Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

He ceased to speak, and the silence of the Calde's Palace closed around them. There had been someone-a cook-in the kitchen, he told himself. There had been a gardener in the garden outside. Bison was calde now, so he and Maytera Mint, who must have renounced her vows to become his wife, lived in this high and secretive building. Yet it seemed that no one did, that not even the shrouded figure across the cloth from him was truly alive, and that the emptiness that had grasped all Viron had its center here.

"Lost… Lost it?" The thick, soft voice might almost have been that of the wind in a chimney.

He told himself he had to speak, and did. "Yes, I have. It's back on Green, I suppose." He wanted to say, "With my bones," but substituted, "With my ring, and other things."

The shrouded figure might not have heard.

"It wasn't any good, you understand. Not to her or to anyone else. She wanted me to have it so that I would know what one looked like."

"I'm… I'm lucky."

He was not certain he had heard her correctly, and said, "I beg your pardon?"

"I don't work very well… I don't work very well, Patera."

"We all have failings. It's far better to-to have a bad leg or something of the sort than a propensity for evil."

"But my eyes are… But my eyes are fine. I can… I can see. You said… You said so. That's lucky… That's lucky, isn't it?"

"Yes, it certainly is. But, Olivine, you've let me get away from the subject again-from the passage that the god-that the Outsider, as I believe-chose for us. There's a colon in it. Do you know what a colon is? Not a semicolon, but a full colon? Two little dots, one above the other?"

She did not answer, and he floundered forward. "A colon is a very strong divider, Olivine, and colons are rarely found in the Writings. I believe-I'm guessing, to be sure, but this is what I believethat it's intended to separate that passage about the stars rolling down the azure sky from the next so that we will understand that they concern two whorls. Blue and this Long Sun Whorl are actually like two little dots themselves, you see, if you think of them from the Outsider's perspective. The higher dot is this whorl, which is farther from the Short Sun; and the lower dot is Blue."

He cleared his throat and searched his memory. "I've shut the book, but I believe I can still quote the passage accurately. It was, `At the voice of Pas wild whirlwinds rise, and clouds and double darkness veil the skies.' Pas himself is a wild whirlwind. That is to say, he's shown that way in art. The oldest representations of him show a swirling storm."

"I didn't know… I didn't know that. Is the other one… Is the other one-? You don't want me to say his… You-"

"Is he depicted as a whirlwind too? Is that what you're asking me?"

She nodded.

"No. But it's quite an intelligent question, now that I come to think about it. Pas is shown as a man with two heads, or a wind; so it's not unreasonable to think that he, who is shown as a man with four faces, might be depicted as a wind as well. He isn't, though. When a writer hesitates to set down his name-which isn't often, since so little has been written about him-he generally draws the sign of addition, a little straight mark with another little mark across it. I suppose that the idea now is that the god blesses us, though it may originally have been a diagram. Crossroads are associated with the god, as I believe I told you."

"I… I see."

"There's an interesting story about another god as a wind, however, and it may have some bearing on the passage in question. A certain man was hoping to have experience of the Outsider. He prayed and prayed, and a violent storm rose. At first he thought that this storm was the god, and rejoiced and shouted praise; but the storm only became more violent. Rain beat him like hail, and hail like stones. Water poured from the rocks all around, and trees were uprooted. Lightning struck the mountain on which he stood. Soon he grew terrified, and finding a little cave he hid himself and waited for the storm to pass.

"At last it did, and after it came the sun and a faint wind, a gentle breeze. And that faint wind, that gentle breeze, was the god whom he had sought."

Olivine did not speak.

"The point of the story, you see, is that Great Pas is not the Outsider. Gods often have several names and more than one personalityI was talking about this with friends not long ago-and it appears that at some time in the past people believed that the Outsider was merely another aspect of Pas. The story I just told you was probably written to show it was not the case.

"Now back to that passage. As I said, happenings in this whorl are intended-or so I would guess. Pas will manifest himself more than once, and angrily. `Wild whirlwinds' are to rise. Notice the plural."

"Will he hurt… Will he hurt us?"

"That I cannot say. We have been warned by the Outsider, however, and the Outsider is a god-indeed, he may be the best and wisest of all the gods-and thus is certainly a great deal wiser than we. If he didn't believe we needed a warning, I doubt that he would have provided it.

"Now the last, and I will be able to sacrifice this bread for you. `Clouds and double darkness veil the skies.' In one respect that is very plain. Double darkness must surely refer to the extinguishing of the Long Sun by night. Night is coming-" He glanced toward the window. "Is already here I ought to say. It may be several days before we see the day again."

"Maybe I'll go back to sleep when you leave… Maybe I'll go back to sleep when you leave, Patera."

"That might be wise." His forefinger traced circles on his right cheek. "Clouds? I can't make much of that. It may mean perfectly ordinary clouds, such as we see every day. It may also refer to the god's veiling the minds of those he intends to destroy. I cannot be sure. `Skies' presents the greatest puzzle of them all, at least to me. There have been two skies involved in the entire passage, as we have seen-the sky of Blue, and ours in this whorl. The plural must, I would think, refer to those two. The whirlwinds, clouds, and double darkness therefore refer not merely to this whorl, the Long Sun Whorl, but to Blue as well. It is dark on Blue each night, but how it can be doubly dark there I cannot imagine. An augur might give us a more exact interpretation, of course; it's a shame that there's no real augur present."

He uncorked the wine bottle. "Don't you have a glass for this, Olivine? And a knife to cut the bread?"

"I could get them… I could get them, but…" There was reluctance in the soft, thick voice that went beyond the usual reluctance to speak at all.

"But what? Please tell me."

"Father doesn't like me taking the… Father doesn't like me taking the things."

"I see. And you're not sure that Calde Bison even knows you're up here?"

She shook her head.

"Doubtless your father's right. It's better not to risk your being put out of the palace, though it would seem to me that you might make Calde Bison or General Mint a useful servant. Your father instructed you to sleep while he was away?"

She nodded again.

"I met my own father today. It was the first time I'd seen him in many years. I don't believe I told you."

"No, Patera…"

He smiled and shook his head. "I was walking up Sun Street, looking for the place where our shop used to be; and he asked whether he could help me. He had seen, I suppose, that I was trying to locate a particular spot."

The shiprock walls, washed almost clean by many rains, had been crumbling into the rectangular holes that had been their cellars; cracked shiprock steps returned to the parent sand and gravel before the empty doorways. He looked above each that he passed for the painted sign he recalled so well: SMOOTHBONE STATIONER. It had proved less durable than the soot.