Gene Wolfe: In Green's Jungles

Vanished People, BLUE'S sentient native race; the Neighbors.

VIRON, the city of the LONG SUN WHORL in which SILK, HORN, and Nettle were born.

Colonel Vivo, an officer in the horde of BLANKO.

Volanta, INCANTO'S hostess in BLANKO, Atteno's wife.

Volto, an unpopular trooper in the horde of BLANKO.

Lieutenant Warren, a mercenary officer.

Water Street, an avenue in BLANKO bordering the river.

WHORL, the generation ship from which the colonists came.

Lieutenant Wight, a mercenary officer.

Master Xiphias, an elderly fencing master of VIRON.

Lieutenant Zepter, a mercenary officer.

Zitta, INCLITO'S wife and MORA'S mother, long dead.

27th day of the Mobilization

To my Dear Friend and Councilor Incanto-

Olmo has fallen. There can be no doubt of it. Our scouts have seen the Duko's pennant at the base camp. I myself saw a dead trooper in purple and maroon not two hours ago. Dragoons of the Bodyguard are here, and the rest close behind. We bear ourselves like men, but you must be braced for the blow.

I clawed you like a devil for supplies, I know. No more. Take Rimando's mules and muledrivers. Rimando too. They are the only help I can give you.

Advice: You know I tried to save the northern farms. We shared meat and salt, Incanto. Listen to me. They are finished. Take what you can and leave them to their fate. These graybeards, these women and boys you found arms for, they may fight or make a show of it from the walls. If you march north with them, the Duko's cavalry will cut them to pieces in half an hour. Whatever happens, do not allow them out of the gates. Show the guns on the walls, call a truce, and take the terms Rigoglio offers.

Write at once if you have word of Mora.

If I fall, do what you can for my mother. Also, Torda and Onorifica. Shed no tears for your discourteous friend-

Inclito

Especially Torda and my mother. I.

I have paper again, and there is still a lot of ink in the little bottle. Besides, the man who owns the shop would give me more ink if I asked for it, I feel certain. Strange how much a quire of writing paper can mean to a man who has made such quantities of it.

This town is walled. I have never seen a whole town with a wall before. It is not a big wall; I have seen others much higher; but it goes all the way around, except where the river comes in and goes out.

I do not think this is the same river we had in the south. This one flows fast but silently. Or perhaps it is simply that the noises of the town keep me from hearing the river. Its water is dark. It seems angry.

Our lazy southern river always smiled, and sometimes laughed aloud, showing a froth of white lace underskirt where it tumbled over rocks. There were crocodiles in it, or at least what we called crocodiles, sleek and shining emerald lizards with eight legs and jaws like traps. They seemed indolent as Nadi herself when they basked on the banks in the sunlight, but their doubly forked blue tongues flicked in and out like flames. I do not think they are really the same as the crocodiles on the Whorl, although it may be that every animal of the kind is entitled to the name, like "bird."

Which reminds me that I ought to write that Oreb is with me still, perching on my shoulder or the head of my staff, which he likes even better.

I washed my clothes in this river before we reached the town. I saw a few fish, but no crocodiles of either sort.

A woodcutter cut my staff for me. I still remember his name, which was Cugino. I don't believe I ever met a better-intentioned man, or found a stranger more friendly. He was the first human being I had seen in days, so I was very glad to see him. I helped him load his donkey, and asked to borrow his axe long enough to cut myself a staff. (I had already tried using the azoth, although I did not tell him so; it shattered the wood to kindling.)

He would not hear of it. He, Cugino, was the ultimate authority when it came to staffs, and to sticks of every kind. Everybody in the village came to him-and to him alone-whenever they wanted a staff. He would cut me a staff himself. He, personally, would select the wood and trim it in the right way.

"Everything for you! The wood, how high, where you hold it. Everything! You stand up straight for me."

He measured me with his eyes, with his hands, and at last with his axe, so that I know now that I am twice the height of Cugino's axe, and an axe-head over.

"Tall! Tall!" (Although I am not, or at least I am not unusually tall.) He stood with his head to the left, the tip of one big, callused forefinger at the corner of his mouth. I feel certain that my friend in the south never looked a tenth so impressive when he was planning a battle.

"I got it!" He clapped his hands, the sound of a plank slapped against another.

We tied his donkey (still loaded, poor beast) and walked some distance into the forest, to a huge tree embraced by a vine thicker than my wrist. Two mighty blows from the axe severed its stem twice, and a third a thick branch at the top of the severed portion.

"Big vine, " Cugino told me with as much pride as if he had planted it. "Strong like me." He displayed the muscle in his arm, which was indeed impressive. "Not stiff."

He tore the section that he had cut off the tree (which must have been thanking him with all its heartwood) and tried to snap it over his knee, muscles bulging. "He's a bender, see? He's a unbreakable."

I ventured that it looked awfully big.

"I'm not through." His powerful fingers ripped away the corky bark, and in something less than half a minute I had a staff whose right-angled top came to my chin, a staff that was nearly straight and as smooth as glass.

I still have it. The staff itself belongs to me, but its angled top is Oreb's, who chides me now. "Fish heads? Fish heads?"

Pointing to the river, I tell him to fish for himself, as I know he can. I would not object to eating, but I can eat after shadelow, assuming that I can find food. This sunlight is nicely slanted for writing, which is to say that the sun is halfway down the sky. Here beside the river, the air is cool and moves not quite enough to be called a breeze. Not enough to stir a sail, in other words, but enough to dry my ink. What could be better?

Before I forget, I ought to say that what my very good friend Cugino called a vine was what we called a liana on Green. Green is a whorl made for trees, and Green's trees have solved every problem but that one.

One might almost call it a whorl made by trees, which cover every part of it except the bare rock of its mountaintops and cliffs, and its poles (or whatever the regions of ice should be called). And the trees are working on them.

In the Whorl , we had the East Pole and the West Pole, pylons with the Long Sun stretched between them. Thus we speak here (and on Green too) of a fictional West Pole to which the Short Sun travels, and an equally fictitious East Pole where it is imagined to originate. From a lander, one sees that none of this is true. There are no such places. Instead of being cylindrical, as we like to think of them, the colored whorls are spherical; and each might be said to have an equally imaginary "pole" at the top and bottom. That is to say that if some scholar were to build models to illustrate them, he would find it necessary to run little axles up through them so that they would turn properly, and if these axles were permitted to protrude at the top as well as at the bottom they would have the appearance of poles to the people whose whorls they held up.

A man named Inclito sat down next to me while I was writing that last. We fell to talking, as two men will who have nothing better to do than sun themselves like crocodiles of a sunny autumn afternoon, our tongues flicking in our mouths fast enough, if not quite so spectacularly.