Return to the Whorl

16. HARI MAU

The Prolocutor's prothonotary entered, bowed obsequiously, and handed the Prolocutor a folded paper. When he had gone, that small and pudgy worthy said, "I implore your pardon. In all probability it is a matter of no importance whatsoever."

The white-haired man he addressed smiled and nodded. "I am flattered Your Cognizance has so much confidence in me."

"Good Silk!" Oreb assured His Cognizance.

"It is not misplaced, I feel certain." He opened the note, read it, glanced gravely at his visitor, and read it again.

"You needn't confide in me, of course. I realize-"

The Prolocutor had raised a plump hand to silence him. "It concerns yourself. I will not conceal that from you. I ask you now, openly and forthrightly, whether you repose trust in my judgment and discretion."

"Much more than in my own, Your Cognizance."

"Then I tell you now that this missive concerns you, but I dare not let you peruse it. Its substance I shall impart when I deem it appropriate. You will willingly assist me?"

"Very willingly, Your Cognizance."

"Exemplary." The Prolocutor looked toward a flower-decked porcelain clock. "Less than an hour remains, and we shall each desire to spend precious moments in private prayer. Let me be succinct."

"Please do, Your Cognizance."

"First, I shall make you do all the work, though I myself shall read the victims. Prepare yourself to address the devoted supplicants of the immortalgods."

The white-haired man nodded.

"Second, I must warn you that there are in this city certain strangers who are said to purpose to carry you off to Blue. I sent my coadjutor to you last night, to forewarn you concerning these outsiders. He miscarried, but-why are you looking like that?"

"No cut!"

"It's nothing, Your Cognizance," the white-haired man said. "Please continue."

"I was about to say that our solemn sacrifice may afford them an incomparable opportunity. You, more than plausibly, are unaccustomed to inserting oneself into the devious schemes of the ill intentioned. I invite you to believe it is quite otherwise with me. If it were my intent to thus abscond with you, I should consider the abovedesignated solemn sacrifice a golden opportunity."

"I'll be careful, Your Cognizance."

"Do so." The Prolocutor looked dubious. "You are of an adventurous and mettlesome disposition. Inculcate the innocence of the dove and the prudence of the turtle. You may need both."

"I'll strive to, Your Cognizance."

"I hope you do." The Prolocutor glanced at his clock again. "Lastly, that communication. General Mint desires to speak with you. You need fear no bootless delay. She is here in my Palace."

He was taken to a small but richly appointed room on the same floor by the prothonotary; a somber-faced Mint waited by the window, small hands clutching the armrests of her chair.

He bowed, Oreb fluttering on his shoulder. "This is a great honor, General. Can I be of help to you?"

She nodded and managed to smile. "Shut the door, please. We haven't time for propriety."

He did.

"The butchers may be listening, so keep your voice low." She glanced about her. "They may even be watching, but there's not much we can do about it. Sit close beside me, so that you can hear me and I can hear you. This…"

He waited.

"This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. And I'm going to do it right now. My husband-well, never mind. You're not Silk. We settled that."

"I hope so," he said.

"So I want to tell you something about him. That little augur kept telling me you were going to sacrifice at three. A grand affair, he said, and he wanted me to come."

"So do I."

Her eyes widened. "Do you really? Then perhaps I will. But I must tell you first." Her voice, already low, fell until it was scarcely audible. "And give you something."

He waited.

"Echidna ordered me to command the rebellion against the Ayuntamiento, I suppose because I could ride. Anyway, I did. There was a man there who had a wonderful horse, a big white stallion, and he let me have it. I jumped onto its back. In those days I could do such things."

"I remember."

"Thank you. I'm glad of that. I jumped onto its back, and it reared. I suppose that without a saddle it hadn't been expecting to be ridden. As it reared, Silk threw me his azoth." She paused. "You may have heard. It was one of the most famous incidents of the war."

"I have," he told her. "I've even written about it."

"Good, I'd like to read it sometime. I didn't stop to ask myself where Silk had gotten such a thing. I simply used it."

She reached under the shawl on her lap. "Later I learned that his wife had given it to him. Hyacinth, I mean, that woman who became his wife not long afterward. I would like to think it may have been because of the azoth."

He nodded.

Her pinched face was paler and more serious than ever; and he sensed, belatedly, that she was in pain. "That woman made him promise to, in return for the azoth. It must have been like that. He would've kept the promise and the secret. It was how he was."

"I know."

"Do you also know that I still have it? The great, the famous weapon from the Short Sun Whorl? I do."

He watched her in silence, praying for her in his heart.

