Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

As slowly as a flower’s, Quetzal’s face turned toward us; it was terrible, not merely swollen or sunken, but misshapen, as if death’s grip had crushed his chin and cheekbones. “I am not bleeding,” he said. “Do you see blood, my children?”

I suppose we shook our heads.

“You can’t stop my bleeding if I’m not bleeding.”

I offered to carry him, but Maytera Marble refused, saying he weighed nothing. Later I was to find that she was not far wrong; I had lifted younger brothers who weighed more.

Nettle asked who had shot him.

“Troopers from Trivigaunte.” He tried to smile, achieving only a grimace. “They’re down here now, my child. They were digging trenches east of the city looking for a tunnel near the surface, and found one. They think Silk’s with us.” He gasped. “But they’d try to stop us anyway. Sphigx commands it.”

I said, “We have to do the will of Pas.”

“Yes, my son. Never forget what you just said.”

By that time we had nearly reached the sleepers. Nettle ran ahead and woke up Remora, knowing that where there is no doctor an augur makes the best substitute; but Quetzal would not let him see his wound. “I’m an old man,” he said. “I’m ready to die. Let me go fast.” Yet he did not die until the following day, when we had begun to cross the abyss.

Remora brought him the Peace, and when it was over Quetzal gave him his gammadion, saying, “Your turn now, Patera. You were cheated by Scylla, but you’ll have to guide the Chapter in the Short Sun Whorl.”

(So it came to be. Although there are many other holy men here, His Cognizance Patera Remora heads what people from other cities call the Vironese Faith. I am adding this note because I know that not all of my readers came from Viron, and as Nettle’s copies are themselves copied, still more will be unfarniliar with the Chapter.)

But I am running ahead of my account. When Quetzal would no more answer our questions than permit us to treat his wound, we asked Maytera Marble what had happened.

“I was lying awake,” she said, “thinking things over. How we’d seen Mainframe, and about dear Chenille and Auk, and Patera Silk and Hyacinth. Wondering, too, whether my husband was still alive, and, well, various things.

“I saw His Cognizance get up and start down the tunnel, so I told Mucor not to worry, I’d be back soon, and went after him and asked where he was going. He said he was afraid there might be danger ahead, so since he couldn’t sleep he was going to see. I said he shouldn’t risk himself like that, that he should send Macaque or one of the other boys.”

She broke down at that point, sobbing uncontrollably, and cried for so long that many of her listeners left to talk among themselves; but Nettle and I stayed, with Remora, Scleroderma, and a few others.

When she had regained her self-possession, she continued, “I wanted him to send someone else. He ordered me to go back, and I said thanks be to Pas that I’m a laywoman now and don’t have to obey, because I’m not going to let you run off alone like this, Your Cognizance, and get killed. I’m going with you. He said he knew these tunnels because he’d come down here alone to make the Ayuntarniento talk to him when they didn’t want to, and he knew the dangers. But I wouldn’t leave.”

Nettle said, “This isn’t your fault, Maggie. I don’t know how it happened, but I know you, and it can’t be.” The rest of us seconded her.

Maytera Marble shook her head. “After we’d walked a long, long way we came to a crossing where four tunnels met. I asked which way we were going, and he said he was turning right, but I had to go back. Then he went into the right-hand tunnel. It was the darkest, the one he went into was. I followed him, and for a little while I saw him up ahead, but he wouldn’t slow down. We were both practically running. Then I really did run as fast as I could, but I lost sight of him. I walked on and on, and there were these tunnels off to the side but I always kept to the one I was in. Then there was a big iron door and I couldn’t go any farther, so I went back. I got to the place—”

She choked and sobbed. “Where the tunnels crossed, and I could hear him walking. Not the way he had been when I’d been following him, but slowly, stumbling every step or two. He was a long way off, but I had good ears and I gave them to Marble.”

Nettle looked puzzled; I signaled her not to speak.

“So I ran some more.” Maytera Mint looked up at us, and it seemed worse to me than any weeping that her eyes were not full of tears. “He’d fallen down when I got there. He was bleeding terribly, like the animals do after the augur pulls his knife out, but he wouldn’t let me look at it, so I carried him.”

We ourselves carried him after that, carrying him in our arms like a child because we had no poles from which to make a stretcher. He directed us, for he knew where the Trivigauntis were, and down which tunnel the sleepers were coming.

(I will say nothing of our brush with the Trivigauntis; it has been talked about until everyone is tired of listening. Shrike, Scleroderma, and I had needlers, as did certain others. Scleroderma risked her life to get our wounded to safety; and as the fighting grew hotter, she was wounded and wounded again, but she continued to nurse us when her skirt was stiff with her own blood.

(She has been dead for years now; I very much regret that it has taken me so long to pay her this well-deserved tribute. Her grandchildren are very proud of her and tell everyone that she was a great woman in Viron. Nobody in Viron thought her a great woman, only a short fat woman who trudged from house to house selling meat scraps, an amusing woman with a joke for everyone, who had dumped a bucket of scraps over Silk while he sat with her on a doorstep because she felt he was patronizing her. But the truth is that her grandchildren are right, and we in Viron were wrong. She was a very great woman, second only to General Mint. She would have ridden with General Mint if she could, and she fought the Guard in Cage Street and nursed the wounded afterward, and fought fires that night when it seemed the whole city might burn. In the end, she and Shrike lost their home and their shop, all that they possessed, to the fire that swept our quarter. Even then, she did not despair.)

Quetzal had brought hundreds of cards from the Burse. He had already entrusted most of them to Remora, and he gave him the rest when we reached the landers. Some of us had thought that he had refused to have his wound bandaged for fear his cards would be stolen, but when they had been turned over to the sleepers, he still refused.

With the sleepers, we filled two landers. It was thought best to have some of them on each, because they knew much more about their operation than any of us did. As has been told many times, the monitor who controlled our lander appeared in the glasses, displayed Blue and Green to us, and asked which was our destination. No one knew, so we consulted Quetzal, although he was too weak almost to speak.

He asked to be carried to the cockpit, as we called that part of our lander which Silk had called the nose. The monitor there displayed both whorls to him, as it had to Remora, Marrow, and me; and he chose Green, and choosing died. Remora then personally carried his body back to the small sickbay; it was no easy task, because our engines were firing as never before, not even when we had left the Long Sun Whorl. As it chanced, there was a glass in this sickbay, I suppose to advise those who cared for the sick.

There was a woman named Moorgrass on board whose trade it had been to wash the bodies of the dead, and perfume them, and prepare them for burial. Remora asked her to wash and prepare Quetzal’s, and Maytera Marble and Nettle volunteered to help her. I shall never forget their screams.