Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 15 — To Mainframe!

“Silk say.” Settling on Auk’s extended wrist, Oreb whistled sharply to emphasize the urgency of his message. “Say Auk!”

“All right, spill it.”

Matar prodded Auk’s ribs with the muzzle of her slug gun. “The lieutenant says for you to stop leaning out of this port. She’s afraid you’ll jump out.”

Auk withdrew his head and arm. “Not me. I could, though. With our gun deck — that what you call it?”

Both Matar and Chenille nodded.

“Shaggy near on the ground like this, it’s maybe eight cubits. That’s sand down there, too, so it’d be candy.”

Matar was studying Oreb. “Where did you find that bird? I thought your calde had it.”

“Girls go,” Oreb reported hoarsely. “Say Auk.”

“He just flew down and lit on me,” Auk explained. “Me and him’s a old knot.” Gently, he stroked Oreb with his forefinger.

Chenille told Matar, “We were together down in the tunnels under our city. It was pretty rough.”

“It was, my daughter.” Incus joined the group. “It was there, however, that I received the divine favor of Surging Scylla, our patroness.”

From her seat at the front of the gondola, the lieutenant called, “What are you talking about back there?”

“Tunnels, sir.” Matar was a lean young woman two fingers smaller than most.

“There,” Incus elucidated, “I learned to load and shoot a needler.” He approached the lieutenant, his plump face wreathed in smiles. “It is an accomplishment of which very few augurs indeed can boast. I had a most excellent teacher in my faithful friend Corporal Hammerstone.”

“Girls go,” Oreb repeated. “Camels. Girl take.”

“Matar!” the lieutenant called. “Get over here.” Matar hurried to obey.

Maytera Marble caught Auk’s sleeve. “There’s something else,” she whispered. “That little cat creature Patera’s wife had is back.”

Auk nodded absently. “He’s got word from Silk, I’ll lay.”

“Something about milk and mammals,” she explained, “and strong twine off caramels. I can’t quite make out what it’s so excited about. Gib has it.”

“That’s camels in a caravan,” Auk said under his breath. “I saw ’em, and I saw troopers going after ’em. Now I got to take the dell and her jefe before that flash little butcher does it and nabs the credit.”

The flat crack of a needler came from the front of the gondola; a woman screamed.

Silk had been watching two distant Trivigauntis probe the desert sand for soil with enough cohesion to hold a mooring stake. As the faint thuddings of the heavy maul reached the cockpit, he turned to the pilot. “Could we take off without untying those ropes?”

“The mooring lines?” The pilot shook her head.

“That’s unfortunate. It might have saved lives.” He sat down beside Hyacinth again and took her hand, listening to the moan of a winter wind that raised sand devils in the distance.

“We ought to have half a dozen more,” the pilot told him. “We will, too, pretty soon. We use twenty-four at home.”

“You have five already.” The number suggested Hyacinth’s five fingers; Silk raised them to his lips, kissing them and the cheap and foolish ring that had been the only ring they had. His padded leather seat lifted sharply beneath him, a forceful upward push like that of Blood’s floater rising from the grassway. “Feel that?” the pilot said.

Hyacinth pointed. “Something flashed way over there.” She swung wide the pane they had opened for Tick.

“Don’t do that,” the pilot told her. “We’ve got plenty of cold air in here already.”

Silk put his own finger to his lips. Almost beyond the edge of hearing, faint, irregular booms filled the intervals between the blows of the maul. “They’re firing,” he informed the pilot. “I know the sound from the fighting in our city.”

Then the gondola heaved beneath them again, faster than the moving room had ever moved, and wilder even than Oosik’s armed floater — rocked and shook them as it soared into the air.

Nearer than the besieged caravan, a slug gun boomed, loud among the gondola’s tormented creaks and groans. Reeling, the pilot jerked out her needler. Hyacinth knocked it from her hand and rammed both thumbs into her eyes, kicking savagely at her knees until both she and the pilot fell.

“What are you doing?” Auk inquired.

“Dropping ballast.” Silk pointed. “If you’ll look down there, you should see something like smoke falling from under the rear gondola.”

Auk thrust his head and shoulders through the opening left by a shot-out pane of glass. “Yeah.”

“That’s desert sand,” Hyacinth explained. “They started shoveling more on as soon as we got down, and the pilot told us about it. You can make this go up with the engines, or pull it down with them. That’s what we did when we landed. But if you want to fly high up for a long while, the easiest way’s to drop sand like he’s doing.”

Chenille said, “This floor’s about level now.”

Silk nodded, pointing toward the bubble in a horizontal tube on the instrument panel.

Auk took the seat nearest him. “If you want me to, I can get somebody else to do this. Even that pilot. I’d have one of ours sit here to watch her.”

“She’s blind,” Silk told him. He threw a lever on the instrument panel. “Hyacinth blinded her. I saw it.”

“She’s just got sore eyes, Patera. She’ll be dandy.”

Hyacinth sat on Silk’s left. “You like this, don’t you?”

“I love it — and I’m terrified by it at the same time. I’m afraid I’m going to kill us all; but the pilot or another Trivigaunti might do so intentionally, and I certainly won’t. But…” His voice trailed away.

“Even if we had a pilot we could trust, you’d want to.”

He cleared his throat. “We do have a pilot we can trust — me. I’m not very experienced as yet, but there must have been a time when that woman wasn’t either.”

Chenille sat down next to Hyacinth. “You poke her glims?”

Hyacinth nodded. “She was going to shoot us, Chen.”

“No shoot!” Oreb sailed into the cockpit.

“Right,” Hyacinth told him. “That’s what I thought, but we had shooting anyway when Auk’s culls fought it out with the troopers watching the general.”

“Only Patera’s still sort of bothered by what you did to her. I can tell.”

Silk glanced at Chenille. “Am I so transparent as that?”

“Sure.” She grinned. “Listen, Patera. Do you think us dells at Orchid’s were always really polite? Do you think we always said please and thank you, and excuse me, Bluebell, but that gown you’ve got on looks a whole lot like one of mine?”

“I don’t know,” Silk admitted. “I would hope so.” From his shoulder, Oreb eyed him quizzically.

“You think I’m rough because I’m big, and you think those dells from Trivigaunte are because they don’t wear makeup, and they had needlers and slug guns. I never had to fight a lot at Orchid’s because I was the longest dell there. You know where Hyacinth comes on me?”

“I believe I do, yes.”

