On Blue's waters

- 9-
KRAIT

When I regained consciousness it must have been almost shadelow. I lay on my back for a long while then, occasionally opening my eyes and shutting them again, seeing without thinking at all about anything I saw. The sky darkened, and the stars came out. I remember seeing Green directly above my up-turned face, and later seeing it no longer, but only the innocent stars that had fled before it and returned when it had gone.

It was at about that time that I felt the cold. I knew I was cold and wished that I were not. I may have moved, rubbing myself with my hands or hugging myself and shivering; I cannot be sure. Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went, but I appealed for no help and received none.

Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie’s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone.

I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. It was as if my spirit had gone and left my body unoccupied as it did on Green; but in this case it had returned, and my memories (such as they were) were those of the body and not those of the spirit. It was day again, perhaps midafternoon. I was sitting among earth and fallen leaves in a pit about twelve cubits deep.

(My own height, I should say, was three cubits and two hands at that time-a good deal less than it is now. Looking up at the walls of the pit while there was still light enough for me to do it, I estimated their height as three to four times my own.)

They had originally been of smooth stone of a kind that was not shiprock, or granite, or any other with which I was familiar. In places it had fallen away, and bare earth thick with gravel could be seen through the openings. These gave me hope of climbing out, but when I tried to stand up I found myself so weak and dizzy that I nearly fell, and quickly sat down again.

It is conceivable that the pit had been intended as a trap from its beginning, but I do not believe that it was. It seems to me instead that it was all that remained of some work of the Vanished People, possibly the cellar of a tower or some such thing. The tower (if there had ever been one) had collapsed centuries earlier, scatter- ing its wreckage across the valley and leaving this pit to collect the leaves of autumn and unfortunates like me. Eventually treacherous vines had veiled its opening, weaving a sort of mat which I had torn to shreds when I fell. A few long strands hung over the edge still, and it seemed to me that I might be able to climb out with their help, if only I could reach them; but I was, as I have said, too weak even to stand.

Strangely, I did not sleep that night, although I had slept so long-three days at least-after my fall. I did not, but sat up shivering and tried to rake together a bed of leaves for myself that would keep me warm, or at least less cold, finding among them my slug gun and the clean bones and skulls of several small animals, instruments of divination in which I read my own fate. I prayed; and at intervals of an hour or so, I fired my slug gun into the air, hoping that Seawrack would hear the shots, wherever she was, and realize that I was still alive. When only two cartridges remained, I resolved to reserve them until there was some hope that someone was nearby.

(Until I heard her voice, I suppose; but in sober fact I hear her now although she is so far away.)

Then I would-this is what I promised myself-fire one shot more; and if that also failed, a last cartridge would remain.

Morning came, and with it warmth and a new face that looked at me over the edge of the pit. At the time I thought it the face of a boy or a small man. “There you are,” the owner said. He stood, and I must have seen that he was naked. Possibly I realized that he was not human as well, but if I did it made little impression on my mind.

A moment more, and to my numb astonishment he leaped from the edge, down into the pit with me, saying, “I want to get you out.”

No doubt it was said ironically, but I heard nothing of that. My rescuer had arrived.

“Shall I do it?”

Logically I should have said that he was trapped now just as I was; naturally I said nothing of the kind. “Please,” I said, and I believe I must have nodded. “Please help me if you can.”

“I can if you’ll let me. Will you?”

No doubt I nodded again.

He strode over to my slug gun, a diminutive, sexless figure. Picked it up, cycled the action, and threw it to his shoulder, aiming at the sun, or perhaps only at the edge of the pit. “I can’t use one of these, Horn,” he said, “but you can.”

“Be careful.” My voice had become a weak croak, and seemed the voice of a stranger. “The safety’s off, and you chambered a fresh round.”

“I know.” He grinned at me, and I saw the folding fangs that reached nearly to his chin. “You could kill me with this. All you’ve got to do is point it and pull the trigger. Isn’t that right?”

“I won’t.”

“Your last chance would be gone.” He grinned again, testing one slender fang against the ball of his thumb, as though making certain that it was sharp enough.

“I know,” I said.

He laughed, a boy’s cheerful, delighted chortle. “Do you know who I am, too?”

“I know what you are. Is that what you mean?”

“But not who?”

By that time I was sure he had come to kill me. I stared down at the leaves.

“I am your best friend, the only friend you have in all the whorl, Horn. Have you any others?” He sat down facing me, with my slug gun across his lap.

There was nothing to say, so I said nothing.

“You hate me and you hate our people. You made that clear when I visited your boat. Why do you hate us so?”

I thought of Sinew, livid and scarcely breathing in the little bed we had made for him; but I said, “I wouldn’t hate you at all if you got me out of this. I would be very grateful to you.”

“Why did you hate me so when you woke up and found me on your boat?”

It was a long time before I spoke, a minute at least; but he seemed prepared to wait all day, and at length I muttered, “You know.”

“I don’t.” He shook his head. “I know why you Blue people dislike us, and it’s regrettable though understandable. I don’t know why you, the particular individual called Horn, hate me as you do.”

I was silent.

“Me. Not my race in general but me; you do, and I can feel it. Why does Horn hate me? I won’t name myself yet. I haven’t quite decided on a name, and there’s plenty of time. But why hate me?”

“I don’t hate you,” I insisted. “I was afraid of you on the sloop because I knew you had come for blood.”

He waited expectantly.

“I know enough about you inhumi to frighten me ten times over. I know how strong you are, and that you can swim better than we can, and fly. I know how clever you are, too.”

“Do you really know how clever we are? Tell me. I’d love to hear it.”

