Gene Wolfe: Exodus from the Long Sun

Suddenly Remora was on his knees beside her. “General — ah — General. Alone here, hey? No one but, er, ourselves. May I call you Maytera?”

She ignored it. “There’ll be the question of burial. A dozen questions, really. You must have realized I’d find out.”

“I — ah — did. Indeed. Not so swiftly, however. You are most — or — perspicacious.”

“Then why didn’t you say so? Why all that nonsense about blood?”

“Because I — Incus. Patera Incus. And old Quetzal, eh? My position is, er, delicate. Imperiled. Maytera, hear me, I — ah — beg you. Yes, beg. Implore.”

She nodded. “I’m listening. What is it?”

“Incus, my prothonotary. Was. You know him?”

She shook her head. “Just tell me.”

“He’s been appointed Prolocutor. By, um, Scylla. He says it, I mean. Credits it himself, eh? Convinced. Spoke to him yesterday, but he — you…”

“Me?” For a second, Maytera Mint felt she was missing some vital clue. It dawned upon her, and she rocked backward to sit cross-legged on the carpet, her head in her hands.

“Maytera? Er, General?”

She looked up at Remora. “I was appointed by Echidna, in front of thousands of people. Is that it, Your Eminence?”

Remora’s mouth opened and shut silently.

“So you know it happened. All those witnesses. And I’ve been successful, as you say. The victorious commander, chosen for us by the gods. Even Bison and the captain talk like that, and then there’s Patera Silk.”

Remora nodded miserably.

“Everyone says he’s been appointed by Great Pas to be our calde, even Maytera Marble. He’s been successful, too, so it looks like the gods have decided to choose leaders for us, and if this Patera Incus is going to be the new Prolocutor, he’ll want to pick his own coadjutor.”

“Nor — ah — um — worse. If he — ah — old Quetzal, you know. Resourceful. Cunning. Seen it myself, hundreds of times, eh? Ayuntamiento had the force, but he’d get ’round them. Get ’round Lemur and Loris, all of them. Old man, hey? Foolish old man. What they think. His Cognizance. Quetzal. But sly, Mayt — General. Very sly. Deep.”

She made a small sound of encouragement.

“Compromise. I — ah — sense it. I am not, um, clever, General. Try to be, indeed. Try. Some have said — well, it pares no parsnips. But not like old Quetzal. Experienced, though. My — ah — self. Conferences, negotiations. And I wind it. Wind it already. Be coadjutor, Incus. Obvious, eh? First thing anybody would, er, formulate. Old Quetzal would — ah — visualize? Comprehend the whole before Incus finished. Old man. Die soon, hey? A year, two years, to — ah — fit yourself into the position, Patera. I’ll be gone. I can, um, hear him as I — we — speak. So I didn’t dare, eh? Tell you. You see my predicament? The — ah — Loris. Galago. All the rest. Chems, every one of them. I suspected it for years. Meeting with this one, that one, entire days, sometimes. Saw them up close. Quetzal knows, he must.”

“But His Cognizance wouldn’t talk about it?”

“No. Ah — no. Too sensitive. Even for me, eh? He, Incus. I told you?”

“You told me he says Scylla’s made him Prolocutor.”

“He, um, offered me…”

One bony hand pushed back the straying lock, and Maytera Mint saw how violently that hand shook. “He offered you…?”

“A — ah — appointment. A position. He was,” Remora swallowed, “not abusive. It was not, I judge, his intent to be — ah — disparage. He said that I — I refused, to be sure. His prothonotary. His, ah, I — I — I…”

Maytera Mint nodded. “I see.”

“We have been, er, companions, Maytera. Coworkers — ah — partners in peace, hey? Son and daughter of the Chapter. We have conferred, and the same — um — consecrated vision has inspired us both. I well — ah — recollect our first meeting. You averred with — um — coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you had — ah, um — executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the calde. You are a hero, um, heroine to the — ah — populace. There is talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support…”

“Be quiet,” she told him. “I haven’t had a moment to get used to the idea that the Ayuntamiento’s made up of chems, and now this.”

“If I, ah—”

“Be quiet, I said!” She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of both hands through her short brown hair. “To begin with, no, you may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I,” another breath, “may marry. We’ll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he is Prolocutor, regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make. I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn’t alter the fact. He would be our Prolocutor, though he wasn’t called so. Since he proposed that you become his prothonotary, plainly you’re not to be coadjutor any longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjutor. That being so, I’ll call you Patera.”

“My dear young woman!”

Her look silenced him. “I’m not your dear young woman, or anyone’s. I’m thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it’s no longer young. Call me General, or I’ll make your life a great deal less pleasant than it has been.”

A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was neither Mint nor Remora applauded. “Brava, my dear young general! Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage.”

He waddled over to them, a short, obese man with bright blue eyes, a cheerful round face, and hair so light as to be nearly blond. “But as for accepting an Ayuntamiento of chems, you need not trouble. I’m no chem, though I confess that the object before you is something of the kind.”

Remora gasped, having recognized him.

“This augur and I are old — I really can’t say friends. Acquaintances. You, I feel sure, are the rebels’ famous General Mint.” The stranger giggled. “Presumably you aim at supreme power, which would make you the Govern-Mint. I like that! I’m Councillor Potto. Curtain. Did you wish to speak to me?”

For a fleeting moment in which his heart nearly stopped, it seemed to Silk that he had seen Hyacinth among the cheering pedestrians. Before he could shout to his bearers, the woman turned her head and the illusion ended. He had been ready, as he realized as he settled back among the cushions, to spring out of the litter.

I need my glasses, he thought. My old ones, which I can’t possibly get back, or some new ones.

Oreb fluttered on his shoulder. “Good Silk!”

“Crazed Silk,” he told his bird. “Mad and foolish Silk. I mistook another woman for her.”

“No see.”

“My own thought exactly. Several times I’ve dreamed my mother was alive. Have I told you about that?”

Oreb whistled.

“For a minute or two after I woke up, I believed it, and I was so happy. This was like that.” Leaning from the right side of the litter, he addressed the head bearer. “You needn’t go so fast. You’ll wear yourselves out.”

The man grinned and bobbed his head.

Silk settled back again. Their speed was increasing. No doubt the bearers felt it a question of honor; when one carried the calde, one ran. Otherwise ordinary people who had never had the privilege of carrying the calde’s litter might think him on an errand of no importance. Which would never do; if his errand were of no importance, neither were his bearers.