“Without those heels she always wears, the top of her head doesn’t even hit my shoulder. She’s beautiful, too, like you always say. The whole time she lived there, she was the best-looking dell Orchid had, and Orchid would tell you so herself. You know who looks the most like Hy now? It’s Poppy, and Poppy looks like Hy about as much as a sham card looks like a lily one. You know how that is? They look the same till you look hard, but when you do you know it’s not even close. The gold in the sham one looks brassy, and it feels greasy. You look at Hy, at her eyes and nose. Look at her chin. Just look! The first couple weeks I knew her I couldn’t see her chin without feeling like a toad in the road.” The huskiness that affects women’s voices when they speak of matters of genuine importance entered Chenille’s. “Poppy’s cute, Patera. Hy’s real gold.”

“I know.”

“So just about everybody hated her.” Chenille coughed. “I nearly did myself. The second or third day—”

“Second,” Hyacinth interjected.

“She came to the big room with a mouse under both eyes. Orchid threw a fit. But you know what?”

Silk shook his head; Hyacinth said, “That’s plenty, Chen,” and he swiveled his seat to face Chenille. “Please tell me. I promise you that I won’t hold it against her, whatever it is.”

“No talk,” Oreb croaked.

“I was going to tell you what happened next, but I’ll skip it. She doesn’t want me to, and she’s probably right. Only she learned fast. She had to, or she’d of been killed. A couple days after that I saw a dell shove her, and Hy tripped her and wrapped her with a chair. A lot of the other dells saw it too, and they left her alone. Are you wanting to ask something?”

Silk said, “No.”

“I kind of thought you were, that you were about to ask me if Hy and I ever got into it.”

Hyacinth shook her head.

“If I could’ve worn her clothes, maybe we would. Or if she could’ve worn mine. We weren’t a knot, either, I’d be lying if I said we were. For one thing, she wasn’t there long enough. I didn’t like her a whole lot, even, but there were things I liked about her. I told you one time.”

Auk said, “Sitting in that thing they got for the grapes back at your manteion, Patera. I was there.”

Silk nodded. “Yes, I remember. I could tell you what you said, Chenille, almost word for word — not because my memory’s remarkable, but because Hyacinth is so important to me.”

He turned away to scan the instrument panel and the cloud-smeared sky, then turned to Auk. “As a favor, would you please bring Sciathan?”

“Sure.” Auk rose. “Only I got to talk to you about those engines, see? I need you to tell me what you did to ’em, and if we’re going to lose any more.”

“I’ll get him,” Hyacinth said, and left the cockpit before Silk could stop her.

Chenille leaned nearer Silk. “She thinks you ought to be proud of her. I do too.”

He nodded.

“Only you’re not, and it hurts. The first time you saw her she had a azoth, and you had to jump out the window to get away. Isn’t that right? Moly told me.”

“It was terrifying,” Silk admitted. Although he was not perspiring, he wiped his face with the hem of his robe. “The azoth cut through a stone windowsill. I don’t believe I will ever forget it.”

Auk said, “You think she was just some village chit after that, Patera?”

“No. No, I didn’t. I knew exactly what she was.”

He was silent then until Sciathan came into the cockpit and bowed, saying, “Do you desire to speak to me, Calde Silk?”

“Yes. Have you flown an airship like this one?”

“Never. I have flown with my wings many times, but we crew have nothing like this save the Whorl itself, and that is flown by Mainframe, not by us.”

“I understand. Just the same, you know a great deal about updrafts and downdrafts and storms; more than I’ll ever learn. I’ve been flying this airship since a gust dispatched for our benefit by Molpe — or the Outsider, as I prefer to believe — returned us to the air. Now I want to leave the controls for a while. Will you take my place? I’d be extremely grateful.”

The Flier nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes! Thank you, Calde Silk. Thank you very much!”

“Then sit here.” Silk left his seat, and Sciathan slid into it. “There are no reins, nor is there a wheel one turns, as there is in a floater. One steers with the engines. Do you understand?”

Sciathan nodded, and Auk cleared his throat.

“A west wind is carrying us toward Mainframe. We could fly faster, but it may be wise to conserve fuel. These dials give the speeds of all eight engines; as you see, four are no longer operating.”

As quickly as he could, Silk outlined what he had learned of the functions of the levers and knobs on the panel; as soon as the Flier seemed to comprehend, Silk turned to Auk. “You wanted to know what I did to the engines. I did very little. I climbed up there into the cloth-covered body.”

Auk said, “Sure. I knew you must of.”

“Most of the space — it’s enormous — is occupied by rows of huge balloons. There are bamboo walkways and wooden beams.”

“I been on some.”

“Yes, of course; you’d have had to in the fighting. What I was going to say is that there are tanks and hoses, too. I’d found a clamp, a simple one such as a carpenter might use.”

Silk paused to glance at the bird on his shoulder. “It was then that Oreb joined me; I’d just picked it up. Anyway I put it on a hose, I suppose a fuel hose, and screwed it closed as tightly as I could. I doubt that it stopped the flow entirely, but it must have reduced it very considerably. It shouldn’t be hard to find when you know what to look for.”

Auk rubbed his chin. “Don’t sound like it.”

“For my conscience’s sake, I should tell you that I lied to Major Hadale — or anyway, I came very close to lying. She asked whether I could repair the engines; and I said, quite honestly I believe, that I could not. One speaks of repairs when a thing is broken. To the best of my knowledge, the engines we’ve lost aren’t; but if they were, I wouldn’t have the faintest notion how they might be repaired — thus I told her truthfully that repairing them was beyond my power. It was not a lie, though I certainly intended it to deceive her. If I’d said I might be able to set them in motion again, she would have had me beaten, I imagine, to compel me to do it.”

Without turning toward them, Sciathan nodded vigorously.

“I’ll ask Patera Incus to shrive me later today. Will you excuse me now? I… I would like very much to be alone.”

As he left the cockpit, Auk told his back, “Get him to tell you how he charmed the slug gun.”

A flimsy door of canvas stretched over a bamboo frame was all that separated the cockpit from a narrow aisle lined with green-curtained cubicles. Hearing a familiar voice, Silk pushed aside the curtain on his right.

The cubicle seemed overfilled by a bunk, a small table, and a stool; Nettle occupied the stool, holding a needler, and Saba smiled in a way that Silk found painful from the bunk.

“Poor girl,” Oreb muttered.

Silk traced the sign of addition in the air. “Blessed be you, General Saba, in the Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the Gods, in that of Gracious Echidna, His Consort, in those of their Sons and their Daughters alike, in that of the Overseeing Outsider, and in the names of all other gods whatsoever, this day and forever. So say I, Silk, in the name of their youngest, fairest child, Steely Sphigx, Goddess of Hardihood and Courage, Sabered Sphigx, the glad and glorious patroness of General Saba and General Saba’s native city.”

“Gracious of you, Calde. I thought you’d come to gloat.”