“You speak my language as well as I do, and you could make me believe you were one of us if you wanted to. One of you was our Prolocutor in the Long Sun Whorl.” I hesitated. “Do I have to explain what a Prolocutor is?”

He shook his head. “Go on.”

“He pretended to be a doddering old man, but he saw through everybody and outwitted our Ayuntamiento over and over again. He outwitted the rest of us, too. We never doubted that he was human.”

“I see. He was a cunning foe, who nearly destroyed you.” At certain angles there was a light in the inhumu’s eyes that seemed almost a yellow flame.

“No, he wasn’t my enemy, he was my friend. Or at any rate he was Silk’s friend, and I was Silk’s friend, too.” Exhausted as I was, and sick with pain, I did not consider how unlikely it was that the inhumu had ever heard of Silk.

“Are you saying you hated this man because he befriended your friend?”

“I’ve made it sound too simple.”

“Most things are simple.”

“Patera Quetzal wasn’t a man at all, but we didn’t know it. He was one of you, and he drank blood!”

“I wish that I could talk to him.” The inhumu seemed to speak mostly to himself.

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. Really. You turned on your friend and killed him, when you found out he was one of us?”

I wanted to say that I wished I had, which would have been the plain truth; but I wanted much more-wanted desperately, in fact-to escape the pit. “We didn’t. We didn’t even know until he was dead. He was shot by the Trivigauntis we were fighting and died of his wound.” That was the plain truth as well.

“So you hate him now because he drank your blood and deceived you, and that hatred has been carried over to me? Is that all there is?”

“You drank Babbie’s blood.”

“Your hus? Yes, I did. What else?”

I actually began to tell him, saying, “I have a wife and children-”

“I know. On the isle they call the Lizard, or Lizard Island.”

I suppose I must have gaped.

“You’ve been answering questions for me, so I’ll answer that one for you. When I was on your boat, the siren who was with you said you’d spoken to people on another one. Do you remember that?”

“A siren?” I was bewildered, and in no condition to think. “Do you mean Seawrack?”

“If we accept that name as hers.”

“She’s very good-looking.” I tried to swallow, although my mouth was drier than the palms of my hands. “But she’s not a-a seductress. She’s still very young.”

He smiled. Until then I had forgotten that they could. “Let’s forget I used that word. The young lady with you said you had spoke to another boat.”

“You can’t have learned about us just from that.”

“Certainly I could have. I did. I found the boat, which wasn’t very far from yours, and talked to the men on it. They thought I was one of you, naturally, and I gave them valuable information, which I made up. In return, they told me your name and your wife’s and where you were going, which was the chief thing I wanted to know. There aren’t many towns where a man might be named Horn. I went to New Viron, which was the closest. We can fly, you know, a whole lot faster than your little boat can sail. I made more inquiries there, and I had no trouble at all.”

If my face was not grim at that moment, it lied; I was very close to trying to snatch my slug gun from him and kill him. “Did you harm my family?”

“No. I flew over your island and had a look at your house and your paper mill. I’m curious at times, like anybody else. I saw a woman there, standing on the beach and looking out to sea, an older and somewhat plainer woman than the new wife on your boat. I didn’t harm her, and I don’t think she saw me. Is that sufficient?”

I nodded.

“Fine. Take this back, will you?” He passed me my slug gun. “I can’t use it and you can, so you’d better have it.”

Numbly, I accepted it and pushed up the safety.

“You aren’t going to shoot me?” He raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“You’re remembering something. I sense it. Want to tell me what it is?”

“Nothing to the point.” My head ached, and the hope that had given me new life for a minute or two had guttered out. Should I put the muzzle into my mouth? That might be the best way.

“Tell me, please.”

Perhaps it was the shock of hearing one of these monsters say please; whatever the reason, I did. “I was recalling what a woman named Chenille once told Nettle about a man, a starving convict, named Gelada. He was in the tunnels. There are horrible tunnels running underground all through the Long Sun Whorl, where I used to live.”

“Gelada was in them,” the inhumu prompted me.

“He wanted to escape. Anybody would. He had a bow, but Auk, the man who was with Chenille, said he wouldn’t shoot them, because they were Gelada’s only chance. Without them, he would never get out.”

“I said that. I said all that earlier, and you ought to have listened. If I were to get you out, it would be terribly dangerous for me, wouldn’t it? Unless I disposed of that slug gun and your knife first.” His face was that of a reptile, although his forehead was higher; his voice was a young man’s-was my son’s.

“No,” I told him. I was almost too despondent to argue. “If you freed me, I would never hurt you. Never, not for any reason.”

He stood up. “I’m going, but I’ll leave you this to think about. We could kill you, all of you. We’re stronger, as you said, and we can fly. Our race is older than yours, and has learned things that you can’t even dream of. Since you hate us, and kill us when you can, why don’t we do it?”

“You want our blood, I suppose.”

“Exactly. You are our cattle.”

I had expected him to fly, but he swarmed up the smooth stone side of the pit as a squirrel climbs a tree, making it look so easy that for a moment I almost imagined that I could do it myself. My thumb was on the safety; but without him I could not escape. Nor could I escape the memory of a time when Sinew was not yet born, and Hoof and Hide not even thought of, when Nettle and I had worked frantically to free someone else’s cow from a quagmire in the vain hope that her owner would give her to us if we succeeded.

Then he was gone; and I, using the slug gun for a crutch, got to my feet and was so foolish as to try to climb out as he had, struggling in that way until I was utterly exhausted and never getting half as high as my own head.

