Lake of the Long Sun

Chapter 11. SOME SUMMATIONS

"Auk ? Have you forgotten me?"

He had thought himself utterly alone on the windswept Pilgrims' Way, trudging back to Limna. Twice before he had stopped to rest, sitting on white stones to scan the skylands. Auk was frequently outdoors and alone nightside, and it was something he enjoyed doing when he had the time: tracing the silver threads of rivers from which he would never drink, and exploring mentally the innumerable unknown cities in which the pickings were (as he liked to imagine) considerably better. Despite Chenille's insistence, he had not believed that she would actually remain in Scylla's shrine all night; but he had never supposed that she might overtake him. He pictured her as she had been when they reached it, footsore and exhausted, her face shining with sweat, her raspberry curls a mass of sodden tangles, her voluptuous body drooping like a bouquet on a grave. Yet he felt sure it had been her voice that had sounded behind him. "Chenille!" he called. "Is that you?"

"No."

He rose, nonplussed, and shouted, "Chenille?"

The syllables of her name echoed from the rocks.

"I won't wait for you, Chenille."

Much nearer: "Then I'll wail for you at the next stone. "

The faint pattering might have been rain; he glanced up at the cloudless sky again. The sound grew louder-running feet on the Pilgrims' Way behind him. As his eyes had traced the rivers, they followed its winding path across the barren, jutting cliff.

The clear skylight revealed her almost at once, nearer than he had supposed, her skirt hiked to her thighs and her arms and legs pumping. Abruptly she vanished in the shadow of a beetling rock, only to emerge like a stone from a sling and shoot toward him. For an. instant he felt that she was running faster and faster with every stride, and would never slow or stop, or even stop gaining speed. Gaping, he stood aside.

She passed like a whirlwind, mouth wide, teeth gleaming, eyes starting from their sockets. A moment more and she was lost among stunted trees.

He drew his needler, checked the breech and pushed off the safety, and advanced cautiously, the needler in his hand ready to fire. The moaning wind brought the sound of tearing cloth, and her hoarse respirations.

"Chenille?"

Again, there was no reply.

"Chenille, I'm sorry."

He felt that some monstrous beast awaited him among the shadows; and although he called himself a fool, he could not free himself from the presentiment.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "It was a rotten thing to do. I should have stayed there with you."

Half a chain farther, and the shadows closed about him. The beast still waited, nearer now. He mopped his sweating face with his bandanna; and as he wadded it into his pocket, he caught sight another, quite naked, sitting on one of the white stones in a patch of skylight. Her black dress and pale undergarments were heaped at her feet, and her tongue lolled from her mouth so far that she appeared to lick her breasts.

He halted, tightening his grip on the needler. She stood and strode toward him. He backed into deeper shadow and leveled the needler; she passed him without a word, stalking through the leafless spinney straight to the edge of the cliff. For a second or two she paused there, her arms above her head.

She dove, and after what seemed too long an interval he heard the faint splash.

He was halfway to the edge before he pushed the safety back up and restored the needler to his waistband. Heights held no fear for him; still, he knew fear as he stood at the brink of the cliff and stared down, a hundred cubits or more, into the skylit water.

She was not there. Wind-driven combers charged at the tumbled rocks like a herd of white-maned horses, but she was not among them.

"Chenille?"

He was about to turn away when her head burst through from a wave. "I'll meet you, " she called, "there." An arm that for an instant seemed but one of many pointed down the rocky beach toward the scattered lights of Limna. "Arms?" The question was Oreb's, and had come from a clump of straggling bushes to Auk's right.

He sighed, glad of any company and ashamed to be glad. "Yeah. Too many arms." He mopped his sweating face again. "No, that's gammon. It was like in a mirror, see? Chenille held her arms up out of the water, and it reflected 'em so it looked like there was more underneath, that's all. You find Patera?"

"Shrine eat."

"Sure. Come over and I'll give you a lift to Limna."

"Like bird?"

"I guess. I won't hurt you if that's what you mean, but you're Patera's, and I'm going to give you back to him if we ever find him."

Oreb fluttered up from the bushes to a landing on Auk's shoulder. "Girl like? Now like?""Chenille? Sure." Auk paused. "You're right. That's not her, is it?"

"No, no!"

