Gene Wolfe: CALDE OF THE LONG SUN

Prolocutor and talk to the commissions in the Juzgado. Tell

everyone who'll listen about me. Tell them everything I've said to

you. I'd hoped that the Ayuntamiento's boat would be in this dock.

It usually is. It isn't today, so you'll have to see the councillors for

me. The old man can bring you back here. Tell them I mean to sink

their boat and drown them all in my lake if my city goes over to Kypris."

Incus stammered, "A th-theophany, S-savage S-s-scylla, w-would--"

"Not convince your councillors. They think themselves too wise.

Theophanies may be useful, however. Reintegrated, I may consider them."

She strode to the damp stone altar and sprang effonlessly to its top.

"I had this built so your Ayuntamiento might offer private

sacrifices and, when I chose, confer with me. Not a trace of ash!

They'll pay for that as well.

"You." She pointed to Auk. "This augur Silk's plotting to overthrow

them for Kypris. Help him, but show him where his duty lies.

If he can't see it, kill him. You've my permission to rule yourself as

my Calde in that case. The idiot here can be Prolocutor under

similar circumstances, I suppose."

She faced the Window and knelt. Auk knelt, too, pulling the

fisherman down. (Incus was kneeling already.) Clearing his throat,

Auk began the prayer that he had bungled upon the Pilgrims' Way,

when Scylla had revealed her divine identity. "Behold us, lovely

Scylla, woman of the waters--"

Incus and the fisherman joined in. "Behold our love and our need

for thee. Cleanse us, O Scylla!"

At the name of the goddess, Chenille threw high her arms with a

strangled cry. The dancing colors called the Holy Hues filled the

Sacred Window with chestnut and brown, aquamarine, orange,

scarlet, and yellow, cerulean blue and a curious shade of rose

brushed with drab. And for a moment it seemed to Auk that he

glimpsed the sneering features of a girl a year or two from

womanhood.

Chenille trembled violently and went limp, slumping to the altar

top and roiling off to fall to the dark and slimy stone of the quay.

Oreb fluttered over to her. "God go?"

The girl's face--if it had been a face--vanished into a wall of

green water, like an onrushing wave. The Holy Hues returned, first

as sun-sparkles on the wave, then claiming the entire Window and

filling it with their whirling ballet before fading back to luminescent

gray.

"I think so," Auk said. He rose, and discovered that his needler

was still in his hand; he thrust it beneath his tunic, and asked

tentatively, "You all right, Jugs?"

Chenille moaned.

He lifted her into a sitting position. "You banged your head on the

rock, Jugs, but you're going to be all right." Eager to do something

for her, but unsure what he should do, he called, "You! Patera! Get

some water."

"She throw?"

Auk swung at Oreb, who hopped agilely to one side.

"Hackum?"

"Yeah, Jugs. Right here." He squeezed her gently with the arm

that supponed her, conscious of the febrile heat of her sunburned skin.

"You came back. Hackum, I'm so glad."

The old fisherman coughed, striving to keep his eyes from

Chenille's breasts. "Mebbe it'd be better if me an' him stayed on the

boat awhile?"

"We're all going on your boat," Auk told him. He picked up

Chenille.

Incus, a battered tin cup of water in his hand, asked, "You intend

to _disobey?_"

Auk dodged. "She said to go to the Juzgado. We got to get back to

Limna, then there's wagons to the city."

"She was sending someone, sending her slave she said, to take us

there." Incus raised the cup and sipped. "She also said _I_ was to be

_Prolocutor_."

The old fisherman scowled. "This feller she's sendin', he'll have a

boat o' his own. Have ter, ter git out here. What becomes o' mine if

we go off with him? She said fer me ter fetch the rest back ter see

them councillors, didn't she? How'm I s'posed ter do that if I ain't

got my boat?"

Oreb fluttered onto Auk's shoulder. "Find Silk?"

"You got it." Carrying Chenille, Auk strode across the quay to eye

the open water between it and the boat; it was one thing to spring

from the gunnel to the quay, another to jump from the quay to the

boat while carrying a woman taller than most. "Get that rope," he

snapped to Incus. "Pull it closer. You left too much slack."

Incus pursed his lips. "We cannot _possibly_ disobey the instructions

of the goddess."

"You can stay here and wait for whoever she's sending. Tell him

we'll meet up with him in Limna. Me and Jugs are going in Dace's

boat."

The old fisherman nodded emphatically.

"If _you_ wish to disobey, my son, _I_ will not attempt to prevent

you. However--"

Something in the darkness beyond the last tank fell with a crash,

and the scream of metal on stone echoed from the walls of the

cavern. A new voice, deeper and louder than any merely human

voice, roared, "_I bring her! Give her to me!_"

It was that of a talus larger than the largest Auk had ever seen; its

virescent bronze face was cast in a grimace of hate, blinding yellow

light glared from its eyes, and the oily black barrels of a flamer and a

pair of buzz guns jutted from its open mouth. Behind it, the black

dark at the back of the cavern had been replaced by a sickly greenish

glow.

"_I bring her! All of you! Give her to me!_" The talus extended a

lengthening arm as it rolled toward them. A steel hand the size of

the altar from which she had fallen closed about Chenille and

plucked her from Auk's grasp; so a child might have snatched a

small and unloved doll from the arms of another doll. "_Get on my

back! Scylla commands it!_"

A half dozen widely spaced rungs of bent rod laddered the talus's

metal flank. Auk scrambled up with the night chough flapping

ahead of him; as he gained the top, the talus's huge hand deposited

Chenille on the sloping black metal before him.

"Hang on!"

Two rows of bent rods much like the steps of the ladder ran the

length of the talus's back. Auk grasped one with his left hand and

Chenille with his right. Her eyelids fluttered. "Hackum?"

"Still here."

Incus's head appeared as he clambered up; his sly face looked sick

in the watery light. "By--by _Hierax!_"

Auk chuckled.

"You--You--Help me _up_."

"Help yourself, Patera. You were the one that wanted to wait for

him. You won. He's here."

Before Auk had finished speaking, Incus sprang onto the talus's

back with astonishing alacrity, apparently impelled by the muscular

arm of the fisherman, who clambered up a moment later. "You'd

make a dimber burglar, old man," Auk told him.

"Hackum, where are we?"

"In a cave on the west side of the lake."

The talus turned in place, one wide black belt crawling, the other

locked. Auk felt the thump of machinery under him.

Puffs of black smoke escaped from the joint between the upright

thorax and long wagon-like abdomen to which they clung. It rocked,

jerked, and skewed backward. A sickening sidewise skid ended in a

geyser of icy water as one belt slipped off the quay. Incus clutched at

Auk's tunic as their side of the talus went under, and for a dizzying

second Auk saw the boat tossed higher than their heads.

The wave that had lifted it broke over them like a blow, a

suffocating, freezing whorl that at once drained away; when Auk

opened his eyes again Chenille was sitting up screaming, her

dripping face blank with terror.