Exodus from the Long Sun

Chapter 8 — To Save Your Life

Repressing a shudder, Maytera Mint stepped over the dead man’s leg, the last to go into the guardroom. Over Hyrax’s leg, she told herself firmly. It was only Hyrax’s leg, and not a thing of honor; Hyrax, a near-homophone of Hierax, was a name often given boys whose mothers had died in childbirth.

Now, Maytera Mint reflected, Hierax had come for Hyrax.

“They, the — ah…” Remora began, and fell silent.

“Soldiers.” Spider seated himself on a stool. “Soldiers got them.” He pulled up his tunic and thrust his needler into his waistband, let the tunic fall into place again, and wiped his hands on his thighs. “See how good they got shot, Patera? Dead center, all three. That’s soldiers’ shootin’.”

“I would have thought that Hyrax’s body would warn Guan,” Maytera Mint ventured. She was looking down at Guan’s body as she spoke. “He must have seen it, exactly as we did.”

Spider nodded. “That’s why he figured there wasn’t nobody layin’ for him. He figured they’d of moved it if they were, and he had a slug gun, didn’t he? I’d want to know more than feet in the door, wouldn’t I? So he went in careful and had a look around, see? That’s how I would of done, and that’s how Guan did. Then he set his gun down, probably stood it in the corner, and got that water. That’s when they got him, shot him from in back. See where he’s lyin’? He was watchin’ the door while he drank. He couldn’t shut it without movin’ Hyrax, and he hadn’t done that yet, but he was watchin’, only a soldier was in here with him that he didn’t know about, and that’s when he shot him.”

“May I sit, too?” Maytera Mint had found another stool. “May His Emminence?”

“Sure.”

“We — er — arms? Should be armed.” Remora was poking about the guardroom. “Slug guns, hey? Slug guns for soldiers, um, chems. Chemical persons, eh? All of them. The slug guns of the, um, departed.”

“They’re gone,” Spider informed him. “They all had slug guns. That’s Guan, Hyrax, and Sewellel. A slug gun’ll do for a soldier, and soldiers don’t like them lyin’ around.

“I am sorry,” Maytera Mint told him. “Genuinely sorry. You must understand that. I sympathize with your grief, not just conventionally but actually.”

“All fight. Sure.”

“Nevertheless, I have won our bet. You pledged your word to give me honest answers to three questions. If you would prefer to wait, I understand. We may not have long, however.”

“I might not,” Spider told her. “That’s what you’re thinkin’, isn’t it? Say it.”

She shook her head. “I’m not, because I don’t understand the situation sufficiently. When you’ve answered my questions, I may. Here is the first. The Army is by no means alone in its possession of slug guns. All Bison’s troopers have them, as do many others. Yet you were entirely certain it was not one of Bison’s troopers who had killed Paca. Why was that?”

Remora put in, “He’s answered already, hey? The — urn — accuracy. Precision.

“Yeah, that. But we saw them, and the other boys shot at them. You said you heard shootin’ when we had you locked up. Well, that was what you heard. It was soldiers, two or three, maybe. If they’d known there wasn’t but five of us and me with no slug gun, they’d have shot it out, but they couldn’t be sure we didn’t have a couple dozen, that’s what I think. So they beat hoof figurin’ to chill us one at a time.” He sighed. “We ought to of stuck together, but I didn’t see it like that then.”

“Thank you.” Maytera Mint laced her fingers in her lap as she considered. “If they have come to rescue His Eminence and me, there would be no reason for us to shoot them if we had slug guns to do it. That’s not a question, Spider. It’s a comment.”

“It’s right enough, whichever it is. But if you’re tryin’ to find out who sent them or why, you’re not goin’ to get it out of me. I don’t know. The Army’s ours, the Ayuntamiento’s. All the soldiers are supposed to know about us.”

“Possibly, um, councillor, eh?” Remora had carried over a stool. “Might not he have come to — ah — dubiety? You have, um, informers? Against the general’s forces, eh? Might not the councillor have come to fear that the calde, er, likewise? You?”

“Maybe.” Spider rose, went to the door, and taking Hyrax’s wrists pulled him into the room. “But I don’t believe it.”

“Nor do I,” Maytera Mint murmured as Spider shut the door and bolted it.

“You gamble, eh? Put yourself at hazard. And us. If the soldiers you apprehend are concealed, hey? There are other, um, chambers? In addition to this in which we, er, presently?”

“That’s the latrine,” Spider told him, nodding toward an interior door. “We got one of those portable jakes in there. The other’s the storeroom. Yeah, they could be in either one. Or locked out. I’ll take that for now.”

He turned to Maytera Mint. “You got two more questions, General. You goin’ to ask them? Or you want more water and somethin’ to eat? You can eat first if you want to.”

Observing Remora’s expression, she said, “Why can’t we eat while I ask? We’re adults.”

“Swell. Patera, you’re the hungriest, right?”

“I, er, possibly.”

“Then you go in and get it. The door’s not locked. Go in there, have a look at the prog, and bring out whatever you and the general want. Fetch along some wine, too, and more water if you want it.”

Remora gulped. “If they are, hey? Inside?”

“They most likely won’t shoot you. Tell them they won’t have to shoot me, neither. Tell them all I got’s a needler. When we went up to that house, I figured a needler’d be plenty and leave a hand free. Besides, it’s what I usually pack.”

“I shall emphasize the point, um, assuming.” Remora faced about and bowed his head.

“Well, get to it. Open the shaggy door.”

“He’s praying,” Maytera Mint explained. “He knows that he may be shot as soon as he does. He’s commending himself to High Hierax and offering the other gods what may be his final prayers as a living person.”

