Gene Wolfe - Exodus from the Long Sun

For half a minute, their cheers silenced him.

“I am in addition — might I say comrade , Auk? A fellow sufferer at least of Auk’s.”

From the manteion floor Auk shouted, “A dimber mate!”

“ Thank you . Beset, as you should know, by woe and eager for a situation of venerational tranquility , I bethought me of this manteion, the new calde’s own , as a place to which I might retire, pray and contemplate the inscrutable ways of the gods. I had not seen it and had heard much of it during the brief days since Auk, my dear friend Hammerstone —”

“I got it right here, Patera.” Hammerstone displayed a pierced clay pot from which a feeble crimson glow proceeded.

“ Auk , are you to assist me? Is that to be our procedure? ”

A seemingly disembodied voice called, “He has to kill ’em!”

“Then he shall , and with my blessing. What of the liturgy , however? Auk? ”

Auk had climbed the steps to the altar. “I don’t know the words, Patera. You’ll have to do it.”

“I shall . And if Auk is to assist, why need my dear friend Hammerstone be excluded? Put the sacred flame to this fuel , if you will, Hammerstone.

“I obtained the key , journeyed hence , and locked myself in, counting the lock’s blessed squeakings among the treasures of my spirit . I came, I say, in search of quiet , resolved upon prayer and suppication . I found it, as I had hoped, and spent hours upon my knees , the least supplicant of the immortal gods . It is a practice I recommend to you without reservation .”

A tongue of fire had sprung up where Hammerstone fanned the wood piled on the altar.

“I was safe from all interruption . Or so I thought. Then you arrived, a tumultuous throng , elevating me to this sacred ambion. How clearly the gods speak! Surmounting Scylla had lifted me to the Prolocutorship . Now was I cautioned that the Prolocutor — I — can be no holy recluse , however he may long for peace. Pray for me, my children , as I pray for myself . Let me not forget my lesson!

“ Auk , my son. Have you the knife of sacrifice? ”

Auk drew his boot knife. “This’s all I got, Patera.”

“Then it must suffice . Bring it to me and I shall bless it.” Incus did so, tracing the sign of addition over the blade. Before he finished, Hammerstone had been forced to step back from the leaping flames.

“In a sacred ceremony more regular, I should now ask their presenters to which of the Nine , or other immortal gods , they wished to offer the fair victims. Today , however—”

Someone shouted, “To Tartaros! He’s always on him!”

“They ain’t black,” Auk told the speaker.

Incus nodded solemnly. “In the present instance that must be dispensed with. None are white . Nor are any black , as my erstwhile comrade has rightly said. Therefore each shall be offered to all the gods .”

After glancing at the first victim, Incus faced the Sacred Window, his arms and his voice raised dramatically. “ Accept all you gods, the sacrifice of this fine piglet . And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will — will—”

He got no further.

The silver radiance showed flecks of color, faded pastels that might have been shadows or phantoms, the visual illusions of disordered sight, dabs of rose and azure that blossomed and withered, shot with pearl and ebony.

Poised beside the young pig, Auk dropped his knife and fell to his knees. Momentarily it seemed that he could make out a face on the left. Then another, wholly different, on the right. A voice spoke, such a voice as Auk had never heard, filled with the roar of mighty engines. It praised him and urged him to seek something or someone. Now and again, though only now and again, he heard or at least believed he heard, a term he knew: ghost, augur, plan . Then silence.

Incus, too, was on his knees; his hands were clasped, his face that of a child.

The piglet had vanished, drawn perhaps into the Window, or perhaps merely fled through the dim manteion and out into the windy winter morning.

Hammerstone stood at rigid attention, his right hand raised in a salute.

For a time that might have been long or short, after the voice spoke no more and the half-formed colors had gone, all was silence; the congregation might have been so many statues, there in the old manteion on Sun Street, statues with starting eyes and gaping mouths.

Then the noise began. Men who had been sitting sprang to their feet; men who had been kneeling jumped up to dance upon the pews. Some howled as though in agony. Some shrieked as if in ecstasy. A woman fell in a fit, thrashing, contorted as a swatted fly, belching bloody foam as her teeth tore her tongue and lips; no one noticed her, or cared.

“He’s gone.” Auk rose slowly, still staring at the now-empty Window. More loudly, loudly enough to make himself heard by Hammerstone, he said, “He ain’t here, not any more. That was him, wasn’t it? That was Pas.”

Hammerstone’s steel arm crashed to his steel side, a sound like the clash of swords.

“Did anybody… You understand him, Patera? It sounded like he was talking about — about—” A man Auk did not know reached out and touched Auk’s coat as he might have touched the Sacred Window.

“He liked me,” Auk concluded weakly. “Kind of like he liked me, that was what it sounded like.” No one heard him.

Incus was on his feet. He tottered to the ambion; although his mouth opened and shut and his lips appeared to shape words, no words could be heard above the din. At last he motioned to Hammerstone, and Hammerstone thundered for silence.

“It is my task—” Incus’s voice had risen to a squeak; he cleared his throat. “My task to explicate for you the utterance of the god.” The recurrence of something near his accustomed singsong restored his confidence. “To gloss upon his message and relay his commands .”

A man in the second row shouted, “It was Pas, wasn’t it?”

Incus nodded, his cheeks trembling. “It was . Lord Pas , the Father of the whorl and the Builder of the Gods .” Neither he nor his hearers noticed his mistake.

“He talked to me,” Hammerstone told Auk. His voice held a dawning joy. “I seen him once, way off, reviewing the parade. This time he talked to me. Like I’m talking to you, and he gave me a order.”

Auk nodded numbly.

“Patera will have heard, won’t he? Sure he will. We’ll talk about this years from now, how Pas talked to us and gave me the order. Me and Patera.”

“Ere I commence my exegesis ,” his voice was stronger, and carried an authority that stilled the congregation, “I shall confide to you something not generally known, which I myself learned only today . There has been no announcement , but I was not sworn to secrecy . On Molpsday Great Pas granted a theophany to the — the aged worthy augur who has for innumerable decades served us as Prolocutor . His office has been attorned to me by Saving Scylla , who would doubtless see his protracted devotion rewarded with that freedom from concerns which is the perfumed ointment of superannuity . It was that, I confess , which sent me in search of tranquility , as I have related . The disquieting intelligence that the Father of the Seven had manifested himself to one whom I have been only too ready to reckon a rival .”