On Blue's waters

- 4-
THE TALE OF THE PAJAROCU

The next morning I found Mucor and Maytera Marble enjoying the sunshine in front of their hut. At the sound of my steps, Maytera blessed me as she used to bless our class at the beginning of each day at the palaestra, recommending us to the god of the day. Mucor, to my astonishment, actually said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I replied. “You’re back. I’m very glad to have you back with us, Mucor. Happier than I can say. Did you find Silk?”

She nodded.

“Where is he?”

“Sit down.” She and Maytera Marble were sitting upon one sun-warmed stone, she cross-legged and Maytera with hands clasped over her shins.

I sat on another. “But you found him? He’s still alive? Please tell me. I’ve got to know.”

“Once I found him, I stayed with Silk a long while. We talked three times.”

“That’s wonderful!” He was alive, clearly, and at that moment 1 could have jumped up and danced.

“He asked me not to tell you where he is. It will be very dangerous for you to try to go where he is. If you find him, it will be dangerous for him, and for Hyacinth as well.” This was said without any expression, as Mucor always spoke; but it seemed to me that there was a spark of concern in her eyes, which were usually so empty.

“I have to, Mucor. We need him, and I have given my word that I will try.”

She shook her head, sending her wild black hair flying. “I told Silk what you told me, that the people here want him to come and lead them. He said that if he were their leader he would only tell them to lead themselves, telling every man and every woman to do what he or she knows should be done. Those words are his.”

“But we need the favor of the gods!”

Maytera remarked quietly, “You knew once whom the good gods favor, Horn. I taught you that while you were still very small. Have you forgotten it?”

I sat thinking for a few seconds. At last I said, “Mucor, you told Silk what I told you when I came.”

She nodded. Her eyes were dull once more, and fixed upon something far away.

“This is my fault, because I didn’t explain the situation as fully as I should have. It’s actually my fault twice. My fault for not explaining, and my fault that certain people in New Viron want Silk to be their caldé. The same thing is true, I’m told, in Three Rivers and some other towns, and that’s my fault, too. My wife and I wrote our book, and it has been more widely read, and much more often copied, than we had ever dreamed it would be.”

“What about the women troopers from Trivigaunte?” Maytera inquired.

“No. Though their men may feel differently. But they want him in Urbasecundus, and in other towns even farther from here. I said my wife and I wrote that book, and it sounds as if I’m trying to divide the blame. I’m not; our book would never have been written if I had not been determined to write it before I died. Nettle saw how hard it was and offered her help, which I gladly accepted. But the fault is mine alone.”

I waited for Mucor to speak, which was nearly always a mistake.

“Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, though I didn’t think so at the time. It was to be a book about Silk, Silk’s Book, and mostly it was. But you’re in it, both of you, and so are General Mint and Maytera Rose. Maybe I should have said all three of you are in there.”

“Really?” Maytera asked.

“Yes. So too are your son Blood, and His Cognizance, and the inhumu that we called His Cognizance Patera Quetzal back in Old Viron. And Corporal Hammerstone, and Patera Incus. Do you remember Patera Incus?”

“Yes, Horn. Yes, I do. My husband thought the whorl of him.” I had been away from her for too long to tell whether she was smiling or frowning.

“But it was mostly about Patera Silk,” I continued, “and I tried to show how good and wise he was, and how he made mistakes sometimes but was never too proud to acknowledge that he’d been wrong. Most of all, how he never gave up, how he kept working for peace with the Ayuntamiento and peace with Trivigaunte, no matter how badly things were going or how impossible any peace seemed. I believed that a book like that would help everyone who read it, not just now or next year, but long after Nettle and I were gone. Nettle thought so, too, and wanted to help create a gift that we could give our children’s children, and their children.”

Maytera’s hand groped toward me. “You’re a good boy, Horn. Too lively and fond of mischief, but good at heart. I always said so, even when I had to take my switch to you.”

I thanked her. “There was something else, Maytera. I felt he deserved it, deserved a book telling everyone what he had done, and I felt sure that if I didn’t write down all the things I knew about him, nobody would.”

Maytera said, “He deserved your tribute, dear.” And Mucor, “He does.”

“So I tried. It was a lot of work for me and even more for Nettle, because she had to copy what I’d written over and over. But when we were finished and I read it as somebody who hadn’t known him would, I realized I hadn’t done him justice, that he had been greater than I had been able to show. Ever since it began to be read, people have been telling us that we exaggerated, that he couldn’t have been as great and good a man as my wife and I said he was. We’ve always known that all the error was on the other side.”

Maytera Marble sniffed. One of the parts she had taken when Maytera Rose died had been that sniff, so expressive of skepticism and contempt. “You think you’ve got to go because they’d never have known about young Patera Silk if you and that girl hadn’t written about him.”

“Yes, I do.”

“That was how I used to treat Maggie, our maid. Every time she did some little favor for me, I made it her task, and added to it. Oh, I knew it was wicked, but I did it just the same.”

Hoping to bring her to herself again, I said, “Did you really, Maytera Marble?”

She nodded, and something in the movement of her head told me that it was still Maytera Rose who gave her assent. “I said to myself that if she was ninny enough to let me impose on her like that, she deserved everything she got. I was right, too. Both ways… Horn?”

“Yes, Maytera. I’m still here. What is it?”

“You don’t owe my granddaughter and me any more favors. You’ve been very, very generous with us, and the only help that my granddaughter’s been able to give you has been to tell you to help yourself. Now I need to ask you for another favor, one that I want almost as much as I want a new eye-”

“I’ll get two if I can, Maytera.”

“You’re going to go anyway? In spite of what Patera Silk said?”