“Well, make it quick!”

“Thank you for answering my first question,” Maytera Mint said to distract Spider. “I agree that you’ve answered fully and fairly, as specified. My second may be a bit touchier. I want to point out in advance that it concerns no confidential matters of our city’s. Or of the Ayuntamiento’s, in so far as the two can be distinguished.

“Before I ask, would you like to pray too? If there are soldiers in there, which you seem to think possible, they are more likely to shoot you than His Eminence. And if they shoot His Eminence, they will certainly shoot us as well.”

Spider gave her a twisted grin. “How about you, General? You’re a sibyl. Why aren’t you prayin’?”

She took out her beads and fingered them while she framed her answer. “Because I have prayed a great deal already during the past few days. I have been in danger almost constantly, and I’ve sent others into dangers far worse and prayed for them. I would only be repeating the petitions I’ve made so often. Also because I’ve told the gods again and again that I’m very willing to die if that is their will for me. If I were to pray, I would pray only that His Eminence, and you, be spared. I do so pray. Great Pas, hear my plea!”

Spider grunted.

“Furthermore, I don’t believe there are soldiers hiding in here. I think that what must have happened was that one of them was in here looking for something. He heard Guan come in and hid, then came out and shot Guan after Guan’s first and perhaps rather cursory examination failed to find him. Would the water have come from the storeroom?”

Spider nodded. “Right.”

“Then I should think that the soldier was in the latrine. Since chems don’t use them, he might have thought Guan wouldn’t expect him there.”

Spider said nothing, sitting with eyes half shut, his back against the shiprock wall.

“Here is my second question. You’ll recall that Councillor Potto described the situation on the surface to His Eminence and me, then asked who was master of the city. His description made it clear that he was implying the Rani was. I take it you will concede that. You were present.”

“Sure. When her troopers come out of her airship, some of yours took shots at them. You know that?”

“I do. Many died as a result of that tragic error.”

“Those troopers thought Viron was bein’ invaded, and they were right. Sure, the Trivigauntis are goin’ to help you fight us. Sure, they’re goin’ to make this Silk calde. But he’ll lose his job the first time he balks. What’s the question?”

“You’ve answered it already, at least in part. I planned to ask what you know of the plans of the Trivigauntis.”

Remora cleared his throat. “I am — ah — readied. Also resolved. You yourselves, eh? Are you, um…?”

“Go ahead,” Spider told him.

Remora took two determined steps to his right and threw wide the door.

“That’s the latrine, you putt!”

Calmly, Remora turned. “I am, ah, was aware of it. I, um, eavesdropped, eh? Couldn’t help it. The General, um, indicated that this, ah, necessary room would be the point of greatest, er, greater hazard. I revere her intellect. More than your own, if I may be thus — ah — incivil.”

“Usually I do better than this,” Spider told him. “Now get in there where you’re s’posed to, and don’t forget to bring me out a bottle.”

“You would — ah — indubitably have had me, um, risk the necessary room as well.” Remora opened the storeroom door as he spoke. “I therefore, eh? Advised by the immortal gods. Or so I would like to, um, have it. The greater risk first.”

He stepped into the storeroom. “As for, ah, this…” He clapped to brighten the single dull light on the ceiling. “It is equally, um, innocent? Unpeopled.”

“In that case, I would like another bottle of water, Your Eminence,” Maytera Mint declared firmly, “if it’s not too much trouble. And some bread, if there is any. Meat, too. I would be very grateful.” To Spider she continued, “I inquired about what you knew, you’ll notice, not what you guessed. Do you know this? Or is it speculation?”

“I know it. Now you’ll want to know how I know.”

She shook her head, marveling to find herself — little Maytera Mint from Sun Street! — haggling with such a man over such a matter. “I won’t require you to reveal your sources.”

“I’ll tell you anyhow. Councillor Potto told me before we went up there. He wasn’t just guessin’, neither.”

Remora emerged from the storeroom with a dusty wine bottle, two even dustier bottles of water, and several small packages wrapped in tinted synthetic.

Spider accepted the wine. “Brown’s bread and red’s meat. I ought to of told you, but I guess you worked it out yourself.”

“It was not — ah — cryptic.” Remora sat down. “This, er, packet is unopened, Maytera. I, hum, sampled the other. Somewhat saline, but tasty.”

She accepted a red package and unwrapped it eagerly; it held flat strips of what seemed to be dried beef. “We thank all gods for this good food,” she murmured. “Thanks to Fair Phaea, especially. Praise Pasturing Pas for fat cattle.” She tore the leathery meat with her teeth and thought it sweet as sugarcane.

“Councillor Potto can lie birds out of a tree,” Spider drew the cork of the wine bottle with a pop. “I’ve heard him to where I just about believed him myself. You said while we were talkin’ in the tunnel that you figured I could fool you if I wanted to. I’m not so sure, but Councillor Potto could put it over on me, and I know it. Only this wasn’t that. He just said it, listenin’ to himself. I don’t think he cared a sham shaggy bit whether I believed it. But I do, and I’ve known him twenty years, like I said.”

Maytera Mint nodded and swallowed. “Thank you. And thank you, Your Eminence, for this food. I thanked the gods, I fear, but not their proximal agent.”

“Quite all right, eh? Um — delighted. Have some bread.” Remora handed her a brown-wrapped package. “Strengthening. Ah — fortifying.”

“Thank you again. Thank you very much. All praise to Fruiting Echidna, whose sword I am.”

She paused as she tore the loaf. “Spider, I’ll ask my final question, if I may. I won’t be able to, with my mouth full of this good bread. You may not know the answer.”