"Yeah, right." Auk nodded to himself. "It's some kind of devil that only looks like Chenille. Shag, I don't know whether it likes birds or not. If I had to guess, I'd say it probably likes 'em for breakfast and lunch, but maybe it'd like something a little more solid for dinner. Anyhow, we'll dodge it if we can."

Worn out though he was, it seemed to him that his lagging feet flew over the next hill and all the rest, when he would have preferred that entire months be consumed in climbing and descending each. An hour passed in weary walking seemed less than a minute to him; and though Oreb kept him company on his shoulder, he had seldom felt so alone.

"I've found it!" Chenille's voice sounded practically at his ear; he jumped and Oreb squawked. "Can you swim? Are you carrying valuables that would be damaged by water?"

"A little," Auk admitted. He had stopped in his tracks to look for her; it was difficult to keep his hand away from his needler. When he spoke again, he was afraid that he might stammer. "Yeah, I am. Couple things."

"Then we must have a boat." Like mist from the lake, she rose between him and the rocky beach-he had been looking in the wrong direction. "You don't comprehend the littlest part of this, do you? I'm Scylla." It was, to Auk's mind, an assertion of such preeminent significance that no being of which he could conceive would have the audacity to make it falsely. He fell to his knees and mumbled a prayer.

"It's 'lovely Scylla,' " his deity told him, " 'wonderful of waters', not 'woman of the water.' If you must mouth that nonsense, do it correctly."

"Yes, Scylla."

She caught him by the hair. "Straighten up! And stop whining. You're a burglar and a thug, so you may be useful. But only if you do precisely as I direct." For a moment she glared at him, her eyes burning into his. "You still don't understand. Where can we find a boat? Around that village, I suppose. Do you know?"

Standing, he was a head taller than she, and felt that he ought to cower. "There's boats there for rent, lovely Scylla. I've got some money." "Don't try to make me laugh. It will do you no good, I warn you. Follow me."

"Yes, Scylla."

"I don't care for birds." She did not trouble to look back at Oreb as she spoke. "They belonged to Daddy, and now to Moipe and ones like that to little Hierax. I don't even like having my people named for them. You know I'm oldest?"

"Yes, I sure do, lovely Scylla." Auk's voice had been an octave too high; he cleared his throat and made an effort to regain his self-possession. "That's the way Patera Pike always told it at the palaestra."

"Pike?" She glanced back at him. "That's good. Is he particularly devoted to me?"

"Yes, lovely Scylla. Or anyhow he was. He's dead."

"It doesn't matter."

Already they had reached the beginning of the Pilgrims' Way; the glowing windows of cookshops and taverns illuminated the street; late diners bound for rented beds stared rudely at Chenille's nakedness, or resolutely did not stare.

"Six children after me! Daddy had this thing about a male heir, and this other thing about not dying." A drunken carter tried to tweak her nipple; she gouged his eyes with both thumbs and left him keening in the gutter. "Moipe was just another girl, but you would have thought Tartaros would do it. Oh, no. So along came little Hierax, but even Hierax wasn't enough. So then three more girls, and after that-I suppose you already knew we could take you over like this?"

Oreb croaked, "Girl?" But if she heard him she gave no sign of it.

Auk muttered, "I didn't know it could still happen now, lovely Scylla."

"It's our right, but most of us have to have a glass or a Window. That's what you call them. A terminal. But this whole lake's my terminal, which gives me lots of power around here."

She was not looking at him, but Auk nodded.

"I haven't been here for a while, though. This woman's a whore. No wonder Kypris went for her." Auk nodded again, weakly.

"In the beginning we chose up, with Daddy to be the god of everything-that's what his name meant-and boss over everybody. You see? Where are the boats?"

"If we turn the next corner and go down a ways we might find some, lovely Scylla."

"He's dead now, though. We wiped him out of core thirty years ago. Anyway, Mama got to pick next, and she grabbed the whole inner surface. I knew she'd stay on land, mostly, so I took the water. I was doing lots of diving back then. Moipe took the arts, like you'd expect." As Chenille rounded the corner, she caught sight of a fishing boat moored at the end of the alley; she pointed. "That one's already got a man on it. Two, and one's an augur. Perfect! Can you sail? I can."