I was, of course, because I had to. I temporized by saying that there were many other things in the Long Sun Whorl that were needed in New Viron.

“We must be realistic, Horn. Are you realistic?”

I said that I tried to be.

“You may not be able to find a new eye for me, much less two. I-I understand that. So do you, I feel sure.”

I nodded and said, “I also understand that because we told everyone about Silk, I’m the one who must go back for him when he’s needed so badly here. When I got to New Viron I asked Marrow for a copy of a certain letter he had shown me. Do you remember Marrow, Maytera?”

Her old woman’s fingers smoothed her dirty black skirt over her thin metal thighs. “I used to go to his shop twice a week.”

“He’s not a bad man, Maytera. In fact, he’s a very good man as men are judged in New Viron today. He has been a good and generous friend to me ever since I agreed to go back and get Silk. But when his clerk came in to copy that letter, he wore a chain.”

She said nothing, and I was afraid she had not understood me. I said, “I don’t mean jewelry, a gold or silver chain around his neck. His hands were chained. There were iron bands around each wrist, and the chain ran between them.”

She said nothing. Neither did Mucor.

“They make those chains short enough that a man wearing one can’t fire a slug gun properly. He can’t work the slide to put a fresh round into the chamber without letting go of the part that his right hand holds.”

“You needn’t explain any more, Horn. Not about the gun or the chains, I mean.”

I did anyway. I had lived on Lizard too long, perhaps, seeing few people other than you yourself, Nettle darling, and our sons. I said, “I watched him write, copying it out for me, and I couldn’t help seeing how careful he was to keep it back, keep it from smearing his ink. It wasn’t a big chain, Maytera. It wasn’t a heavy chain at all, just a little, light chain with seven little links. The men who unload boats wear much heavier ones. He probably thinks that he’s being treated kindly, and in a way he is.”

“I quite understand, Horn. You don’t have to tell us any more.”

“Once-this is two or three years ago-I talked to a man in town who was boasting about how beautiful a girl he had was. He even offered to take me to his house so that I could see her.”

“Did you go?”

I had but I denied it, one of those lies we tell without knowing why. “I asked him if the chain didn’t get in the way when they made love, and he said no, he made her hold her hands over her head.”

“Is this about Silk? Yes, I suppose it is.” Maytera was silent for a moment. “Like Marl. Marl was a friend of mine back home. Like the clerk, except that he didn’t have to wear a chain. All right, I understand why you think you must bring Silk here. In your place, I suppose I would, too.”

“Even though he doesn’t want to? He wanted very badly to go with us when we left. You must remember that, Maytera-how much he wanted to go with us, how eager he was. He hated all the evil he saw in the Whorl, and he must have hoped that people would be better in a new place.”

She said nothing.

“A lot are. Many of us are. That’s what I ought to say, because I’m one of them. We’re not as good as he would want us to be, but we’re better than we were in a lot of ways. Just thinking about starting fresh in a new place made Auk better, and if he and Chenille landed here-”

Mucor said distinctly, “On Green.”

“They landed on Green?” I turned to her eagerly. “Have you talked to them there?”

My question hung in the air, whispered by the waves at the feet of the cliffs.

At last I shrugged, and went back to Maytera Marble. “Even if they landed on Green, Maytera, they may be better people than the Auk and Chenille we knew, better people than they ever were at home.”

“What I started out to say, Horn, is that even if you cannot bring back a new eye for me, you could still make me very, very happy.”

I assured her that I would do anything I could for her.

“We agree that it will be difficult for you to find a new eye. This is worse, or anyway I’m afraid it may be. But if you should see my husband, see Hammerstone…”

I waited.

“If he’s still alive, if you should run across him, I’d like you to tell him where I am and how very deeply I regret tricking him into marriage as I did. Tell him, please, that I wouldn’t have come here, or brought my granddaughter here, if I had been able to face him. Ask him to pray for me, please. Will you do that for me, Horn? Ask him to pray for me?”

Naturally I promised that I would.

“He didn’t pray at all when I was with him, when we were… It pained me. It gave me pain, and yet I knew that he was being open and honest with me. It was I, the one who prayed, who lied and lied too. I know that must seem illogical, yet it was so.”

Here I tried to say something comforting, I believe. I am no longer certain what it was.

“Now I’m blind, Horn. I am punished, and not too severe a punishment, either. Are you going to tell him that I’m blind now, Horn?”

I said I certainly would, because I would try to enlist Hammerstone’s help in finding new eyes for her.

“And where we are now, my granddaughter and I? Will you tell him about this rock in the sea?”

“I’ll probably have to, Maytera. I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

She was silent for a minute or two, nor did Mucor speak again. I stood up to gauge the force and direction of the wind. The western horizon showed no indications of bad weather, only the clearest of calm blue skies.

“Horn?”

“Yes, Maytera. If Mucor won’t tell me anything more, and won’t tell Patera Silk that I’m going to come for him whether he wants me to or not, I ought to leave.”

“Only a moment more, Horn. Can’t you spare me a moment Or two? Horn, you knew him. Do you think that my husband-that Hammerstone might try to come here and kill me? Is he capable of that? Was he?”

“Absolutely not.” Privately I thought it likely that he would come, or try to, although not to do her harm.

“It might be better if he did.” Her voice had been growing weaker as she spoke; it was so faint when she said that that I could scarcely hear her over the distant murmur of the waves. “I still try to pretend that I’m taking care of my granddaughter, as I did when we were on our little farm, and in the town. But she’s taking care of me, really. That is the truth-”

Mucor interrupted, startling me. “I do not.”

I said, “You don’t require much taking care of, Maytera, and your granddaughter wouldn’t have the bottles of water I brought for her if you hadn’t told me she needed them. You were taking care of her then.”