Nettle shook her head. “You don’t know him.”

“I came — or at least. I left the cockpit — to escape my friends,” Silk told Saba. “I had no more than stepped out when I heard you and looked in. ‘When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans, we spoil them ourselves.’ I read that when I was a boy, and I’ve learned since how very true it is.”

Nettle said, “She was telling me about Trivigaunte, Calde. I don’t think I’d want to live there, but I’d like to see it.”

“We go in for towers.” Saba smiled. “We say it’s because we build such good ones, but maybe we build good ones because we build so many of them. Towers and whitewash, and wide, clean streets. Your city looks,” she paused, searching for a telling word, “squatty, like a camp. Squatty and dirty. I know you love it, but that’s how it looks to us.”

Silk nodded. “I understand. The interiors of our houses are clean, I believe, for the most part; but our streets are filthy, as you say. I was trying to do something about it, and a great many other things, when I was arrested.”

“Not by me,” Saba told him. “I didn’t order it.”

“I never thought you did.”

“But you were talking to the enemy without telling us. If—” Saba’s voice broke, and Oreb croaked in sympathy.

“We each have our sorrows.” Silk let the green curtain fall behind him. “I won’t ask you to palliate mine, but I may be able to ease yours. I’ll try. What were you about to say?”

“I started to say I’d put in a word for you back home, that’s all. Because we’ll get you again when we get back this airship. If Siyuf’s not running your city yet, she soon will be.” Saba chuckled wryly. “Then I remembered where I stand. I’d forgotten, talking to this girl. I’m the general who went crazy and turned the airship east when it ought to have been headed home. That’s what Hadale told them at the Palace, that I’d gone crazy. They’ll think it was treachery and she was covering for me.”

“You weren’t insane,” Silk told her. “You were possessed by Mucor, at my urging. You were possessed in the same way at my dinner. Others must have told you about it — Major Hadale, particularly, since she is your subordinate.”

“I didn’t want to hear it. Is Hadale your prisoner too?”

Silk shook his head. “She left the airship with most of your pterotroopers to capture a caravan. That let Auk and Gib and their friends overcome the rest.”

Nettle held up her needler. “We fought too, Horn and me both. We’d fought hoppies already for General Mint, but a lot of Auk’s people had never fought before. Hardly any of the women.” To Saba she added, “Your pterotroopers were good, but our hoppies were better. You couldn’t panic them.”

“I’m sure you acquited yourself creditably,” Silk told her. “I, unfortunately, did not. Hyacinth knocked a needler from the pilot’s hand and subdued her. I picked it up and held it, feeling an utter fool. I couldn’t fire for fear of hitting Hyacinth, and with the needler in my hand I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Then someone back here started shooting. Slugs came into the cockpit, and it was only by the favor of a god that all three of us weren’t killed.”

Silk paused, reflecting. “Have I thanked you, General, for your obvious goodwill? I should, and I do. I’ll see to it that you’re not mistreated, of course.”

Saba shrugged. “That man Auk said I could stay in here, which was nice of him. Those were my jailers that almost shot you. I like this girl better.”

She fell silent, and Silk found himself listening to the hum of the engines.

“My pterotroopers fought alongside Mint’s when we were the only Trivigauntis in Viron, Calde. We fought beside your Guard to get you out of that place outside the city, too. If I said I was planning to put in a good word for you already when we left Viron, would you believe it?”

“Of course.”

“I wasn’t, but I should have been. I was thinking about covering my own arse, as if that mattered.”

“Don’t torment yourself, General, I beg you.” Silk pushed back the curtain that served the cubicle as a door. “In the second gondola there was a hatch toward the rear that opened onto the roof. Is there a similar hatch here?”

“Sure. I’ll show you, if it’s all right with her.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Silk stepped back and let the curtain fall.

A rope ladder rolled and tied at the ceiling marked the hatch. Pulling a cord released the ladder. The light wooden hatch was held shut by a simple peg-and-cord retainer. Silk removed the peg, threw back the hatch, and climbed out onto the open, empty deck.

With a glad cry Oreb left his shoulder, racing the length of the gondola, shooting ahead of the airship until he was nearly lost to Silk’s myopic vision, wheeling and soaring.

More circumspectly, Silk followed until he stood at the gondola’s semicircular prow, the toes of the scuffed old shoes he had never found time to replace hanging over the aching void. He looked down at them, seeing them as if he had never seen them before, noting as items new and strange small cracks in their leather, and the ways in which the shoes had shaped themselves to his feet. Beside his left shoe there was a brass socket set into the deck. Presumably a flagpole would be put in it when the airship took part in military ceremonies in Trivigaunte.

Even more probably, similar sockets ringed the entire deck. Light poles would support railings of rope, used perhaps when dignitaries stood where he was standing now, bemedaled women in gorgeous uniforms waving to the populace below. It was even possible that the Rani herself had stood upon this very spot.

He recalled then that he had wished for flags to be raised on this airship to signal the approach of Siyuf’s horde. The signalmen (who would more plausibly have been signalwomen) would have kept watch from here with telescopes, would have run their flags up one of the immense cables from which the gondola hung. Below them -

Some minute motion of the gondola, some response to a tiny variation in the wind, nearly caused him to lose his balance; he came very close to putting his right foot forward to regain it, and would have fallen if he had, ending the persistent pain in its ankle.

It would not have been such a bad thing, perhaps, to have fallen. If one did not dread death, it would be an experience of unparalleled interest; to fall from such a height as this, a height greater than that of the loftiest mountain, would provide ample time for observation, prayer, and reflection, surely.

Eventually his body would strike the ground, probably in some unpeopled spot. His spirit would return to the Aureate Path, where once he had encountered his mothers and fathers; his bones would not be found — if they were found at all — until Nettle’s children were grown. To the living he would not die but disappear, a source of wonder rather than sorrow. All men died, and all died very quickly in the eyes of the Outsider. Few died so well as that.

He peered upward to study the Aureate Path as it stretched before the airship’s blunt nose, and again felt himself — very slightly — lose balance. If his parents waited there for him, they were not to be seen by the eyes of life.

One father had been Chenille’s father as well. He, Silk, who had possessed no family save his mother, had gained a sister now. Although neither Chenille nor Hyacinth nor any other woman could take his mother’s place. No one could.

Recalling the unmarked razor he had puzzled over so often, he fingered his stubbled cheeks. He had not shaved in well over a day; no doubt his beard was apparent to everyone. It was better, though, to know to whom the razor had belonged.