Pas was dead! Auk could think of nothing else. "No? Then don't kill them. I was going to say that we took new names that would fit. Daddy was Typhon the First, back home. What none of us knew was that he'd let her choose, too. So she picked love, what a surprise. And got sex and everything dirty with it. She didn't meddle very much in the beginning, knowing that-"

Hearing her voice, Patera Incus had looked up. "You! Augur! Prepare to cast off." Chenille herself was off like a sprinter, disappearing in the dense shadow of a salting shed. A moment later Auk saw her leap-flying in away that he knew would have been impossible had she not been possessed-to land with a roll upon the deck of. The fishing boat.

"I said prepare to cast off. Are you deaf?" She struck the augur with her left hand and the fisherman with her right, and the sounds of the blows might almost have been the slamming of double doors. Auk drew his needler and hurried after her.

Another hot-another scorching-morning. Maytera Marble fanned herself with a pamphlet. There were coils in her cheeks; their plan no longer appeared at her call, but she was almost sure of it. Her main coils were in her legs, with an auxiliary coil in each cheek; there the fluid that carried such strength as she still possessed was brought (or at least ought to have been brought) into intimate contact with her titanium faceplate, which was in turn in intimate contact with the air of the kitchen.

And the air was supposed to be cooler.

But no, that couldn't be right. She had once looked- she was almost sure she had looked-distinctly like a bio. Her cheeks had been overlaid with . . . with some material that would very likely have impeded the transfer of heat. What had she told dear Patera Silk the other day? Three centuries? Three hundred years? The decimal had slipped, must certainly have slipped to the left.

It had to have. She had looked like a bio then-like a bio girl, with black hair and red cheeks. Like a somewhat older Dahlia in fact, and Dahlia had always been so bad at arithmetic, forever mixing up her decimals, multiplying two decimal numbers and getting one with two decimal points, mere scrambled digits that meant not even His Cognizance could have said what.

With her free hand, Maytera Marble stirred the porridge. It was done, nearly overcooked. She lifted it from the stove and fanned herself again. In the refectory on the other side of the doorway, little Maytera Mint waited for her breakfast with exemplary patience. Maytera Marble told her, "Perhaps you'd better eat now, sib. Maytera Rose may be ill."

"All right, sib."

"That was obedience, wasn't it?" The pamphlet drifted past Maytera Marble's face; it bore a watery picture of Scylla frolicking with sunfish and sturgeon, but carried no cooling. Deep within Maytera Marble, an almost-forgotten sensor stirred dangerously. "You don't have to obey me, sib."

"You're senior, sib." Normally the words would have been nearly inaudible; this morning they were firm and clear.

Maytera Marble was too hot to notice. "I won't make you eat now if you don't want to, but I've got to take it off the stove."

"I want what you want, sib."

"I'm going to go upstairs. Maytera may require my help." Maytera Marble had an inspiration. "I'll take her bowl up on a tray." That would make it possible for Maytera Mint to eat her breakfast without waiting for the eldest sibyl. "First I'm going to give you porridge, and you must eat it all."

"If that's what you wish, sib."

Maytera Marble opened the cupboard and got Maytera Rose's bowl and the old, chipped bowl that Maytera Mint professed to prefer. Climbing the stair would overheat her; but she had not thought of that in time, so she would have to climb. She ladled out porridge until the ladle dissolved into a cloud of digits, then stared at it. She had always taught her classes that solid objects were composed of swarming atoms, but she had been wrong; every solid object, each solid thought, was swarming numbers. Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to dip up more porridge, to drop the pamphlet and find the lip of a bowl with her fingers and dump more porridge in.

The stair was not as onerous as she had feared, but the second story of the cenoby had vanished, replaced by neat rows of wilting herbs, by straggling vines. Someone had chalked up a message: SILK FOR CALDE!

"Sib?" It was Maytera Mint, her voice faint and far. "Are you all right, sib?"

The crude letters and the shiprock wall fell into digits.

"Sib?"

"Yes. Yes, I was going upstairs, wasn't I? To look in on Maytera Betel." It would not do to worry timorous little Maytera Mint. "I only stepped out here for a minute to cool down."

"I'm afraid Maytera Betel's left us, sib. To look in on Maytera Rose."

"Yes, sib. To be sure." These dancing bands of numbers were steps, she felt. But steps leading to the door or to an upper floor? "I must have become confused, Maytera. It's so hot."

