Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

"That's where I write letters." She pointed to a little damaskwood desk. "See how the light from the window falls?"

I acknowledge that it seemed a good arrangement.

"Only I don't write a lot of them. You could come here and use it sometime if you wanted to."

I thanked her, and asked again whether she had found any mention of me in Marrow's papers.

"There's a lot of stuff." Her eyes were vague. "I haven't gone through everything yet. I'll look. Maybe you could come back tomorrow?"

"Yes, I'd be happy to."

"You're sure you wouldn't like something to eat?"

"No, but it's very kind of you."

"I would." She rang a bell. "If there's something for you, I'll have to make sure you're really Horn."

I nodded and assured that I understood her caution and applauded it.

"You must have been just a sprat on the lander."

I admitted it, adding that I had thought myself a man.

"Seems like a real long time ago to you. It don't to me. I must be, oh, a couple years older. I'd like to give you some money, too. But I have to know."

"I don't need it, as I told you; but as for identification, my brother Calf lives here. He'll vouch for me, I'm sure."

A slave girl entered, bowing. Capsicum told her to serve tea and to send in "the boy."

When the slave girl had gone, Capsicum unlocked her cabinet and got out two cards. "Real ones, like we used to have back home. The Chapter will give you four gold ones for each of these."

She seemed to expect me to challenge her assertion, so I said, "Patera Remora, you mean? I feel sure he won't, since they're not mine."

A boy of about ten joined us, and she introduced him as her grandson. "You have to go to the shop of a man named Calf, Weasel. This gentleman will tell you how to get there. Ask Calf to come here, please, and identify the gentleman for me. The gentleman says Calf is his brother."

My knowledge of these streets is somewhat limited, but I directed Weasel to the best of my ability and he nodded as though he understood. "Do you have a magic bird?"

I laughed and tried to explain that I had a pet bird, not a magic one. To confess the truth, I had not the heart to tell the little fellow there were no magic birds.

"Where is it?"

"I sent him to my wife, to let her know that our son Hoof is returning to her, and that the rest of us-our son Hide and his betrothed, and our daughter and I-will return to her soon."

Capsicum smiled at the prospect of a wedding. "Marrow'd have married me after his wife died, but I wouldn't let him."

I said I was sorry to hear it.

"Get along, Weasel. You go and ask the gentleman to come like we told you to, this don't concern you. We would've fought like a old dog and a old cat, Patera. I've never been sorry I said no."

"I'm not an augur. I realized that this is an augur's robe, but I'm not."

"You've got a wife, you said."

"Yes, I do. Augurs have wives, occasionally, however."

"Patera Silk did. I heard that before we left."

The slave girl came in, staggering under the weight of a tray loaded with tea and wine, cups, saucers, and wineglasses, and enough little sandwiches and cakes to feed a palaestra. I drank tea (and to please Capsicum a glass of wine) and ate a sandwich, which was excellent.

We talked about Viron for a time. I told her about the devastation that was the Sun Street Quarter, which she had supposed would have been rebuilt long since. "I don't think I'd have come, Patera, if it hadn't been for that. I had a nice place, the whole top floor in a real nice house, and my rent paid for half a year. Only it burned, and I thought, he's going away and I've lost everything, and if I don't go with him I'll lose him too. So I went."

She toyed with the cards she had taken from her cabinet, then laid them down; clearly they recalled Viron, and the rooms there she had lost. "Why are people so mean?"

"Because they separate themselves from the Outsider." I had not thought about it in those terms before and said what I did without reflection; but as soon as I had spoken, I realized that what I had said was true.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"A god." I was suddenly afraid of saying too much, of pushing too hard or too far.

"Just a god?" She took another sandwich.

"Isn't that enough for you, Capsicum? Godhead?"

"Well, there's a lot of them, and sometimes it seems like they're as mean as we are."

"Because they, too, have separated themselves from him. Nor are there really many gods, or even two. Insofar as they're gods at allwhich isn't far, in most cases-they are him."

"I don't follow that." She seemed genuinely puzzled.

"You have a walking stick. Suppose it could walk by itself, and that it chose to walk away from you."

She laughed; and I understood what had drawn Marrow to her years ago; she did not laugh for effect, as women nearly always do, but as a child or a man might.

"You see," I said, "if the Outsider were to make a walking stick, it would be such a good walking stick that it could do that." I held up the staff Cugino had cut for me. "But if it chose to walk away from him, instead of coming to him when he called to it, it would no longer be a walking stick at all, only a stick that walked. And when someone tending a fire saw it go past, he would break it and toss it onto the coals."

She studied me as she chewed her sandwich, and I added, "I myself have walked away from him any number of times; he's always come after me, and I hope he always will."

"It's only a walking stick when I walk with it." She held up her own thick black stick. "That's what you mean, isn't it?"

"Exactly."

Dusting crumbs from her hands, she picked up the cards and tossed them into my lap. "These are for you."

"I don't need them, as I told you."

"Maybe you will." Her right hand scratched her left palm, a gesture I did not (and do not) comprehend.

"Wouldn't it be better to wait until I've established that I am who I say I am?"

"Horn, the man Marrow sent to bring back Silk."

"Yes. Precisely."

She shook her head. "That's for what Marrow left. This's mine, and I want you to have it. Did he say why he wanted Silk?"

"Certainly. There was a great deal of disorder here, a great deal of lawlessness. Marrow and some others had tried to set up a government; but they could not agree on a calde, and most felt that if they had, the townspeople would not accept him. They would accept Silk, however, and the five who met with me had agreed to accept him, too."

"We don't need one anymore." Capsicum's voice was bitter. "We've got Gyrfalcon."

"Since I failed to bring Silk, that's all to the good."

She said nothing, regarding me over the top of her glass.

"You think he killed Marrow, don't you?"

"I didn't say so, and I won't."

"But you think it." I hesitated, scrambling for words that would make my meaning tolerable, if not acceptable. "I don't know that. I returned here only a few days ago."

She nodded.

"Let us suppose, however, that I did-that I knew beyond question that Marrow, who fought beside me in the tunnels and did everything he could to assist me in the mission he gave me, had been murdered, and that the new calde here was his murderer." I laid the cards she had given me on the tray. "Even knowing that, I would have to consider what would happen to the town if he were stripped of power and tried. It would be difficult to overturn a mountain-I believe you will agree with that. But it would be easier to overturn a mountain than to replace it."

When she did not speak, I said, "I am giving you back your cards. It wouldn't be right for me to keep them."

The boy Weasel returned and reported that Calf would not come but had given him a note. Capsicum broke the seal, unfolded the note, and read it twice. I asked whether I might read it too, since it concerned me.