“If I don’t know, I don’t.” He wiped the top of the wine bottle on his cuff and held it out to her. “You want to bless this, too, while you’re doin’ everythin’ else?”

“Certainly.” Maytera Mint laid the bread in her lap with the remainder of the dried beef and traced the sign of addition over the bottle. “Praise to you, Exhilarating Thelxiepeia, and praise to you, likewise, dark son of Thyone.”

“Want a drink? Help yourself.”

She sipped cautiously, then more boldly.

“I bet that was the first wine you ever had in your life. Am I right?”

She shook her head. “Laymen — they are men in fact, very largely — give us a bottle now and then. When it happens, we have a glass at dinner until it’s gone.” She hesitated. “We did, I should have said. Maytera Rose and I did, but we won’t any more. She passed away last Tarsday, and I’ve scarcely had a moment to mourn her. She was…”

“A, umph, excellent sibyl,” Remora put in. He chewed and swallowed. “Doubtless. I did not have the — ah — happiness of her acquaintance. But doubtless, eh? No doubt of it.”

“A good woman whom life had treated sufficiently roughly that she struck out, at times, before she was struck.” Maytera Mint finished pensively. “Toward the end she struck at others habitually, I would say. It could be unpleasant, and yet her asperity was fundamentally defensive. That’s good wine. Might I have a little more, Spider?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thank you.” She sipped again. “Perhaps His Eminence would like some too.”

“Dimber with me.”

Maytera Mint wiped the mouth of the bottle and passed it to Remora. “My third question now. As I said, you may not know the answer. But what was the original purpose of these tunnels? I’ve been wondering ever since our calde described them to me, and it may be important.”

Spider leaned back, his homely heavy-featured face tilted upward and his eyes closed. “That’s somethin’ I can tell you all right, but I got to think.”

“As I say—”

He leaned forward once more, his eyes open and one large hand tugging at his stubbled jaw. “I didn’t say I don’t know. Councillor Potto told me about them. One thing he said was it wasn’t just one thing. There’s three or maybe four, and they go under the whole whorl. You know that?”

Her mouth full, Maytera Mint shook her head.

“If you went along the big one we turned off of,” Spider jerked his thumb at the door, “far enough, you could get clean to the skylands, maybe. I don’t know anybody that ever tried it, but that’s what Councillor Potto said one time. You can be way out in the sticks where there isn’t any houses or anythin’, nothin’ but trees and bushes, and maybe there’s one right under you. Could be a hundred cubits down or so close you’d hit it puttin’ in a fence post.”

Hoping her face did not betray the skepticism she felt, she said, “The labor involved must have been incredible.”

“Pas built them. It’s queer, tellin’ you two that. You ought to tell me. But he did. He did it when he was buildin’ the whorl, so it wasn’t as bad as you’d figure.”

The wine returned to Spider, who drank and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “His boys did the real work, accordin’ to the councillor. When we say Pas made it, it just means he had the idea and ran the job.”

“His divine — ah — puissance animated his servants.”

“If you say so. But there was a lot, see? He wanted the job done fast. Mind if I have a little of that?”

Spider took two strips of dried meat from Maytera Mint’s lap. “I’m with him there, I’m the same way. You got a job to do, you do it. Wrap it up and tie the string. Let one drag, and somethin’ always goes queer.” He bit through both strips.

“If they were indeed constructed by Pas, it must have been for some good reason. It’s one of the paradoxes of isagogics—” Maytera Mint looked to Remora for permission to speak on learned and holy topics, and received it. “That Pas, with all power at his disposal, squanders none. He never acts without a purpose, and educes a multitude of benefits from a single action.”

She paused, inviting contradiction. “We sibyls don’t go to the schola, but we receive some education as postulants, and we read, of course. We can also question our augurs if we wish, though I confess I’ve seldom done so.”

“All — ah — admirably correct, Maytera. General.”

Spider nodded. “Councillor Potto said somethin’ like that about the tunnels. We were talkin’ about when they got built.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“It was while they were buildin’ the whorl, like I said. To start it was just a big hunk of rock. You know that?”

“Certainly. The Chrasmologic Writings emphasize it.”

“So how could they get in and get the rock out? They dug a bunch of tunnels. Then they had to haul in dirt and trees, and pretty soon a big cart would come out and it’d be tearin’ up stuff they just planted. These tunnels are shiprock in lots of places, especially high up. You twig that?”

“Most have been, I believe. Nearly all.”

“All right. They made those before they brought in dirt, see? Up on the surface, only it was bare rock then, and now that’s maybe ten, twenty cubits down. They set those stretches up and shoveled dirt around them. Then they could cart in more, and the trees, without tearin’ up what they’d already finished.”

Maytera Mint swallowed bread. “But the deeper tunnels are bored through stone? That’s how our calde described them.”

“Sure, that’s how they got the rock out. Look up at the skylands next time you’re out in the open. Look at how much room there is, just clouds and air, and the sun and the shade, all right? What’s a few tunnels compared to that?”

Remora nodded vigorously. “’How mighty are the works of Pas!’ The, er, initial line of the Chrasmologic Writings, eh? Therefore known to — ah — all. Even laymen. We clergy, um, prone to forget.”

“He pumped water through them too,” Spider continued. “You take the lake. That’s a shaggy lot of water. Think if old Pas had to bring it in barrels. So for the little stuff, he just run pipes down the tunnels, but for big ones like the lake, he put in doors to keep the water out of the ones he wanted to stay dry, and pumped. I could show you a cave by the lake with one of those doors in the back. That’s where Pas pumped in water to fill the lake, and he put in that door ’cause he didn’t want the water to wash back into his tunnels when he was done. That cave used to be under the water when the lake was bigger.”

