Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

The bedroom door opened as he was tying his shoes. "Can we go up now… Can we go up now, Patera?"

"You were watching me, weren't you, Olivine? You came in much too promptly."

She said nothing, shifting from one foot to the other; for the first time he realized that she herself had no shoes, only strips of the coarse cloth tied around her feet.

"Through the keyhole? That was very wrong of you."

Wordlessly, she showed him a chink in the paneling that separated the room in which they stood from the next.

"To see when I was finished? Was that it?"

"If you'd put them… If you'd put them on. And…"

"And what? I promise not to get angry with you." It was an easy promise to make when he knew that pity would overwhelm whatever anger he might feel.

"And I'd never seen a bio… And I'd never seen a bio man. Only… Only father."

"Who is not a bio. I didn't think so. You're a chem yourself, aren't you, Olivine?"

She nodded.

"Hold out your hands, please. I wish to examine them both, here at the window."

"I took our bread… I took our bread up? While you were… While you were washing?"

"And got me clean clothing. Also you disposed of my old ones, no doubt. You must have been very busy."

"You took a long… You took a long time."

"Perhaps I did." He glanced out, thinking to gauge the distance between the setting sun and horizon, then recalled that the Long Sun never set. How profoundly unnatural a sun that moved had seemed when they reached Blue!

"I'll wash them for… I'll wash them for you?"

"Thank you. Now hold out your hands as I asked. I will not ask again."

One hand was an assembly of blocks and rods, the otherapparently-living flesh. He said, "Since you spied on me while I was dressing, Olivine, it wouldn't be inappropriate for me to ask you to strip, now would it?"

She cowered.

"It would be fair, and it might even be an eminently just punishment for what you did; but I won't demand it. I only ask that you take off the cloth you've wrapped around your head and face. Do it, please. At once."

She did, and he embraced her for a time, feeling her deep sobs and stroking her smooth metal skull.

When ten minutes or more had passed, he said, "You look like your mother. Doesn't Hammerstone-doesn't your father-tell you that? Surely he must."

"Sometimes…"

He sat down upon the bed. "Do you imagine that you're so ugly, Olivine? You're not ugly to me, I assure you. Your mother is an old and dear friend. No one who resembled her as much as you do could ever seem ugly to me."

"I don't move… I don't move right."

Reluctantly, he nodded.

"I can't do what a woman… I can't do what a woman does. She went… She went away."

"She was captured by the Trivigauntis, Olivine, just as I was myself. When she got back here she went to Blue, because it was her duty to do so-the service she owed Great Pas. Do you understand?"

Slowly the shining metal head turned from side to side.

"I've been trying to remember what you were like when we left. You were still very small, however, and I'm afraid I didn't give you as much attention as I should."

"I didn't have a name… I didn't have a name yet. I couldn't talk… I couldn't talk, Patera."

Nor could she talk well now, he reflected. Hammerstone had been forced to construct her vocal apparatus alone, clearly, and the result had left something to be desired.

"Patera…"

He nodded. "You want me to go upstairs with you now, and to sacrifice for you and bless you, as Silk must have."

She nodded.

"For which you have dressed me in these clothes-clothes that I really should not have consented to wear, since I'm not entitled to them-and are fidgeting as we speak." He tried to recall whether he had ever seen a chem fidget before, and decided he had not. "But, Olivine, you're not going to divert me from my purpose. I'm going to the room I mentioned earlier, and you aren't coming with me. If its door is unlocked, I intend to stay there some time. Have you a pressing engagement?"

She was silent, and he was not sure she had understood. He added, "Another place to which you must go? Something else you have to do?"

She shook her head.

"Then you can wait, and you will have to. I-I'll try not to be too long."

She did not reply.

"When I come out, I'll sacrifice for you and give you my blessing, exactly as you wish. Then I would like to tell you about the errands that have brought me here and enlist your help, if you'll provide it." Unable to endure her silent scrutiny any longer, he turned away. "I'll come up to your floor and look for you, I promise."

Night waited outside the narrow window when he rose, dusted the knees of his new black trousers, and glanced around the room for the last time. Blowing out the candle, he opened the door and stepped out into the corridor again. It seemed empty at first, but as soon as he had closed the door behind him, a bit of grayish brown darkness detached itself from the shadows of another doorway and limped toward him. "You had a long wait," he said. "I'm sorry, Olivine."

"It's all right… It's all right, Patera."

Her head and face were swaddled in the sackcloth again; he touched it when she was near enough to touch, stroking her head as he might have stroked the head of any other child. "Do you think yourself so hideous, Olivine? You're not."

"I can't… I can't, Patera. Men-"

"Male chems?"

"Want me to when they see… Men want me to when they see me. So I try to look like one… So I try to look like one of you." The last word was succeeded by a strange, high squeal; after a moment he realized she was laughing.

The fifth-floor door she opened for him was five fingers thick, old and losing its varnish flake by flake but still sturdy. As he followed her into the darkness beyond it, he reflected that the room she called hers had surely been a storeroom originally. She snapped her fingers to kindle the bleared green light on its ceiling, and he saw that it still was. Boxes and barrels stood in its corners and against its walls, and metal bars, drills and files, spools of wire, and bits of cannibalized machinery littered the floor. He said, "This is where your father finished making you."

"Where we work on… Where we work on me." She had taken a pale figurine, a half bottle of wine, and a clean white cloth from some crevice among the boxes; unfolding the cloth disclosed the small loaf she had taken from the kitchen. She spread the cloth on the floor and arranged the other items on it.

He said, "You'll have to tell me how Silk sacrifices these things for you. We don't have a fire."

"The wine is the blood… The wine is the blood, Patera. The bread is the… The bread is the meat."

He began to protest, but thought better of it and traced the sign of addition over them, then looked up to see that Olivine was holding a book. "Is that the Chrasmologic Writings?"

"I keep it here… For you."

To his own surprise, he discovered that he was smiling. "I pointed out that we have no fire, Olivine. With equal or greater relevance, I might have said that we have no Sacred Window. But we can consult gods anyway, thanks to you, and perhaps they'll be in that book for us, as they are sometimes. Afterwards, I'll talk to you a little, if I may; then I'll sacrifice as you wish. Is that all right?"

She nodded, kneeling.

The Writings were small and shabby-the sort of copy, he thought, that a student might use in the schola. He opened them at random.

" `There, where a fountain's gurgling waters play, they rush to land, and end in feast the day: they feed; then quaff; and now (their hunger fled) sigh for their friends and mourn the dead; nor cease their tears till each in slumber shares a sweet forgetfulness of human cares. Now far the night advances her gloomy reign, and setting stars roll down the azure plain: At the voice of Pas wild whirlwinds rise, and clouds and double darkness veil the skies.' "