For seconds that dragged on and on, Maytera was silent; when I was on the point of leaving, she said, “Horn, may I touch your face? I’ve been wanting to, the whole time you’ve been here.”

“If it will make you happy to do it, it will make me happy, too,” I told her.

She rose, and Mucor rose with her; I stood close to Maytera Marble and let her hands discover my face for themselves.

“You’re older now.”

“Yes, Maytera. Older and fatter and losing my hair. Do you remember how bald my father was?”

“It’s still the same dear face, though it pains me to-to have it changed at all. Horn, it’s not at all likely that you’ll be able to find new eyes for me, or find my husband, either. We both know that. Even so, you can make me happy if you will. Will you promise to come back here after you have tried? Even if you have no eye to give me, and no word of my husband? And leave me a copy of your book, so that I can hear, sometimes, about Patera Silk and Patera Pike, and the old days at our manteion?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that our book would be of no use to her, but it occurred to me that the seamen who came to consult Mucor might be induced to read passages to her. I said something to that effect, and she said, “Mucor can read it to me, if she will.”

Surprised yet again, I asked, “Can you read, Mucor?”

“A little.” She seemed almost on the point of smiling. “Grandmother taught me.”

“She would have, naturally.” I was ready to kick myself for not having anticipated something so obvious.

Maytera Marble said, “If she doesn’t know a word, she can spell it out to me so I can tell her.”

The love in her voice touched me; for the space of a breath, I considered what you would want me to do, Nettle; but I know you too well to have much doubt. “You want me to bring you a copy of our book, when I return from the Long Sun Whorl, Maytera? From the Whorl?”

Very humbly she said, “If it’s not too much trouble, Horn.” Her hands had left my face to clutch each other. “It-I would appreciate it very much.”

“You won’t have to wait. I have a copy in my boat. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I had not gone ten steps when I heard the tapping of her stick behind me. I told her that she did not have to come, that I would bring the book up to her.

“No. No, I want to, Horn. I can’t ask you to make that climb again, and-and…”

She was afraid that I might sail away without having given it to her. Perhaps I should have been angry that she had so little confidence in my promise; but the truth was, as I realized even then, that she wanted the book so badly that she could not bear to run even the slightest risk, and wailing for me to return with it would have been agony. I took her free hand, and we descended the precipitous path together.

When we had reached the flat rock upon which the fish had so mysteriously appeared, she asked me about the sloop, how long it was, how wide, how one managed the sails and so on and so forth, all of it, I believe, to postpone the delicious instant when she would actually hold the book in her own hands, pushing the moment back again and again.

I gave her each measurement she asked for, and explained the rudiments of sailing as well as I could, how one trims the sails depending on the angle of the wind to the course, how to navigate by the sun and the stars, how the management of a laden boat differs from that of an empty one, and other matters; and while I was descanting upon all this Mucor appeared, standing upon an outcrop halfway up the cliff so small that it had escaped my notice up to then. I waved to her and she waved in return, but she did not speak.

At last I went aboard, retrieved our book from the cubby, and standing in the stern with one foot on the gunwale presented it to Maytera Marble, a present from both its authors.

It seems foolish now to write that her face, a face composed of hundreds of tiny mechanisms, glowed with happiness. Yet it did. “Horn! Oh, Horn! This-this is the answer to so many, many prayers!”

I smiled, although she could not see it. “All of them yours, I’m sure, Maytera. A good many people have taken the trouble to read it, though.”

“It’s so thick! So heavy!” Reverently she opened it, turning pages to feel the paper. “Are they written on both sides, Horn?”

“Yes, they are, Maytera. And my wife’s handwriting is quite small.”

She nodded solemnly. “I remember dear little Nettle’s hand. She had a very good hand, Horn, even when she was just a child. A neat little hand. It may give my granddaughter trouble at first, but she’ll soon be reading it like print, I feel sure.”

I said that I was, too, and prepared to cast off.

“We’re all in here, Horn? Dear old Maytera Rose, Maytera Mint, and my granddaughter and I? And Patera, and Patera Pike, and you children in the palaestra?”

“There’s a great deal about Patera Silk,” I told her, “but only a little, really, about Patera Pike. I’m afraid most of the other students at the palaestra aren’t even mentioned, but Nettle and I pop up pretty frequently.”

I was on the point of saying good-bye, but now that the moment for it had come I found myself every bit as reluctant as she was. “Do you remember how I followed you to the gate of Blood’s villa? How I wanted to come in with you, but you wouldn’t let me?”

“You were a good, brave boy. I couldn’t risk your life like that, Horn.”

“It’s in there,” I said, and cast off. “I’m leaving now. Remember me in your prayers.”

“I will. Oh, I will!”

I sighed, and put one of my new sweeps into the water with a plop that she surely heard.

“Good-bye, Horn.” She clutched our book to her chest. “You will come back someday? Please?”

“When I’ve got eyes for you,” I told her, and pushed off. The little inlet was so sheltered by its cliffs that there was scarcely any wind; I had to scull the sloop to its mouth before the mainsail began to draw.

I was trimming it when I heard Mucor’s long, shrill whistle and looked up. She was pointing at the sloop and me, her left arm stiffly extended; and because the outcrop on which she stood was a good deal higher than the top of the mast, her rag of gown and long, coarse, black hair were whipped by the wind. Whenever I think of her now, that is the image I recall first: poised upon the outcrop she has reached by the almost invisible crevice behind her, her arm stretched forth and her face the face of General Mint restrained by some subordinate, ordering forward troops she would rather have led in person.