He looked down at his shoes again. Beneath them, Sciathan sat at the controls, steering a structure a hundred times larger than the Grand Manteion with the touch of a finger. There was no Sacred Window on the airship — that would have been almost impossible — but there was a glass somewhere. Idly Silk found himself wondering where it was. Not in the cockpit, certainly, nor in Saba’s cubicle. Yet it would almost have to be in this gondola, in which the Rani’s officers ate and slept, and from which they steered her airship. Perhaps in the chartroom; he had climbed to this deck from that chartroom without seeing it — but then he had been occupied with his thoughts.

Too much so to do anything to relieve Saba’s depression. Yes, too self-centered for that. Saba and her pterotroopers might be outnumbered at present, but -

Hands upon his shoulders. “Don’t jump, Calde!”

He took a cautious step backward. “I hadn’t intended to,” he said, and wondered whether he lied.

He turned. Horn’s pale face showed very clearly what Horn thought. “I’m sorry I frightened you,” Silk told him, “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Just come away from the edge, please, Calde. For me?”

To soothe Horn, he took a step. “You can’t have been up here when I came — I would have seen you. You weren’t on the roof of our old gondola either, because I looked back at it. Nettle told you I asked about a hatch, of course.”

“A little farther, Calde. Please?”

“No. This is foolish; but to reassure you, I’ll sit down.” He did, spreading his robe over his crossed legs. “You see? I can’t possibly fall from here, and neither can you, if you sit. I need someone to talk to.”

Horn sat, his relief apparent.

“When I was in the cockpit, I wanted to leave it in order to pray — that was what I told myself, at least. But when I was up here alone and might have prayed to my heart’s content, I did not. I contemplated my shoes instead, and thought about certain things. They weren’t foolish things for the most part, but I feel very foolish for having thought so much about them. Are you going with Auk when he leaves the whorl? That’s what he’s going to do, you know. The Crew, as Sciathan calls the people of his city, have some of the underground towers Mamelta showed me — intact underground towers — and they’re going to give Auk one. I forget what Mamelta called them.”

“You never told me about towers, Calde.”

Silk did, striving unsuccessfully to make his description concise. “That isn’t all I can recall, but that’s all that’s of importance, I believe, and now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone, except for Doctor Crane while we were fellow-captives, and Doctor Crane is dead.”

“I never even got to see him,” Horn said. “I wish I had because of the way you talk about him. Is the underwater boat like this airship?”

“Not at all. It’s all metal — practically all iron, I’m certain. There’s a hole at the bottom, too, through which the Ayuntamiento can launch a smaller boat. You’d think that would sink the big one, wouldn’t you? But it didn’t, and we got away through that hole, Doctor Crane and I.” Silk paused, lost in thought. “There are monstrous fish in the lake, Horn, fish bigger than you can imagine. Chenille told me that once, and she’s quite correct.”

“You wanted to know if I was going with Auk. Nettle and me, because either way we’d do it together.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t asked us, but I don’t think Nettle would want to if he did. There’s my father and mother back home, and my brothers and sisters, and Nettle’s family.”

“Of course,” Silk repeated.

“I like Chenille. I like her a lot. But Auk’s not what I call a good man, even if Tartaros did choose him to enlighten. You remember what I told you about him that time? He’s still the same, I think. The people he’s got with him aren’t much better, either. He calls them the best thieves in the whorl, did you know that, Calde? Because of stealing this airship.”

“They’re not all thieves,” Silk said, “though Auk may like to pretend they are. Most are just poor people from the Orilla and our own quarter. I doubt that many real thieves have the sort of faith something like this requires.” He fell silent, by no means sure that he should say more.

“What is it, Calde?”

“I doubt that all of them will go. Chenille will, I think, though she would be a wealthy woman in Viron; but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to see more than a few of the others hold back.”

“You’re not going, are you, Calde?”

Silk shook his head. “I would like to. I don’t believe Hyacinth would, however; and these are Auk’s people when all is said and done. Not mine.”

“Then Nettle and me will come home with you and Hyacinth. Moly wants to go back, too. She wants to find her husband and get back to building their daughter. And there’s Patera Incus and Patera Remora.”

Silk nodded. “But we will not be numerous enough to keep the Trivigauntis we have on board from reclaiming their airship, even so. Had you thought of that, Horn? Not unless a great many of Auk’s followers desert him at the last moment. It had just occurred to me when you laid hold of my shoulders.”

Horn frowned. “Can we leave the Trivigauntis in Mainframe, Calde? I can’t think of anything else we can do.”

“I can. Or at least, I believe I have, which gave me a very good reason not to step off the edge. Perhaps I needed one more than I knew.” Noticing Horn’s expression, he added, “I’m sorry if I distress you.”

Horn swallowed. “I want to tell you something, sort of a secret. I haven’t told anybody yet except Nettle. I know you won’t laugh, but please don’t tell anybody else.”

“I won’t, unless I believe it absolutely necessary.”

“You know the cats’ meat woman? She comes to sacrifice just about every Scylsday.”

Silk nodded. “Very well.”

“She likes Maytera. Moly, I mean. She came to see her one time at the palace. I wouldn’t have thought she’d walk all the way up the hill, but she did. They were sitting in the kitchen, and the cats’ meat woman—”

“Scleroderma,” Silk murmured. His eyes were on the purple slopes of far-away mountains. “It’s a puffball — it grows in forests.”

“She was the one that held General Mint’s horse for her before she charged the floaters in Cage Street,” Horn continued. “She told Moly, and naturally Moly wanted to know all about it, so they talked about that and the fighting, and how Kypris came to our manteion for the funeral. Then she said she was writing all about it, writing down everything that had happened and how she’d been right in the middle of all the most important parts.”

Silk tried not to smile, but failed.

“So she wants her grandchildren to be able to read about everything, and how she met you when you were just out of the schola, and how she walked up to the Calde’s Palace and they let her right in. I thought it was pretty funny too.”

“I think it heart-warming,” Silk told him. “We may laugh — I wouldn’t be surprised if she laughed herself — and yet she’s right. Her grandchildren are still small, I imagine, and though they’ve lived in these unsettled times themselves, they won’t remember much about them. When they’re older, they’ll be delighted to have a history written by their own grandmother from the perspective of their family. I applaud her.”

“Well, maybe I should of thought like that too, Calde, but I didn’t. To tell the truth, I got kind of mad.”

“You didn’t play some trick on her, I hope.”

“No, but I started thinking about what had happened and if she’d really been in the middle like she said. Pretty soon I saw she hadn’t at all, but you’d been there more than anybody, more even than General Mint. And what Scleroderma said about meeting you when you got out of the schola? Well, I met you then too. You used to come into our class and talk to us, and naturally I’d see you helping Patera Pike at sacrifice. So I decided I’m going to write down everything I can remember as soon as I get some paper. I’ll call it Patera Silk’s Book, or something like that.”

