Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

Horn caught Silk’s hand and joined them.

“As for this boy,” the captain finished, “I shall procure a weapon for him.”

“If we’re going we’d better go,” Hyacinth declared.

“You inquire concerning the two Siyufs, My Calde. I have heard only rumors. Are they true?”

“I spoke to General Mint on a glass before we returned,” Silk told him. “One of the councillors — Tarsier, I imagine — has altered a chem to look like Siyuf. She was supposed to mend relations between Trivigaunte and Viron, or see to it that the Trivigauntis lost if she could not. She appears to have chosen to occupy Siyuf’s place permanently and conquer Viron for herself instead. Generalissimo Oosik has freed the real Siyuf in the hope—”

The final words were lost in an explosion. Silk found himself half in the crater, with Horn beside him and Hyacinth clinging and sobbing. After a few seconds he managed to gasp, “That was too near. Near enough to ring my ears.”

“Where’s the captain?” Horn asked. From the bottom, Nettle shouted, “Horn!”

“I don’t know.” Silk raised his head to look around. “I can’t see him, or — are those horses?”

“Our horse.” Hyacinth staggered but managed to stand. “It must have been killed.”

“Unless the captain mounted it and rode away. In either case, we’d better go.”

She glared at him; then turned abruptly and slid down the slanting wall of the crater, pushing past Nettle and vanishing into the tunnel.

Horn caught Silk’s arm. “You were sort of waiting here with the captain, Calde. Like you didn’t want to.”

“Because I wasn’t sure all the people who fled the battle had gotten inside.”

Silk coughed and spat. “That explosion blew dirt into my mouth. I suppose it was open, as it usually is — I shouldn’t talk so much. At any rate, I wanted to tell him I was resigning my office, and General Mint is to succeed me. Don’t feel you have to chase after him with the message.”

Nettle called, “I’m going inside with Hyacinth. Are you coming?”

“In a minute,” Horn told her. “No, Calde, I won’t. But I promised His Cognizance I’d find you and bring you down there, and I’m going to as soon as …” He paused, shamefaced.

“What is it, Horn?”

“It’s a long way, he says, to the big cave where the people are asleep in bottles, and when we get there we’ll have to wake them up. Maybe we’d better get going.”

“No, Horn.” With the air of one who intends to remain for some time, Silk seated himself on the edge of the crater. “I asked Mucor to awaken the strongest man she could find and have him break the cylinder before the gas inside it killed him. If I could break one with Hyacinth’s needler as easily as I did, I’d think a very strong man might break one from within with his fists. They’ll be coming to meet us — or at least I hope they will — and may be able to show us a shorter route to the belly of the whorl, where the landers are.”

He studied Horn with troubled eyes. “Now, why did you stop me from following Hyacinth? What is it?”

“Nothing, Calde.”

Like noisy spirits, troopers on horseback thundered past, their faces obscured and their clothing dyed black by the snow.

“Those were Trivigauntis, I believe,” Silk said. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. Bad, I suppose. If I say it myself — tell you what I believe you were about to say — will you at least confess I’m right?”

“I don’t want to, Calde.

“But you will, I know. You were going to tell me why you and Nettle took me up on the roof of the gondola, where General Saba and Hyacinth joined us, pretending that they hadn’t—”

“I was going to tell you about falling off the time before, Calde. You said you tried to kill yourself and I stopped you, but it was the other way. I started to slide off on purpose. I don’t know what got into me, but you grabbed me. You were just about killed too, and now I remember. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

Silk shook his head. “If I hadn’t acted foolishly, you wouldn’t have been in danger at all; I provoked your danger and very nearly occasioned your death.”.

He sighed. “That wasn’t what you came so close to telling me, however. Hyacinth had been in General Saba’s cabin, though both pretended they had not been together. The walls of those cabins are cloth and bamboo, and you and Nettle were afraid I’d overhear them and realize they were doing the things that women do, at times, to provide each other pleasure.”

Seeing Horn’s expression, he smiled sadly. “Did you think I didn’t know such things occur? I’ve shriven women often, and in any event we were taught about them — and worse things — at the schola. We’re far too innocent for our duties when we leave it, I’m afraid; but our instructors ready us for the whorl as well as they can.” He looked down at the object that Horn was offering him. “What is that?”

“Your needler, Calde. It used to be the pilot’s, I guess. Hyacinth knocked it out of her hand, you said, and you picked it up. You must have left it there in the cockpit, because the Flier found it there and gave it to me.”

Silk accepted it, tucking it into his waistband. “You want me to kill Hyacinth with it. Is that the plan?”

“If you want to.” Wretchedly, Horn nodded.

“I don’t. I won’t. I’m taking this because I may need it — I’ve been down there, and I may have to protect her. Haven’t I told you about that?”

“Yes, Calde. On the airship for my book.”

“Good, I won’t have to go over it again. Now listen. You feel that Hyacinth has betrayed me, and unnaturally. I want you to at least consider, as I do, that Hyacinth herself may feel differently. Isn’t it possible — in fact, likely — that she feared that General Saba might regain her airship in fact as well as in name? That in that case it would be well for us — for Hyacinth and me, and every Vironese on board — if she were as friendly toward us as we could render her?”

Horn nodded reluctantly. “I guess so, Calde.”

“Furthermore, Hyacinth knew that I meant to return General Saba’s airship when we returned to the city. May not Hyacinth have considered that General Saba might at some future date be a good and strong friend to Viron?”

Through the break in the tunnel wall, Hyacinth called, “Aren’t you coming down?”

“Soon,” Silk told her. “We’re not finished here.”

“Calde, she’s the one dropping mortar bombs on us. General Saba is. That’s her up there in the airship right now.”

“It is indeed; but she’s dropping them because she’s been ordered to, as any good officer would. I doubt very much that Hyacinth cherished any hope of suborning General Saba from her duty; but there are many times when an officer, particularly a high-ranking one, may exercise discretion. Hyacinth tried, I believe, to do what she could to make certain any such decisions would favor us — more specifically, my government.”

“But we’re going. You said so on the airship, and before we found this way, we were going to have to walk all the way to the Juzgado. On the Short Sun Whorl, it won’t matter whether General Saba likes us or not, will it?”

“No. But Hyacinth could not have known aboard the airship that we would be leaving this soon, and she may even have hoped that we would not leave at all. I think she did.”

“I see.” Horn nodded; and when Silk did not speak again, he said, “Calde, we’d better go.”

“Soon, as I said. There’s one more thing — no, two. The first is that whatever that act might mean to me, or to you, or even to General Saba, it meant next to nothing to Hyacinth; she has performed similar ones hundreds of times with any number of partners. With Generalissimo Oosik, for example.”