Mucor might, as I have tried to say here, have commanded ten thousand spectral troopers; but at the time I could not see even one. Then some slight sound from the top of the rock reached my ears, and I realized that her gesture had misled me. Like any actual general, she was not pointing to whatever forces she commanded, but to their objective.

At the top of the cliff, I saw a small dark figure that seemed almost a cluster of boys, or two men upon their hands and knees. It vanished, then reappeared as it made a flying leap from the top of the cliff. For a moment I thought its target was the sloop, and at it would strike it and die. It sent up a waterspout five cubits from the tip of the bowsprit, however, and vanished as if it had sunk like a stone.

Back in the inlet, Maytera Marble was shouting, her voice audible but unintelligible, echoing and re-echoing from cliff to cliff. Mucor waved, but disappeared into the crevice too quickly for me to wave in return. Earlier I wrote that she is not tall, but that was misleading. Majesty is not a mere matter of a hand or two over the eight. In twenty years, I myself had matured and even aged; yet subconsciously I had supposed that Mucor was still the preternatural adolescent I remembered.

Nearly noon, although I am writing by lamplight. Gusts that would lay the sloop on her beam ends rock my cracker-box palace, whistling through every lattice and shutter. Green was bigger than a man’s thumb last night when it rose over the willow in the garden, and I was reminded that my people here call it the Devils’ Lantern. Seeing it, I thought only of the inhumi, and not of the storms and the tides, which I in my folly imagined would mean nothing to us in this inland place. I needed a good lesson, and I am getting it, and the whole unhappy town of Gaon with me. Between gusts, I hear my elephant trumpeting in his stall.

No quantity of preaching or teaching will make the people wholly safe from the inhumi’s sleights and subterfuges. No one knows that better than I. But preaching and teaching may do something, may even save a few lives, and so they are worth doing. It may be at least as valuable, however, to encourage the farmers to plant crops that will not be beaten flat by the storms-yams for example. This is surely the first storm, and not the last.

I see that when I described my departure from Mucor’s Rock 1 never actually mentioned that Babbie came on board, his black snout and little red eyes breaking water just aft of the rudder, and his stubby forepaws clutching the gunwale beside me in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of the leatherskin. Hus can swim like rainbow-frogs, as Sinew and everyone else who has ever hunted them attests, and certainly Babbie could.

Only the leatherskin could have been a less welcome boarder. I ordered him to return to Mucor, and he crouched in the bow and defied me. I grappled with him then, and tried to drop him over the side, but he was as heavy as a stone, and clung to me with all his legs so tightly that the two of us might have been hewn from a single block of flesh; and when, after a long tussle, I was able to tear him loose and push him out of the sloop, he swam under the keel and climbed back on board in far less time than it had taken me to throw him off.

After that, I sat by the tiller frowning at him, while he squatted like a spider on the other side of the mast, glaring at me through close-set crimson eyes that seemed only slightly bigger than the heads of pins. When I ate that night, I flung him a loaf of bread and a couple of apples, reflecting that if I fed him he might be somewhat less likely to charge when my back was to him.

I could have broken out the slug gun, loaded it, and shot him. Or at least, I supposed at the time that I could have, though in point of fact Babbie could have killed me long before I got the first cartridge in the chamber. I am no longer quite sure why I did not, although there were certainly some compelling arguments against it. The first, which I could not help giving considerable weight, was that I might well hole the sloop. If I missed, the slug would undoubtedly smash through her planking, unless the new cartridges were vastly inferior to those made beneath the Long Sun. Hus are notorious for their tough hides and massive bones; and yet it was quite possible that a slug fired at close range might penetrate this small hus and a plank, too.

Hus are difficult to kill as well, and almost always charge if a hunter’s first shot merely wounds them. A fast second shot is often necessary, and although one or two dogs would be enough to track one down, most hunters recommend taking eight or ten to impede the charge. I had none, and the distance would be too short for me to have any hope of getting off a second shot.

There was also a chance at least that this particular hus would be of value to me. A tame hus might always be sold, and while I had him he would, presumably, guard the sloop in my absence. Recalling my old fellow pupil, and the shame I had felt at being forced to borrow three cards from Marrow, I could almost wish that Babbie had been with me earlier.

But the most serious reason was that I would be destroying the gift Mucor had sent me as a gesture of good will. Mucor, whose spirit might be watching us invisibly for all I knew (or could know) would surely take that amiss, and if Silk were to change his mind and choose to reveal his whereabouts once he learned that I was determined to search him out, only Mucor could bring me that information. When I had turned this last reason over in my mind for a few minutes, I acutely regretted having thrown Babbie overboard.

Half joking, I told him, “We may never be friends, Babbie, but we need not be enemies either. You try to be a good beast, and I’ll try to be a good master to you.”

He continued to glare; and his glare said very plainly, You hate me so I hate you.

I filled my washbowl with fresh water then, and gave it to him.

An inhuma was caught last night, and today I was forced to watch as she was buried alive. There is no trial for these monsters, and understandably so-we burn them in New Viron-but I could not help wishing it were otherwise; I would like to have granted her a death less horrible. As things are, I had to preside over the customary means of extermination. One of the big, flat paving stones was lifted in the marketplace and set aside, and her grave dug where it had lain. Into that grave she was forced, though she pled and fought. Five men with long poles pinned her there until a cartload of gravel could be dumped on top of her. Dirt was shoveled on top of the gravel, and at last the stone was returned to its place and a symbol, too awful to describe, was cut into it so that no one will aig there again.

These people, like people everywhere here, seem to fear that an inhumu may live on even with its head severed. That is not the case, of course; but I cannot help wondering how the superstition originated and became so widespread. Certainly the inhumi have no bones as we understand them. Possibly their skeletons are cartilage, as those of some sea-creatures are. On Green, Geier maintained that the inhumi are akin to slugs and leeches. No one, I believe, took him seriously; yet it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they are difficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without the blood that is their only food.