“I’m flattered.” This time Silk succeeded in suppressing his smile. “Are you going to write about this, too? Sitting up here talking to me?”

“Yes, I am.” Horn filled his lungs with the still, pure air. “And that’s another reason for you not to jump off. If you did, I’d have to end it right here.” He rapped the deck with his knuckles. “Right up here, and then maybe I’d wonder a little about why you did, and then it would be over. I don’t think that would be a very good ending.”

“Nor would it be,” Silk agreed.

“But that’s the way you were thinking of ending it. You were standing too close to the edge to of been thinking about anything else. Whats the trouble, Calde? Something’s — I don’t know. Hurt you somehow, hurt you a lot. If I knew what it was, maybe I could help, or Nettle could.”

Without rising, Silk turned away; after a moment, he slid across the varnished wood so that he could let his legs dangle over the edge. “Come here, Horn.”

“I’m afraid to.”

“You aren’t going to fall. Feel how smooth the motion of the airship is. Nor am I going to push you off. Did you think I might? I won’t, I promise.”

Face down, Horn crept forward.

“That’s the way. It’s such a magnificent view, perhaps the most magnificent that either of us will ever see. When you mentioned your class, you reminded me that I’m supposed to be teaching you — it’s one of my many duties, and one that I’ve neglected shamefully since you and I talked in the manse. As your teacher, it’s my pleasure as well as my duty to show you things like this whenever I can — and to make you look at them as well, if I must. Look! Isn’t it magnificent?”

“It’s like the skylands,” Horn ventured, “except we’re a little closer and it’s daytime.”

“A great deal closer, and the sun has already begun to narrow. We haven’t much time left in which to look at this. A few hours at most.”

“We could again tomorrow. We could look out of one of those windows. All the gondolas have them.”

“This airship may crash tonight,” Silk told him, “or it may be forced to land for some reason. Or the whorl below us might be hidden by clouds, as it was when I looked out of one of the windows earlier today. Let’s look while we can.”

Horn crept a finger’s width nearer the edge.

“Down there’s a city bigger than Viron, and those tiny pale dots are its people. See them? They look like that, I believe, because they’re staring up at us. In all probability, they’ve never seen an airship, or seen anything larger than the Fliers that can fly. They’ll speculate about us for months, perhaps for years.”

“Is it Palustria, Calde?”

Silk shook his head. “Palustria doesn’t even lie in this direction, so it’s certainly not Palustria. Besides, I think we’ve gone farther than that already. We were hoisted up early this morning, and we’ve been flying south or east ever since. A well-mounted man can ride there in less than a week.”

“I’ve never seen off-center buildings like those,” Horn ventured. “Besides, there aren’t any swamps. Everybody says Palustria’s in the middle of swamps.”

“They’ve turned them into rice fields, or so I’m told — if not all of them at least a large part of them, no doubt the part closest to their city. Their rice crop’s failed this year because of the drought. They say it’s the first time the rice crop’s failed in the entire history of Palustria.” For a while Silk sat in silence, staring down at the foreign city below.

“Can I ask you something, Calde?”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“Why isn’t it windier up here? I’ve never been up on a mountain, but Maytera read something about that to us one time, and it said it was real windy just about all the time. Looking down, it seems like we’re going fast. It’s not taking us very long at all to go over this, and it’s big. So the wind ought to be in our faces.”

“I asked our pilot the same thing,” Silk told him, “and I was ready to kick myself for stupidity when she told me. Look there, up and out, and you can see one of the engines that’s still running. Notice how slowly it’s turning? You can almost make out the wooden arms; but when the engines were going fast, those were just a blur, a shimmer in front of each engine.”

“Like a mill.”

“Somewhat; but while the arms of a windmill are turned by the wind, these are turned by their engines to create a wind that will blow us wherever we wish. They’re making very little wind at present — just enough to keep us from tumbling about. We’re being carried by a natural wind; but because we’re blown along by it, like a dry leaf or one of those paper streamers the wind tore off our victory arch, it seems to us that the air is scarcely moving.”

“I think I understand. What if we turned around and tried to go the other way?”

“Then this still air would at once become a gale.”

The smooth wooden deck on which Silk was sitting tilted, seeming almost to fall away from under him.

“Patera!”

He felt Horn clutch his robe. The sound of the remaining engines rose. “I’m all right,” he said.

“You could’ve slid off! I almost did.”

“Not unless the gondola were to slope much more steeply.” A vagrant breeze ruffled Silk’s straw-colored hair.

“What happened?” From the sound of Horn’s voice; he was far from the edge now, perhaps halfway to the hatch.

“The wind increased, I imagine. The new wind would have reached our tail first; presumably it lifted it.”

“You still want to die.”

The plaintive note in Horn’s voice was more painful than an accusation. “No,” Silk said.

“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong? Please, Calde?”

“I would if I could explain it.” The city was behind them already, its houses and fields replaced by forbidding forests. “I might say that it’s an accumulation of small matters. Have you ever had a day when everything went amiss? Of course you have — everyone has.”

“Sure,” Horn said.

“Can you come a little closer? I can scarcely hear you.”

“All right, Calde.

“I also want to say that it has to do with the Plan of Pas; but that isn’t quite right. Pas, you see, isn’t the only god who has a plan. I’ve just understood this one, perhaps while I was still in the cockpit, as it’s called, guiding this airship and thinking — when I didn’t have to think much about that — about Hyacinth’s overpowering our pilot. Or perhaps only when I was talking with General Saba, just before I came up here. It might be fair to say that I understood in the cockpit, but that the full import of what I had understood had come only when I was talking with Nettle and General Saba.”

“I think I get it.”

“On the other hand, I could say that it was about facts that the Outsider confided on my wedding night. You see, Horn, I was enlightened again then. Nothing I learned at the schola had prepared me for the possibility of multiple enlightenments, but clearly they can and do take place. Which would you like to hear about first?”

“The little things going wrong, I guess. Only please come back here with me, Patera. You said it was hard to hear me. Well, I can hardly hear you.”

“I’m perfectly safe, Horn.” Silk discovered that he was grasping the edge of the deck; he forced himself to relax, placing his hands together as if in prayer. “We might begin anywhere, but let us begin with Maytera Marble. With Moly, as she asks us to call her now. Do you think her name was really Moly — Molybdenum — before she became a sibyl? Honestly.”

“That’s what she says, Calde.” Horn was moving closer; Silk heard the faint scrub of his coat and trousers against the planking.

“I don’t. She hasn’t told me she’s lying, but I hope she will soon.”

“I — I don’t think so, Calde.” Horn’s tones grew deeper as he asserted his opinion. “She’s really careful about that kind of thing.”

