Someone on shore called again for Babbie, and I understood that he meant me; it never so much as occurred to me then that I had sometimes been called “Silk” or “Horn.” He who called me seemed quite near, and he called me with more urgency than Seawrack ever has. I searched the shadows under the closest trees for him without result.

I had on my trousers, with Hyacinth’s azoth in the waistband, and I got my tunic as well and the augur’s black robe that Olivine had found in some forgotten closet for me; I left behind stockings, boots, sash, and the jeweled vest. For a moment I considered taking back my dagger and the sword that I am still too weak to use, but the voice from the forest was calling to me and there was no more time to waste upon inessentials. I waded ashore and set off through the forest at a trot. I have the pen case on which I am writing and this rambling account of my failure, with a few other possessions, because they were in the pockets of my robe.

Oreb has been urging me to rise and walk, and in a moment I will. It may be that we are lost. I do not know. I have been trying to go northwest, that being the direction in which I think New Viron must lie, and I believe that I have succeeded pretty well.

Another halt, and this one must be for the night-a hollow among the roots of (what I will say is) just such a tree as we had on Green. It is what we call a very big tree here, in other words. I will write, I suppose, as long as the light lasts; I have three (no, four) more sheets of paper. The light will not last long, however, and I have no way to start a fire and nothing to cook if I did. The last time I ate was at about this time two days ago with Chota. I am not hungry, but am afraid I may become weaker.

If the inhumi find me here and kill me here, then they find me here and kill me. That is all there is to it.

Good-bye again, Nettle. I have always loved you. Good-bye, Sinew, my son. May the Outsider bless you, as I do. In the years to come, remember your father and forget our last quarrel. Good-bye, Hoof. Good-bye, Hide. Be good boys. Obey your mother until you are grown, and cherish her always.

I found him in the forest, sitting in the dark under the trees. I could not see him. It was too dark to see anything. But I knelt beside him and laid my head upon his knee, and he comforted me.