Last night I stopped writing because I could not bring myself to describe the rest of that day, or the night that followed it, or the day that followed that, the day on which I licked dew from the sides of the pit, lying on my belly at first, then kneeling, then standing-and at last, when the Short Sun peeped over the rim and the dew was almost gone, wiping the stone above my head with fingers that I thrust into my mouth the moment they felt damp. Altogether I got two mouthfuls of water, at most. No more than that, certainly, and very likely it was less.

Earlier I had prayed, then cursed every god in my heart when the rescuer they sent had proved to be Krait. On that day I did not pray, or curse, or any such thing.

This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished.

I was standing in Nettle’s kitchen. She was making soup, and I watched her add a whole plateful of chopped meat to her kettle and shake the fire. She turned and saw me, and we kissed and embraced. I explained to her that I was not really in her kitchen at all, that I lay at the bottom of a pit in a ruin of the Vanished People on an island far away, and that I was dying of thirst.

“Oh,” Nettle said, “I’ll get you some water.”

She went to the millstream and brought back a dipper of clean, cool water for me; but I could not drink. “Come with me,” I told her. “I’ll show you where I am, and when you give me your water there I’ll be able to drink it.” I took her hand (yes, Nettle my darling, I took your hard, hardworking little hand in mine) and tried to lead her back to the pit in which I lay. She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream.

And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold.

It had crossed the pit and vanished on the other side an hour or two before, when the inhumu returned. He stood with his toes grasping the edge and looked down at me, and I saw that he was wearing one of my tunics and a pair of my old trousers, the trousers loose and rolled up to the knee, and the tunic even looser, so that it hung on him as his father’s coat does on a child who plays at being grown. “Horn!” he called. And again, “Horn!”

I managed to sit up and to nod.

“Look, Horn, I’ve brought you a bottle of water.” He held it up. “I carried an empty one, and filled it to the top at a spring I’ve discovered not far from here. Wasn’t that clever of me?”

I tried to speak, to beg him for the water; but I could not. I nodded again.

“You’d promise me anything for this, wouldn’t you?” He leaped into the pit with it. “I’ll trade you this bottle for your slug gun. Will you trade?”

I must have nodded, because the bottle was in my hands, although he held it too. I put it to my lips and drank and drank; I would not have believed that I could drink an entire bottle of that size without ever taking it from my mouth, but that was how I drank that one.

“You feel better now,” the inhumu said. It was a statement, not a question.

I found that I could speak again, although the voice did not seem mine. “Yes. Thank you. I do.”

“I know. I’ve been in exactly the same position myself. I not only got you that bottle of water, Horn, but I brought you a coil of rope. It’s small, but I think it may be strong enough. It’s very hard to carry anything when you fly. It keeps pulling you down, and you’ve got to hold it with your feet.” He held up one foot in a way that very few human beings could have imitated, and I saw that his toes were as long as my fingers, and tipped with claws.

“Thank you,” I repeated. “Thank you very much.”

“I’ll get you out, or my rope and I will. But you’ll have to help us, and I’ve got to get your promise first. Your solemn oath.”

I nodded and tried to smile.

“A question.” He leveled a forefinger longer than mine; it, too, was claw-tipped. “Are you a logical, unemotional sort of man, would you say? Are you willing to follow reason wherever it takes you?”

Halting and stammering, I tried to say that I made an effort to be, and thought that I was.

“Then let’s go back. Not to the boat, we don’t have to back up that far. The other day I wanted to know why you hated me, and you explained that it was because I wanted to drink your blood, and because one of us had deceived you into thinking he was one of you up there. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.” I could not imagine what he was getting at.

“You drove me from your boat, despite the fact that I didn’t try to deceive you. If I would not drink your blood-I will pledge myself not to-would you still drive me away?”

My thirst had been quenched, but I was weak and sick. “If I could.”

“Why?”

“One of you nearly killed my son.”

His head wagged. “That wasn’t me. Haven’t you any better reason?”

“Because you drank Babbie’s blood, and would glut yourself on Seawrack’s if you could.”

“I pledge myself not to drink theirs either. I warn you, I won’t go any further. I have to eat, just as you do. Now, if I get you out, will you let me remain on board?”

Quite certain that he would never rescue me, I said that I would.

“You have a good reputation in your town. Are you a man of your word? Is your word sacred to you, even when it’s given to me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You lack conviction. Listen to me. You are going to Pajarocu.”

My eyes must have opened a little wider at that.

“The men on the other boat told me. You’re going to Pajarocu. Acknowledge it.”

“We are trying to get to Pajarocu.”

“That’s better. You’re going to board a lander there, and fly up to the great ship.”

I nodded, and seeing that a nod would not be sufficient, said, “We’re hoping to fly back up to the Whorl, as you say. I certainly am, and I’ll take Seawrack if she wants to go and they’ll allow me to.”

The inhumu pointed to himself, his wrist backbent in a fashion that no human being could have managed. “I want to go with you. Will you help me, if I help you get out of this place?”

“Yes,” I said again.

He smiled wryly, swaying as Patera Quetzal used to. “You don’t mean it.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ll have to give a better pledge than that. Listen to me, Horn. I’ll do everything I can to help you get there before the lander takes off. You think I’ll obstruct you. I won’t. I’ll help all I can. We’re strong, you say. Won’t I be a strong friend to you? You praised our cunning. It will be at your service. Don’t say you don’t; trust me. You must trust me, or die.”

“I trust you,” I said, and I meant it; that is the measure of a man’s desire to live-of mine, at least. An inhumu had demanded that I trust him if I wanted to live, and trust him I did.

“Better. Will you let me go with you and help you? Will you pledge yourself to reveal my nature to no one?”