"Be brave, sib." A hand touched her shoulder. "Perhaps you'd like to call me that? We're sisters, you and I."

Now and again she saw actual stairs, the strip of brown carpet with its pattern worn away that she had swept so often. Maytera Rose's door ended the short corridor: the corner room. Maytera Marble knocked and found that her knuckles had smashed the panel; through the splintered wood she glimpsed Maytera Rose still in bed, her mouth and eyes open and her face dotted with flies.

She entered, ripped Maytera Rose's threadbare nightgown from neck to hem, and opened Maytera Rose's chest; then she pulled off her habit, hung it neatly over a chair, and opened her own. Almost reluctantly, she began to exchange components with her dead sib, testing each as it went into place, and rejecting a few. This is Tarsday, she reminded herself, but Maytera's gone, so this can't be theft. I won't need these any more.

The glass on the north wall showed a fishing boat under full sail; a naked woman standing beside the helmsman wore a flashing ring. Maytera, naked herself, averted her eyes.

Silk's head throbbed, and his eyes seemed glued shut. Short and fat yet somehow huge, Councillor Potto loomed over him, fists cocked, waiting for his eyes to open. Somewhere-somewhere there had been peace. Turn the key the other way, and the dancers would dance backward, the music play backward, vanished nights reappear . . .

Darkness and a steady thudding, infinitely reassuring. Knees drawn up, arms bent in prayer. Wordless contemplation, free of the need to eat or drink or breathe.

The tunnel, dark and warm but ever colder. Anguished cries, Mamelta beside him, her hand in his and Hyacinth's tiny needler yapping like a terrier.

How much did they give you? Blows that rocked him.

Ashes, unseen but choking.

"This is the place."

How much did you tell Blood?

A shower of fire. Morning prayers in a manteion in Limna that was perhaps thirty cubits, .yet a thousand leagues away.

"Behind you! Behind you!" Whirl and shoot.

The dead woman's lantern, its candle three-quarters consumed. Mamelta blowing on a glowing coal to light it.

"I am a loyal cit-"

"Councillor, I am a loyal cit-"

Spitting blood.

"Those who harm an augur-"

How much-

Silk's right eye opened, saw a wall as gray as ash, and closed again.

He tried to count his shots-and found himself in the eating house again. "Well, Patera, for one thing mine holds a lot more needles. ... All of them good and thick, this was the Alambrera in the old days." The door opened and Potto came in with their dinners on a tray, Sergeant Sand behind him with the box and the terrible rods.

Back! Back! Kneeling in the ashes, digging with his hands. A god who took five needles and still stood at the edge of the lantern light, snarling, blood and slaver running from its mouth. The boom of a slug gun, loud in the tunnel and very near.

. . . did you give him?

Metal rods jammed into his groin. Sand's arm spinning the crank, his expressionless face washed away by unbearable pain.

He bought your manteion.

"Yes. I'm a-"

Indefinitely? He let you stay indefinitely?

"Yes."

Indefinitely.

"Yes. I don't know . . ."

(Back, oh, back, but the current is too strong.)

Silk's left eye opened. Painted steel, gray as ash. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, his head aching and his stomach queasy. He was in a gray-walled room of modest size, without windows. He shivered. He had been lying on a low, hard, and very narrow cot.

A voice from the edge of memory said, "Ah, you're awake. I need somebody to talk to."

He gasped and blinked. It was Doctor Crane, one hand raised, eyes sparkling. "How many fingers?"

"You? I dreamed ..."

"You got caught, Silk. So did I. How many fingers do you see?"

"Three."

"Good. What day is it?"

Silk had to consider; it was an effort to remember. At last he said, "Tarsday? Orpine's obsequies were on Scylsday; we went to the lake on Molpsday, and I went down. . ."

"Yes?"

"Into these tunnels. I've been down here a long time. It might even be Hieraxday by now."

"Good enough, but we're not in the tunnels."

"The Alambrera?"

Crane shook his head. "I'll tell you, but it'll take some explaining, and I ought to warn you first that they've probably locked us up together hoping we may say something useful. You may not want to oblige them."

Silk nodded and found it a mistake. "I wish I had some water."

"It's all around us. But you'll have to wait till they give us some, if they ever do."