“I know she is. That’s why it’s such a torment to her. I’m going to ask Patera Incus to shrive me. I hope that it will lead her to ask him — or Patera Remora, though Incus would be better — to do the same.”

“I still—”

“Why are there so few chems now, Horn? There the Plan of Pas has clearly gone awry. He made them both male and female, and clearly intended them to reproduce and so maintain their numbers — perhaps even increase them. Let us assume that he peopled our whorl with equal numbers of each sex, which would seem to be the logical thing for him to do. What went wrong?” It was becoming colder, or Silk more sensitive to the cold. He drew his thick winter robe about him.

“I don’t know, Calde. The soldiers sleep a lot, and naturally they can’t, you know, build anybody then.”

“Ours do, at least. Most of the soldiers in most other cities are dead. Most have been dead for a century or longer. Pas should have made female soldiers, like the troopers from Trivigaunte. He didn’t, and that was clearly an error.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that, Patera.”

“Why not, if I think them true? Would Pas like me better if I were a coward? Some male chems were artisans and farm laborers, from what I know of them, and a few were servants — butlers and so forth. But most were soldiers, and the soldiers fought for their cities and died, or slept as Hammerstone did. The female chems, who were largely cooks or maids, wore out and died childless. Nearly every soldier must have courted a cook or a maid, three hundred years ago. And nearly every such cook and maid must have loved a soldier. How likely is it that such a couple would be reunited by chance after centuries?”

“It could happen.” Horn sounded defiant.

“Of course it could. All sorts of unlikely things can, but they rarely do. Something has been troubling her ever since she and Hammerstone were married, and I believe I know what it is. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Even if you’re right,” Horn said, “that’s not a very good reason to want to die.”

“I disagree, but let’s move on. In the cockpit, I realized that Chenille and Hyacinth had fought when both of them were at Orchid’s — she was the woman who paid for the funeral at which Kypris spoke to us, not that it matters. My sister—”

“I didn’t know you had a sister, Calde.

Silk smiled. “Forget I said that, please; it was a slip of the tongue. I was about to say that Chenille blacked Hyacinth’s eyes, which isn’t surprising since she’s considerably larger and stronger. Nor do I blame her. If Hyacinth has forgiven her, and she clearly has, I can do no less. But they lied about it, both of them, and I found it very painful. I can’t prove they lied, Horn; but if you’d been there, you would have caught the lie just as I did. Hyacinth identified an incident to which Chenille was about to refer before Chenille specified it. That could only mean that Chenille was much more closely involved than she pretended.”

A wide river dotted with ice divided the forest below. Silk leaned forward to study it. “You’ll say that what I’ve told you is not a good reason to die. Again, I disagree.”

“Calde…?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“You don’t look like her. Like Chenille. She’s got that red hair, but it’s dyed. Underneath her hair’s dark, I think. Your eyes are blue, but hers are brown, and like you said she’s real big and strong. You’re tall and pretty strong, but…”

“You need not proceed, Horn, if it embarrasses you.”

“What I mean is she’d be a lot like Auk if she was a man. You’d be a better runner, but — but…”

“We are alike in certain ways, I suppose.”

“That’s not it.” Horn was less at ease than ever. “Since you’ve been calde everybody talks about the old one. Then last night before those women came you were talking about his will. Nettle told me, and this’s her idea, really. He said he had an adopted son, and this son was going to be the next one. What Nettle says is he didn’t say to make it happen, he just said it would. Is that right?”

Silk nodded. “’Though he is not the son of my body, my son will succeed me.’”

“Chenille’s his real daughter, Nettle told me that too. And you’re the next calde. So if she’s your sister—”

“We will go no further with this, Horn. It has nothing to do with our topic.”

“All right. I won’t tell anybody.”

“There are so many lies in the whorl that it’s not likely anyone would credit you if you did. May I instance one more? Hyacinth subdued our pilot, Hyacinth alone. I mentioned it.”

“Yes, Calde.”

“I’ve been trying to think of an enlightening analogy for you, but I can’t. Suppose I were to say that it was like seeing Patera Incus overpower Auk. The analogy would be flawed because I’ve never supposed that Patera Incus could not fight, only that he would fight badly. I had imagined Hyacinth would be helpless in the face of violence; she spoke of taking fencing from Master Xiphias once, yet I never…”

“I can’t hear you. Can’t you turn around this way?”

“No. Come closer.” Silk found Horn’s hand and drew him nearer the edge.

“Nobody thought you could fight either, Calde.”

“I know, and they had almost convinced me of it. That was a part of the reason I broke into Blood’s — I needed to prove I wasn’t the milksop everyone took me for. Nor was I, though I was badly frightened most of the time.”

“Maybe that’s how Hyacinth felt about the pilot.” Greatly daring, Horn sat up, his legs stretched before him and his feet on the edge of the deck. “Hyacinth’s real girly when you’re around. We got lots of it this morning. She smiles whenever you look at her and holds on like she can’t stand up. She wants you to like her. Calde, you know that big cat Mucor’s got?”

Silk was staring down at a mountain valley, following the snowy rush of a young river over red stones. “You mean Lion?”

“I don’t know the name, but Lion sounds like a boy. This was a girl cat, I think, kind of gray, with long pointed ears and a little short tail. I saw it one time when I brought up Mucor’s dinner. It really liked her. It would rub up against her and smile. Cats can smile, Calde.”

“I know.”

“It kept putting its paw in Mucor’s lap so she’d pet it, but it wasn’t too sure about me. It showed me its teeth, pulling its lips back without making any noise. I was pretty scared.”

“So was I, Horn. I shot two of those horned cats once; I’m very sorry for that now.” Silk leaned forward again. “Look at that cliff, Horn. Can you see it?”

“Sure, I saw it just a minute ago. I don’t think I could climb it, but I’d like to try.”

Horn made himself speak more loudly. “I know what Hyacinth seems like to you, Calde, but she seems a lot like Mucor’s cat to Nettle and me. She’s respectful to Moly, though.”

Silk glanced over his shoulder. “You’re right, there is a great deal of good in Hyacinth, though I would love her even if there were none.”

Horn shook his head. “I was going to say she sort of hits it off with Hammerstone. He can be awful rough.”

“Yes, I’m well aware of it.”

“He likes Moly and Patera Incus, so he’s nice to them. But he treats Nettle and me like sprats, and with other people he’s like Auk. Hyacinth won’t give him half a step, and once when she got mad she called him all kinds of names. I thought I knew all those. I learned most of that stuff when I was little, but she had some I never heard. If the pilot pulled a needler on Mucor, what do you think her cat would do?”