“Yes, if you’ll get me out.”

“You still don’t mean it. Do you believe in gods? Who are they?”

I rattled off the names of the Nine.

“Which means the most to you? Name him!”

“Great Pas.”

“You’re holding something back. Do you think you can trick me because I can trick you? You’re wrong, and you’d better learn that from the beginning. Which means most to you?”

It was the end of my resistance. “The Outsider. And Pas.”

The inhumu smiled. “I like you, Horn. I really do. I’m growing fond of you. Now listen to this. I swear to you by Pas, by the Outsider, and by my own god that I will not feed upon either you or Seawrack, as you call her. Neither will I take the blood of your pet hus, ever again. I further swear that there will be no trickery or double-dealing in the keeping of this oath I give, no sophistry. I will keep the spirit as well as the letter. Is that satisfactory?”

I nodded.

“Then I’ll be wasting my time with the rest, but I’m going to waste it. I further swear that as long as I’m on your boat I’ll never deceive you into thinking that I’m one of you, or try to. What more do you want me to say?”

“Nothing,” I told him.

“I’ll continue just the same. Listen to me, Horn. What does it matter to you whether I prey on your kind here or there? Is their blood more precious aboard the void ship?”

“No.”

“Correct. It doesn’t matter in the least. I’ll have an easier time of it up there with less competition, that’s all. And there’ll be one fewer of us down here preying upon your friends and family.” He was silent for a few seconds, gauging my reaction. “Suppose I leave you where you are. Who will prey upon your family then, Horn? That nice woman I saw, and whatever children the two of you have back home on Lizard Island? No doubt you’ve thought about it?”

I shook my head.

“Why, I will. I’ll leave you in here, but I won’t just leave you here and forget you. I’ll go back there bringing word of you, and you won’t be there to protect them. Do I have to speak more clearly tian that? I will if I must.”

I shook my head again. “I’ll swear to whatever you want me to swear to, by Pas and the Outsider, and your god, too, if you’ll let me.”

“You’ll have my friendship and assistance. Do I have to go through that again?”

“No,” I said.

“Then swear you’ll accept both. You’re not to kill or injure me, or drive me away, or betray me to anyone else for any reason whatsoever. You’re to do everything you can to see to it that I’m on the lander when it takes off. That we both are.”

I swore, stumbling at times over the phrasing but corrected by him.

When I was finished, he turned away. “I’m sorry, Horn. I really am. That was close. You tried very hard. If I can, I’ll be back tomorrow.” Before I could say a word, he had begun to climb the wall of the pit.

I broke. I am a coward at heart, I suppose. Perhaps all men are, but I certainly am. I pleaded. I begged. I wept and shrieked aloud, and wept again.

And when I did, he turned back. Krait the inhumu turned at the edge of the pit, and looked down upon me in my misery. He may have been smiling or grinning or snarling. I do not know. “Horn?” he said.

“Yes!” I raised my arms, imploring him. Tears streamed down my face as they had when I was a child.

“Horn, your oath didn’t convince me. I don’t think any oath you could give would. Not today, and probably never. I can’t trust you, and I don’t know of anything that would…” He stopped, perhaps only to watch me weep.

“Wait!” My sobs were choking me. “Please wait. Will you let me talk?”

He nodded. “For a minute or two, as long as you don’t talk nonsense.”

“Hear me out-that’s all I ask. My house is on the Lizard. You’ve seen it. You said you flew over it and saw Nettle on the beach.”

“Go on.”

“I built it, and we’ve lived there for years. I know how things are done in our house. Isn’t that obvious? You’ve got to believe me.”

He nodded again. “I do, so far.”

“There are bars on the windows and inside the flue. There are good locks on both doors, and bars for them as well. Heavy wooden bars that you put up and lift down. When conjunction is near-”

“As it is. Go on.”

“When conjunction’s near, we always bar the doors. My wife bars them at shadelow, even if I’m still working in the mill. I have to knock and be let in.”

“You’re proposing that I knock and imitate your voice. I could doit.”

“No,” I said, and shook my head. “Let me finish, please. It-it’s something better.”

In his own voice, which might have been Sinew’s, he said, “Let’s hear it.”

“When conjunction’s past, she forgets. She never bars them then. I’ve spoken to her about it, but it didn’t help. Unless I bar them, they aren’t barred.”

I reached into my pocket, got the key, and held it out. “You want to go to the Whorl. But if you don’t go-if we don’t-you’ll be here. And you’ll have the key.”

He hesitated. Perhaps his hesitation was feigned; I do not know.

I said, “If we get to the Whorl, you and I both, I want you to promise me you’ll give it back.”

“You trust my promise?” His face was as expressionless as the face of a snake.

“Yes. Yes, I must.”

“Then trust this one. I’ll get you out at once, as soon as you throw me that key.”

I did. I was too weak to throw it out of the pit the first time; it rang against the stone side a hand’s breadth below the top, and fell back in. I tried to run and catch it in the air, and nearly fell myself.

“I’m waiting, Horn.” He was kneeling at the edge, his hands ready.

I threw again, and watched those scaly hands close around it.

Without a word, he stood, dropped the key into his pocket, turned, and walked haltingly away.

There are times when time means nothing. That was one. My heart pounded like a hammer, and I tried to clean my face with my fingers.

When he came back, it might almost have been a theophany. I had wanted to see him so much that when I did I was horribly afraid that I was imagining it. “Get my slug gun,” he said. “We may need it.”

I did as I was told, slinging it across my back.