Spider fell silent, and Maytera Mint remarked, “Something’s troubling you.”

“I was just thinkin’ about a couple things. I told you this side one ends in dirt, and that’s where we bury them?”

She nodded.

“There’s one of those doors in front of the dirt. I guess the big tunnel was one of them they pumped in, and they didn’t want water in it. What we’re in now was probably put in after. Anyway, talkin’ about doors reminded me we’re goin’ to have to bury these culls. It’ll take a lot of diggin’.”

“I had assumed we would,” she said. “You indicated there were two points troubling you. May I ask what the second was? And what the other uses of these tunnels are?”

“That’s the same question two times.” Spider shrugged. “You never asked me why the lake keeps gettin’ smaller.”

“I didn’t suppose you knew, and to tell the truth, I’ve never thought much about it. The water has gone elsewhere, I suppose. Down into these tunnels, perhaps.”

“You couldn’t be any wronger about that, General.”

Remora put his water bottle on the floor between his feet. “You know, eh? Privy to the, um, information?”

“Yes, I’d like to know, too,” Maytera Mint said, “if you don’t mind. And I’ve by no means finished eating yet.”

“It’s all the same. You wanted to know what else they’re good for and somethin’ else. I forget.”

“The second consideration that troubled you.”

“Same thing. The sun shines all the time, don’t it?”

“Certainly.”

“But we get night half the time ’cause the shade’s there. It cools things off, right? When it’s hot, you’re happy to see the shade come down, ’cause you know it’s goin’ to get cooler. Wintertime, you don’t like it so much.”

“Primary. Um, puerile. What — ah — the significance?”

“See this room, Patera? Three doors. Let’s say they’re all shut. No windows, all right? Now s’pose the sun started at that corner there and run over to that one, about as big as a rope. That’s the whorl. That’s what it’s like, see? Goin’ to get pretty hot in here, right?”

“I take your point,” Maytera Mint told Spider, “but I do not understand it. The whorl is very large.”

“Not that big. It’s been goin’ for three hundred years and over. That’s what they say.”

“The, um, fact. Provable in a — ah — many ways.”

“Good here, Patera. It had to be hot enough for people to live in when Pas started it, see?”

Neither Remora nor Maytera Mint spoke.

“But it couldn’t get much hotter or we’d fry. Couldn’t get much hotter with the sun goin’ all the time. So there had to be some way to get shut of the heat.”

“The — ah — outside, eh? Beyond the whorl. The, um, Writings state, hey? An — uh, um — frigid night.”

“You got it. Notice how the wind blows all the time down here? It’s cold, too, colder than up top, anyhow.”

“I, um, fail—”

Maytera Mint interrupted. “I see! Air circulates through these tunnels, doesn’t it, Spider? Some of them must be filled with warm air bound for the night outside. The ones we’ve been in are carrying cold air back to the surface.”

“Bull’s-eye, General. Well, it’s not workin’ as good as it did. You said about lake water goin’ in the tunnels.”

She nodded.

“Suppose it fills a tunnel half up. The wind can’t blow as much, see? If it fills the whole tunnel in just one spot, the wind can’t blow at all. There’s places where the shiprock gave way, too, and wind can’t blow there either. So it’s gettin’ hotter. We don’t notice, ’cause it’s too slow. But talk to old people and they’ll say winters used to be colder, and longer, too.” Spider stood. “I’m goin’ to start diggin’. You want to eat more, bring it along.”

“I do and I will,” Maytera Mint gathered up what remained of her bread and meat, picked up her bottle of water, and rose. The bolt of the outer door clanked back; the shadowy side tunnel beyond was deserted.

“They’ve gone off,” Spider told her over his shoulder. “I’d like to know why they started shootin’ at my boys.”

She sighed. “Because they were Ayuntamientados, I should imagine. Four brave men who had kept Viron secure for years, slain by others who’ve guarded it for centuries. That’s what we’ve come to.”

“Not all, eh?” Remora closed the door behind him. “All the, um. Not, ah, er, fah…” His mouth worked soundlessly.

Maytera Mint looked around at him in some surprise. His eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull, and his nose appeared both thinner and smaller. As she watched, his lips drew back, exposing his big, discolored teeth in a frightful grin. Spider exclaimed, “Sphigx shit!”

“He’s not the right one,” Remora informed Maytera Mint.

She made herself smile.

“This is the one who talks to the one who’s not there. The right one was down here with the tall girl. He might be here.”

“This is Mucor,” Maytera Mint explained to Spider. “She’s Maytera’s granddaughter. We’ve spoken before.

“Do you remember, Mucor? You came to tell me our calde was in danger of capture, and I stormed the Palatine. Afterward, we met in person in the Juzgado.”

Remora nodded, his head bobbing like a toy’s, lank black hair mercifully concealing his terrible eyes. “Incus is his name. A little augur.”

“I don’t know him, though His Eminence has told me of him. Mucor? Mucor!”

The death-head grin was fading.

“Mucor, come back, please! If you see Bison or our calde, tell them — tell either or both — where I am, and that this man is holding us for Councillor Potto.”

“You won’t be then.” The final word was almost too faint to hear. The grin vanished; Remora tossed his hair back as he habitually did, and the eyes his gesture revealed were no longer terrifying. “Not all, hey? Many on our, um, the calde’s.”

When no one spoke, he added, “The general’s, hey?”

“You want my needler?” Spider asked Maytera Mint.

“Certainly, if you’re willing to let me have it.”

He presented it butt first. “You wouldn’t shoot me, would you, General? Not with my own needler that I gave you.”