“Come here,” Silk told him. “Sit with me. Are you afraid I’ll take you with me if I jump? I’m not going to, and I’d like you beside me.”

“I’m still pretty scared.”

“You would have climbed that cliff, given the chance. You would be no more dead falling from here.”

“All right.” Gingerly, Horn edged forward until his legs dangled over the abyss of air. Oreb settled on his shoulder.

“As I said, I’ve neglected my duty to teach you. Now I can actually show you part of the Plan. I find it enlightening, and you may, too. See the city ahead? The mountains we crossed isolate it from the west. Soon we’ll see what isolates it from the east; and if we were to turn north or south, we’d come upon barriers there as well. Some are more formidable than others, of course.”

“Their houses are like people, Calde. Look, there’s Pas, with the two heads. Even the little ones are like people lying down, see? The thatch makes it look like they’ve got blankets.”

“Good place.” Oreb bobbed on Horn’s shoulder.

“It is,” Silk agreed, “but if we weren’t used to seeing Pas pictured like this, we’d think this image the more horrible — and it is horrible — for being so large. I won’t ask if you’ve lain with a woman, Horn; it’s too personal a matter to broach save in shriving, and I know you too well to shrive you. Should you wish to be shriven, I hope you’ll go to Patera Remora.”

“All right.”

“I had not until my wedding night. Indeed, it remains my only such experience. You needn’t tell me that Hyacinth has lain with scores of men. I knew it and was acutely conscious of it; so was she. I can’t say what our experience meant to her, and perhaps it meant little or nothing. To me it was wonderful. Wonderful! I came to her as one starving. And yet—”

Still very frightened, Horn jerked his head. “I know.”

“Good. I’m glad you understand. There was a taint that came from neither Hyacinth nor me, but from the act itself. After two hours, or about that, I rested. We had done what men and women do more than once, and more than twice. I was happy, exhausted, and soiled. I felt that Echidna, particularly, was displeased; and I doubt that I would have had the courage if I had not rejected her in my heart after her theophany. You were there, I know.”

Horn nodded again. “She’s a very great goddess, Calde.”

“She is. Great and terrible. It may be that I was wrong to reject her — I won’t argue the point. I only say that I had, and felt as I did. As I’ve said, the Outsider enlightened me a second time then. I won’t tell you all that he told me — I couldn’t. But one thing was that he created Pas. The Seven, as everyone knows, are the children of Pas and Echidna; it had never occurred to me to wonder whence they themselves came. Why do you think Pas built barriers between our cities, Horn?”

The sudden question caught him off guard. “To keep them from fighting, Calde?”

“Not at all. Not only do they fight, but he knew that they would; if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have provided them with armies. No, he erected mountains and dug rivers and lakes so they could not combine against him. More specifically, so they couldn’t combine against Mainframe, the home he was to set over them.”

“Did the Outsider tell you that, Calde?”

Silk shook his head. “Hammerstong did, and Hammerstone is right. The Outsider, as he showed me, has no reason to fear our leaguing against him. We’ve done it innumerable times, just as we betray him daily as individuals. His fear — he is afraid for our sake, not his own — is that we may come to love other things more than we love him. When I was at your manteion on Sun Street, foolish people used to ask me why Pas or Scylla permitted some action that they regarded as evil, as if a god had to sign a paper before a man could be struck or a child fall ill. On my wedding night, the Outsider explained why it is that he permits what people call evil at all — not this theft or that uncleanness, but the thing itself. It serves him, you see. It hates him, yet it serves him, too. Does this make sense to you, Horn?”

“Like a mule that kicks whenever it gets a chance.”

“Exactly. That mule is harnessed like the rest and draws the wagon, however unwillingly. Given the freedom of the whorl — and even of those beyond it — evil directs us back to the Outsider. I told you I rejected Echidna; I thought I did it because she is evil, but the truth is that I did it because he is better. A child who burns its hand says the fire’s bad, as the saying goes; but the fire itself is saying, ‘Not to me, child. Reach out to him.’”

“I think I see. Calde, I’m getting pretty cold.”

“Fish heads?” Oreb inquired.

Silk nodded. “We’ll go in soon, so you and Oreb will be warm and can get something to eat; but first, have you been looking at our whorl, Horn? This is winter wheat below us, I believe. See how the sunlight plays on it, how it ripples in the wind, displaying every conceivable shade of green?”

“You still haven’t told me — maybe I shouldn’t ask you—”

“Why I was tempted to jump? It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Oreb squawked, “Look out!”

Already, Horn was sliding from the edge of the deck; the face he turned toward Silk displayed Mucor’s deathly grin.

“You know where Silk is?” Auk stepped into the cockpit and shut the flimsy door behind him.

Sciathan pointed to the ceiling, his urchin face all sharp V’s. “Upstairs, which is what you call me. I saw shoes and stockings, and the legs of trousers at the top.” He gestured toward the slanted pane before him. “The trousers were black, the shoes and stockings the same, the legs too long for the smallest augur. The tallest, I think, would not do this.”

“They ain’t there any more.” Auk bent, craning his neck to peer upward. “I ought to tell you, too. Number Seven ought to work if you start it.”

Sciathan flicked two switches and nodded appreciatively as a needle rose. “You have removed his clamp.”

“There was more to it than that. We’re working on Number Five now. They got ’em out on booms, see?”

“I have observed this. In a moment I shall tell you what else I have observed.”

“Only you can haul the booms in to fix the engines. It’s a pretty good system. We had to yank the heads and beat on the pistons some, but we didn’t hurt ’em much. What’d you see?”

“Another seated beside Silk. It is hazardous to sit thus.”

“You said it.”

“The other was almost chilled…” Sciathan paused, his head cocked. “Calde Silk comes now to General Saba’s cabin. I hear his voice.”

Leaving the cockpit, Auk saw that Saba’s curtain was drawn back. Silk stood where it had hung, and a perspiring Horn had crowded into the cubicle beside Nettle.

“ — don’t know how to put this, exactly,” Silk was saying. “I ought to have given that more thought while I was up on the roof a moment ago.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Hello, Auk. I’m glad you’re here; I was going to send Nettle for you. We’re about to return her airship to General Saba.”

Oreb bobbed in assent as Auk stared.

“I don’t mean, of course, that we’re not going to take you to Mainframe — you and Sciathan, and the rest. We are. Or rather, she is; Hyacinth and I will accompany her, with Nettle, Horn, His Eminence, Patera Remora, and Moly.”

Saba grinned at Auk. “I don’t understand this either, but I like it.”

“Of course you do,” Silk told her, “and so will Auk. We all should, because it will help every one of us.”

He turned back to Auk. “A small ceremony at which you return General Saba’s sword might be appropriate. Would you like that?”