"Councillor Potto hit me with his fist." Silk caressed the swelling on the side of his head gingerly. "That's the last thing that I remember. When you say they, do you mean our Ayuntamiento?"

"That's right." Crane sat down on the cot beside him. "I hope you don't mind. I was sitting on the floor while you were unconscious, and it's cold and hard on the buttocks. Why did you go out to the lake? Mind telling me?"

"I can't remember."

Crane nodded approvingly. "That's probably the best line to take."

"It isn't a line at all. I've-I've had very strange dreams." Silk pushed away terrifying memories of Potto and Sand. "One about a naked woman who had strange dreams too."

"Tch, tch!"

"I talked with a-it doesn't matter. And I vanquished a devil. You won't believe that, Doctor."

"I don't," Crane told him cheerfully.

"But I did. I called on the gods in turn. Only Hierax frightened her."

"A female devil. Did she look like this?" Crane bared his teeth.

"Yes, a little." Silk paused, rubbing his head. "And it wasn't a dream-it's not fading. You know her. You must."

Crane lifted an eyebrow. "I know the devil you drove away? My circle of acquaintances is wide, I admit, but-"

"She's Mucor, Blood's daughter. She can possess people, and she possessed the woman I was with."

Suddenly serious, Crane whistled softly.

"Was it you who operated on her?"

Crane shook his head. "Blood told you?"

"He told me he'd had a brain surgeon in the house before you. When I learned what Mucor could do, I understood-or at least, I think I do. Will you tell me about it?"

Crane fingered his beard, then shrugged. "Can't hurt, I suppose. The Ayuntamiento knows all the important points anyhow, and we've got to pass the time some way. If I do, will you answer a few questions of mine? Honest, complete answers, unless it's something that you don't want them to know?"

"I know nothing that I wouldn't want the Ayuntamiento to leam," Silk declared, "and I've already answered a great many questions for Councillor Potto. I'll tell you anything concerning myself, and anything I know about other people that wasn't learned under the seal."

Crane grinned. "In that case I'll start with the most basic one. Who are you working for?"

"I should have said that I'll answer after you answer my own questions about Mucor. That was the agreement, and I'd like to help her if I can."

The eyebrow went up again. "Including my first one?"

"Yes," Silk said. "Very much including that one. That one first of all. Is Mucor really Blood's daughter? That's what she told me."

"Legally. His adopted daughter. Unmarried men aren't usually allowed to adopt, but Blood's been working for the Ayuntamiento. Were you aware of that?"

Silk remembered in the nick of time not to shake his head. "No. Nor do I believe it now. He's a criminal."

"They don't pay him so many cards, you understand. They let him operate without interference as long as there's no serious trouble at any of his places, and do him favors. This seems to have been one of them. A word to the judge from any of the councillors would have been more than enough, and by adopting her he could control her up to the age of consent."

"I see. Who are her real parents?"

Crane shrugged again. "She doesn't have any. Not in our whorl, anyhow. And whoever they were, they probably met in a petri dish. She was a frozen embryo. Blood paid a good deal for it, I imagine. I know he paid a small fortune to get that brain man you mentioned."

Recalling the bare and filthy room in which he had first encountered Mucor, Silk said bitterly, "A fortune to destroy what he had given so much to get."

"Not really. It was supposed to make her pliable. She was a holy terror, from what I've heard. But when the brain man-he came from Palustria, by the way, which is how we found out what was going on. When he opened up her cranium, he got hit with a new organ." Crane chuckled. "I've read his report. It's in the medical file back at the villa."

"A new organ? What was it?"

"I didn't mean that it wasn't a brain. It was. But it wasn't like anything the brain man had worked on before. It wasn't a human brain for medical purposes, or an animal's brain, either. He had to go by guess and good gods, as they say. And in the end he made a botch of it. He as much as admitted it."

Silk wiped his eyes.

"Oh, come now. It was.ten years ago, and we spies are supposed to be of sterner stuff."

"Has anybody ever cried for her, Doctor?" Silk asked. "You, or Blood, or Musk, or the brain surgeon? Anyone at all?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then let me cry for her. Let her have that at least."

"I wouldn't think of trying to slop you. You haven't asked why Blood didn't get rid of her."

"No."

"She's his daughter, according to what you just told me-his daughter legally, at least."