“I’m not heavy enough to pull you up. You’d pull me in.” He tossed down a coil of rope. “I’ve tied the other end to one of these little bushes. If you can climb up, you’ll be out. If you can’t…” He shrugged.

I made use of every foothold, and tried to remember how Silk had climbed Blood’s wall, and Blood’s house, too; but nothing seemed to help. In the end Krait helped me, his hand grasping my own and his clawed feet braced against the side of a little depression he had made for them. His hand was small, smooth, cold, and strong; unpleasantly soft.

Then there came a moment when I stood at the rim of the pit I had come to know so well, staring down at its stones and bones, its fallen leaves and broken strands of vine.

“What about the rope?” he said. “Shall we take it with us?”

I shook my head.

“We may need it. I got it from your boat.”

So the sloop was safe. Just knowing that made me feel a little bit stronger. “Leave it,” I told him. “Somebody else may fall in.”

Together we made the long walk back to the sloop. “You can fly,” I said once when we stopped to rest. “Why don’t you? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You’re afraid I don’t trust you.”

I denied it.

“You’re right. It would be foolish of me to doubt you now that you’re out of that hole and have my slug gun and your knife. You could kill me easily, and take the key from my pocket.”

I nodded, although I was thinking that it would not be half so easy as he implied.

“I’m going to become one of you, and in fact I already have. I did it when I borrowed your clothes. So now I have to act like one of you and walk, even though walking’s hard for me.” He smiled bitterly. “Do I look like a real boy to you?”

I shook my head.

“You see, I’m keeping my promise. I’ll look like a boy to the young woman you call Seawrack, however, and to everyone we meet, unless they’re… Well, you know. So I can’t fly. I can’t because you can’t. Do you enjoy paradoxes?”

I told him that Silk had liked them more than I did.

“He was wiser than you are, exactly as you say. I’ll pester you with dozens before we part, Horn. Here’s one. Those who cling to life lose it; those who fling their lives away save them. Do you like that?”

I said, “I might if I understood it.”

“Paradoxes explain everything,” he told me. “Since they do, they can’t be explained.”

That was a second paradox, of course. Or rather, it was a great truth embodied in a paradox, the truth being that a thing cannot be employed to prove itself. We had a fortune-teller at court a few |i days ago. He had come partly, as he said, because he wanted permission to ply his trade in our town; and partly, or so I would guess, because he hoped to gain notoriety here.

He volunteered to read my future in the stars. I declined, pointing out that it was midday and that even if he went outside he would not be able to see them. He insisted that he knew their positions even when he could not, unrolling a score of big charts, and launching into a convoluted recitation that nobody understood.

I cut him off, ruling that he did not need my permission to tell fortunes, or anyone’s, as long as he behaved himself. I added that he was free to take fees from, anyone foolish enough to give him | their money.

He retired to the back of the room, and I soon forgot about H him; but after an hour or two he came forward again, announcing If loudly that he had completed his prediction for me. (It was the I usual mixture of flattery and menace-I would lead three towns not my own to victory, would be tried for my life, would return as a stranger to my sons’ native place, find new love, and so on and so forth. I will not put myself to the trouble of recording the entire rigmarole.) When he had finished, I asked how I-or anyone whose future he foretold-might know that his prophecies were valid; and he solemnly declared that the stars themselves confirmed them.

Everybody laughed. But there is rarely a day on which I do not hear proofs of the same kind advanced with confidence. Somebody testifies, and his testimony being doubted, swears that it is true. A dozen heads nod sagely. Yes, since he declares it true, it must be.

That is easy enough; but what about Krait’s first paradox? Now I think that he meant that I had doomed myself by my own anxiety to leave the pit. Given courage enough to refuse the help of an inhumu, I might have been rescued by someone else or freed myself by my own efforts, and so might have returned eventually to my home, which I feel certain that I shall never see again.

That I will never see more, even if the storms and waves have spared it.

I had intended to continue my narrative tonight-or rather to resume it, telling how the inhumu and I made our way down the mountainside to the sloop, how we went in search of Seawrack, and so forth. I would then be very near the point at which she gave me the ring. |j|

But I will not have much time tonight, and I am going to use it to write about something that happened today instead. In a way it bears upon everything that I had intended to write, and I will get to that soon enough.

A man came to court this morning to ask protection from the Vanished People. There was a good deal of laughter, and when I had restored order I pointed out to him that his fellow townsmen did not believe him-or even credit the present existence of the Vanished People-and suggested that he first put forward whatever evidence of their existence he possessed so that we would not be laughed to scorn.

This man, whose name is Barsat, admitted that he had no evidence beyond the testimony of his wife, whom he offered to bring to court tomorrow; but he swore that he had seen the Vanished People on three occasions and felt sure they were by no means friendly.

I asked what he had done to offend them. He does not know, or at least says he does not. I then asked him to describe the circumstances under which he saw them the first time. He said he was going into the jungle to cut firewood when he saw several standing or sitting in thickets and regarding him in a less than friendly way, and turned back. I asked how many there were. He said he could not be sure, at which there was more laughter.

That and his obvious sincerity convince me that he is telling the truth. If he were lying, his testimony would have been both more circumstantial and more sensational. Besides, any number of Neighbors greater than two is difficult to count in my experience.

It was already late when the inhumu and I started down the mountain, and neither of us was capable of swift or sustained walking. You are not to imagine from that, however, that I was downhearted or despondent. Health makes us cheerful, and illness and weakness leave us gloomy and sad-that, at least, is the common view. I can only say that I have seldom been weaker or nearer exhaustion, but my heart fairly leaped for joy. I was out of the pit. Free! Free even of the burning thirst that had at last become a torment worse even than hopelessness. The rocks and ancient, moss-sheathed trees were beautiful, and the very air was lovely. The inhumu assured me that he knew the shortest way back to the sloop; and I reflected that Patera Quetzal had been a good friend to Silk. Was it not at least possible that this inhumu would prove a good friend to Seawrack and me?

