Gene Wolfe - The Urth of the New Sun

Clouds had come to veil the stars, so that I had to grope for the objects I had seen from above; but I found that I had been correct. A brass candlepan held the guttered remains of a candle no bee would have acknowledged. The bodies of a kitten and a small bird lay together in the gutter.

As I was examining them, the man who had been dead leaped down beside me, managing his jump better than I had mine. I spoke to him, but he did not reply; as an experiment I walked a short distance down the street. He followed me docilely.

I was in no mood for sleep by then, and the fatigue I had felt after I restored him to life had been sponged away by a sensation I am not tempted to call unreality — the exultation of knowing that my being no longer resided in the marionette of flesh people were accustomed to call Severian , but in a distant star shining with energy enough to bring ten thousand worlds to flower. Watching the man who had been dead, I recalled how far Miles and I had walked when neither of us should have walked at all, and I knew that things were now otherwise.

“Come,” I said. “We’ll have a look at the town, and I’ll stand you a drink as soon as the first dramshop unbars its door.”

He answered nothing. When I led him to a patch of starlight, his face was the face of one who wanders amid strange dreams.

If I were to describe all our ramblings in detail, reader, you would be bored indeed; but it was not boring for me. We walked along the hilltops, north until we were halted by the town wall, a tumbledown affair that seemed to have been built as much from pride as fear. Turning back, we made our way down cozy, crooked lanes lined with half-timbered houses, to reach the river just as the first light of the new day peeped over the roofs behind us.

As we strolled along admiring the many-masted vessels, an old man, an early riser and doubtless a poor sleeper (as so many old people are) stopped us.

“Why, Zama !” he exclaimed. “ Zama , boy, they said you was dead.”

I laughed, and at the sound of my laughter the man who had been dead smiled.

The old man cackled. “Why, you never looked better in your life!”

I asked, “How did they say he’d died?”

“Drowned! Pinian’s boat foundered up by Baiulo Island , that’s what I heard.”

“Does he have a wife?” When I saw the old man’s curious glance, I added, “I only met him last night when we were out drinking, and I’d like to drop him off someplace. He’s stowed a little more than’s good for him, I’m afraid.”

“No family. He’s boardin’ with Pinian. Pinian’s old woman takes it out of his pay.” He told me how to get there and how to recognize the house, which sounded squalid enough. “Not that I’d bring him to ‘em so early, with him shippin’ water. Pinian’ll beat the cake out of him, sure as scullin’.” He shook his head in wonder. “Why, everybody heard they’d fished out Zama’s remains and brought ‘em back with ‘em!”

Not knowing what else to say I told him, “You never know what to believe,” and then, moved by this wretched old man’s clear delight at finding a strong young man still alive, I put my hand upon his head and mumbled some set phrases about wishing him well in this life and the next. It was a blessing I had occasionally given as Autarch.

I had intended to do nothing at all, and yet the effect was extraordinary. When I took away my hand, it seemed that the years had covered him like dust, and unseen walls had fallen to let in the wind; his eyes opened so that they looked as big as dishes, and he fell to his knees.

When we were some distance away, I glanced back at him. He was kneeling there still and staring after us, but no longer an old man. Nor was he a young one, but simply a man in essence, a man freed of the gyre of time.

Though Zama did not speak, he put his arm about my shoulders. I put mine over his, and in that fashion we strolled up the street Burgundofara and I had taken the evening before and found her at breakfast with Hadelin in the public room of the Chowder Pot.

THEY HAD expected neither of us — there were no extra places set at the table. I pulled up a chair for myself, and then (when he only stood and stared) another for Zama .

“We thought you were gone, sieur,” Hadelin said. His face, and hers, told plainly enough where Burgundofara had spent the night.

“I was,” I said, speaking to her and not to him. “But I see you got into our room all right to get your clothes.”

“I thought you were dead,” Burgundofara said. When I did not reply, she added, “I thought this man had killed you. The doorway was blocked up with stuff I had to push over, but the shutters had been broken open.”

“Anyway, sieur, you’re back.” Hadelin tried to sound cheerful and failed. “Still going downriver with us?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “When I’ve seen your craft.”

“Then you will be, sieur, I think.”

The innkeeper appeared, bowing and forcing himself to smile. I noticed he had a butcher knife thrust through his belt behind his leather apron.

“Fruit for me,” I told him. “Last night you said you had some. Bring some for this man too; we’ll see whether he eats it. Mate for both of us.”

“Immediately, sieur.”

“After I’ve eaten, you and I can go up to my room. It’s been damaged, and we’ll have to decide by how much.”

“That won’t be necessary, sieur. A trifle! Perhaps we can agree upon an orichalk as a token payment?” He tried to rub his hands in the way such people often do, but their tremors made the gesture ridiculous.

“Five, I should think, or ten. A broken door, a damaged wall, and a broken bed — you and I shall go up and make a reckoning.”

His lips were trembling too, and suddenly it was no longer pleasant to terrify this little man who had come with his lantern and his stick when he heard one of his guests attacked. I said, “You shouldn’t drink so much,” and touched his hands.

He smiled, chirped, “Thank you, sieur! Fruit, yes, sieur!” and trotted away.

It was all tropical, as I had half expected: plantains, oranges, mangoes, and bananas brought overland to the upper river by trains of sumpters and shipped south. There were no apples and no grapes. I borrowed the knife that had stabbed Zama to peel a mango, and we ate in silence. After a time Zama ate too, which I thought a good sign.

“Something more, sieur?” the innkeeper asked at my elbow. “We’ve plenty.”

I shook my head.

“Then perhaps…?” He nodded toward the stair, and I rose, motioning for the others to remain where they were.

Burgundofara said, “You should have kept him frightened. It would have been cheaper.” The innkeeper shot her a glance of raw hatred.

His inn, which had looked small enough the night before when I had been tired and it was wrapped in darkness, I saw to be tiny now, four rooms on our floor, and four more, I suppose, on the floor above. The room itself, which had seemed capacious enough when I lay upon the torn mattress listening to Zama move about, was hardly larger than the cabin Burgundofara and I had shared on the tender. Zama’s ax, old and worn and intended for wood, stood in one corner.

“I didn’t want you to come so I could get money from you, sieur,” the innkeeper told me. “Not for this or anything. Not any time.”

I looked about at the destruction. “But you’ll have it.”

“Then I’ll give it away. There’s many a poor man in Os these days.”

“I imagine so.” I was not really listening to what he said or to what I said myself, but examining the shutters; it was to see them that I had insisted on coming upstairs. Burgundofara had mentioned that they had been broken, and she was right. The wood had split away from the screws that had held the bolt. I recalled bolting them and later opening them. When I retraced my actions in memory, I found that I had merely touched them and they had flown open.