But I can continue this little lecture best by returning to my narrative.

Back in New Viron, Marrow had been told of a trader named Wijzer who knew the way to Pajarocu. We found him on his boat (which was four times the length of mine, and five times the width) and Marrow invited him to his house.

“If what I know a good supper it will buy…” He shrugged “Or you want to see me eat.”

We assured him that it had never occurred to us that he might be an inhumu.

“Strangers you don’t know, I think. Before Pajarocu with a hundred you must speak. Sharp you better be. Sharp they are, those inhumi. Sharp always.”

Marrow grunted agreement.

“Many in Pajarocu I meet. Some I killed. Them you cannot drown. That you know?”

I said I had heard it, but that I did not know whether it was true.

“True it is.” Wijzer paused to inspect a load of melons, then looked around and pointed. “You, Marrow. Your house that way is it? A house bigger than all the rest it is? The whole town you steer?”

Marrow leaned upon his stick. “The town doesn’t always think so.”

“Him sending you are.” Wijzer pointed to me. “To go he wants?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I want to because it is my duty.”

“Careful be. Careful you must be.” He made off through the hay market, pushing others out of his way and leading us as if he knew the route to Marrow’s better than either one of us; he was a big man, not so much tall as broad, with a big, square, sun-reddened face and muscular, short-fingered hands whose backs were thick with reddish hair.

“He’s rough,” Marrow whispered, “but don’t let that make you think he’s honest. He may send you wrong.”

The set of Wijzer’s shoulders told me he had overheard, so I said, “I’m a good judge of men, Councilor, and I think that this one can be trusted.” At the word councilor, Marrow’s eyes went wide.

His cook had prepared a good, plain dinner for us. There were seven or eight vegetable dishes variously prepared (most of Marrow’s wealth came from trading fruits and vegetables still), a big pork roast with baked apples, hot breads with a bowl of butter, and so forth. Wijzer pitched into the meat and wine. “No cheese, Marrow? Councilor Marrow? So said it is? Like a judge you are? No one this to me tells, or before more polite I am.”

“A few people call me that.” Marrow leaned back in his carved chair, toying with his wine glass. “But it has no legal force, and I don’t even make my servants do it.”

“This man Horn, he does. Him I hear. Why him you send it is?”

Marrow shook his head. “We’re sending him because he’s best qualified to go, and because he will. If you’re asking if I trust him, I do. Absolutely.”

“I’m going because I want Silk here more than anybody,” told Wijzer.

“Ahh?” His fork, laden with a great gobbet of pork, paused halfway to his mouth.

Marrow’s look suggested that I hold my tongue.

“So. Silk. Why you want so far to go I wondered. A long sail ror you Pajarocu is. Long even for me from Dorp it is, where nearer I am.” The Pork attained its ultimate destination.

“Do you know about Silk?”

He shrugged. “Stories there are. Some I hear. Someone a big book he has. Things he said, but maybe not all true they are. A good man, just the same he is. In Pajarocu Silk is, you think? Why? Him I did not see.”

“We don’t believe he’s in Pajarocu,” I said, “either one of us. I believe that he’s probably still in Viron, the city we left to come here. But Councilor Marrow got a letter from Pajarocu not long ago, a very important letter. I asked him to have a copy made for me, and he did. I think you ought to read it.”

I got out the letter and handed it to Wijzer, but he only tapped it, still folded, against the edge of the table. “This city, this Viron. From there you come. A councilor it steers. Not so it is?”

Marrow shook his head. “Under our Charter, the caldé decided things in Viron. We didn’t always follow our Charter, but that’s what it said. The Ayuntamiento was under him, and it was composed of councilors. When Horn and I left, Silk was caldé, and he told us to go. People from other landers who came later than we did say he was still caldé when they left, and urged them to risk the trip.”

Wijzer gestured with the folded letter. “One of these councilors you were, Marrow?”

Marrow shook his head again.

“Nothing you were. When this Silk comes, nothing again you will be. Why him do you want, if nothing you were?”

I began to protest, but Marrow said, “That’s right. I was nothing.”

Wijzer swallowed half his wine. “So here Silk you bring, where people who have never him seen him love. Caldé here he will be, and a council like before he will want. A councilor then you are that real is.”

“It could happen.” Marrow shrugged. “But it probably won’t. Do you seriously think that’s why we’re sending Horn here to fetch Silk?”

“Enough for me it is.”

“Who governs your own town? You?”

“Dorp? No. My boat I govern. For me, enough she is.”

Marrow buttered a roll while we waited for him to speak again. “You may know winds and landmarks, but you don’t know men. Not as well as you think you do.”

“Anybody that can say.” Wijzer helped himself to another salsify fritter.

“You’re right. Anybody can say it. Even Caldé Silk could, because it’s true.” Marrow picked up his wine glass and put it down with a bang. “I’m one of five who try to steer New Viron. Horn can tell you about that, if you want to hear it. I’m not always obeyed, none of us are. But I try, and our people know I want what’s best for the town. You say Caldé Silk will want a new Ayuntamiento if he comes here. He may not, he had a lot of trouble with our councilors back home.”

Wijzer continued to eat, watching Marrow’s face.

“If he doesn’t, I’ll be nothing again. All right, I’ll see to my turnips, and if Silk ever asks my help, he’ll get it. If he wants an Ayuntamiento, he may want me to be on it. That will be all right, too. If he asks my help, I may bargain for a seat. Or I may not. It’ll depend on what help he wants and how badly it’s needed. I won’t ask if all this satisfies you.”

“Good that is. Not you ask.”

