Gene Wolfe - CALDE OF THE LONG SUN

didn't get anybody to do it. Is that clear? Will you say Pas to that,

nothing back?"

Maytera Marble cocked and lifted her head, thus raising an

eyebrow. "Someone shot her from a window of your house, Bloody.

I saw it."

"All right, you saw it, and Trivigaunte's going to make somebody

pay. I don't blame them. What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be me

or the boys. We didn't do it, and that's not open to argument. I want

that settled before the cut."

Maytera Marble put a hand on his shoulder. "I understand,

Bloody. Do you know who did? Will you point them out to us?"

Blood hesitated, his apoplectic face growing redder than ever.

"If..." His eyes shifted toward a soldier almost too swiftly to be

seen. "Yes, absolutely." Several of the armored men muttered agreement.

"In that case it's accepted by our side," Maytera Marble told him.

"I'll report to my principals, Generalissimo Oosik and General

Saba, that you had nothing to do with it and are anxious to testify

against the guilty parties. Who are they?"

Blood ignored the question. "Good. Fine. They won't attack

while I'm talking to you?"

"Of course not." Silently, Maytera Marble prayed that she was

being truthful.

"You'd probably like to sit. I know I would. Come in here, and I

think we can settle this."

He showed her into a paneled drawing room and shut the door

firmly. "My boys are getting edgy," he explained, "and that gets me

edgy around them."

"They're my grandchildren?" Maytera Marble sank into a tapestry

chair too deep and too soft for her. "Your sons?"

"I don't have any. You said you were my mother. I guess you

meant you came to talk for her."

"I am your mother, Bloody." Maytera Marble studied him, finding

traces of her earlier self in his heavy, cunning face, as well as far too

many of his father. "I suppose you've seen me since you found out

who I was or had somebody look at me and describe me, and now

you don't recognize me. I understand. You're my son, just the same."

He grasped the advantage by reflex. "Then you wouldn't want to

see me killed, or would you?"

"No. No, I wouldn't." She let her stick and white flag fall to the

carpet. "If I had been willing to have you die, everything would have

been a great deal easier. Don't you see that? You should. You, of

all people."

She paused, considering. "I was an old woman before you found

out who I was, and I think I must have looked older. I was already

forty when you were born. That's terribly old for a bio mother."

"She came a few times when I was little. I remember her."

"Every three months, Bloody. Once in each season, if I could get

away alone that often. We were supposed to go out out in pairs. and

usually we had to."

"She's dead? My mother?"

"Your foster mother? I don't know. I lost track of her when you

were nine."

"I mean y--! Rose. Maytera Rose, my real mother."

"Me." Maytera Marble tapped her chest, a soft click.

"It was her funeral sacrifice. The other sibyl said so."

"We burned parts of her," Maytera Marble conceded. "But mostly

those were parts of me in her coffin. Of Marble, I mean, though I've

kept her name. It makes things easier, with the children particularly.

And there's still a great deal of my personality left."

Blood rose and went to the window. The dull green turret of a

Guard floater showed above a half-ruined section of wall. "You

mind if I open this?"

"Certainly not. I'd prefer it."

"I want to hear if they start shooting, so I can stop it."

She nodded. "My thought exactly, Bloody. Some of the children

have slug guns, and nearly all the rest have needlers. Perhaps I

should have taken them, but I was afraid we'd need them on the

walk out." She sighed, the weary _hish_ of a mop across a terazzo

floor. "The worst would have hidden theirs anyway, though none of

the children are really bad."

"I remember when she lost her arm," Blood told her. "She used to

pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One

day it was a hand like your--"

"It was this one." Maytera Marble displayed it.

"So I asked her what happened. I didn't know she was my mother

then. She was just a sibyl that came sometimes. My mother would

have tea and cookies."

"Or sandwiches." Maytera Marble supplemented his account.

"Very good sandwiches, too, though I was always careful not to eat

more than a fourth of one. Bacon in the fall, cheese in winter,

pickled burbot and chives on toast in spring, and curds and

watercress in summer. Do you remember, Bloody? We always gave

you one."

"Sometimes it was all I got," Blood said bitterly

"I know. That's why I never ate more than a founh."

"Is that really the same hand?" Blood eyed it curiously.

"Yes, it is, It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody, because

you have to do it one-handed. It was particularly hard for me,

because by then I already had a great many new parts. Or rather, I

had reclaimed a great many old ones. They worked better, that was

why I wanted them, but I wasn't used to the new assembly yet,

which made changing hands harder. It would have been wasteful to

burn them, though. They were in much better condition than my old

ones."

"Even if it is, I'm not going to call you Mother."

Maytera Marble smiled, lifting her head and inclining it to the

right as she always did. "You have already, Bloody. Out there. You

called me Mama. It sounded wonderful."

When he said nothing, she added, "You said you were going to

open that window. Why don't you?"

He nodded and raised the sash. "That's why I bought your

manteion, do you know about that? I wasn't just a sprat nobody

wanted any more. I had money and influence, and I got word my

mother was dying. I hadn't spoken to her in fifteen, twenty years,

but I asked Musk, and he said if I really wanted to get even it might

be my last chance. I saw the sense in that, so we went, both of us."

"To get even, Bloody?" Maytera Marble lifted an eyebrow.

"It doesn't matter. I was sitting with her, see, and she needed

something, so I sent Musk. Then I said something and called her

Mom, and she said your mother's still alive, I tried to be a mother to

you, Blood, and I swore I wouldn't tell."

Turning from the window to face Maytera Marble, he added, "She

wouldn't, either. But I found out."

"And bought our manteion to torment me, Bloody?"

"Yeah. The taxes were in arrears. I'm real close to the Ayuntamiento.

I guess you know that already or you wouldn't have come

out here shooting."

"You have councillors here, staying with you. Loris, Tarsier, and

Potto. That was one reason I wanted to talk."

Blood shook his head. "Tarsier's gone. Who told you?"

"Like your foster mother, I've sworn not to tell."

"One of my people? Somebody in this house?"

"My lips are sealed, Bloody."

"We'll get into that later, maybe. Yeah, I've got them staying

here. It's not the first time, either. When I found out about you--if

you're who you say you are--I talked to Loris, just one friend to

another, and he let me have it for taxes. Know how much it was?

Twelve hundred and change. I was going to leave you hanging, keep

talking about tearing the whole thing down. Then Silk came out

here. The great Calde Silk himself! Nobody would believe that now,

but he did. He solved my house like a thief. By Phaea, he was a thief."

Maytera Marble sniffed. It was at once a devastating and a