I quickly convinced myself that he already was.

Having satisfied my thirst from the water bottle he had brought, and again at the spring he showed me, I had become ravenously hungry. There was food on the sloop, I knew; and it was even possible that the inhumu and I might sight the game that had evaded Seawrack and me. If we did, I told myself, I would shoot it, butcher it, and eat it on the spot. I unslung the slug gun and carried it at the ready.

We had gone about two-thirds of the way when something rattled the branches of an immense flintwood that had fallen only a few days earlier. It was nearly dark by then; I heard the rustle of the dying leaves much more plainly than I saw them move.

I pushed off the safety and advanced cautiously, and when they rustled again, put the butt to my shoulder. Urgently the inhumu whispered, “Don’t shoot until we see what it is.”

I scarcely heard him. I was fairly sure I knew about where the animal was, and was resolved to cripple it if I could not kill it, telling myself that I would soon track it down.

The branches sounded a third time, I squeezed the trigger, and the inhumu slapped my slug gun to one side, all in far less time than it has taken me to write it.

Before the report had died away, Babbie broke from cover, charging straight at us with all the blinding speed of which hus are capable over short distances. If it had been five minutes later and thus a shade darker, he would have opened me from thigh to shoulder. As it was, he recognized me at the last possible moment, and recognizing the inhumu as well, diverted his charge to him.

Although I had written about Patera Quetzal’s flying, and had heard him in flight when we were in the tunnels, I had never actually seen him fly. Here on Blue, I have seen inhumi in flight several times, but always at a distance, so that they might almost have been bats or even birds; in the shadow of those twilit trees, I saw one take flight when I stood so near that I might easily have touched him. He sprang into the air, and as Babbie passed beneath him his arms lengthened, widened, and thinned. His fingers spread a web of skin, each finger grown longer than my arms. That is something less than clear, I realize; but I do not know any other way to describe it. At once his arms beat, not slowly as one normally sees when the inhumi fly but with the most frantic haste, raising a sudden gale in complete and ghostly silence. Babbie turned back and leaped, his tusks slashing murderously at-

Nothing. The inhumu had vanished into the darkness of the boughs.

I called, “Babbie! Babbie! It’s me!” and crouched as I used to on the sloop.

He came to me only slowly, clearly very conscious (as I was myself) that I had shot at him a moment before; and very conscious, too, that I still held the slug gun. I laid it aside and spoke to him, and although I no longer remember just what it was I said, it must have been effective; before long his head was between my hands, as it had sometimes been when we two were alone in the sloop upon the wide, wide sea. I talked to him until the day ended and the stars appeared, while stroking his muzzle and rubbing his ears; and no doubt a great deal of it was nonsense; one thing impressed me, however, and I should record it here. These, I believe, were my exact words: “You thought I was gone, didn’t you, Babbie? Well, I just about was. Poor Babbie! Poor, poor Babbie! You thought I was dead.”

At which he nodded.

I went a-hunting today for the first time since Hari Mau brought me here. It might be more accurate to say that I watched the others hunt, since I killed nothing. But then, neither did they.

These people hold cattle sacred (as I may have mentioned before), seeing the embodiment of Great Pas in the bulls and that of Echidna in the cows. Out of regard for these deities, they will not eat beef or knowingly wear or possess any leather items made from the skins of cattle. When they sacrifice cattle, as they do almost daily, the entire carcass is consumed by the altar fire.

The result of all this is that cattle are raised here only for religious purposes, and although there was a good supply as long as there were frozen embryos from the landers to implant, their numbers have fallen so low of late that the priests are seriously concerned. Since the gods cannot be seen here as they used to be in the Sacred Windows of the Long Sun Whorl, the priests feel it absolutely necessary that their symbols be seen as often as possible. Thus no sooner had some farmers reported wild cattle than a party of eager volunteers was recruited to capture them. It was a delicate operation, since the sacred animals could not be harmed or even made to suffer any indignity.

We rode out about an hour after shadeup, located the herd: without much trouble, and surrounded it, turning back the animals that tried to bolt by riding at their shoulders and flourishing yellow flags embroidered in scarlet thread with quotations from the Writings. Or rather, as I ought to have said, from what are called the Sacred Books here; these are rather different, I believe, from the Chrasmologic Writings we knew back in Old Viron.

They were generally effective, however, although we lost one heifer and a horse was gored. When we had tired the most rebellious and had the herd together, a holy man approached it on foot, hung every animal with garlands, put a noose of red and yellow rope over the head of each, and led them away, nine head plus three carves. They will be kept at the temple until they are tame enough to be permitted to wander at large. The priests say that will be very soon.

Before I described our cattle hunt, I should have given some reason for including it; but to write the truth, I am not sure I had any at the time. It had occurred that day and my mind was full of it, and that is all; but when I think about the walk back to the sloop with Babbie, I can see that it fits in well enough. He had begun to revert to the wild state, as the cattle had. Like the holy man, I was able to retame him because I meant him no harm.

After chewing Oreb’s quill for a minute or two, I have decided to take the analogy further. It should prove amusing, and may even be enlightening.

The inhumu had told me that we human beings were the cattle of his kind. They drink our blood in preference to the blood of animals merely because they prefer it (this is what he said), just as we prefer the milk of cattle to that of goats. Various other animals give milk too: pigs, dogs, and sheep, for example. Yet we do not even try to milk those.

