Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

He said, "Now that you know, you hate me."

I said, "I knew all along, and I don't." The first part was a lie, because I had not known he was an inhumu until we got him on the boat and Father told me. But it is what I said.

"That place…"

"It's where we real people come from." I thumped my chest. "I guess that's why you're one of us there, and Babbie too."

I had not thought it would bother him, but it did. He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man on the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams.

I asked, "Do you really dream you're a human man like me?"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you." I pushed him out of the way so I could open up the little cupboard where we kept most of the food. I got out potatoes, enough for father and me with some left over for Babbie, and a slab of bacon, onions, lard, and stuff.

I turned around and Juganu said, "Sometimes I do. Sometimes I really do." He followed me up on deck.

Father said I had brought too much, but I explained I had wanted to give some to Babbie and the bird, and Babbie would eat a lot. That was the first time I really thought about the bird and the girl; I was not even sure that they had come back with us. Then the bird flew down out of the rigging somewhere and perched on his shoulder. I looked around for the girl because I thought she would want to eat, too.

"We will not have to feed Scylla," he told me, "though she is surely here. Will you speak with us, Scylla?"

He had turned his head so as to look at his bird, and it said, "Bird talk?"

"Certainly, if you wish to."

"Good bird!"

"She is possessing Oreb, you see. She is in his mind-what there is of it. More accurately, there is an image of her there which she herself placed there; that image was the Scylla we saw on the Red Sun Whorl. You won't have forgotten what your mother and I told you concerning Scylla and Echidna-how they tried to destroy Great Pas, and the vengeance he took. Are you going to boil those potatoes you're peeling?"

I said I had not planned to.

"Do it. Fill a pan with seawater and bring it to a boil. Drop them in for ten minutes before you fry them. They're old-the new crop's not in yet-and that will help." In all the time I knew him, he never looked less like our real father or sounded more like him.

Juganu began to explain the same things to Father that he had to me; but Father cut him off, saying he already knew.

I said, "My sister was an inhuma, Juganu. Her name was Jahlee, and she and Father did that a lot."

He said, "She was a young woman there, you see. Quite an attractive young woman."

Then Juganu thanked Father for taking him there. "It was the high point of my life," he said. He looked just like a little old man with gray skin and no teeth; and I wondered how old he really was, because the blond man with the big hook nose had not looked as old as Father.

Father said, "You mustn't think that it will never happen again. Would you like to go back tonight?"

I used to watch Sinew play tricks on Mother, and Hide and I played some good ones too, but I had never seen anyone look that surprised. "Will you? Oh, Rajan! Rajan, I-I…"

Father put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll go after Hoof and I eat."

"No sea!" the bird objected.

"No, the boat will not have reached the sea yet; but it will be well for me to get a better feel for its speed. It is sailing with the current, of course, so it should make good time."

After that we were all quiet, thinking, except that he told me to use a little celery salt instead of the yellow sea-salt I brought with the pepper. "But only a little. And you should be starting your bacon, and browning the onions. Cut up the onions now. Cubes, not rings."

Then he said, "I should explain to you both why we cannot go to the sea directly, as I did to Scylla several days ago. In order to go to a place we must have with us someone who has been there, or at least been in the area. I don't know why that is so, but that is how it seems to be. I can go to Green-as I have at times-because I have been there in the flesh. I can go to the Red Sun Whorl, too, as we did a few minutes ago, because Jahlee and I went there in the company of Duko Rigoglio of Soldo. He had been a Sleeper on the Whorl, and so had been there in the flesh. I cannot take us to the sea there, because I have never been on it. Scylla has, to be sure; but ultimately Scylla is not among us."

His bird croaked. But it was only bird noise, not a word.

"There is another factor. When we go, we often seem to arrive in a place resembling the one we left. That was why I lured you onto this boat, Juganu. I had promised Scylla that I would take her to the sea of her native whorl if I could. Once I walked along a road that runs beside Gyoll and looked at the boats plying its water, so I hoped that if we left Blue from a boat we would arrive aboard a boat there. So it proved. That it was going downstream was sheer good fortune. Slice your potatoes. Be careful, though. They'll still be hot."

While they were frying I asked him whether we were here or there when we were there, because I had been thinking about the way he had said that the girl had not been with us, not really.

"We are in both places. The philosophers-I am none-tell us that it is impossible for a single object to be in two places at once. We are not indivisible wholes, however."

I said, "Part of us was here, and part there?"

He nodded. "And now that we've been on that boat on the river we should be able to return, though the boat itself will be in a new location. We'll test that supposition tonight."

While we were eating he explained that he had brought us back fast because he had been worried about the boat, especially because Babbie had come and would not be around to take care of things here. "That was a surprise, and a rather unpleasant one," Father told me, "though it was interesting to discover just how human Babbie is." He stopped speaking to study the western horizon.

Juganu said, "What about me?"

Father shook his head. "I knew you were human in spirit. Remember that I had an adopted daughter-one I mourn. I had an adopted son once, too." He sighed, and I saw then how hard it was for him to keep a cheerful face, as he generally did.

His bird dropped onto his shoulder. "Have bird!"

"Yes. A great blessing." He gave the bird a bit of bacon, then put his plate down in front of Babbie. He had eaten two or three mouthfuls. "I hate to disturb your meal, son, but I believe we'd better take in the jigger and reef the main."

We did, and the wind came as I was tying the last knot. I have been in worse blows, and in fact I was in a couple when we sailed with Captain Wijzer; but it would have been foolish to go back to the Red Sun Whorl until things had quieted down, three or four hours after daylight.

Down in the cabin, Father and Juganu and I took off our clothes and dried ourselves as well as we could. It felt very good to lie on my bunk then and shut my eyes, so I did not see things change the way I had before.

After a while somebody shook my shoulder. I opened them, and it was dark again.

"Get up," he said. "You don't want to sleep through this."

That was exactly what I did want, but after a minute or so it sort of soaked through to me that I was lying on wood instead of my bunk, and the boat was not rocking the way I remembered.

Some people that read this may not know about boats, so I am going to say here that they're all different. Two that are about the same size and look about the same will act about the same sometimes, but they are never exactly the same. The Samru, which was the big river boat we were on, was a roller, and when you were up on the high parts, it really rolled a lot, just like you had climbed up the mast of a regular boat.