She accepted it, glanced at it, and dropped it into one of her habit’s side pockets. “No. Only if I were compelled to, and perhaps not even then.”

“All right I’m goin’ to dig the graves now, see? You two can finish eatin’ and watch,” Spider stepped out into the empty tunnel, “but if I’m cold ’fore I finish, it’s for me. You wrap me and slide me in. Knife’s in my pocket.”

They followed him down the tunnel until it was blocked by a massive barrier of rusty iron. “Councillor Potto doesn’t want anybody to hear,” Spider confided, “but I guess it don’t matter any more. Fraus!”

For a second or longer, nothing happened.

The great barrier shuddered, creaked, and began to creep upward, rolling unpleasantly into itself. Abruptly, Maytera Mint became conscious of the stench of decay, nauseous yet so diffuse that she might almost have believed she imagined it. Remora snorted, sounding surprisingly horse-like, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“No fresh air, ’cept when the door’s open,” Spider remarked as he led them into the dim cul-de-sac the rising barrier had revealed. “It’ll air out pretty quick.” He stopped to point. “Right here’s where the shiprock ends. Have a look.”

Maytera Mint advanced to do so, crossing loose earth into which her scuffed black shoes sank. “I’m very glad you let us hear the word for that door. I’d hate to think of our being locked in here, unable to get it open.”

“I’m bein’ nice to you two so you’ll slide me in after it happens. See the rolls of poly?”

“Certainly.” She was examining the edge of the shiprock wall. “This is not as thick as I had imagined.”

“It’s pretty strong, though. There’s iron rods in it.”

“The — ah — interments.” Remora indicated scraps of paper that dotted the sloping earth at the end of the tunnel. “Those, um, are they all?” He counted them silently, his lips twitching. “Eleven in — ah — toto?”

Spider nodded. “Plenty of room left, but we got three in the guardroom, and Paca back in the big tunnel, and me.”

“You — ah — depression. A mere, um, state of mind, my son. Emotion, hey?”

“Yes,” Maytera Mint agreed heartily. “You mustn’t talk as if your death were inevitable, Spider. I mean now, killed by those soldiers. It isn’t, and I pray it won’t happen.”

“That devil you called your sib’s granddaughter, General. What’d it say?”

“She is not a devil,” Maytera Mint delared firmly. “She is a living girl, one who has been shamefully mistreated.”

Spider grunted, picking up a long-handled spade that had lain between two rolls of synthetic.

“This, er, granddaughter, General. An — ah — difficult child?” Remora bit into a strip of dried beef.

Maytera Mint nodded absently, and found herself staring at one of the grim slips of soiled paper. Bending and squinting, she read a name, a date, and a few particulars of the dead man’s life. “Is this the most recent one, Spider? The paper seems cleaner than the others.”

“Yeah. Last spring.”

There was still half a loaf. Deep in thought, she tore away piece after piece, chewing and swallowing slowly, and drank from her bottle.

“I’m about done here.” Spider had ceased to dig, leaning on his spade. “Think you two could fetch a cull out for me? Door’s not locked.”

“I was about to suggest it myself,” Maytera Mint told him.

“We — ah — trust, hey? On our honor?”

“I have his needler, Your Eminence. We could go at any time, and I could shoot him if he tried to stop us.”

“In that case, um, the circumstances—”

“But he gave it to me, remember? Besides, he knows these tunnels, and we don’t.”

“Ah — the soldiers.”

“I feel certain they’d help up if we could find them, but what if we couldn’t? Spider, we’ll be happy to bring one of your late friends here for burial. Thank you for your trust in us. It is not misplaced.”

He nodded. “Cut off a big hunk of poly. You can lay him on that and drag him, it’s real slick. When you get him here, I’ll wrap him up in it.”

“May I borrow your knife?”

He got it from his pocket and handed it to her, then went back to his digging. Remora held the ends of the smaller roll while she pulled out and slashed free a length twice the height of a man.

As they carried it back to the guardroom, Remora muttered, “You, um, wonders with him, Maytera. I congratulate you.”

She shrugged, unconsciously thrusting her hand into her pocket to grasp Spider’s needler. “He has no slug gun, Your Eminence, and without one he would be defenseless against the soldiers. He’s hoping our presence will make it possible for him to surrender.”

“I, ah—” Remora opened the guardroom door and glanced around. Their stools stood in a circle as they had left them, and the three dead men still sprawled on the gritty shiprock floor, untouched. “One can always, eh? Give up? Capitulate. Not, um, that we—”

“One can always raise one’s hands and step into full view of the enemy,” Maytera Mint told him. “A good many troopers lose their lives doing it. This one nearest the door, I think. If Your Eminence will unfold that synthetic, we can roll him onto it, poor spirit.”

“You, er, concerned, eh?” Remora spread the synthetic winding sheet, holding it down with his knees as he wrestled with the dead man’s shoulder. “I observed your demeanor in — ah — there. As you ate.”

“Puzzled.” She forced her gaze away from the dead man’s eyes, wishing that it had been possible to roll him so that he lay face down again. “There was fresh earth on the blade of that spade. At least, I think it was fresh, or fairly fresh. Maytera has a little garden back at the cenoby, Your Eminence. I’ve helped her with it now and then, hoeing, and spading in the spring. I don’t think that Spider noticed it.”

“I fail to see the, um, import. Someone else, eh? Could be Councillor Potto, another — hum — subordinate.”

“I fail to see it too,” she told Remora. “Take the other corner, will you?”

Back at the end of the tunnel, Spider had completed the first grave and begun a second. “That’s Hyrax.” He produced a stump of pencil and a battered notebook. “I’ll write, you two cap for him.”