The more intelligent an animal is, the more difficult it is to tame. I am not going to offer that as an opinion, because I am convinced that it is a fact. Let us consider a progression, beginning with the hus. Hus are more intelligent than nittimonks, nittimonks more intelligent than dogs, and dogs more intelligent than cattle. Adult cattle can be captured and tamed in a few weeks. Adult dogs, born in the wild, can scarcely be tamed at all; and unless they have been raised among humans they are almost untrainable. Young nittimonks can be tamed, but can be trained only with the greatest difficulty, and they are never reliable.

For hus to be tamed and trained, they must be captured very young, as Babbie no doubt was; and when I lived on Lizard I would probably have said that the surprising thing was that he could be trained at all. The truth, as I came slowly to realize during the time I had him, is that he was not. He did not obey me by rote, as my horse does. Instead, he tried to cooperate with me. I was inferior to him in strength and in many other ways, but I possessed powers that must have seemed wholly magical to him. What did he make of the slug gun? What could he make of it? Plainly it is in the best interest of a captive hus to cooperate with his captors, protecting their property, assisting them to hunt (he will share in the bag, after all) and the rest.

All that seems clear. Accepting it, how are the inhumi able to train human beings? How was Krait able to tame me like a hus, although I had not been taken young? In all honesty, I have no satisfactory answer. He offered himself as a valuable friend when he freed me from the pit, and afterward. And he liked me, I believe, in the same way that I liked poor Babbie. Before Krait died, he loved me, and I him. I had become the father of a brilliant, wayward, monstrous son.

It was dark when we reached the sloop. I had tied her to a tree before leaving with Seawrack and Babbie on our hunting expedition, and she seemed almost exactly as I had left her. There was no sign of Seawrack or the inhumu. I shared a good many apples and what remained of the ham with Babbie, and retired for the night.

It was still dark when I woke wet and shivering, or at least it seemed so. Fog had come in, chill and damp, and so thick that I literally could not see the bowsprit from my seat in the stern. I built a fire in our little box of sand, and Babbie and I sat before it, trying to keep as warm and dry as we could.

“I should have brought warmer clothes,” I told him. “I knew perfectly well that I was going to a faraway place, but it never crossed my mind that the climate here was bound to be different.”

He only sniffed the ashes, not quite convinced as yet that I was not cooking fish in them.

When I had gone to sleep, I had planned to search for Seawrack in the morning. This was the morning, presumably, but there was no looking for her in it, nor for anything else. For a while I considered ordering Babbie to find her for me; but I had no reason to think he knew where she was, and if he set off to search the entire island it seemed likely that I would lose him as well. At last I said, “This fog may last all day, Babbie, and I suppose it’s possible it may be foggy tomorrow, too. But it’s bound to lift eventually.”

He glanced up at me, stirring the ashes tentatively with both forefeet.

Taking his silence for agreement, I continued, “As soon as it does, we’ll sail all the way around the island. She probably got lost. Who wouldn’t get lost in this? And the natural thing for her to do would be to walk downhill until she found the sea, and go along the beach.”

A voice that seemed disembodied remarked, “You’ll find her if you do it, but I can take you straight to her if you want me to.” It was a boy’s voice, and I had better make that plain at once; it might have been one of the twins speaking.

I looked around, seeing no one.

“Up here.” With grace that reminded me vividly of a small green snake I had seen once, Krait slid down the backstay and dropped into the stern. Babbie was on his feet immediately, every bristle up.

“Do you want me to, Horn? You’ll be surprised, at what we find. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I had laid the slug gun beside me when I slept, and left it there under the foredeck when I woke up. My hands groped futilely for it, settling for Sinew’s knife.

“What’s this?” He took a quick step backward, but I could not be sure his alarm was real. “I’m offering to do you a favor.”

“Have you killed her?”

He raised both hands, exactly the gesture of a boy trying to fend off a larger and stronger one. “I haven’t! I don’t remember exactly what I promised you when you were down in that hole-”

“You promised you wouldn’t drink my blood, or hers, or Babbie’s. It leaves you any amount of evil, though I didn’t think of that at the time.”

He would not meet my eyes. “It wouldn’t be fair, would it? You’d call me a cheater.”

I was so angry, and so frightened for Seawrack that I demanded he answer my question, although he already had.

“I haven’t hurt here at all. She’s alive, and from what I’ve seen of her, perfectly happy.”

“Then take me to her!”

“This minute? Horn, listen. I promised not to feed on you, but I promised a great deal more. I promised to help you get to Pajarocu, and all that.” He took the key to my house out of his pocket and held it up. “Remember this?”

I nodded.

“I haven’t used it. Someday I may, but I haven’t yet. You say you’re reasonable. You said you tried to be, and you know that I want to find Pajarocu as much as you do. More, if you ask me. Would it make sense for me to hurt her, when I haven’t hurt you or your family? Or your pet hus? I wouldn’t guide you to her after I’d harmed her, would I?”

I was relaxing. The mere fact that he seemed afraid of me made me less fearful of him, although that is always a mistake. “I apologize. Why did you say I’d be surprised when we found her?”

He shook his head. “I won’t tell you, because you wouldn’t believe me. We’d fight again, and it would be bad for both of us. If you want to go now I’ll show you, but we’ll have to untie your boat.”

We did, and got the anchor up; it was not until I had the sloop gliding like a ghost through the damp gray silence that I asked whether he could see to guide us in spite of the fog.

“Yes, I can. We all can, and now you know something that very few others do.” He threw back his head, looking in the general direction of the block at the top of the mast. “What color is the sky, Horn?”