"That. wouldn't stop him. It was because the brain man said her subrogative abilities could regenerate some time after she'd healed. It was only a guess, but judging from your story about a devil, they have. And the Ayuntamiento knows it now, thanks to you. It's going to make Viron more dangerous than ever."

Silk daubed at his eyes again with a comer of his robe and wiped his nose. "More formidable, you mean. That may trouble your government in Palustria, but it doesn't bother me."

"I see." Crane slid backward on the cot until he could prop his spine against the steel wall. "You promised you'd tell me who you were working for, if I told you about Mucor. Now you're going to say you're working for His Cognizance the Prolocutor, or something like that. Is that it? Hardly what I'd call fair play."

"No. Or perhaps, in a way, I am. It's a nice ethical point. Certainly I'm doing what His Cognizance would wish me to do, but I haven't told him-haven't informed the Chapter formally, I should say. I really haven't had time, the old excuse. Would you have believed me if I'd said I was a spy for His Cognizance?"

"I wouldn't and I don't. Your Prolocutor's got spies, plenty of them. But they aren't holy augurs. He's not so foolish as that. Who is it?"

"The Outsider."

"The god?"

"Yes." Silk sensed that Crane's eyebrow had been raised again, though he was not looking at Crane's face; he filled his lungs and expelled the air through his mouth. "No one believes me-except for Maytera Marble, a little-so I don't expect you to, either, Doctor. You least of all. But I've already told Councillor Potto, and I'll tell you. The Outsider spoke to me last Phaesday, on the ballcourt at our palaestra." He waited for Crane's snort of contempt.

"Now that's interesting. We ought to be able to talk about that for a long time. Did you see him?"

Silk considered the question. "Not in the way I see you now, and in fact I feel sure it's impossible to see him like that. All visual representations of the gods are ultimately false, as I told Blood a few days ago; they're more or less appropriate, not more or less like. But the Outsider showed himself to me-his spirit, if one can speak of the spirit of a god-by showing me innumerable things he had done and made, people and animals and plants and myriad other things that he cares very much about, not all of them beautiful or lovable things to you, Doctor, or to me. Huge fires outside the whorl, a beetle that looked like a piece of jewelry but laid its eggs in dung, and a boy who can't speak and lives-well, like a wild beast.

"There was a naked criminal on a scaffold, and we came back to that when he died, and again when his body was taken down. His mother was watching with a group of his friends, and when someone said he had incited sedition, she said that she didn't think he had ever been really bad, and that she would always love him. There was a dead woman who had been left in an alley, and Patera Pike, and it was all connected, as if they were pieces of something larger." Silk paused, remembering.

"Let's get back to the god. Could you hear his voice?"

"Voices," Silk said. "One spoke into each ear most of the time. One was very masculine-not falsely deep, but solid, as if a mountain of stone were speaking. The other was feminine, a sort of gentle cooing; yet both voices were his. When my enlightenment was over, I understood far, far better than I ever had before why artists show Pas with two heads, though I believe, too, that the Outsider had a great many more voices as well. I could hear them in back of me at times, although indistinctly. It was as if a crowd were waiting behind me while its leaders whispered in my ears; but as if the crowd was actually all one person, somehow: the Outsider. Do you want to comment?"

Crane shook his head. "When both voices spoke at once, could you understand what they said?"

"Oh, yes. Even when they were saying quite different things, as they usually did. The difficult thing for me to understand, even now-one of the difficult things, anyway-is that all of this took place in an instant. I think I told someone later that it seemed to last hundreds of years, but the truth is that it didn't occupy any amount of time at all. It took place during something else that wasn't time, something I've never known at any other time. That's badly expressed, but perhaps you understand what I mean."

Crane nodded.

"One of the boys-Horn, the best player we have-was reaching for a catch. He had his fingers almost on the ball, and then this took place outside of time. It was as if the Outsider had been standing in back of me all my life, but had never spoken until it was necessary. He showed me who he was and how he felt about everything he had made. Then how he felt about me, and what he wanted me to do. He warned me that he wouldn't help me. . . ." The words faded away; Silk pressed his palm to his forehead.

Crane chuckled. "That wasn't very nice of him."

"I don't believe it's a question of niceness," Silk said slowly. "It's a matter of logic. If I was to be his agent, as he asked-he never demanded anything. I ought to have emphasized that.