They knelt. Maytera Mint found herself, rather to her own surprise, clasping the cold hand. If things had been different, she thought, we might have been man and wife, you and I. We must be nearly of an age.

The drone of Remora’s prayer reminded her of the singsong voices of children in the classroom, recifing the multiplication table, memorizing prayers for meals, for betrothals, for the dead. Had she taught girls this year? Or boys? She could not remember.

We would have kissed and held hands, and done what men and women do, and I would have borne you a child, perhaps, my own child. But when I met Bison…

“All right, General, let him go. I got to fold this over him.” Suddenly Hyrax was no longer a dead man, but a statue or a picture, still visible but blurred and faintly blue through the synthetic.

“His knife.” She rose, dusting loose earth from her black skirt by reflex. “You’ll need his knife for the paper.”

“I already got it. You want to help, Patera? I could do it alone, but it’ll be easier with two.” They crouched, one on either side, and Spider said, “Lift when I do, see? A-one and a-two and a-three!”

Raising the shrouded corpse to waist level, they slid it into its grave; and he began shovelling earth after it, pausing from time to time to tamp the damp dark face of death with the handle of his spade. He said, “You’re wonderin’ why we don’t dig them down the way you usually do, I guess.”

“The, um, papers,” Remora ventured. “Stepped upon, eh? Trodden.”

“There’s that. But mostly it’s easier to dig here. Then too, we’d have to walk on the old ones to bury the new ones.”

As they were leaving the guardroom with Guan stretched on a fresh sheet of poly, laughter, faint and mad, echoed in the main tunnel. “Wait!” Maytera Mint told Remora. “Did you hear that? You must have!”

He shuddered. “I — ah — possibly.”

“Will you do me a favor, Your Eminence?” She did not wait for his assent. “Go back in there and get two packages of that dried meat. One for yourself, and one for me. We can put them in our pockets.”

“That — ah — merriment…”

“I have no idea, Your Eminence. I have a feeling, a presentiment, if you will, that we may need food.”

“If we — er — never mind.” Remora vanished into the guardroom.

When he returned, Maytera Mint handed him a needler.

“But I am — er — better, perhaps, with you, eh, General? Your, um, forte.”

“That isn’t Spider’s, it’s Guan’s,” she told him. “Spider said a needler was what he usually used, remember? It didn’t really make much of an impression at the time, but afterward, thinking about that poor man who dressed as a woman, it struck me that the other spy-catchers must have done the same thing. They would want some sort of a weapon, and before the rebellion nobody but a Guardsman could walk around the city carrying a slug gun. Then I wondered — this was while we were bringing Hyrax — what they did with them when they got their slug guns. It seemed likely that most of them had simply put them in their waistbands, under their tunics, where they were accustomed to carrying them.”

“Most, um, sagacious.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence. Anyway, whatever that was we heard wasn’t a soldier. Do you agree?”

“I, um, indubitably.” Remora stared down at the needler in his hand.

“Or a chem at all, any kind of chem. So a needler should work, and we may need them, just as we may need this meat, for which I haven’t yet thanked you. Thank you very much, Your Eminence. It was a great condescension for you to oblige me as you have.”

“You must know how to, um, operate? Manage this?” Remora might not have heard her.

“It’s not difficult. Push that down,” she pointed to the safety catch, “when you wish to shoot. Point it, and pull the trigger. If you want to shoot a second needle, pull it again. I won’t show you how to reload now. There isn’t time, and we don’t have any more needles anyway.”

Remora gulped and nodded.

“In your waistband under your robe, perhaps. I believe that’s where our calde must carry his.”

“I — ah. It would be, er, inadvisable, hey? When we return to the — ah — up there.”

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.” Maytera Mint stooped for a corner of the sheet of synthetic on which Guan’s body lay. “We’d better go now, and quickly, or Spider will wonder what delayed us.”

At the end of the side tunnel she knelt as she had before, trying to keep her mind upon appropriate petitions to the gods. Guan had kicked her shortly before Spider had locked her away with Remora so that he and his men could sleep; the right side of her thigh was still sore and stiff. She had scarcely given it a thought since it had happened, or so she had convinced herself. Now that Guan was dead, now that Guan lay before her, she found she could not free her mind from the memory of that kick. It was easy to mouth I forgive you, and to ask the gods, Echidna particularly, not to hold the kick against him; yet she felt that her forgiveness did not reach her heart, however hard she tried to bring it there.

The transparent sheet covered Guan as a sister sheet from the parent roll had covered Hyrax, and Maytera Mint got to her feet. What was the third man’s name? He had been the quietest of their captors; she had thought him sullen and marked him as potentially the most dangerous. She would never know, now, whether she had been correct.

“How ’bout if you dig for Sewellel, Patera? I’ll go back with General Mint here and fetch him.”

“Why, ah—”

She saw Remora assure himself that his needler was in place with a touch of his forearm, and said, “He’s not going to attack me, Your Eminence. He would like to speak to me in private, I imagine.”

Remora managed to smile. “In that, um, circumstances, I shall — ah — comply. With all good will.”

“What it really is,” Spider told him, “is I want to see if you can do it right. You’ll have to dig for me, see? You seen me do it. Now you do for Sewellel and Paca, and that’ll be two for each of us. Let’s move out, General.”

Obediently, she followed him down the side tunnel. “What I told Patera’s lily,” Spider said as they walked. “You know that word? Means the truth.”

“Yes, I do, though I’ve always considered it children’s slang. My pupils use it sometimes.”

“But that you said, General. That was the lily too.”

She nodded, striving to make her nod sympathetic.

“I’m sorry about the way I talk. Sometimes I swear when I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I always do.”

