Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

The other way was for them to hide in people. I had read about Patera Jerboa in the book, so I told him about it, and he said I was right. (This was while we were eating the soup. I remember now.) A god could hide in anybody who looked at a Sacred Window or even a glass, and once he was in there he did not have to do anything. If he just went in and kept quiet, it was just impossible for anybody to find out he was there.

But Scylla and the others found a new place. They found out that if they did it right they could go into animals. What usually happened, Father said, was that someone would bring an animal to sacrifice, for instance a goat. When they were getting ready to kill it, it would naturally be in front of the Window. Scylla or whatever god it was would get into it and break loose from whoever was holding it and run away.

"Pas soon realized what was happening," Father said, "and warned his worshippers. Thus when an animal went wild, they knew it had been possessed and hunted it down and killed it."

I said, "So it didn't work."

"Let us say it often failed. Some of the animals made good their escape, horses and birds particularly. There were other difficulties however. No doubt that was why the technique was almost never used until Scylla, Echidna, Hierax, and the rest were desperate to escape Pas. For one thing, most animals are not long-lived. You mentioned Patera Jerboa."

I nodded and said yes, I had.

"He was middle-aged when Pas possessed him, yet he yielded up his fragment of the god thirty years later. A horse may live for fifteen or twenty years, if it's well cared for; but that's extraordinary."

I said, "They can't talk either, except for Oreb."

"You are right." Father put down his soup. "But that is part of a larger and more serious problem. No horse or bull or bird has anything like the brain of a human being. If we think of the gods pouring themselves into us as wine is poured from a great cask into bottles, animals are small bottles indeed. If Scylla had possessed me instead of Oreb, the Scylla we would see on the Red Sun Whorl would still be far short of the Scylla who once existed in Mainframe. As it is, the Scylla we see is no more than a sketch of the original Scylla-of the daughter of the tyrant who assumed the name Typhon, the daughter who had pledged herself in secret to one of the sea gods of the Short Sun Whorl that would in time become our Red Sun Whorl."

I told him I had not known anything about that.

"She did," Father said. "It was a form of treason, of rebellion against her father. Abaia, Erebus, Scylla and the rest had taken posses sion of the waters, and were plotting to gain the land as well. According to what I was told on one occasion, they still are."

Juganu said, "Are you saying that our Scylla, the girl who comes out of Oreb, wants to ask this Red Sun goddess for help?"

"Yes. I thought you knew. She possessed Oreb, as I told you, because she knew he would soon be brought here. She felt sure-she told me this one night-that Pas would not have peopled Blue unless he had some way to go there himself to rule them. `Lord it' was the phrase she used. She was wrong, as I could have told her. In Oreb she searched this whorl for nearly a year, finding nothing better one or two landers with their glasses half intact. They would not or could not accept her-'Upload' was the word she employed. She'd been to the Red Sun Whorl with Jahlee and me, but hadn't let us know she was present. A few nights ago she spoke to me through Oreb, and from the way he talked and what he said, I knew the speaker was not he. She revealed her presence, and implored me to take her there again."

"Did she say Pas would kill her if he could?"

Father nodded and sipped from the wine bottle; sometimes it seemed like he was just pretending to eat and drink, and this was one of them. "That is indeed what she said, but I am not certain it's true and I'm not Pas."

Juganu had been listening to us, and had even swallowed some soup. He was a little and old again, about half the size he had been. "Pas will be angry with you. Isn't he your chief god?"

Father shook his head. "The Outsider is my chief god."

I said, "The only god you trust," because I was pretty sure from things like that he had said that I knew who he really was.

"Whom I don't trust half as much as I ought to, my son."

The bird lit on Father's shoulder about then. "Bird eat?"

"Of course. You brought the fish, so you are entitled to some of the soup."

I said it had already had the head and guts.

"Yes." Father smiled and shrugged. "Oreb's diet can't have been pleasant for Scylla, though she's never complained about it. Perhaps she is accustomed to it now; and since such things taste good to him, they may taste good to her, I hope so." He held up his spoon so the bird could get some in its beak. I had finished mine, and I do not think his could have been very hot.

I asked him about Pas. "You said she said she didn't think Pas would let anybody come here unless he could come, too. She must have known him for a long time."

Father agreed she had. "For three hundred years."

"Then why wasn't she right about that?"

He shrugged. "Are you so certain she was wrong?"

"You said she and the bird couldn't find anyplace."

"Correct. Pas has not yet come, perhaps. Or perhaps he has, and Oreb simply failed to find the place that Pas found or created. You pointed out that she had long years in which to learn the nature of her father."

He grinned at me then, and I laughed too.

"Yet she believed that she and her mother-with Hierax and Molpe, though Molpe cannot have been of much help-would prove strong enough to destroy him. She was clearly wrong about that; she underestimated him, and badly."

He stopped to think and give the bird more soup. It would pick flakes of fish and cut-up potato out with its beak. "Would you like my opinion?"

I nodded, and Juganu said, "Very much, Rajan."

"Then I believe Pas knows that as the years pass we will come to realize how much we need him, and bring him. New Viron sent me for Silk. That was foolish, because no mere man could repair all the evil there. Silk did his best for Viron itself, but left it scarcely better than he found it. The same impulse will be applied to Pas in another generation, surely."

I asked if he thought a god could do it, and he said that the people themselves would have to, even if a god helped them.

We both wanted to know why Scylla wanted to talk to that other Scylla in the Red Sun Whorl, and he said, "She wants to describe her efforts in the Long Sun Whorl, and to obtain the Greater Scylla's advice. No doubt she is hoping for help as well, though she will not say so. If she were to leave Oreb and return to Mainframe-we would have to visit the Long Sun Whorl, of course-she would be destroyed. At least she believes she would be, and that's deterrent enough. If she simply remains where she is, she will perish when Oreb dies."

"No cut!" the bird said, which made me and Juganu laugh.

Father also said, "I am by no means eager to overhear their conversation, if it takes place; but I would like a word with that Greater Scylla myself."

He got his second wish, but not the first one, when we went back to the boat on the river.

We sailed through the delta. The river breaks into five big streams there, the captain told us, and so many little ones that nobody could count them. They were always changing anyway, he said, so we had to pick our way along.

Scylla went out on the bowsprit. It was long and she went almost to the end. I sat on the big carved railing and let my feet hang over. I had left my wound behind on Blue, mostly. There were no bandages anymore and I was not bleeding, but it sort of hurt and I did not feel strong. Father had said I could make things, but he had worried about me making cards or anything like that. So I did a couple little things I did not think would bother him or anybody, a nail was one, and a seashell. The way you did it was to hold your hands together and think about what you wanted, them pull them apart slowly getting whatever it was right. When I had each thing the way I wanted it, I tossed it in the water.