Gene Wolfe: The Urth of the New Sun

“Where’s that?”

“Lune? It’s the moon of my world, the moon of Urth.”

“That was small stuff, then,” Purn told me. “Tenders and launches and so forth. Nobody never said there wasn’t a lot of little stuff shuttling around between the various worlds of the various suns. Only this ship here and the other ones like it, allowing that there’s more than the one, they don’t come in so close, generally. They can do it all right, but it’s a tricky business. Then too, there’s a good bit of rock whizzing around, close in to a sun, usually.”

The white-haired Idas appeared carrying a collection of tools. “Hello!” he called, and I waved to him.

“I ought to get busy,” Purn muttered. “Me and that one are supposed to be taking care of ‘em. I was just looking around to be sure they were all right when I saw you, uh, uh…”

“Severian,” I said. “I was the Autarch — the ruler — of the Commonwealth; now I’m the surrogate of Urth, and its ambassador. Do you come from Urth, Purn?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever been, but maybe I have.” He looked thoughtful. “Big white moon?”

“No, it’s green. You were on Verthandi, perhaps; I’ve read that its moons are pale gray”

Purn shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Idas had come up to us by then, and he said, “It must be wonderful.” I had no notion of what he meant. Purn moved away, looking at the beasts.

As if we were two conspirators Idas whispered, “Don’t worry about him. He’s afraid I’ll report him for not working.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll report you? ” I asked. There was something about Idas that irritated me, though perhaps it was only his seeming weakness.

“Oh, do you know Sidero?”

“Who I know is my own affair, I believe.”

“I don’t think you know anyone,” he said. And then, as if he had committed a merely social blunder, “But maybe you do. Or I could introduce you. I will, if you want me to.”

“I do,” I told him. “Introduce me to Sidero at the first opportunity. I demand to be returned to my stateroom.”

Idas nodded. “I will. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I came there to talk with you sometime? You — I hope you’ll excuse me for saying this — you know nothing about ships, and I know nothing about such places as, ah…”

“Urth?”

“Nothing of worlds. I’ve seen a few pictures, but other than that, all I know are these.” He gestured vaguely toward the beasts. “And they are bad, always bad. But perhaps there are good things on the worlds too, that never live long enough to find their way to the decks.”

“Surely they’re not all evil.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes they are. And I, who have to clean up after them, and feed them, and adjust the atmosphere for them if they need it, would rather kill them all; but Sidero and Zelezo would beat me if I did.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they killed you,” I told him. I had no desire to see such a fascinating collection wiped out by this petty man’s spite. “Which would be just, I think. You look as though you belong among them yourself.”

“Oh, no,” he said seriously. “It’s you and Purn and the rest who do. I was born here on the ship.”

Something in his manner told me he was trying to draw me into conversation and would gladly quarrel with me if only it would keep me talking. For my part, I had no desire to talk at all, much less quarrel. I felt tired enough to drop, and I was ravenously hungry. I said, “If I belong in this collection of exotic brutes, it’s up to you to see I’m fed. Where is the galley?”

Idas hesitated for a moment, quite plainly debating some sort of exchange of information — he would direct me if I would first answer seven questions about Urth, or something of that sort. Then he realized I was ready to knock him down if he said anything of the kind, and he told me, though sullenly enough, how to get there.

One of the advantages of such a memory as mine, which stores everything and forgets nothing, is that it is as good as paper at such times. (Indeed, that may be its only advantage.) On this occasion, however, it did me no more good than it had when I had tried to follow the directions of that lochage of the peltasts whom I met upon the bridge of Gyoll . No doubt Idas had assumed I knew more of the ship than I did, and that I would not count doors and look for turnings with exactness.

Soon I realized I had gone wrong. Three corridors branched where there should have been only two, and a promised stair did not appear. I retraced my path, found the point at which (as I believed) I had become lost, and began again. Almost at once, I found myself treading a broad, straight passageway such as Idas had told me led to the galley. I assumed then that my wanderings had sent me wide of part of the prescribed route, and I strode along in high spirits.

By the standards of the ship, it was a wide and windy place indeed. No doubt it was one that received its atmosphere directly from the devices that circulated and purified it, for it smelled as a breeze from the south does on a rainy day in spring. The floor was neither of the strange grass I had seen before nor of the grillwork I had already come to hate, but polished wood deeply entombed in clear varnish. The walls, which had been of a dark and deathly gray in the crew’s quarters, were white here, and once or twice I passed padded seats that stood with their backs toward the walls.

The passageway turned and turned again, and I felt that it was rising ever so slightly, though the weight I lifted with my steps was so slight I could not be certain. There were pictures on the walls, and some of these pictures moved — once a picture of our ship as it might have been limned by someone far distant; I could not help but stop to look, and I shuddered to think how near I had come to seeing it so.

Another turn — but one that proved not to be a turn, only the termination of the passageway in a circle of doors. I chose one at random and stepped into a narrow gangway so dark, after the white passage, that I could hardly see more than the lights overhead.

A few moments later, I realized that I had passed a hatch, the first I had seen since reentering the ship; still not wholly free from the fear that had gripped me when I saw that terrible and beautiful picture, I took out my necklace as I strode along and made certain it had not been damaged.

The gangway turned twice and divided, then twisted like a serpent.

A door swung open as I passed, releasing the aroma of roast meat. A voice, the thin and mechanical voice of the lock, said, “Welcome back, master.”

I looked through the doorway and saw my own cabin. Not, of course, the cabin I had taken in the crew’s quarters, but the stateroom I had left to launch the leaden coffer into the great light of the new universe aborning only a watch or two before.

THE STEWARD had brought my meal and, finding me not in my stateroom, had left it on the table. The meat was still warm under its bell; I ate it ravenously, and with it new bread and salt butter, celeriac and salsify, and red wine. Afterward I undressed, washed myself, and slept.

He woke me, shaking me by my shoulder. It was odd, but when I — the Autarch of Urth — had boarded the ship, I had scarcely noticed him, though he brought my meals and willingly saw to various little wants; no doubt it was that very willingness which had unjustly wiped him from my attention. Now that I myself had been a member of the crew, it was as though he had turned to show another face.

It looked down at me now, blunt-featured yet intelligent, the eyes bright with suppressed excitement. “Someone wishes to see you, Autarch,” he murmured.