“I say I won’t ask, because I’m not asking your help for my own sake. I’m asking for everybody in my town, and everybody on this inside-out whorl Pas packed us off to. If that’s not exact enough for you, I’m asking for Horn here. He’s going off alone to a place that neither one of us have ever been to, because there’s a chance we can get Silk to come here.”

Marrow pointed to me with his fork. “Look at him. There he sits, and inside of a week he may drown. He has a wife and three boys. If you know something that might help him, this is your chance to tell him. If you don’t and he dies, maybe I’ll be the only who blames you. One old man in a foreign town, that’s nothing. But maybe you’ll blame yourself. Think about it.”

Wijzer turned to me. “This wife, a beautiful young girl she is?”

I shook my head and explained that you are my own age.

“Me?” He indicated himself, a broad thumb to his chest. “A beautiful young girl I got. In Dorp she is.”

“You must miss her, I’m sure.”

Marrow started to speak, but Wijzer stopped him with an up-raised hand. “Did I say I wouldn’t tell? No!” He belched. “This I will I have said. A trader that his word keeps I am. Who and why to know I wish. My right that is. But who you are I see, Marrow, and why it is they here to you listen.”

He unfolded the letter and rattled it between his fingers. “Good paper. Where this do you get?”

Again, Marrow pointed to me.

I said, “I made it. That’s what I do.”

“The papermaker you are?”

I nodded.

“Not a sailor.” Wijzer frowned. “Why a sailor does he not send?”

Marrow said, “He’s a sailor, too. He’s going instead of somebody else because getting to Pajarocu won’t gain us anything unless he can persuade Silk to come back with him. He’s the only one, or almost the only one, who may be able to.”

Wijzer grunted, his eyes on the letter.

I said, “There are two other people who might have as much influence with Caldé Silk, or more. Do you want to hear about them?”

“If you want, I will listen.”

“Both are women. Maytera Marble might, but she’s old and blind, and believes that she’s taking care of the granddaughter who cares for her. Would you want me to step aside so they could send her?”

Wijzer made a rude noise. “Not as far as Beled she would get.”

“You’re right. The other is Nettle, my wife. She’s a fine sailor, she’s strong for a woman, and she’s got more sense than any two men I know. If I had not offered to go, they were going to ask her, and I feel sure she would have gone.”

Wijzer chuckled. “And you at home to sit and cook! No, you must go. That I see.”

“I want to go,” I told him. “I want to see Silk again, and talk to him, more than anything else in the whorl. I know Nettle feels the same way, and if I succeed, she’ll get to see him and talk to him too. You said Maytera Marble wouldn’t get as far as Beled. Beled’s the town where the Trivigauntis settled, isn’t it?”

Marrow said, “That’s right.”

“It’s that way? North?”

Wijzer nodded absently. “Here of this He-hold-fire I read. Back to the Whorl he will make his lander go. How it is, this he can do? Other men this cannot do.”

“I have no idea,” I said. “Perhaps I can find out when I get to Pajarocu.”

“Horn’s good with machinery,” Marrow told Wijzer. “He built the mill that made that paper.”

“In a box it you make?” Wijzer’s hands indicated the size.

“No. In a continuous strip, until we’re out of slurry.”

“Good! A lander here you got? A lander everybody’s got.”

Marrow said, “We have some, but they’re just shells. The one Horn and I came in…” He made a wry face. “For the first few years, everybody took everything they wanted. Wire, metal, anything. I did it myself.”

“Dorp, too.”

“I used to hope that another would land. That was before the fourth came. I had a plan, and men to carry it out. We would arrive before the last colonist left, and seize control. Search them as they got out, and make them put back the cards they’d taken, any wiring, any other parts. We did, and it took off again.”

Wijzer laughed.

“They-Pas-doesn’t want anyone to go back. You probably know it. So unless a lander’s disabled before it unloads, it goes back to the Whorl so it can bring more people here.”

“A good one at Mura they got,” Wijzer remarked pensively. “This I hear. Only nobody near they will allow.”

“If I had succeeded,” Marrow told him, “I wouldn’t have let anyone near ours either.”

“Dorp, too. Our judges there, but none they got.” Wijzer refolded the letter and handed it back to me. “Pajarocu to go, a sharp watch you must keep, young fellow. The legend already you know? About the pajarocu bird?”

I smiled; no one had called me young in a long time. “I’ll try, and if you know the legend, I’d like to hear it.”

He cleared his throat and poured himself another glass of wine. “The Maker everything he made. Like a man a boat builds it was. All the animals, the grass, trees, Pas and his old wife, everything. About the Maker you know?”

I nodded and said that we called him the Outsider.

“A good name for him that is. Outside him we keep, into our hearts we don’t let him come.

“When everything he’s got made, he got to paint. First the water. Easy it is. Then the ground, all the rocks. A little harder it gets. Then sky and trees. Grass harder than you think it is, the little brush he had got to use, and paint so when the wind blows the color changes, and different colors for different kinds. Then dogs and greenbucks, all the different animals. Birds and flowers going to be tough they are. This he knows. So for the last them he leaves.”

I nodded. Marrow was yawning.

“While the other stuff painting he is, the pajarocu with the big owl up north they got makes friends. Well, that big owl the first bird the Maker paints he is, because so quick it he can do. White for feathers, eyes, legs, and everything. But that owl not much fun he is, so the snake-eater bird next he calls. At the owl the pajarocu bird looks, and all over white he is. Does it hurt the pajarocu wants to know. That big owl, he never laughs. To have a game he wants, so he says yes. A lot it hurts, he says, but over quick it is.