Auk shook his head.

“It wasn’t taken from her, in any event. It’s still in that box at the foot of her bed, she tells me.”

Nettle displayed her needler. “Can I put this up?”

Auk snapped, “Keep it!”

“A very small ceremony, then — here and now. Would you get out your sword for me, General? I’ll give it to Auk, who will give it back to you. You should wear it thereafter. It will hearten your troopers, I’m confident.”

Auk declared, “We’re not giving the slug guns back.”

“Not now, at least. That will depend upon whether there are arms on the craft the Crew provides you, though I imagine there will be.”

Horn mopped his forehead. “Nobody understands this except you, Calde.”

“It’s simple enough. Neither General Saba nor I desire a war between Viron and Trivigaunte. We Vironese have seized this airship, the pride of its city.”

Horn looked to Nettle, who said, “They’d seized as.”

“Exacily. Another reason for war, which General Saba and I wish to prevent. The solution is obvious — our freedom for the airship.”

“We’re free now!”

“Nobody can be truly free without peace. Consider the alternative. When we returned to Viron, Generalissimo Siyuf would try to recapture this airship by force, while General Mint and Generalissimo Oosik tried to prevent her; it would cost five hundred lives the first day — at least that many, and perhaps more.”

Saba told Nettle, “You’re going to have to wait a little before you get a tour of Trivigaunte. When he wanted to know if I’d take you home if I got my airship back, I was too surprised to say anything. But I will, and let Auk here and the rabble we loaded first out at Mainframe, if that’s what he wants.” She bent over her footlocker. “Some of you are afraid I’m going to cross you. All of you, except your Calde, most likely.”

Auk grunted.

She straightened up, holding a sharply curved saber with a gem-studded hilt. “This is the sword of honor the Rani awarded me last year, and I’m proud of it. Maybe I haven’t worn it as much as I ought to for fear something might happen to it.”

Oreb whistled, and Nettle told Saba, “It’s beautiful!”

Saba smiled at Auk. “The girl let me keep it. I told her about it, and she said leave it where it is, Auk won’t mind.”

He muttered, “I’d like mine back. That Colonel’s got it.”

“If you come back with us, I’ll try to get it for you.”

“No cut!” Oreb hopped from Silk’s shoulder to Saba’s to examine the sword more closely.

She drew it and took a half step backward, holding it at eye level with both hands grasping the blade. “By this sword I swear that as long as Calde Silk’s on my airship, I’ll do whatever he tells me, and when I land him and his friends at their city it will be as passengers, and not prisoners.”

Silk nodded. “On the terms you have described, General, we return command to you.”

“You’re going to let me talk to the Palace on the glass and tell them what we’re doing?”

“If you choose to. You are in command.”

Saba lowered her sword. “Then if I break my oath, you can take this and break it.”

She led them through the gondola to the airy compartment from which Silk had climbed to the deck. It held cabinets, a sizable table, and two leather seats; there was a glass on the wall, next to the door. “This is the chartroom,” Saba told Silk, “the nerve center of my airship, where our navigational instruments and maps are. There’s a speaking tube that runs through officers’ quarters to the cockpit. Do you know about those? Like a glass, but only to the one place and all you can do is talk.”

“This’s where you ought to be,” Auk said, but Silk shook his head.

Saba pointed. “Right up there’s the hatch. We go up to take the angle between the ship and the sun, mostly. Now it should be zero.” She swallowed. “I’ll check it as soon as I talk to the Palace.”

Horn touched Silk’s arm. “Don’t go back, Calde. Please?”

Auk asked, “You were up there, huh? Somebody nearly got killed is what I heard.”

“He was going to jump off,” Horn told Auk. “I grabbed him and I guess I got him back, only I don’t remember, just sort of wrestling, and the roof gone, and music.” Puzzled, he stared at Silk. “Someplace down there was having a concert, I guess.”

“I saw the evil in the whorl,” Silk explained. “I thought I knew it, when I actually had no idea. A few days ago, I began to see it clearly.”

He waited for someone to speak, but no one did.

“An hour ago, I saw it very clearly indeed; and it was horrible. What was worse was that instead of focusing on the evil in myself, as I should have, I gave my attention to the evil in others. I would have told you then that I saw a great deal in Horn, for example. I still do.”

“Calde, I never said—”

“That was utterly, utterly wrong. I don’t mean that the evil isn’t there — it is, and it always will be because it is ineradicable; but seeing it alone, not merely Horn’s evil but everyone else’s too, did something to me far worse than anything Horn himself would ever do, I’m sure — it blinded me to good. Seeing only evil, I wanted with all my heart to reunite myself with the Outsider. That would itself have been an evil act, but Horn saved me from it.”

“I’m so glad.” Nettle looked at Horn with shining eyes.

“Just by coming up on the roof of this gondola, really. For Horn’s sake, I won’t go there again, though it’s such a marvelous thing to stand in the sky smiling down at the whorl that I find it difficult to renounce it; merely by standing there, I came to understand how Sciathan feels about flying.”

Auk cleared his throat. “I want to tell you about that clamp. All right if I do it now, before she talks to ’em back in Trivigaunte?”

“You found it, I assume.”

“Yeah, only that wasn’t a fuel hose. It was a lube hose.”

Saba’s eyes opened wide, “What!”

Auk ignored her. “The clamp cut the flow to where they got hot and seized. It didn’t show on the gauge up front ’cause it just measures tank temperature. The tank was all right and the pump was running, but there wasn’t much getting through. We got Number Seven busted loose, and maybe we can fix the rest.”

“They’ll never be as good as they were.” Saba sounded disgusted.

“They weren’t anyhow,” Auk told her. “I made a couple little improvements already.”

Oreb eyed them both. “Fish heads?”

“I feel the same way myself,” Silk announced. “If I’m to live after all, I’d like something to eat.”

Saba stepped to the glass and clapped; it grew luminous, as the monitor’s gray face coalesced. At once dancing flecks of color replaced it — peach, pink, and an etherial blue that deepened until it was nearly black.

Silk fell to his knees; for him the sunlit chartroom and its occupants vanished.

“Silk?” The face in the glass was innocent and sensual, preternaturally lovely. “Silk, wouldn’t you like to be Pas? We’d be together then… Silk.”

He bowed his head, unable to speak.

“They can scan you at Mainframe. As I was scanned, Silk, with him. He held my hand…”

Silk found that he was staring up at her; she smiled, and his spirit melted.

“You’ll go on with your life. Silk. Just as it is. You’d be Pas too. And he would be you. Look…”

The face lovelier than any mortal woman’s dispersed like smoke. In its place stood a bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and two heads.

One was Silk’s.