Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

Chenille had gone to the mirror and grasped the sides of its ornate frame with both hands. “It’s dusty,” she told Silk. “They had dust covers over all this, but dust got in anyhow.” With a grunt of effort, she lifted the mirror from its hook; behind it was featureless plaster, somewhat lighter in color than that to either side.

Silk had risen when Saba did. He limped to the wall and rapped it with his knuckles, evoking solid thuds. Saba stared, her wide mouth working.

“Want me to put this back, Patera?” Chenille inquired.

“I don’t think so. Not yet, at least. I’ll do it, or Master Xiphias can. Can you put it down without dropping it?”

“I think so. I’m pretty strong.”

The heels of Saba’s polished riding boots came together with a click. “I apologize, Calde. I’m leaving. Again, I regret this very much.”

“Don’t go yet,” Silk said hastily. “Your Generalissimo Siyuf is bringing us thousands of—”

Saba’s cup fell to the costly carpet, splashing it and her gleaming boots with black coffee. “That’s the news I was going to tell you! You — you learned that from animal guts?”

Three busy days after Saba had dropped her coffee, Marrow the greengrocer abandoned the pleasant anticipation of the parade that was to close the market early to stare at the weary prophet nearing his stall. “Auk?” Marrow smoothed his fruit-stained apron. “Aren’t you Auk?”

“That’s me.” The prophet stepped out of the wind to lean against a table piled with oranges.

“You’re a friend of the calde’s. That’s what they say.”

“I guess.” Auk saatched his stubbled jaw. “I like him, anyhow, and I brought a ram when Kypris came. I don’t know if he likes me, though. If he don’t, I don’t blame him.”

Marrow wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You’re a friend of General Mint’s, too.”

“Everybody is now. That’s what I hear.”

“Scleroderma told me. You know her? The butcher’s wife.”

Auk shook his head.

“She knows you, and she says you used to come to Silk’s manteion, on Sun Street.”

“Yeah. I know where it is.”

“She says you’d sit in a little garden they’ve got and talk to her. To General Mint. Would you like an orange?”

“Sure, but I don’t have the money. Not that I can spend.”

“Take some. Wait a minute, I’ll get you a bag.” Marrow hurried to the back of his stall, and Auk slipped a peach into his pocket.

“Now you’re going around talking about the Plan of Pas. Would you like some bananas? Real bananas from Urbs?”

Auk looked at the price. “No,” he said.

“Free. I’m not going to charge you.”

Auk straightened up, filling his barrel of a chest with air. “Yeah. I know. That’s why I don’t want any. Listen up. I’d steal your bananas, see? That’s lily. I’d steal ’em and riffle your till, ’cause that’s the kind I am. I’m a dimber thief, and Tartaros needs cards for something we’re planning to do. Only I won’t let you give me bananas. They cost you too much, and it wouldn’t be right.”

“But—”

“Muzzle it.” Auk had begun to peel an orange, pulling away bright cusps of rind with strong, soiled fingers. “I got a mort back in the Orilla I’m supposed to take care of. She’s hungry, and she’s not used to it like me. So if you want to put oranges and maybe a couple potatoes in that sack, I’ll thank you for ’em and take ’em to her. No bananas, see? But nab the gelt off these that want to buy first. I’ll take the sack when you’re done, if you still want to give it.”

“That’s Auk the Prophet,” Marrow whispered to the crowd around his stall. “A dozen yellow apples, madame? And two cabbages? Absolutely! Very fresh and very cheap.”

A few minutes later he told Auk, “I want to take you over to Shrike’s as soon as my boy gets back. Scleroderma’s husband? He’ll let you have a bite or two of meat, I’m sure.”

There were two hundred, if not more, waiting for Auk in the Orilla, and another hundred following him. Tartaros whispered, “You are fatigued, Auk my noctolater, and cold.”

“You got the lily there, Terrible Tartaros.”

“Therefore you are liable to be impatient.”

“Not me. I been fired and cold up on the roof, when they were looking with dogs.”

“Be warned. This time the prize is greater.”

Auk shouldered their way through the crowd, halted at the door of the boarded-up shop that had been his destination, and put down the bags he carried. “Listen up, all you culls.”

The crowd hushed.

“I don’t know what you want, but I know what I want. I want to leave this stuff with the dell inside. She’s hungry, and some cullys in the market gave me this for her. If you want to see me, you’ve done it. If you want to hear me, you’ve done that, too. If it’s something else, let me give her these and we’ll talk about it.”

A voice from the crowd called, “We want you to sacrifice!”

“You’re abram. I’m no augur.” Auk pounded on the warped door. “Hammerstone! Look alive in there!”

The door opened; at the sight of the towering soldier, the crowd fell silent. “This ain’t one of the Ayuntamiento’s,” Auk shouted hastily. “He’s working for the gods like I am, only when we were corning here…” He tried to remember when they had come; although he vividly recalled watching Hammerstone free himself from tons of shattered shiprock, he could not shut his mind upon the day. “It was when the Alambrera gave up. Anyway all these trooper culls were taking shots at him, so we figured it was better for him to pull it in.”

Behind him Hammerstone hissed. “Ask if Patera’s here.” It was like receiving confidences from a thunderhead.

“Patera Incus!” Auk shouted. “We’re looking for this real holy augur named Patera Incus. Somebody said something about a sacrifice. Is Patera Incus out there?”

Voices from the back of the crowd: “You do it!”

From behind Hammerstone, Hyacinth inquired urgently, “Is there food in those? I want it.”

Tartaros whispered, “Tell them you will,” by some miracle overcoming the clamor of the crowd.

Auk was so surprised he turned to look. “What the shaggy — I mean yeah, dimber, Terrible Tartaros. Anything.” Passing both sacks to Hammerstone, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “I’ll sacrifice. You got it!”

“When?” Four men lifted a terrified brown kid over their heads; its unhappy bleats were visible, although inaudible.

“Now, Auk my noctolater.”

“Now!” Auk repeated.

A thin man whose coat and hat had once been costly asked, “You say you’re doing the gods’ will. Will a god appear?”

Auk waited for assurance from the blind god at his side, but none was forthcoming.

Others took up the question. “Will a god come?”

“What do you think?” Auk challenged them, and a hundred arguments broke out at once.

From behind Hammerstone’s green bulk, Hyacinth inquired, “Where’re we going to do it?”

“I thought you were eating.”

“She is,” Hammerstone rumbled. “I can hear her.”

The noise grew as fifty men and a dozen loud-voiced women shouted demands. Auk muttered, “Terrible Tartaros, you better tell me what to tell ’em or we could have a problem here.”

“Have I not, Auk my noctolater? You are to sacrifice, to me or to whatever god you wish.”

Auk turned to Hammerstone. “Get out of the door. I got to tell both of you, and I ain’t going to talk to her through you.”

The soldier emerged into the street, evoking another awed silence. Revealed, Hyacinth chewed and gulped, wiping her hands on her soiled gown. “That was a nectarine, I think, and I think I swallowed the pit. I can’t remember spitting it out. Maybe I chewed it up. Thelx, was it good!”