Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Gyrfalcon stared, then laughed. He has a big booming laugh. "You want me at your son's wedding?"

"Yes," Father said, "I do. I want you there very much, if you will come. All of us will be delighted, I'm sure."

"Let me think now." Still grinning, Gyrfalcon sipped a little wine. "You promised to answer some more questions for me if I would answer that one. I suppose you meant if I would give you an answer you liked."

"Why no. Any answer. And I'm only asking you to consider it. I know how many demands there must be on your time, and in all honesty you are entitled to ask all the questions you wish."

Gyrfalcon leaned back and surveyed us, looked around at his garden, and came back to us, looking at Father and me like he never saw us before. "Do you think my wine's poisoned?"

"Certainly not. I would have warned my son not to drink it if I did. Does it bother you that I haven't drunk my own?" He drank half his glass and ate some bread.

"I poison people. That's what they say in town. You must have heard it."

"I heard something of the sort."

"Well, I don't. They can't prove I do, but I can't prove I don't."

"Naturally not."

"Do you still want me to come to your other son's wedding?"

"Of course. We will all be delighted."

"Then I'll come. Let me know when the date is set."

The bird said, "Bird tell!" and I noticed Father jumped a little. Later he explained to me about Scylla.

"I've got a few more questions for you. Here's the first one. Is Silk ever coming?"

"I have no idea. I failed to find him." For a minute I thought Father was going to cry again but he did not. "That was the principal thing I promised I would do. I realize that. I failed, and that is all I have to say. I reached Viron. I talked with its present calde, Calde Bison, and a number of other people-I spoke with my own father, for example. But I was unable to locate Silk, and I left. I offer no excuses."

"You don't know whether Silk's coming?"

"As I said. He may, but I very much doubt it."

I whispered, "Can't you see that if he were here Gyrfalcon would have to kill him?"

"No, I don't-because it isn't true."

Gyrfalcon told me, "You're stirring our stew with your finger, young man. Better stop before you get burned."

Father was smiling. "I've dreaded this hour. Not because of what you and the others might say to me or what New Viron might do to me, but because I knew I would have to admit that I failed, that Silk is not coming. Now I've done it and I can begin to live again."

"Good Silk," said the bird. "Good Silk!"

"Can I ask a couple more questions?"

"Before you decide on my punishment? Yes, certainly."

Gyrfalcon shook his head. "No punishment. I'm not going to give you a dressing down, either. You did your best."

"I did not," Father told him. "I did what I did. I could have remained in Viron and continued to search. I didn't."

"You said you were looking for somebody here, too, but you didn't know his name. What do you want with him?"

"I want him to go on a journey with me."

"I see." Gyrfalcon sucked his teeth at that. "Going far?"

"Yes, very far indeed," Father said.

They had put us on horses for the ride out to Gyrfalcon's house, but we had to walk back. While we walked, I asked Father if he wanted me to come when he went away. It seemed to surprise him, as if it was something he had not thought about, but I saw enough of him to know that he thought about most things way far in advance. "Would you go, if I asked you to?"

I said I would, and Hide and Vadsig could look after Mother.

"We won't be gone long," he told me. I did not understand what he meant till later. I had never gone to the Red Sun Whorl, and when Hide told me he had not made me believe it. Father could not make Juganu believe it, either. Juganu was the inhumu we found, a little old man with a bald head. We had taken him on the boat and put out to sea.

Father said, "You have no reason to worry-far less than we. If this vessel sinks, you can fly."

"Rajan!" Juganu tried to get away, climbing the rigging like two nittimonks and flattening out his arms, but I chased him and caught him and threw him down.

"You need have no fear," Father told him, "we will be your friends if you'll let us."

"I served you faithfully." Juganu moaned. "I swear by our god."

That was the first I ever heard about the inhumi having their own god, but Father paid no attention to it. "You tried to kill me when Evensong and I left Gaon, and you will call for others to kill me here as soon as I let you go."

I said we should kill him ourselves when we were finished with him, but Father shook his head. "I killed your sister. Surely that was killing enough for one lifetime. I will not call it murder-murder is something worse-but I will not kill this man, who may be her brother for all I know. After he has helped us, we will free him."

"I served you throughout the war, Rajan." (The end of Father's staff was on his neck, and Father's foot was on his chest.) "How can I serve you now?"

"By going with us to a place where you will be as human as we are." For a minute Father thought about things. "And by coming back. You will be tempted to remain, I warn you; if you do, you will die and it will be by no act of mine."

"Where I…?" The old inhumu gaped at us.

"We will sleep," Father told him, "all of us except Babbie. Hoof will rig a sea anchor for us-"

From the mizzen top, his bird cried, "I go! I come!"

"Yes," Father told it. "You will come with us, Scylla. It's for your sake we're going, after all."

After that, I furled the sails and made a sea anchor from two sweeps.

(My wife was reading over my shoulder when I wrote that last, and says that many people will not know what a sea anchor is or how to make one. The others promised to let me write this by myself, because Hide and Vadsig saw more of the man who said he was our father than I did in Dorp, and Daisy hardly saw him at all, even if she writes better. She writes better than Hide, too, even if Hide will not admit it.

(A sea anchor is the sort of anchor you use when your anchor cable will not reach bottom. A boat is meant to sail, and will sail whenever the wind blows, even under bare poles. You cannot stop it, but a good sea anchor will slow it down so much it might as well be stopped. What I did was to lash together two sweeps crosswise and tie a long line to them in the middle. The longer the line on a sea anchor, the better it holds.)

Then we went to sleep. Babbie was supposed to watch Juganu the inhumu and our boat, too, while we were gone; and Father tied a line around Juganu's neck and to his wrist. I said that if we slept and Juganu did not, he would bleed us till we were dead if we did not wake up, and the line would not help. But Father said he could not, and Juganu swore he would not.

After that we went into the cabin and Father told me to lay down and close my eyes. I did, but as soon as I heard him and Juganu lay down too, and the rattle when he put down his stick, I sat up. He was on his bunk, with Juganu on the floor beside him. I remembered the sword he called Azoth was probably under his tunic, and if Juganu got it he could kill us both. I had never seen him use it, but he had told me what it could do and so had Hide. I took it up on deck and hid it. It was not that I was afraid to go to the Red Sun Whorl, but I was very nervous about it. I cannot explain it more than that.

Babbie was on deck and looked at me with his little fierce eyes in a way that told me I was supposed to be in the cabin asleep. I have never been sure how much Babbie understands, but he understands a lot. I know he understood that, and you could ask him to bring you almost anything except food and he would go get it if he felt like it. He would even bring Father food, but he would not do that for Hide or me. Babbie has gone away, I think into the woods on the mainland, but Vadsig says Witches Rock.