Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

Naturally I assured him that I would not.

“Because I’ll walk. I always do. They see me around the Palace all night long. They say it’s my spirit, that I step out of my skin and walk all night. Do you believe it, my child?”

Nettle nodded. “If Your Cognizance says so.”

“I don’t.” I had the impression that he was leaning most of his weight upon my shoulder, yet he was certainly not heavy. “Never believe such stuff. I can’t sleep, and so I wander about dazed and tired, that’s all. My son, would you tell those in front to go faster? I haven’t the breath.”

I shouted, “His Cognizance says we must walk faster!” or something of the kind.

“Thank you. Now we can stop. Let the fat woman and her man catch up.” He turned, motioning to them urgently.

Nettle whispered, “We’re in danger down here. We must be, or he wouldn’t be in such a hurry.”

She had spoken in my ear, and I myself had hardly heard her, yet Patera Quetzal (as I thought of him) said, “We are, my daughter, but I don’t know how much. When you don’t know, you have to act as though it were great.”

Wishing to return to my question, I asked him, “Were you in very much danger from Spider, Your Cognizance?”

He shook his head, not as a man does, turning it from side to side, but swaying it while holding it nearly upright. “From him? None. No, a lot, since he would have wasted my time. I’d a lot to do, so I left.” He laughed, an old man’s high-pitched cackle. “Vanished in the darkness. Is that what young Remora told you? He told somebody that, I know. Want to know how to do it?”

He turned his back and raised his black robe to cover his head, standing with his hands and the baculus out of sight in front of him. That stretch of tunnel was as well lit by the creeping green lights the first settlers brought as any, yet he seemed almost to have disappeared, baculus and all. I said, “I see, Your Cognizance. I mean, I don’t.”

Scleroderma and her husband caught up with us then, she waddling very slowly and dolefully, he limping in a way that showed how his feet hurt. Nettle told them that Quetzal was worried about them.

“I’m worried about him,” Scleroderma said, and holding onto her husband and me as though we were a couple of trees lowered herself to the shiprock floor and kicked off her shoes. Her husband said, “You sprats walk too fast. How’s His Cognizance supposed to keep up?” He sat down beside his wife and pulled off his as well.

Recalling that Quetzal had been concerned for their safety, I motioned for Nettle to sit and sat down myself. Scleroderma said accusingly, “I heard you yell at them in front, trying to get them to go faster.”

I explained that Quetzal had instructed me to, and Nettle asked, “Where is he? He was here with us a minute ago.

“Up ahead,” Shrike told her. “Haven’t seen him in quite a while.”

We rested for perhaps an hour, during which Nettle and I worried that we were becoming permanently separated from the rest. For a long way, however, it was impossible for our route to diverge from theirs; the tunnel ran nearly straight, slanting gently, and in fact pleasantly, downward. At length we came upon a side tunnel; but we found a note there signed by Hart, saying that His Cognizance had instructed him to write it, that they would follow the main tunnel, and that anyone who found the note was to leave it to direct others.

After another half league or so, we heard a baby crying and faint snores; and soon we caught up with our friends from the quarter and my mother, brothers, and sisters, all of them sound asleep. Scleroderma and her husband lay down at once, and I got Nettle to lie down as well, telling her to sleep if she could. She had no more than pillowed her head on my jacket than she was sleeping as soundly as Scleroderma.

I sat down, took off my shoes and rubbed my feet, and tried to decide what I ought to do. I had promised Quetzal I would stay awake, and I recalled very clearly what Silk had told me about the dog-like creatures the soldiers called gods and the convicts bufes. But I was tired and hungry, and longed to rest; and though Quetzal had asked me to protect the company, which by then numbered more than four hundred, he had said nothing about anyone’s protecting me while I slept an hour or two.

After turning the matter over for what seemed a very long while in the dilatory fashion in which I weigh problems when I’m fatigued, I decided I would watch faithfully until someone woke, charge him or her to take my place, and sleep myself.

Then it almost seemed that I was asleep already, because it seemed that I could hear the soft sigh of wings, as if a big owl were flying along the tunnel a considerable distance from where I sat. I sat up straight and listened with all my might, but heard nothing more. Soon afterward, it struck me that Quetzal had said he often had difficulty sleeping. Thinking he might watch for me if he were wakeful, I stood up and padded among the sleepers looking for him; but he was not there.

I cannot describe the consternation I felt. Over and over I told myself that I must surely be mistaken, that someone had lent him a blanket or coat that covered his black robe; and so I peered into the same faces that I had peered into a few minutes before, until I sincerely believe that I could have described everyone present and said where each of them lay. We had among us a dozen infants, a large contingent of children, and a good many women; but not more than forty men, including Patera Remora and Shrike. I told myself very firmly then that a woman or even a girl could guard us as well as I could. She would only have to wake me if danger threatened.

Eventually it occurred to me to ask myself what Silk would have done in my situation. Silk would have prayed, I decided, and so I knelt, folded my hands and bowed my head, and implored the Outsider to take pity on my plight and cause one at least of those sleeping around me to wake up, very carefully specifying that a woman or a girl would be entirely acceptable to me.

When I raised my head, someone was sitting up in the midst of the sleepers; when I saw her dark and deathly eyes, I knew at once the mocking fashion in which the Outsider had answered my prayer. “Mucor,” I called softly. “Please come over here and talk to me.”

Her face floated upward like a ghost’s and seemed almost to drift along the tunnel; she was wearing a sibyl’s black gown.

“Mucor,” I inquired, “where is your grandmother? She was here before.” Very tardily it had occurred to me that Maytera Marble rarely slept, and would be the ideal person to relieve me so that I could.

“Gone,” Mucor said. I expected to get nothing more out of her, having learned at the Calde’s Palace how seldom she spoke. But after a few seconds she added, “She went with the man who isn’t there.”

It was encouraging, but there seemed little use in asking who the man who wasn’t there was. I asked instead if she would send her spifit to learn where her grandmother was and whether she was in need of help. Mucor nodded, and we sat side-by-side in silence for what I felt sure was at least a quarter-hour. I was nearly asleep when she said, “She’s carrying him. Crying. She’d like somebody to come.”

“Your grandmother?”

I must have spoken more loudly than I had intended, because Nettle sat up and asked what was wrong.

Mucor pointed down the tunnel, saying, “Not far.”

Nor was she. We had hardly lost sight of our friends when we met Maytera Marble, more or less dressed in an augur’s robe so long it swept the tunnel floor, with Quetzal in her arms. Her face could not display emotion, as I have tried to make clear; but every limb expressed the most heart-rending anguish. “He’s been shot,” she told us. “He won’t let me do anything to stop the bleeding.” Her voice was agonized.