"Aren't you going to ask what good an azoth is to a crippled woman in a wheelchair? Go ahead. I'm inviting the question."

He shook his head. "Legs are for running away."

She considered, her head cocked to one side. "Sometimes. Sometimes running away is the wisest thing one can do."

"You're right, I'm sure."

"I used to run away from you. From Silk, I mean. Not because I was afraid of Silk, but because I was afraid of humiliation. That was foolish."

He nodded. "Humiliation is a gift from the Outsider, I'm quite ce-tain."

"Really? Now you sound like Silk."

Oreb croaked, "Good Silk," and stirred upon his shoulder.

He said, "I'm flattered. If that's the sort of thing Silk says, we need him badly."

"Man come!"

"I was going to say that all humiliation comes down to exclusion. The humiliated person feels himself or herself no longer a member of the group-or at least, no longer a member in good standing. As he leaves the group, he approaches the Outsider, the god the gods have cast aside."

There was a perfunctory tap at the door, which opened at once. The prothonotary said, "You must be in the Grand Manteion in fifteen minutes."

"I'll do my best."

Mint motioned for the prothonotary to close the door, and he did. "We haven't long," she said, "or I'd ask you about that. There isn't time. You're in danger. My husband told you."

"There are strangers-His Cognizance calls them outsiders, which maybe significant-here looking for Silk. Is that what you mean?"

She nodded, and the hand that had been concealed by her shawl emerged holding an azoth with a watery, somewhat purplish stone in its hilt and a bloodstone near the guard. For a moment she seemed reluctant to surrender it.

Oreb whistled, adding, "Bad thing!"

"It's a dangerous thing, certainly. It's also a valuable thing. You could sell it for a great deal of money, General."

"I could, if it were mine to sell." She sighed. "It isn't. You would have made this much easier for me, Horn, if you had asked the question. I was going to say that though such a woman could not use an azoth, she might still have the pleasure of giving it to someone who had need of it. That pleasure is mine, and I claim it. Take it, please."

"If you no longer want it, you should return it to Silk," he told her.

"I do want it. I want it very badly, but I have no need of it and you may. As for giving it back, I've tried to. Silk accepted it once but soon returned it. Cover it with your hand."

In the sacristy of the Grand Manteion, Oreb eyed the ranked sacrificial knives. "Good Silk. No cut!"

"I won't," he said, "but you must help me by remaining here. If you fly out there, the people will see you and think I've brought you to offer you to the gods, and may very well demand I do it. Will you stay here?"

"Good bird!"

He had brushed the augur's robe Olivine had given him (half shamed by the clumsy stitches with which he had sewn his corn into its seam that morning), washed his hands, and smoothed his unruly hair. Now on impulse he shaved his beard, scraping it away with a well-tended razor inlaid with the Chapter's knife-and-chalice seal. "My father's was larger," he told Oreb, "but much plainer-an ordinary bone handle. This is ivory, unless I'm badly mistaken."

"No cut!"

"I'm trying not to. A little more lather, I believe."

He whisked the badger-hair brush against the scented soap in the Grand Manteion's porcelain mug, then applied the brush vigorously to his left cheek. "Here I confess I remind myself of Doctor Crane, shaving off his beard in our inn at Limna. He kept wanting to spare a little, and so do I. But no, it must all go, as his did. With it gone, my resemblance to Patera Silk will be much less marked, I imagine; besides, it-"

"Good Silk!"

"It may throw those outsiders-to use His Cognizance's suggestive term-off the track."

"Bad men?" Oreb flew from windowsill to washstand, from which he regarded his master through an eye like polished jet.

"I wish I knew. There are about a hundred things I wish I knew, Oreb. I'd like to know whether Pig and Hound are in the congregation, for example; and I'd like very much to know whether General Mint and Calde Bison are, to say nothing of these outsiders. I'd like to know where Silk is, why neither Bison nor His Cognizance will take me to him when it would appear to be so much to the advantage of both to have Silk out of the city." After giving his upper lip a final touch, he rinsed the razor under the tap.

"Good Silk!"

"He is, and for Calde Bison and His Cognizance that is just the problem. For His Cognizance, Silk is a second Prolocutor, able-even if unwilling-to countermand his direction of the Chapter. For Calde Bison, having Silk here is still worse."

Energetically applied, the washcloth dotted his black robe with dots darker still. He examined them and decided it could not be helped, and that they would dry in soon in any event. "He has General Mint, his lady wife, who's so careful not to call herself Calde Mint. She is a second calde, just the same."

"Good girl!"

"Of course. That's why so many people love and trust her. But behind her is yet another calde-Silk. I wouldn't want Bison's job on any terms, and most certainly not on the terms he has it."

