Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

"Possibly. I don't know."

"Tell me about her."

"As you wish. You mentioned that the gods have been telling everyone to leave. The devices used to cross the abyss to Blue or Green are called landers. Are you familiar with them?"

"I've heard of them," Hound said. "I've never seen one."

"Are you aware that they were provisioned by Pas before the W'iorl set out from the Short Sun Whorl? And that most of them have been looted?"

"All of them is what everybody says."

"I won't argue the point. There were human embryos among their supplies, ancient embryos preserved by cold far beyond that of the coldest winter nights. Sometimes the looters simply left those embryos. Sometimes they wantonly destroyed them, and sometimes they took and sold them, packing them in ice in an attempt to preserve them until they could be implanted."

"You said human embryos, Horn. I've heard of it being done with animals."

"Yes." His face was solemn in the flickering firelight, his blue eyes lost beneath their graying brows. "There were human embryos as well. There were also seeds, kept frozen like the embryos, so that they would sprout even after hundreds of years; but it is with the human embryos that you and I have to do, because Mucor was such an embryo. So was Patera Silk."

"Calde Silk? You can't be serious!"

He shook his head. "I set out to explain Mucor, but there would be no Mucor-or so I believe-without Patera Silk. Nor would either of them exist without Pas, who was called Typhon on the Short Sun Whorl."

Hound said, "I've heard that the gods have different names in different places, sometimes."

"That seems to have been the case with Pas, Echidna, and the rest. They had other names on the Short Sun Whorl, and those persons-Typhon, his family, and his friends-continued to exist there after they had entered the Whorl."

"Go on, please."

"If you wish. I should say that I heard that Pas had been called Typhon from a man named Auk, someone I knew long ago, who said he had been told by Scylla. He was a bad man, a bully and a thug, yet he was deeply religious in his way-I very much doubt that he would have made such a thing up. It was not his sort of lie, if you know what I mean.

"When Pas-let us call him Pas, since we're accustomed to that name-decided to send mortals to the whorls beyond the Short Sun Whorl, he used no less than three separate means. Some he sent as sleepers, unconscious in tubes of thin glass until they were awakened by the breaking of the glass. Some-your ancestors, Hound, and mine-he simply set down here inside the Whorl. And some he sent as frozen embryos, the products of carefully controlled matings in his workshops."

"Why so many ways?" Hound asked.

"I can only guess, and you could guess every bit as well. Do so now."

Hound looked thoughtful. "Well, he wanted us to colonize the new whorls, didn't he? So he put people in here to do it."

"Waking or sleeping?"

"Both, I guess. He must have been afraid we'd fight in here, and kill everyone off. Or get some disease that would wipe us out. No, that can't be right, because then there would have been no one to wake up the sleepers."

"Mainframe could have done that, I believe."

"I've never met a sleeper, Horn. I've never even seen one. I take it that you have. Are they very different from us?"

"In appearance? No, not at all. They were made to forget certain things and given falsified memories in their place, but one only occasionally catches a hint of it."

"You're saying that everybody could have been asleep? All of us? No houses and no people, just trees and animals?"

"No, I'm saying Pas must have considered that and rejected it as unworkable, or at least undesirable."

Hound nodded. "He'd have had nobody to worship him."

"That's true, though I'm not sure it was a consideration. If it didn't seem so impious, I'd say now that the Chapter and the manteions seem almost to have been a joke, that Pas made himself our chief god largely because it amused him. Do you know the story about the farmer who complained all his life about getting too much rain or too little, about the soil and the winds and so on? It's no more impious than my instructor's joke about Thyone's son; and like that one, it has wisdom."

Hound shook his head.

"The farmer died and went to Mainframe, and was soon called to the magnificent chamber in which Pas holds court. Pas said to him, `I understand you feel that I botched certain aspects of the job when I built the Whorl'; and the farmer admitted it was so, saying, `Well, sir, pretty often I thought I could have made it better.' To which Pas replied, `Yes, that's what I wanted you to do.' "

"That hits very close to home." Hound smiled.

"It does. It also explains many things, once you understand that Pas himself was brought into being by the Outsider. Pas wished to mold and guide us; and for him to do it, we had to be awake. As our chief god, he was ideally situated, though the false memories given the sleepers may have been intended to serve the same purpose. Like the farmer we complain of storms, but Pas must have foreseen that there would be storms-and things far worse-on the new whorls. How could we cope with them if we never saw snow, or a wind storm?"

"I still don't understand about the embryos. You said that you… that Calde Silk was one of the people grown from them, and this Mucor was, too."

"To colonize the new whorls-speaking of storms and such, there's a wind rising outside. Have you noticed?"

"I've been listening to it. I won't bring my donkeys in unless there's an actual storm. They can't graze in here."

"To colonize Blue and Green, Pas had to make certain that some human beings reached them alive. He pretty well assured that by dividing us into the two groups-ourselves, and the sleepers. If the sleep process, whatever it was, couldn't keep them alive for three hundred years, we would supply colonists. If we were wiped out by some disease as you suggested, the sleepers could be roused by Mainframe, or by the chems that Pas put in this whorl as well.

"But though our surviving until we reached Blue and Green was necessary, it was not sufficient. We had to survive on those whorls afterward. Blue is a hospitable one; we are our own worst enemies there. Green is much harsher. It's where the inhumi breed, and there are diseases and dangerous animals. Pas felt we ordinary people might not be able to deal with those, so he took steps to see that we'd have some extraordinary ones as well, people like Mucor, who can send out her spirit without dying; and people like Silk, who was the sort of leader we weave legends about but seldom get-or deserve, I might add."

Hound stared at the fire before he spoke. "You said most of those embryos had been stolen or destroyed."

"I'm afraid so."

"Does that mean we'll fail?"

"Perhaps. On Green at least."

"I'd like to go. Am I crazy? I've never felt this way way before."

"The crossing is very dangerous-I don't deny that. But you and Tansy might make a better life for yourselves and your children on Blue than you will ever have here, and you would be doing the will of Pas."

"Not Blue," Hound said. "I want to go to Green. I want to go where I'm needed, Horn."

Before he replied, he stretched out on the floor, his hands behind his head. "You're a brave man."

"I'm not! I know I'm not. But-but…"

"You are."

"But I'm steady, and I've got a good head on my shoulders, and I don't drink or get so angry I ruin everything. I'm no troublemaker. I can work with my hands, and I drive a hard bargain. They could use me. I know they could!"

"I'm sure you're right."

"I'm going to have think about it. I'm going to have to think for a long time, probably until after the baby's born."

Silence descended on the ruined villa, a silence broken only by the moaning of the wind outside, the crackling of the fire, and the soft breathing of the man stretched on the floor.