“I understand, believe me.”

He stopped abruptly. “Thing is, I don’t believe you. Or him, back there. Patera What’shisface.

“Remora.”

Spider waved aside Remora’s identity. “Echidna made you a general? She talked to you about it?”

“She certainly did.”

“Could you see her like you’re seein’ me now? Could you make out what she was sayin’? She talked to you out of one of those big glasses they got in manteions?”

“Exactly. I can repeat everything she said, if you wish. I’d be happy to.” This was a return to familiar ground, and Maytera Mint felt more confident than she had since she and Remora had passed through the ruined gate of Blood’s villa.

“I know somebody that says he couldn’t really hear the words. He just knew what she meant.”

“He had known woman,” Maytera Mint explained, hoping that Spider would understand what she intended by known. “Or else he had… Excuse this, please. The indelicacy.”

“Sure thing.”

“He had known another man, or a boy, as men know women. That man you told us about? Titi? I should imagine—”

“Yeah, so do I, and the other way, too. Sure he did. Is that the only reason?”

“It is. By Echidna’s will, those who have enjoyed carnal knowledge of others may not behold the gods. Nor may they hear them distinctly, though in most cases they understand them. It varies between individuals, and several reasons have been put forward for that. If you don’t mind, I won’t explain those in detail. They concern the frequency and the specific natures of various sexual relations. You can readily construct them, or similar theories, for yourself.”

“Sure, General. You can skip all that.”

“I have never known Man. Therefore I saw the face of the goddess exactly as I see yours. More clearly, because her face was very bright. I heard each word she uttered, and can repeat them verbatim, as I said. When I have known Man…”

The guilty words had slipped out; she hurried on, conscious that her cheeks were reddening. “I shall no longer be able to see Echidna. No more than your friend could. In the event that I know Man — I mean, have relations with a — with a husband. My husband. Then I won’t be able to repeat the words of the gods any more than you could.”

“That was the thing I was wanting to talk to you about.”

“The words of the goddess? She said—”

Spider waved Echidna’s words aside. “You gettin’ married and knowin’ a man, like you said. I got to tell you.”

Her hand closed about the needler in her pocket. “Do you mean yourself, Spider? No. Not willingly.”

He shook his head. “Bison. I’m fly, see? I can tell from how you talk about him. It got you worried when I said I got culls you think’s yours. You were scared Bison was one.”

“Certainly not!” Maytera Mint took three deep breaths and relaxed her hold on the needler. “I suppose I was, a little.”

“Yeah, I know. You kept tellin’ yourself it couldn’t be like that, on account of stuff he’s said to you.”

She had taken a step backward; she found that her shoulders were pressed against the tunnel’s cold shiprock. “I haven’t said anything to him, Spider, nor has he said a single such word to me. Nothing! But I’ve seen — or believed I saw… And he, Bison, no doubt has — has. Seen me. And heard me, too. My voice. In the same fashion.”

“Yeah, I got you, General.” To her surprise, Spider leaned against the wall next to her, sparing her the embarrassment of his gaze. “How old are you?”

“That is none of your affair.” She made her voice as firm as she could.

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. How old’d you say I am?”

She shook her head. “Since I decline to confide my age to you, it would be completely inappropriate for me to speculate on yours.”

“I’m forty-eight, and that’s lily. I’d say you’re about thirty-three, thirty-four. If that’s queer I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

“Nor will I now.”

“I just want to say it goes awful fast. Life goes by awful fast. You think you know all about that now. The shag you do. I remember all kind of things that happened when I was a sprat.”

“I understand, Spider. I know precisely what you mean.”

“You just think you do. I’ve had maybe a hundred women. I wish I’d kept count, but I didn’t. There was only two I didn’t have to pay, and one was abram once you got to know her.”

“It’s quite normal for men to think women—” Maytera Mint sought for a diplomatic word. “Irrational. And for women to think men irrational as well.”

“Handin’ you the lily, I had to pay the other one, too. I didn’t give her the gelt, but she cost a shaggy lot more. More than she was worth.” Spider shot Maytera Mint a sidelong look. “I got something important to say, but I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

“Is it true, Spider?”

“Shag, yes! Every word.

“Then I will believe you, even if you don’t believe me about the gods. What is it?”

“This isn’t it. This’s what I should of said back there, see? There was a time when I might of got a woman like you, but that’s over. Over and done up, see? Just slipped away. Last year I met one I thought I might like and sort of shaved her a little, you know? And she shaved me back. Then she seen I was gettin’ to be serious, and she just froze up. She’d look at me, and her eyes kept sayin’ too old, too old. It goes so fast. I didn’t feel like I’d got old. I still don’t.”

For a half-minute or more, his silence filled the tunnel.

“All right, about this buck Bison.”

Maytera Mint forced herself to nod.

“I’m goin’ to die. Probably it won’t be very long at all. Back there where we bury, I kept hopin’ they’d shoot me and I’d get to say it before I went cold, ’cause then you’d believe me. But they don’t shoot like that. The way my culls got it, you’re chilled straight off, so I got to say it right here. He was one of mine, see? Bison was. A dimber hand.”

She could not be certain she had spoken; perhaps not.

“He was supposed to check in every night. I’d meet him, see, in this certain place. But he only come the first time, the first night.”

It was possible to breathe again.

“So I sent somebody. I sent this cully we’re fetchin’, Sewellel. Bison, he told him he was out. He wouldn’t tell you anything about us, but he wouldn’t tell us anything about you, neither. That’s the lily, General. That’s how it was. I don’t blame you if you don’t believe it, and in your shoes maybe I wouldn’t. But I’m goin’ today and know it, and I’d like you to cap for me when I’m cold.”