"But if I was to be his agent, then he was doing it; he was preserving our manteion, because that was what he wanted me to do. He is preserving it through me. I'm the help he sent, you see; and you don't rescue the rescuer, just as you don't scrub a bar of soap or buy plums to hang on your plum tree. I said I'd try to do it, of course. I said I'd try to do whatever he wanted me to."

"So then you sallied forth to save that run-down manteion on Sun Street? And that little house where you live, and the rest of it?"

"Yes." Silk nodded, wished he had not, and added, "Not necessarily the buildings that are there now. If they could be replaced with new and larger buildings-Patera Remora, the coadjutor, hinted at that the other night-it would be even better. But that answers your question. That tells you whom I'm working for. Spying for, if you like, because I was spying on you."

"For a minor god called the Outsider."

"Yes. Correct. We were going-I was going to tell you that I knew you were a spy, the next time you came to treat my ankle. That I'd talked to people who'd provided you with information, without realizing why you wanted it, who'd carried messages for you and to you; and I'd seen a pattern in those things-I see it more clearly now, but I had seen it even then."

Crane smiled and shook his head in mock despair. "So did Councillor Lemur, unfortunately." "I see other things, too," Silk told him. "Why you were at Blood's, for example; and why I encountered Blood's talus here in the tunnels."

"We're not in the tunnels," Crane said absently, "didn't you hear me say that there's water all around us? We're in a sunken ship in the lake. Or to be a little more exact, in a ship that was built to sink, and to float to the surface on the captain's order. To swim underwater like a fish, if you can believe that. This is the secret capital of Viron. I'd be a wealthy man as well as a hero, if only I could get that information to my superiors back home."

Silk slid from tlie cot and crossed the room to its steel door. It was locked, as he had expected, and there was no pane of glass or peephole through which he could look out. Suddenly conscious of the odor of his body and the smears of ash on his clothing, he asked, "Isn't there any way we can wash here?"

Crane shook his head again. "There's a slop jar under the cot, if you want that."

"No. Not now."

"Then tell me why you cared whether I was a spy or not, if you weren't going to hand me over to the Ayuntamiento."

"I was," Silk said simply, "if you wouldn't help me save our manteion from Blood. I was going to say that if you did that, I'd let you leave the city."

He sat down in the corner farthest from the cot, finding the steel floor as cold and as hard as Crane had said. "But if you wouldn't, I planned to roll you over to the hoppies. That's the way the people of our quarter would say it, and I was working for them as well as for the Outsider, who wanted to save our manteion because he cares so deeply about them."

He pulled off his shoes. "By 'hoppies' they mean the troopers of our Civil Guard. They say that the Guardsmen look like frogs, because of their green uniforms."

"I know. Why did you go into the tunnels? Because I'd asked some people about them?"

Silk was peeling off his stockings as he replied. "Not really. I didn't intend to enter the tunnels, although I'd heard of them vaguely-circles of black mechanics meeting there and so on, which they told us at the schola was a lot of nonsense. You and this wrapping you lent me had made it possible for me to walk out to Scylla's shrine on the lake. I went out there because Commissioner Simuliid had; and the person who told me that said you'd been interested to learn of it."

"Chenille."

"No." Silk shook his head, knowing that it would hurt, but eager to make his answer as negative as possible.

"You know it was. Not that it matters. I was listening outside while you shrove her, by the way. I couldn't hear a lot, but I wish I'd heard that." "You couldn't have heard it, because it was never said. Chenille acknowledged her own transgressions, not yours." Silk removed the wrapping.

"Have it your way. Did Blood's talus turn you over to Potto?"

"It was more complicated than that," Silk hesitated. "I suppose it's imprudent for me to say it; but if Councillor Potto has someone listening to us, all the better-I want to get this off my conscience. I killed Blood's talus. I had to in order to preserve my own life; but I didn't like it, and I haven't come to like it any better since it happened."

"With . . . ?"

Silk nodded. "With an azoth I happened to have upon my person. It was later taken from me."

"I've got you. Maybe we'd better not say anything else about that."

"Then let's talk about this," Silk said, and held up the wrapping. "You very generously lent me this, and I've been as ungrateful as I could possibly be. You know my excuse, which is that I was hoping to do what the Outsider had asked-to justify his faith in me, who in twenty-three years had never paid him even trifling honors. It wouldn't be right for me to keep this, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to return it."