I told him that I could not see it, that I could not so much as see the masthead.

“No wonder you didn’t spot me up there. Look anyway. What color is it?”

“Gray. Fog is always gray, unless there’s sunshine on it. Then it’s white.”

“And when you look up at the sky on a sunny day? What color then?”

“Blue.”

He said nothing, so I added, “It’s a beautiful, clear blue, and the clouds are white, if there are any.”

“The sky I see is always black.”

I believe I must have explained that for us the night sky was black, too, and tried to describe it.

“It’s always black,” he repeated as he went forward and climbed onto the little foredeck, “and the stars are there all the time.”

No doubt my explanation will bore you, whoever you are, unless you are Nettle; but she is the reader I hope for, and so I will explain anyway for her sake. When I leave a break in my text like the one above, sketching the three whorls to separate one bit from the next, it is generally because I have decided to stop and get some sleep.

This was different. I wanted to think, and in a moment I will tell you what I was thinking about. I wiped my pen and laid it down, rose and clasped my hands behind my back. You know, dear wife, how I used to walk the beach deep in thought when we were planning the mill. In the same way I stalked silently around this big pink-and-blue house, which they have given me and expanded for me, and which we call my palace to overawe our neighbors.

All was silent, everyone else having gone to bed. In the stableyard my elephant slept standing, as elephants do and as horses sometimes do also; but slept soundly nonetheless. From the stables I went out into the garden, and listened to the nightingales singing as I stared up at the night sky and at such stars as could sometimes be glimpsed between thick, dark clouds that would have been almost visible to Krait. Two nightingales in gold cages are kept there, as I should explain. (I ought to have written were.)

The weather has been sultry for a week at least, and I found the garden, with its jasmine, plashing fountains, ferns, and statues a very pleasant place. For half an hour or more I sat upon a white stone bench, looking up at the stars through torn and racing clouds, stars (each a whorl like Blue or Green) that must seem to the inhumi like fruit glimpsed over the high wall of a garden.

That is not singing as Seawrack understands it, nor as she has made me understand it either; but she has been silent since shadelow, and the old rollicking song marches through my head again. How young we were, Nettle!

Oh, how very young we were!

When I went back inside, I heard Chandi weeping in the women’s quarters. Because I was afraid she would wake the others I made her come out with me, and we sat together on the white stone bench while I did my unskillful best to comfort her. She was homesick, poor child, and I made her tell me her real name and describe her parents and brothers and sisters, the town she comes from, and even her mother’s cook and her father’s workmen. She was born in the Whorl, just as you and I were; but she can remember nothing about it, having left as an infant. I got her to tell me everything she had learned about it from her parents, but there was very little beyond self-glorification: they had lived in a much bigger house there, and everyone had deferred to them. That sort of thing. She knew that the sun had been a line across the sky, but imagined that it rose and set as the Short Sun does here.

As for me, I did not weep; but I was at least as homesick as she, and when she was calmer I told her about you, Nettle, calling you Hyacinth. She understood very little but sympathized very much. She is a good-hearted girl, and cannot be much over fifteen.

When I had talked her out, and myself as well, I promised that I would send her back to her father and mother. She was horrified, and explained that no matter what she or I said they would believe that I had rejected her, as would all the people of her town; she would be shunned by everyone, and might even be stoned to death. She is mine, it seems-but not mine to set free. I could not help thinking that she and I, who are so different in appearance, age, and gender, are in fact two of a kind.

Together, we released one of the nightingales and watched it fly away, a symbol for both of us of what we wished for ourselves. She wanted me to open the cage of the other, but I told her that I would not, that another night would come on which she would be as she had been tonight; and I said that when that night came we would talk again and set the second bird free.

It is not well to spend one’s symbols improvidently.

As for what I left this lovely table to think about, it was Krait’s remark. He had said the stars were always there, and I (that so much younger I aboard the sloop) had thought he meant merely that they did not vanish in fact when they vanished to sight. It seemed a trivial observation, since I had never supposed they did-everyone has seen the flame of a candle disappear in sunlight and knows that the invisible flame will burn a finger.

Now I think differently, and I feel certain I am right. The black sky that Krait saw was not the night sky, or the day sky either. It was the sky, the only sky there is, without clouds and without any change save for the slow circling of the Short Sun and the other, more distant, stars, and the somewhat quicker rising and setting of Green. The whorl to him and to all the inhumi is the airless starlit plain we saw when poor Mamelta led us to the belly of the Whorl. Small wonder then that the inhumi are so wretched, so cruel, and so hungry for warmth.

When Chandi and I glimpsed Green from our seat in the garden, she told me that her mother had told her once that it was the eye of the Great Inhumu, whose children he sends here. I nodded, and was careful not to mention that I had lived and fought there.

Dreamt that Oreb was back. Very strange. I was in the Sun Street Quarter again, made inexpressibly sad by its devastation. I sent Pig away as I actually did there, with Oreb for a guide; but at the last moment I could not bear to be parted from him and called him back. He returned and lit upon my shoulder, wrapping a slimy tentacle around my neck, he having become Scylla. In Oreb’s voice, she demanded that I take her to the Blue Mainframe. I explained that I could not, that there was no such place, only the Short Sun. While I spoke I watched Pig’s disappearing back and heard the faint tapping of his sword.

I “woke” heartbroken, and found that I had fallen asleep in the jungle, lying beside Krait. I picked up his hand and rubbed the back, feeling that rubbing would somehow restore him to life, but his body was dissolving into fetid liquid already, a liquid that became the filthy water of the sewer I opened there.