Gene Wolfe - CALDE OF THE LONG SUN

Maytera Mint glanced up at the senior sibyl's metal face.

"I mean it. I know about the liver, and what tumors mean. But I

can't see the pictures. I never could."

Closing her eyes, Maytera Mint shook her head.

"You must!"

"Maytera, I'm afraid."

Not so distant as it had been, the buzz gun spoke again, its rattle

followed by the dull boom of slug guns.

Maytera Mint straightened up; this time it was clear that people

on the edge of the crowd had heard the firing.

"Friends! I don't know who's fighting. But it would appear--"

A pudgy young man in black was pushing through the crowd,

pracfically knocking down several people in his hurry. Seeing him,

she knew the intense relief of passing responsibility to someone else.

"Friends, neither my dear sib nor I will read this fine lamb for you.

Nor need you endure the irregularity of sacrifice by sibyls any

longer. Patera Gulo has returned!"

He was at her side before she pronounced the final word,

disheveled and sweating in his wool robe, but transported with

triumph. "You will, all you people--everybody in the city--have a

real augur to sacrifice for you. Yes! But it won't be me. Patera Silk's

back!"

They cheered and shouted until she covered her ears.

Gulo raised his arms for silence. "Maytera, I didn't want to tell

you, didn't want to worry you or involve you. But I spent most of

the night going around writing on walls. Talking to--to people.

Anybody who'd listen, really, and getting them to do it, too. I took

a box of chalk from the palaestra. _Silk for calde! Silk for

calde! Here he comes!_"

Caps and scarves flew into the air. "_SILK FOR CALDE!_"

Then she caught sight of him, waving, head and shoulders

emerging from the turret of a green Civil Guard floater--one that

threw up dust as all floaters did, but seemed to operate in ghostly

silence, so great was the noise.

"_I am come?_" the talus thundered again. "_In the service of Scylla!

Mightiest of goddesses! Let me pass! Or perish!_" Both buzz guns

spoke together, filling the tunnel with the wild shrieking of ricochets.

Auk, who had pulled Chenille flat when the shooting began,

clasped her more tightly than ever. After a half minute or more the

right buzz gun fell silent, then the left. He could hear no answering

fire.

Rising, he peered over the talus's broad shoulder. Chems littered

the tunnel as far as the creeping lights illuminated it. Several were

on fire. "Soldiers," he reported.

"Men fight," Oreb amplified. He flapped his injured wing uneasily.

"Iron men."

"The Ayuntamiento," Incus cleared his throat, "must have called

out the _Army_." The talus rolled forward before he had finished, and

a soldier cried out as its belts crushed him.

Auk sat down between Incus and Chenille. "I think it's time you

and me had a talk, Patera. I couldn't say much while the goddess

was around."

Incus did not reply or meet his eyes.

"I got pretty rough with you, and I don't like doing that to an

augur. But you got me mad, and that's how I am."

"Good Auk!" Oreb maintained.

He smiled bitterly. "Sometimes. What I'm trying to say, Patera, is

I don't want to have to pitch you off this tall ass. I don't want to have

to leave you behind in this tunnel. But I will if I got to. Back there

you said you went out to the lake looking for Chenille. If you knew

about her, didn't you know about me and Silk too?"

Incus seemed to explode. "How can you sit here talking about

_nothing_ when _men_ are _dying_ down there!"

"Before I asked you, you looked pretty calm yourself."

Dace, the old fisherman, chuckled.

"I was _praying_ for them!"

Auk got to his feet again. "Then you won't mind jumping off to

bring 'em the Pardon of Pas."

Incus blinked.

"While you're thinking that over," Auk frowned for effect and felt

himself grow genuinely angry, "maybe you could tell me what your

jefe wanted with Chenille."

The talus fired, a deafening report from a big gun he had not

realized it possessed; the concussion of the bursting shell followed

without an interval.

"You're _correct_." Incus stood up. His hand trembled as he jerked a

string of ranling jet prayer beads from a pocket of his robe. "You're

right, because Hierax has _prompted_ you to recall _me_ to my duty.

I--I _go_."

Something glanced off the talus's ear and ricocheted down the

tunnel, keening like a grief-stricken spirit. Oreb, who had perched

on the crest of its helmet to observe the battle, dropped into Auk's

lap with a terrified squawk. "Bad fight!"

Auk ignored him, watching Incus, who with Dace's help was

scrambling over the side of the talus. Behind it, the tunnel stretched

to the end of sight, a narrowing whorl of spectral green varied by fires.

When he caught sight of Incus crouched beside a fallen soldier,

Auk spat. "If I hadn't seen it... I didn't think he had the salt." A

volley pelted the talus like rain, drowning Dace's reply.

The talus roared, and a gout of blue flame from its mouth lit the

tunnel like lightning; a buzz gun supported its flamer with a long,

staccato burst. Then the enormous head revolved, an eye emitting a

pencil of light that picked out Incus's black robe. "_Return to me!_"

Still bent over the soldier, Incus replied, although Auk could not

make out his words. Ever curious, Oreb fluttered up the tunnel

toward them. The talus stopped and rolled backward, one of its

extensile arms reaching for Incus.

This time his voice carried clearly. "_I'll_ get back on if you take

_him_, too."

There was a pause. Auk glanced behind him at the metal mask

that was the talus's face.

"_Can he speak!_"

"_Soon_, I hope. I'm _trying_ to repair him."

The huge hand descended, and Incus moved aside for it. Perched

on the thumb, Oreb rode jauntily back to the talus's back. "Still

live!"

Dace grunted doubtfully.

The hand swept downward; Oreb fluttered to Auk's shoulder.

"Bird homer'

With grotesque tenderness fingers as thick as the soldier's thighs

deposited him between bent handholds.

"Still live?" Oreb repeated plaintively.

Certainly it did not seem so. The fallen soldier's arms and legs, of

painted metal now scratched and lusterless, lay motionless, bent at

angles that appeared unnatural; his metal face, designed as a model

of valor, was filled with the pathos that attaches to all broken things.

Singled out inquiringly by one of Oreb's bright, black eyes, Auk

could only shrug.

The talus rolled forward again as Incus's head appeared above its

side. "I'm going to--he's not _dead_," the little augur gasped. "Not

completely."

Auk caught his hand and pulled him up.

"I was--was just reciting the _liturgy_ you know. And I saw--The

gods provide us such graces! I looked into his _wound_, there where

the chest plate's sprung. They train us, you know, at the schola, to

repair Sacred Windows."

Afraid to stand near the edge of the talus's back, he crawled

across it to the motionless soldier, pointing. "I was quite good at it.

And--And I've had occasion since to--to _help_ various chems.

_Dying_ chems, you understand."

He took the gammadion from about his neck and held it up for

Auk's inspection. "This is Pas's voided cross. You've seen it many

times, I'm sure. But you can undo the catches and open up a chem

with the pieces. _Watch_."

Deftly he removed the sprung plate. There was a ragged hole near