Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

On the flight to Mainframe, we had many opportunities to see and hear Auk, though he was not generally communicative. Chenille, with whom we had worked at the Calde’s Palace, often spoke of him as well. Silk did not, as some readers assume, confide to us the content of Auk’s shriving, although he told me that he had shriven him upon meeting him in the Cock. That Auk had kicked a man to death was known throughout the quarter, and it seems probable that it was one of the offences of which he was shriven. Chenille confided to Nettle that he had struck her on two occasions, and described them.

More than one reader has taxed me with whitewashing Auk’s character. It is more probable that I have painted it too dark; I disliked him, and even after so many years have found it hard to treat him fairly. As I have tried to make clear, he was a big man and an extremely strong one, far from handsome, with a beard so heavy that he appeared unshaven even when he had just shaved; although he was said to be courageous and a free spender, few besides Silk, Chenille, and Gib ever spoke well of him.

If I found it hard to be fair to Auk, I found it harder still to be fair to Hyacinth, whose extraordinary beauty was at once her blessing and her curse. She had little education, far too much vanity, and a savage temper. When Nettle was present, she displayed herself to me, posing, bending over to exhibit her decolletage, raising her skirt to adjust her hose, and so forth. In Nettle’s absence, she cursed me if I so much as glanced at her. She saw all human relationships in terms of money, power, and lust, and understood Silk less well than Tick understood her.

Very few of us, I would say, have known such a woman as General Mint; and it is almost impossible to convey an accurate impression of her to those who have not. She was small, with a smooth little face, a sharp nose, and a dart of brown hair that divided her forehead almost to the eyebrows. In conversation her voice was the soft and timorous one we recalled from her classroom; but when the need for quick, decisive action arose, the little sibyl was cast off immediately. Her glance was fire and steel then, and at the sound of her voice wounded troopers who had seemed too weak to stand snatched up weapons and joined the advance. Unless restrained by her subordinates, she led her troops in person, striding boldly ahead of the boldest and never slackening her pace as she shouted encouragement to those behind her. If it had not been for Bison and Captain Serval, she would certainly have been killed by the second day.

As a tactician, she understood better than most the need for a simple workable plan which could be put into effect before conditions changed; that and the astounding loyalty she inspired were the keys to her success. Although she is better known as General Mint, I have titled her Maytera, just as I have referred to her sib as Maytera Marble throughout my account. Fewer than I had expected have found fault with Silk’s assertion that she took her warlike character from the Goddess of Love, although it seems implausible to me. Nettle suggests that many women, thus inspired by love of their city and their gods, might exhibit the same dauntless courage. Certainly love will face the inhumi at midnight, as we say now.

Although neither of us spoke to Blood, both of us saw and heard him when he visited the manteion, and saw him and Musk when they offered their white rabbits. Blood’s conversations with Silk and Maytera Marble were detailed to us by them; they, I would guess, saw more good in him than Nettle or I would have.

Neither of us ever saw Doctor Crane, but Maytera Marble had met him and liked him, as Silk had. Chenille, who had known him intimately, said that he looked on injury and illness as a butcher looks on pigs and steers; and I have tried to convey something of that. From what Silk said of him, he believed in Sphigx no more than any other god, and had her reality been proven to him, he would only have turned from ridiculing those who credited it to ridiculing her.

I have taken Incus’s character from Remora’s description and our own observations during the flight to Mainframe. He was physically unimpressive, and perhaps for that reason frequently impelled to assert his importance, but not lacking in courage. On the airship I watched him ‘enchant’ a slug gun by slipping his finger behind the trigger, then snatch it from the trooper as she struggled to fire it.

Many readers have demanded that I include an account of our passage through the tunnels to the lander and our flight through the abyss. Again I invite them to pen their own, as Scleroderma did. (Her grandson has it and permits visitors to copy it.) I intend to say no more here than is necessary to illuminate the character of the inhumu Nettle and I knew as Patera Quetzal, His Cognizance the Prolocutor of Viron. No doubt many will object to my writing character in such a context, urging that a monster of that kind can no more have character than a hus; but those who trap hus and tame them have told me they differ at least as much as dogs.

To us Quetzal was not an inhumu, but a venerable old man, wise and compassionate, Silk’s supporter and steadfast friend. When Nettle and I returned to the tunnel it was to him that we brought Silk’s message. When they had heard it, many wanted to return to the surface to look for Silk and help him search for Hyacinth. Quetzal forbade it, pointing out that it was contrary to Silk’s own instructions, and led us down the tunnel in the direction of the lake.

Then I remembered something that Remora had told me on the airship: how Quetzal had vanished when Spider forced him into the cellar of Blood’s ruined villa. When we had walked a long way down the tunnel and even the hardiest had grown weary, and Quetzal himself had fallen behind nearly all of our straggling company, I was able to ask about it.

“Walk beside me, my son.” He put a hand on my shoulder; I recall how light and boneless it felt through the thin jacket I wore, as if he had laid a strip of soft leather beside my neck. “I can’t keep up any more. Will you support me? You’re young and strong. Patera Calde likes you, did you know that?”

I said I hoped he did, and that he had always been kind to me.

“He likes you. He speaks of you warmly, and of you, my child. You’re both good children. Good children, I say. But men and women with children are children to me. No fool like an old man! You women are wiser when you’re old, my child. You’re grown, both of you. I doubt you know it, but you are.”

We thanked him.

“I can hardly get along. Like the fat woman. Can’t leave her, can we? Can’t leave them back there, and she’s too heavy to carry.” He was wearing an ordinary augur’s robe; but he bore the baculus, his rod of office, which he used as a staff.

I said that we would have to stop soon for Scleroderma’s sake, and many others, and offered to go ahead if he would tell me what to look for.

“I want you to sleep, my son.” He seemed to suck his gums and reconsidered. “No, to keep watch. Can you stay awake?”

I assured him that I could.

“Good. Someone must, and I can’t. I’m always nodding off, ask young Remora. I can’t keep up this pace myself, but I have to keep urging everybody to walk faster. What tricks the gods play! Have you a weapon, my child?”

Nettle shook her head; I explained that she had brought a needler from the airship but had given it to me, and offered to return it to her.

“Keep it. Keep it! You’ll need it when you stand guard.” He turned his head. He had a long and very wrinkled neck that would have betrayed his true nature at once had I known then of the hooded inhumi. As it was, I was suddenly frightened because there was nothing of warmth or kindness in his look. It was as though I were seeing a mask, or the features of a corpse propped erect. He said, “You won’t shoot me, will you?”