Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

"Your lander couldn't return?"

"It could and it did, without me. I should have set a guard on it, but I didn't think it was necessary. Not that we had anyone to spare, anyhow."

"I have an idea," Jahlee said suddenly. "You'll both think it's silly-"

She was interrupted by Bala, who told me, "Your son did everything, Horn. He really is Sinew's brother. I knew it as soon as he started working and began talking to them. He's wonderful, just like my husband." Hide, coming in behind her, flushed and stared at his boots.

I thanked her, and Jahlee said, "He gets it from you, and that's what you ought to do, too. Talk to them. You want to find out how somebody got up to the Long Sun Whorl from here, and they might know. That was my idea, Rajan."

"A good one, I believe. May I go into your cellar to speak with them, Bala?"

"I must come with you," Maliki told me. "In the absence of Sinew, I must. Bala ought to come too."

Jahlee said, "And me. It was my idea."

Hide coughed, glanced at Bala, and muttered, "It's not very nice down there, Father. I mean we did everything we could, emptied their pots and washed them, but…"

"I understand. In Blanko I had some people chained to the wall in a dry sewer. They've been freed by this time, I hope."

"There's one I sort of think you ought to talk to."

"The leader?" I asked; and Bala, "The big one?"

Hide shook his head. "The woman."

Maliki smiled. "Ah!"

"And it might help if we brought her up here. Instead of everybody going down there. She's real weak, she couldn't do anything, and there's five of us. I don't think she can hardly walk."

"I'm sure you're right. She's more likely to talk freely when the others can't hear her. Would that be-I won't say agreeable. Permissible, Bala?" I sipped my wine, which was far from good.

"If it's all right with Maliki."

Hide began, "She…"

"She what? The prisoner? What were you about to say?"

"Can't we talk someplace else, Father? Just you and me?" He looked significantly at Jahlee and Maliki.

"You recognized her? Who is she?"

He shook his head, and Oreb croaked, "Poor boy!"

"Then she recognized you, or told you something else you don't want the others to hear, although Bala must have heard it already."

Reluctantly, he nodded.

Maliki said sharply, "Tell us, Bala. This is nonsense, and may be dangerous. Tell me!"

"It really wasn't anything." Bala sounded apologetic. "It was while he was taking off the bandage on her leg. She said he reminded her of somebody she used to know."

"Is that all?" Maliki snapped.

Bala nodded.

Hide muttered wretchedly, "Horn, Father. She said his name was Horn, and I looked kind of like him."

"Is that all?"

Oreb offered his advice: "No talk!"

"Yeah. I guess Bala didn't hear that last part, she wasn't paying much attention."

Maliki leveled her forefinger at me. "Your name is Horn. So you say."

"It is."

"Your son doesn't resemble you much."

Hide said, "He looks more like me here than back in camp."

"No talk!"

Maliki gave Oreb a hard look before turning back to Hide. "His appearance changes from place to place? Is that what you maintain, young man?"

The blood rose in Hide's cheeks, and he pointed to Jahlee. "So does she. Ask her!"

Maliki rose. "You people are crazy! Mad, absolutely mad, like Nadar."

"In that case there's no point in listening to us," I told her. "Let's listen to this woman prisoner instead. She is sane, presumably."

"Not from the way she fought," Maliki spoke with deep satisfaction. "It was one of the men who surrendered and made her surrender too, when they were cut off and Sinew had fifty all around them."

I started to say that we owed such a brave woman a hearing, but Maliki interrupted me. "Changing all the time, you claim, like dreams. Do you still maintain that all three of you are just dreams?"

"Where is my son's slug gun?" I asked her. "You took it-very sensibly, I thought-when he went into the cellar among the prisoners."

She looked around in some confusion.

"You were holding it on your lap, with both your hands on it, clearly afraid that my grandsons would want to play with it. Where is it now?"

"Gun gone!" Oreb announced.

I turned to Hide and Bala. "Bring her up here, please. I want to see her, and it may be important."

Jahlee was gone for two days. She came back tonight and sat at our fire, looking so human that I had to remind myself again and again that she was not. She said, "Aren't you going to ask what I want?"

"No. I know what you want, and I can't give it to you."

"Temporarily, you can."

"You don't want it temporarily. You want it permanently-something I can't provide."

"I can't provide what you want either, Calde."

"I've asked you not to call me that," I reminded her.

"All right," she said.

"As for what I want, I want to go home. That is all I want, and I'm doing it. I want to convene Marrow and the other leaders who sent me out, confess that I failed, tell them how I failed, and give them this to read. It's true, of course, that you can't help me with it; but it's equally true that I-I should say we-don't need your help. I only ask that you not hinder us. We have silver and a few cards, and our horses. We-"

She interrupted me. "Horses I can't ride."

"You can't, but then you don't need to."

"I'd like to ride with you, like I did on Green when we went to see the lander. I was a bad rider, I know."

"I'm a poor rider myself, even though I've had to ride so much of late. Certainly you were a better one than I expected."

"Your son, the big one, said we couldn't be ghosts." She giggled. "Because his horses weren't afraid of us. He thought he was making a joke, remember? And I said, oh, horses don't have to be afraid of me. He liked me, he really did. He liked me better than Bala fat."

I did not reply.

"So if I could ride with you here the way I did there, you could say I was your daughter-in-law, Hide's brother's wife."

"I could. I would not."

Jahlee seemed not to have heard me. "I've got enough money to buy a horse. Money is easy for us. For me anyway. Real cards. We like cards, because they're light."

"Taking them prevents the landers from returning to the Long Sun Whorl, also. That means fewer prey for you."

She gave me a tight-lipped smile. "Oh, there are plenty of you. More than enough for me."

I was busying myself with my pen case, sharpening the little quill I am using. "You don't care about your race."

"You are my race. You know that, why won't you admit it? Inside, I'm one of you. So was everybody who fought for you at Gaon."

"What about the inhumi who destroyed the Vanished People, Jahlee? Were they human too?"

"They were dead before I was born."

We sat in silence for a time, listening to the wind in the trees and Hide's slow breathing. From time to time he mumbled a word or two indistinctly; perhaps Jahlee could distinguish them or guess the content of his dreams from their tone, but I could not.

"Where's Oreb?" she said at last.

"Nearby, I imagine. He flew after warning me that you were coming."

"He doesn't like me."

I did not reply; or if I did, merely muttered something noncommittal.

"Do you?"

I had never thought about it. After a time I said, "Yes. I've been wishing you would go. But yes, I do."

"I drink blood. Human blood, mostly."

"I know it. So did Krait."

"We don't kill you, though. At least, not very often."

I nodded.

"When you were on the river with that little girl from Han, we all said we were going to kill you, that we had to. That was what we had decided. But none of us wanted to, not really. We kept hanging back, each of us hoping somebody else would do it."