“Pray for your spirit.” She was still trying to wrap her understanding about the fact.

“Yeah. So it’s lily. I told you I wouldn’t tell you who mine was, the ones you thought was yours. But he’s not mine any more. That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”

She found herself entering the guardroom again, with no memory of having resumed their walk. “Shall I go back and cut off a piece of synthetic?” she asked. “I forgot entirely that we’d need another one. If you carry Sewellel on your shoulders, you’ll have blood all over you.”

“I got it right here,” Spider told her. He held it up.

“But I have your knife. You gave me that so…”

“I used Guan’s, ’fore I wrote for him.” Spider smiled, a small, sad smile heart-wrenchingly foreign to his coarse face. “It don’t really take three. It don’t even take two, see? I been down here by myself and buried a couple times, and that’s what I do, ’cause I start by findin’ the dead cull’s knife.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m certain you must have been the only mourner that those men had, more than once.” She thrust her hands into her pockets, found his needler and her beads, and at last his knife. “Take it, please. I don’t want to bury you, Spider. I won’t. I want to save your life, and I’m going to try. I’m going to try very hard, and I’ll succeed.”

He shook his head, but she forced the rough clasp knife into his hand. “Close the door, please. I think it would be better if we didn’t startle His Eminence.

Striding purposefully now, she crossed the guardroom and entered the storeroom. “I should have gone in here before,” she told Spider over her shoulder. “I let His Eminence do it both times, and it was cowardly of me. This locker — I suppose that’s what you call it — with the sign of addition on it in red. Is this where the stretcher’s kept?”

Behind her, Spider said, “Yeah, that’s it.”

She turned, drawing his needler. “Raise both your hands, Spider. You are my prisoner.”

He stared at her, his eyes wide.

“He may be able to see us. I can’t be sure. Raise them! Hold them up before he kills you.”

As Spider lifted his hands, the front of the locker swung open; a soldier stepped out and saluted, his slug gun stiffly vertical, his steel heels clashing. Maytera Mint said, “You aren’t Sergeant Sand. What’s your name?”

“Private Schist, sir!”

“Thank you. There’s a dead man in the outer room. I take it you killed him?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Take the synthetic this man’s holding and wrap him — the dead man out there, I mean. Wrap the dead man’s body in that. You can carry it for us.”

Schist saluted again.

Spider said, “You knew he was in there all the time.”

Maytera Mint shook her head, finding herself suddenly weak with relief. “I wish I were that… I don’t know what to call it. That godlike. People believe I am, but I’m not. I have to think and think.”

She paused to watch Schist through the doorway as he knelt beside Sewellel’s corpse. “And even then I ask Bison’s advice, and the captain’s. Often I find they’ve seen more deeply into the problem than I have. I suppose it’s useless to ask whether you were telling me the whole truth about Bison now. You can put down your hands, I think.”

“I was, yeah.” From his expression, Spider was relieved as well. “How’d you figure he was in there?”

“From the earth on the spade. There was fresh earth on the blade. Didn’t you notice it?”

He shook his head.

From the guardroom, Schist announced, “I got him, sir.”

“Good. You’d better walk ahead of us, Spider, and put up your hands again. There are more, you see. They could have rushed you hours ago, but they must have been afraid you’d kill His Eminence and me.”

A hundred thoughts crowded her mind. “Besides, if we let you walk behind us, you might decide that your duty to Councillor Potto compelled you to run. Then this soldier would fire.”

“I’d hit you, too,” Schist said. “I don’t miss much.” He patted Sewellel’s swathed corpse, slung over his left shoulder.

“Can I put my hand down to open the door?”

“Certainly,” Maytera Mint told him; and Schist, “Sure.”

“I ought to explain that I’ve spoken with Private Schist’s sergeant,” Maytera Mint continued as they left the guardroom. “That was on Sphixday, the day after our calde was rescued. His name is Sand, and he has come over to our side, to the calde’s side, with his entire squad. Or rather, with what remains of it, because several were killed by a talus.”

“I know how it feels.”

“I realize you do, Spider. Neither you nor I, nor Sergeant Sand, created war. What I was going to say is that our calde and I, with Sergeant Sand himself and Generalissimo Oosik and General Saba, conferred upon how we might make the best possible use of Schist here and the rest. Of the few soldiers we had. It wasn’t a lengthy debate, because all of us found the answer rather obvious. The soldiers knew these tunnels, and none of us did, though our calde had spent some time in them. Furthermore, down here they might encounter other soldiers whom they could bring over to our side. Plainly then, the best use that could be made of them was to send them back here to scout the enemy’s dispositions, and augment their number if they could.”

“All right, but how’d you know he was in there from the dirt on my spade?”

“It was fresh, as I said. Still somewhat damp. I asked about the grave that looked most new, and read the date on the paper, and it wasn’t nearly new enough. So somebody else had been burying something. I thought of an ear, as they’re called, or something of the sort, though to the best of my knowledge Sand didn’t have one.” She fell silent, listening to their echoing footsteps.

“Go on,” Spider urged her.

“Eventually I realized that room back there was a better place. A soldier as intelligent as Sand would surely anticipate that we would stop there to eat and talk. He’d want to know what we said, since you might say something that would be of value to him. He was right, because as soon as we arrived I began asking my questions. At any rate, he had Schist hide and listen, and when we left we were going here.”

Already, too soon as it seemed to Maytera Mint, they had passed beneath the great iron door, and Remora was staring at Schist. She called, “It’s all right, Your Eminence! We have been rescued, and Spider is our prisoner.”

The earth around Remora erupted as two more soldiers freed themselves from it.