Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

“He is.” Silk started toward the door. “You have my word, Orchid; but I must go — we must, if Chenille’s coming.”

“I’ve got to get my coat.” She was already on her feet. “Your litter’s around back? On Music? I’ll meet you.”

As he rattled down the wooden steps, Silk could not be sure he had told her it was, or that he had replied at all.

“If you don’t want to, they won’t make you,” Auk told his listeners. “You think the gods are a bunch of hoppies? They don’t push anybody around. Why should they? When they want to do you a good turn, they say do this and this, ’cause it’s going to be good, you’re going to like it. Only if you say it’s a queer lay, they say dimber by us, we’ll give it to somebody else. Remember Kypris? She didn’t say go uphill and solve all those kens. She said if you want to, go to it and I’ll keep the street. This is like that. I’m not here to make anybody do anything. Neither’s Tartaros.”

One of his listeners asked, “What’ve we got to do now?”

The blind god whose hand was upon Auk’s shoulder whispered, “Tell him to make ready.”

“To start with, you got to get yourself set,” Auk said. “Get used to it. You’ll be going to a new place. It’ll be better, real nice, but all the stuff you’re used to will be down the chute. Even the sun’ll be different, a short sun that won’t ever go out. You got to think about it, and that’s why I’m here, to start you culls thinking. You want to think about what to take, and who to take with you, and talk to ’em. If you’re like me, you’re going to want pals. Tell ’em. Every man’s got to have a woman, too, and every woman’s got to take a man. Just sprats don’t have to have anybody.”

A big-nosed woman shouted, “Over here!” and Auk’s listeners drifted away, forming two long lines, slug guns at the ready.

“That went well,” Tartaros whispered.

“They didn’t believe me.” Wearily, Auk started back down the tunnel; this one was open to the sky, as most were on this level. The walls were walls, but had doors and windows in them. He was still trying to make up his mind whether that made things better or worse.

“Men come slowly to belief,” the god whispered, “nor is that to be deplored. Some have taken the first step already, because you urged it.”

Auk felt a glow of satisfaction. “If you figure that was enough, what we did back there, dimber with me. Think I ought to steal something for her to eat? I said I would.”

“You must steal more cards, as well.”

Auk steered the blind god around a hoppy’s corpse, its eyes and mouth black with cold-numbed flies. “You won’t let me spend ’em, Terrible Tartaros.”

“We will have need of many cards, and quickly. Have I not made it clear to you?”

“Yeah, to fix up a lander.” Auk smiled at the thought. “I guess you did.”

“That is well. Your mind is mending. Steal food, if you wish, Auk, and more cards where you can.”

As their litter jogged down Sun Street Chenille said, “I’d like you to shrive me. Will this take long enough?”

“That will depend on how much you have to tell me.” Silk was acutely aware of her hip pressing his own. He recalled a rule forbidding sibyls from riding in a litter with a man; he was beginning to feel that there should be another — strictly enforced — against augurs riding with women. “Certainly it would be more regular to do it in the manteion, where we would not be pressed for time.”

“You know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid of some goddess getting in me again. You don’t know about Scylla, do you?”

“I’ve spoken with Patera Incus. He told me that Scylla had possessed you — it was one of the reasons I was anxious to find you — and that she, through you, had appointed him Prolocutor.”

Chenille nodded, the motion of her head almost ghostly in the tightly curtained litter. “I remember that a little. Only he talked about it so much after she let me go that I can’t be sure exactly what I said. Auk could tell you.”

“I’ll ask when we find him; but the Prolocutorship is a concern of the Chapter’s, not the civil government’s. In other words, I have no more say in the matter than any other member of the clergy, and none at all as calde. Was Auk the only other person present?”

“Dace, but he’s dead.”

“I see. I refrained from asking Patera about witnesses. As I said, it’s a matter that concerns me only as one augur among many. It may be that I’ll no longer be an augur at all when the matter comes before the clergy.”

Silk was silent for a moment, his eyes vague. “If what Patera reports is true, and I’m inclined to credit him, it’s unfortunate that Scylla didn’t make her wish known at a time when other augurs, or sibyls, were present. Most of the—”

Chenille interrupted. “I wouldn’t mind if it was Kypris again. It might be nice. Only Scylla was really rough. That’s how I lost my gown and my good jade necklace, I’d go out to the lake and look for it, only I’m pretty sure somebody’s found it by this time. Anyway, isn’t there someplace where we could do it besides in the manteion? Kypris got me when I was in there, and Scylla when I was in her shrine at the lake. I’m going to try to stay away from places like that for a while.”

“I see. If you don’t look at the Sacred Window, you can’t be possessed — so Kypris implied, at least.” Too late, Silk recalled that there was no Window in Scylla’s shrine. “It may be that there are other means, of course,” he finished lamely, “or that only she is limited in that fashion.”

“Don’t you bucks ever get possessed?”

“Certainly we do. In fact, it’s much more usual, or so the Chrasmologic Writings imply. Men are normally possessed by male gods, such as Pas, Tartaros, Hierax, and the Outsider, or such minor male gods as Catamitus. That is true of enlightenment as well. I myself was enlightened by the Outsider, not Pas, though it would appear that common report attributes my enlightenment to Pas.” Silk forbore mentioning that Pas was dead.

“The reason I was asking—”

Their litter stopped, lowered gently to an uneven surface. Oreb pushed the curtain aside with beak, and was gone.

“I’ll be here a while,” Silk told the head bearer. “It might be best if I were to pay you now.”

The head bearer made an awkward bow with one eye on his men, who were helping Chenille out of the litter. “We’ll wait, Calde. No trouble.”

Silk got out his cardcase. “May I give you something so you can refresh yourselves while you wait?”

“We’ll be all right.” The head bearer backed away.

“As you wish.”

The garden gate was unlocked; Silk opened it for Chenille. “I was afraid you’d give them too much,” she whispered as she passed. “They’d get drunk.”

That explained the head bearer’s refusal, Silk decided as he reclosed the gate; it would not do for the bearers of the calde’s litter to be drunk. He made a mental note to allow for the propensity of the lowest classes to drink too much.

“Is anybody here?” Chenille looked about her at the arbor and the wells, the berry brambles and wilted tomato vines under the windows of the manse, the seared fig and the leafless little pear, and the spaded black soil that had been Maytera Marble’s struggling garden.

“At the moment? I can’t say. I assume that Patera Gulo’s still off fighting — or at any rate off watching what’s left of Erne’s brigade. Maytera Marble’s probably in the cenoby; we’ll find out when I’ve shriven you.”

“You won’t hold us long with a handful of men,” Maytera Mint told Spider. “Colonel Bison has five hundred.”