So the pajarocu, over to look he goes. The Maker the snake-killer bird painting is, and two dozen colors using he is. Red for the tail, brown for wings, blue and white in front, yellow around the mouth and the chin, everything he’s got using he is. So the pajarocu hides. When the Maker finished is, the pajarocu nobody can find. Because he has never been painted and nobody him can see, it is.”

Marrow chuckled.

“So the Maker for the owl and the snake-eater bird calls, and them for the pajarocu to look he tells. The owl at night can look, and the snake-eater bird when light it gets. But him they never see, so him they never find. All the time the owl around the night he flies, and cu, cu he says. Never the snake-eater bird talks, till somewhere where the pajarocu might be he comes. Then Pajarocu?”

I said, “That’s a good story, but if I understand you, you’re telling me that even with your directions I may have a lot of trouble finding Pajarocu.”

Wijzer nodded solemnly. “Not a place that wants to be found it is. Traders to steal will come back, they think. If close you get, wrong their friends to you will tell.”

Marrow, who had eaten nearly as much as Wijzer, said, “They have invited us to send someone, one man or one woman to fly back to the Long Sun Whorl and return to this one. You’ve seen their letter, and that’s an accurate copy. How do you explain it?”

“They it maybe can explain. Them ask. Everything this young fellow to tell I want, so that careful he will be. Afraid you are that so much I will tell that not he will go?”

Marrow said, “No,” and I reaffirmed that I was going.

“You a question I ask.” Wijzer swirled what little wine remained in his glass, staring into it as though he could read the future in its spiral. “One man back can go, your letter says. This fellow Silk to bring here you want. Two you will be.”

I nodded. “Marrow and our other leaders and I talked about that. A great many people know about Patera Silk now. When he identifies himself, we believe they’ll let him come aboard their lander.”

When Wijzer only stared at me, I added, “We hope that they will, at least.”

“You hope.” Wijzer snorted.

Marrow said, “We do. Our own lander held more than five hundred. I doubt that they’ll get two hundred from other towns with their invitation, but suppose they do. Or let’s say they get a hundred, and to that they add four hundred of their own people. The lander reaches the Long Sun Whorl safely, and the hundred scatter, every man looking for his own city.”

Wijzer frowned. “It you must finish.”

“When the time to return comes, do you think a hundred will reassemble at the lander?”

Wijzer shook his head. “No. Not a hundred there will be.”

Marrow made a little sound expressive of satisfaction. “Then why not let Silk take one of the empty seats?”

“Because none there may be. Not a hundred I said. Two hundred, maybe. When about this town that you got I ask, what they say it is? You know? The first it was. The first lander from the Whorl came, and here landed. True it is?”

“No,” I told him. “Another lander left some time before ours, with a group led by a man called Auk. They were also from Viron. Have you ever heard of them?”

Wijzer shook his head. “Someplace else they landed, maybe.”

“On Green,” I said, “or so I’ve been told. There was also another lander that left at the same time ours did. One lander wouldn’t hold all of us, and we had cards enough to restore two, so we took two. It came here with us, but we’ve never learned what became of Auk’s.”

Wijzer leaned toward me, his elbows on the table and his big, square face ruddy with sun, wind, and wine. “You listen. Here twenty years now you been. For me, nine it is. Back up there,” he pointed to the ceiling, “where the Long Sun they got, what like it is, not you know. What like it was when away I went. Everybody out Pas wants. Storms, and a week all nights he gives. Even me, out he drives. Everybody! The landers up there that they got? No good! No good! You the cards had, this you said. Enough back you put, and it flies. Right that is?”

I nodded.

Wijzer directed his attention to Marrow. “Landers here you got, you say. But the wires pulled out are, seats, too. Cards, pipes glass, all that. Again to fly, not you can them make. Those landers up there? How it goes with them, you think? First of all you went so the best ones you took. The one I ride, like what it is, you thinly Forty-eight seats for us left. Forty-eight for six hundred and thirty-four. That I never forget. Up we fly, and fifteen dead we got. No food but what we bring. No water. Pipes, taps, what you sit on every day, all gone they are. When here we get, how our lander smells you think? Babies all sick. Everybody sick or dead they are. Terrible it is. Terrible! So why go? Because we got to.”

He looked back to me and pointed a short, thick finger. “Not everybody comes back, you think. So more seats there are. Maybe not everybody comes. But the ones… Family up there you got?”

“My father, if he’s still alive. An uncle and two aunts, and some cousins. They may have left by this time.”

“Or not, maybe. Friends?”

“Yes. A few.”

“Father. Uncle. Aunt. Friend. Cousin. Care I don’t. Father we say. On his knees he gets. He cries. What then will you do? About that you got to think. Ever of you they beg? Your father, to you down on his knees before he has got? Crying? Of you begging?”

“No,” I said. “He never did.”

“Twenty years. A very young man then you are. Maybe a boy when you go, yes?”

I nodded again.

“At your father you looked, your father you saw. A man not like you he was. The same for me it is when a boy I am. No more! This time your own face you see, but old you are. Not strong like twenty years ago. Weak now he is. Crying, begging. Tears down his cheeks running. Horn, Horn! Me you got to take! My own flesh you are!”

Wijzer was silent for a moment, watching my face. “No extra seats there will be. No. Not one even.”

Marrow grunted again, and I said, “I understand what you mean. It could be very difficult.”

Wijzer leaned back and drank what remained of his wine. “To Pajarocu you go? Still?”

“Yes.”

“Stubborn like me you are. For you a good voyage I wish. Something to draw on you got, Marrow?”

Marrow called his clerk, and had him bring paper, a quill, and a bottle of ink.

