Orson Card - Wyrms

"Heads don't learn," said Patience. "Heads don't pay attention, and they forget too quickly."

The monkey kept jumping up and down. It was distracting.

"I pay attention," said the pilot's head. "I know this river. Some pilots, the river's like an enemy, they wrestle it up and down. Some, it's like a god, they worship, they pray, they curse. Some, it's a whore for them, they think they're in charge but she plays them for fools.

Some, it's a lover, a wife, a family, they live and die for it. But me-"

"Come along, young sir," said Sken. But Patience stayed to listen.

"For me, the Cranwater's not like anything else. This river is myself. That's my name, River, as God gave it to me that's my name, the stream is my body, my arms, my legs."

The monkey stopped to pick a louse. The head grinned, but because the mouth was lower than the lip of the jar, the thick glass transformed the smile into a hideous leer.

The monkey tasted the louse, swallowed, and went back to work. Again the breath came through the pilot's throat.

"My boat's good," said River.

"Your boat's a rotten old canoe," said Sken.

"So. You're the captain, you get a good boat, but you come back and buy me for pilot."

"We'll get a live pilot, thanks all the same," said Sken.

"That's right, walk away, you've got legs, you can just walk off, what's that to you?"

A hawk swooped low, circled, came back and landed on a small platform atop the pole where River hung. It held a squirming rat in one talon. It raked open the belly, spattering blood, snatched the guts into its beak, then dropped the rest of the carcass into River's jar. The jar lurched as the gools and headworms attached themselves and fed.

"Pardon my lunch," said River. "As you see, I'm a self-contained system. You don't have to feed me, though I'm glad if you can keep my jar full of Cranwater, and it's nice if you now and then wash my jar. Monkey's apt to smear it with a bit of his stuff."

"Where's your owner?" asked Patience.

Sken was irate. "You're not thinking of-"

"Go buy a boat, Sken. You have fifteen minutes.

Choose the best, and I'll come negotiate the price."

"I won't have this thing as pilot!"

"If Ruin and Reck have to put up with you as ship's captain, you'll learn to live with River as pilot. Weren't you the one said the pilot was most important?"

"You're enjoying this," said Sken. "You're making sport, and I thought we were friends."

"You're not making a mistake, young master," said River. "A pilot has to know the sandbars, the currents, the fast places, the slow places, the shallow channels, the spring rises, I know them all, I'll get you through, provided you do as I tell you, up to and including that Queen of Grease you have with you, what do you do, harvest her sweat and sell it as lamp oil downriver?"

Patience laughed. Sken did not.

"Buy the boat," said Patience. "I want this pilot, for reasons that are good enough."

River cheered her on. "For reasons of wisdom, for reasons of-"

"Shut up," said Sken to River. Then to Patience:

"Young sir, you don't know this man-"

"I know from how his face has aged and cracked that he's at least two centuries, in hard sunlight and bad weather much of the time,"

"Ah, it's the truth, the torture of my life written on my face," said River.

"So he's old," said Sken.

"He's been a head at least a century," said Patience.

"Plying the river all that time. And in those many voyages, he's never failed a customer. He's never broken up a boat on a sandbar or a rock."

"How do you know that?" Sken demanded.

"Because the young master's got the spirit of discernment of truth in him," said River.

"Because he's here," said Patience. "If he'd ever let an owner down, his jar would have been broken, and he would have been poured out into the river long ago."

Sken glared, but had no answer. So she went farther along the dock, examining all the boats with an even more skeptical eye.

"You've got wisdom," said River. "I hope that among the hundred sons I conceived when I could still do the mattress hornpipe, there's one as well-favored and intelligent and-"

"And rich."

"As your most gracious self. Though I could wish a son of mine might have more of a beard on him."

"As he would no doubt wish his father to have more limbs."

River giggled, an artificial-sounding laugh because it all came from his mouth. There could be no belly laugh, with the monkey pumping the bellows with the same steady rhythm. "Ay, there's something lacking on both of us, I can't deny it."

"When will your owner come back?" asked Patience.

"When I send the monkey to fetch him."

"Then send."

"And miss out on conversation with such a likely young man? I buggered a few as fair as you in my time, I'll have you know, and they thanked me afterward."

"As I'll thank you for mislaying your practical buggery tools before we met."

River winked. "Nothing shocks you, does it?"

"Nothing that lives in a jar, anyway," said Patience.

"Send the monkey. If you want to talk, I can read your lips."

River made three sharp kissing noises. Patience realized that it was a sound he could make without the bellows. The monkey immediately dropped the bellows and clambered around to perch on the lip of the jar, pressing his forehead against River's. A few more chirping sounds, tongue clicks, lip pops, and the monkey dropped to the wooden dock and ran off through the crowd.

River made a single clicking sound, and the hawk took off and flew away.

Patience stood, reading his lips as he made jokes, told stories, and studied her with his eyes. All the while, Patience felt Unwyrm calling her. Come faster, I need you, you love me, I'll have you. Not in words, it was never words, it was just the need. Fly to me now.

I'm coming, said Patience silently, trying hard not to think consciously of the murder in her mind.

The head named River babbled on and on, looking less and less like her father the longer she watched. Good.

She didn't need the distraction.

Once they were on the water, Sken was in her element, and lorded it over them all. Never mind River muttering commands from his jar, which dangled from a pole near the helm; Sken was glad enough to follow River's orders about where to steer, once he showed that he really did know the river. Steering was the pilot's business-everything else about the boat was Sken's to decide. Only Angel, lying in comfort at last, without the bouncing of the road, only he was exempt from her orders. All the others, Sken kept them hopping with the business of a boat making the tricky upriver passage under sail and oar.

She took particular pleasure in ordering Reck and Ruin to climb the mast and fiddle with the two sails-she watched with unbearable satisfaction on her face as they dangled over the water doing her bidding. The height didn't seem to bother them, nor the work, but the water itself seemed to make them uncomfortable. And credit Sken with this: she did not abuse her authority. Like any good captain, she knew that the geblings would obey her, but only as long as she ordered them to do what was clearly needful.

Patience did her part as well, a full share of work, like any of the others. At first Sken was uneasy ordering her about, but if she left Patience without labor. Patience would come and ask, until Sken barked out commands to her as easily as to anyone. Patience was grateful for anything that engaged her mind. The Cranning call was relentless, but it was easier to live with when she was busy. So she spent many an hour braiding lines, raising and lowering sail, or leaning on the helm as River ordered their way upstream, tacking across the current to keep the wind, easing into deep channels with oars or poles to get past the tricky places-it was a vigorous, hardworking life, and Patience came to love the river, partly because of the peace it brought to her, partly for the life itself. Sken's coarseness and crudity became vigor and strength, when seen within the river life.