"I won't accept it. Is it cold now? It must be. Do you want me to recharge it for you?"

"I want you to take it, Doctor. I would have extorted the money I need from you if I could. I deserve no favors from you."

"You've never gotten any, either." Crane drew his legs onto the cot to sit cross-legged. "I didn't invent you, but I wish I had, because I'd like to take credit for you. You're exactly what we've needed. You're a rallying point for the underclass in Viron, and a city divided is a city too weak to attack its neighbors. Now recharge that thing and put it back on your ankle." "I never wished to weaken Viron," Silk told him. "That was no part of my task."

"Don't blame yourself. The Ayuntamiento did the damage when they assassinated the calde and governed in defiance of your Charter and their people-which won't save your life when Lemur's finished with you. He'll kill you just like he'll kill me."

Silk nodded ruefully. "Councillor Potto said something of the sort. I hoped-I still hope that it was no more than a threat. That he will no more kill me, despite his threat, than Blood would."

"The situation is entirely different. You'd gone out to Blood's, and it seemed likely that others knew about it. If his talus caught you and dragged you into the tunnels, it's not likely that anybody else knows the Ayuntamiento has you. Not even the talus, since you say you killed it."

"Only Mamelta, the woman who was captured with me."

'"What's more," Crane said, "killing you would have made Blood much less secure. Killing you would make Lemur and the rest more secure. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't done it already. Who's Mamelta, by the way? One of those holy women?"

"One of the people whom Pas put into the whorl when he had finished it. Did you know that some of them are still alive, though sleeping?"

Crane shook his head. "Did he tell you that? Pas?"

"No, she did. I had been captured by soldiers-I left the azoth behind when that happened, because I knew I'd be searched. A drift of ashes almost filled that tunnel, and I left it buried in them when the soldiers pulled me out."

Crane grinned. "Shrewd enough."

"It wasn't. Not really. I was going to say that one of the soldiers showed me the sleeping people and told me they had been there since the time of the first settlers. Mucor woke one, Mamelta, and I exorcised Mucor, as I told you."

"Yes."

"Mamelta and I got away from the soldiers-Hammerstone will be punished for that, I'm afraid-but we were arrested again when we went back for the azoth. They locked me up in a place worse than this one, and after a while they brought me my robe. Mamelta had been wearing it, so they must have given her proper clothing; at least, I hope they did." Silk paused, gnawing his lower lip. "I could have resisted the soldiers with the azoth, I suppose; it's quite possible that I would have killed them both. But I couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Very creditable. But by the time you were rearrested Potto was there?"

"Yes."

"And he soon realized who you were."

"I told him," Silk admitted. "That is to say, he asked my name, and I gave it. I would do it again. I'm a loyal citizen, as I assured him repeatedly."

"I wonder if it's possible to be toyal while dead. But that's your bailiwick. The thing that interests me is that you escaped the first time, with this woman. Mind telling me how you reconciled that with your loyalty?"

"I had an urgent matter to attend to," Silk said. "I won't go into detail now, but I did; and because I had done nothing wrong, I was morally justified in leaving when the opportunity presented itself."

"But now you have? Are you a criminal deserving of death?"

"No. My conscience isn't entirely clear, but the worst thing on it is that I've failed the Outsider. If I could get away again in some fashion-though that appears impossible now-it's conceivable that I might succeed after all."

"Then you'd be willing to escape if we could?"

"From an iron room with a locked door?" Silk ran his fingers through his untidy thatch of yellow hair. "How do you propose to do it, Doctor?"

"We may not be here forever. Would you be willing?" "Yes. Certainly."

"Then recharge your wrapping. We may have to run, and I hope we will. Go ahead, kick it or wallop the floor with it."

Silk did as he had been told, flailing the steel plates. "If there's even the slightest chance to fulfill my pledge to the Outsider, I must take it; and I will. He'll surely bless you, as I do, for your magnanimity."

"I won't bank on it." Crane smiled, and for a moment actually appeared cheerful. "You had a cerebral accident, that's all. Most likely a tiny vein burst as a result of your exertions during the game. When that happens in the right spot, delusions like yours aren't at all uncommon. Wernicke's area, it's called." He touched his own head to indicate the place.