“Look. Main this is.” Carefully, Wijzer drew a wavering line down the paper. “We on Main here. Islands we got.” He sketched in several. “North the Lizard it is.” He began to draw it, a tiny blot of ink upon the vastness of the sea. “The Lizard you know?”

I told him I lived there.

“Good that is. Home for another good dinner you can stop.” Wijzer looked at me slyly, and I realized with something of a start that he had bright blue eyes like Silk’s.

“No,” I said, and found it not as hard to say as I expected. “I doubt that I’ll stop there at all, unless I find that I need something I neglected to bring.”

Marrow grunted his approval.

“Better you don’t. Rocks there is. But those you must know.” Wijzer added towns up the coast. “Too many islands to draw, but there these rocks and the big sandbar you I must show. Both very bad they are. Maybe them you see, maybe nothing.” He gave me another sly glance. “Nothing you see, me anyhow you believe. Yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know how easy it is to stave a boat on a rock that can’t be seen.”

Wijzer nodded to himself. “Coming Green is. The sea to go up and down it makes. The tide in Dorp we say. About the tide you know?”

“Yes,” I repeated.

“How more water Green makes, then not so much, I will not tell. Not till someone to me it explains. But so it is. About this tide you must think always, because bigger and bigger it gets while you go. Never it you forget. A safe anchorage you got, but in an hour, two hours, not safe it is.”

I nodded.

“Also all these towns that to you I show. At all these towns even Wijzer would not put in. But maybe something there is you need. Which ones crazy is, I will not show. All crazy they are. Me you understand? Crazy like this one you got they are. Only all different, too.”

“Differing laws and customs. I know what you mean.”

“So if nothing you need, past best to go it is. Now these two up here…” He drew circles around them and blew on the ink. “Where you cross they are. Because over here…” Another wavering line, receding to the south and showing much less detail. “Another Main you got. Maybe a name it’s got. I don’t know.”

“Shadelow, the western continent,” I proposed.

“Maybe. Or maybe just a big island it is. Wijzer, not smart enough you to tell he is. An island, maybe, but big it is. This coast? Better well out you stand.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Two or three towns.” He sketched them in, adding their names in a careful script. “What down for you I put, what I them call it is. Maybe something else you say. Maybe something else they do. Here the big river runs.” Meticulously he blacked it in. “It you got to see, so sharp you got to look. What too big not to see is, what nobody sees it is.”

I told him that I had been thinking the same thing not long before.

“A wise saying it is. Everyplace wise fellows the same things say. This you know?”

“I suppose that they must, although I’d never thought about it.”

“Wise always the same it is. About men, women, children. About boats, food, horses, dogs, everything. Always the same. No birds in the old nest, wise fellows say, and the good cock out of the old bag. A thief, the thief s tracks sees. The meat from the gods it is, the cooks from devils. All those things in towns all over they say. You young fellows laugh, but us old fellows know. The look-out, the little thing always he sees. Almost always, because to see it sharp he must look. The big thing, too big to look out sharp for it is, and nobody it sees.

Dipping his quill for what might have been the tenth time, he divided the river. “The big stream to starboard it is. Yes? Little to port. The little one fast it runs. Hard to sail up. Yes? Just the same, the way you go it is.” He drew an arrow upon the unknown land beside it, and began to sketch in trees beside it.

After a moment I nodded and said, “Yes. I will.”

Wijzer stopped drawing trees and divided the smaller stream. “Same here, the little one you take. A little boat you got?”

“Much smaller than yours,” I told him. “It’s small enough for me to handle alone easily.”

“That’s good. Good! For a good, strong blow you must wait. You see? Then up here you can sail. Close to the shore, you got to stay. Careful always you must be, and the legend not forget. A good watch keep. Here sometimes Pajarocu is.” He added a dot of ink and began lettering the word beside it: PAJAROCU.

“Did you say it was there only sometimes?” I asked.

Wijzer shrugged. “Not a town like this town of yours it is. You will see, if there you get. Sometimes here it is, sometimes over there. If I tell, you would not me believe. That you coming are they know, maybe it they move. Or another reason. Or no reason. Not like my Dorp, Pajarocu is.” He pointed to Dorp, a cluster of tiny houses on his map. “Not like any other town Pajarocu is.”

Marrow was leaning far over the table to look at it. “That river is practically due west of here.”

Wijzer’s face lost all expression, and he laid aside his quill.

“Couldn’t Horn save time by sailing west from here?”

“That some fellows do, maybe,” Wijzer told him. “Sometimes all right they go. Sometimes not. What here I draw, what Wijzer does it is.”

“But you want to trade from town to town,” Marrow objected. “Horn won’t be doing that.”

I said, “If I were to do as you suggest, sailing due west from here) I would eventually strike the coast of this big island or second continent that Wijzer has very kindly mapped for us. But when I did, I wouldn’t know whether to turn south or north, unless the river mouth was in view.”

Reluctantly, Marrow nodded.

“With the greatest respect to Captain Wijzer, a map like this one, drawn freehand, could easily be in error by, oh, fifty leagues or more. Suppose that I decided it was accurate, and sailed north. It might easily take me a week to sail fifty leagues, tacking up the coast. Suppose that at the end of that week I turned back to search south. And that the river mouth was five leagues beyond the point at which I turned back. How long would it take me to locate it?”

Wijzer smiled; and Marrow said reluctantly, “I see what you mean. It’s just that they’re going to leave as soon as their lander’s ready, and it’s nearly ready now. You read that letter. Anybody who hasn’t arrived before they go will be left behind.”

“I realize that there’s no time to waste,” I told him, “but sometimes it’s best to make haste slowly.” Privately I reflected that I might have the best of both plans by sailing north for a hundred leagues or so, then turning west well south of the place where Wijzer had advised me to.

And I resolved to do it.