An augur appeared in the doorway of the sacristy. "Ready for the procession, Patera? I'll show you where we're assembling."

By now it did not seem worthwhile to object to the honorific.

Whispers swept the throng that filled the Grand Manteion as a breeze sweeps a forest in leaf, soft as it left the narthex, gathering strength as it proceeded down the nave. He had no way of knowing (he told himself) that it was because he was walking with the Prolocutor, a step behind and a step to the right as he had been instructed to. Yet he knew it was, and was subtly, inexplicably embarrassed.

There were seats for them some distance from the Great Altar, seats sufficiently removed that they would not be troubled by the conflagration a full score of augurs and sibyls were preparing to kindle upon it-for the Prolocutor, a magnificent ebony throne austerely chased with gold, for him a chair beside and below it scarcely less imposing and likewise ebony.

A choir of… He tried to count the singers. Four hundred at least. On Blue they might have founded a little town of their own, called Song or Melody. Intermarried, and produced a sweet-voiced clean-faced race that would quickly become famous.

Their music rose, fell, then rose again, at once urgent and majestic. Glancing behind him at the gray shimmer of the Sacred Window, he wondered what gods listened, if in fact any did.

One did, surely, though not from the Sacred Window. Pig was in the audience. The memory of Silk and what Silk had told him in the ruined villa that had been Blood's returned, more vivid than ever.

Sunshine caught and concentrated in a wide reflector of bright gold did its work. A thread of smoke rose from the vast, ordered pile of cedar on the altar. (Wood enough to build a nice little house for some poor family, he thought rebelliously.) The white thread thickened. As the hymn reached crescendo, a tiny tongue of flame appeared.

"Rise," the Prolocutor whispered, "and receive my blessing."

He stood up, faced the throne, and bowed his head while the soft right hand of the Prolocutor traced and retraced the sign of addition over his head and the Prolocutor's plaintive voice recited the longest blessing in the Chrasmologic Writings, with extraordinary emphasis on every second or third word.

When it was over, he strode past the altar to the ambion. There was a great deal to say, and little time in which to say it; but it would be far less difficult if he could link it in some fashion to the Writings. Breathing, "Help me, O Obscure Outsider," he opened them at random.

"'A simple way would be to admit that myth is neither irresponsible fantasy, nor the object of weighty psychology, nor any other such thing. It is wholly other, and requires to be looked at with open eyes.'"

Sighing his thanks, he closed the magnificent gem-studded volume and laid it aside. "In a moment," he said, surveying the congregation, "we will offer our gifts to the immortal gods. We will implore them to speak to us through their Sacred Window-"

There was an audible buzz of talk. He stood silent and frowning until it ceased.

"And we shall ask them to speak through the entrails of the animals we give them as well. It is easy-far too easy-for us to forget that they have spoken to us already, long before the oldest person who hears me was born.

"What the gods are saying, I believe, is that there are various forms of knowledge, of which myth is one, and that we must not confound them. It is always a temptation to throw aside knowledge-it makes life so much easier. It may well be that the kind we are most tempted to cast away is exactly that which the gods warn us to preserve today: I mean the knowledge that a thing is itself, and not some other thing. A man says women are all alike, and a woman that men are all alike. One who fancies himself wise says that one can know only what one sees, or that no one can know anything at all, and thus saves himself much labor of thought, at the cost of being wrong."

He glanced at the altar fire, gauging how much time remained. "Let us look at the myth that Pas wants everyone to leave this whorl and go to one of the whorls outside. There can be no one among you who has not heard it in one form or another, perhaps even from the lips of Patera Silk. I would certainly imagine that it has been said, with greater or less elaboration, by augurs standing at this very ambion."

There was another buzz of talk. Fingers tapping at the sides of the sculptured wave of onyx that was the ambion of the Grand Manteion, he waited for it to subside.

"Is it a mere falsehood? No, it is a myth. Is it merely an entertaining fantasy? No, again. It is a myth. Is it an exact and accurate statement of fact, as though I should say that His Cognizance, who permits me to speak to you today in his place, is a wise and good man? No, it is a myth."

He paused to wipe his perspiring forehead. "When Patera Silk went down to the first lander in the tunnels below our city, he saw the following words on the last stair: `He who descends serves Pas best.' Those words were graven on those stone steps at the order of Great Pas himself. Plainly then, those who have thus descended stand highest in the eyes of Pas, and I believe highest in those of his father as well. From that we easily see the origin of the myth. But you to whom I speak, the citizens of this sacred city who do not descend, serve him also."

Flames snapped upon the altar now, the voice of the fire nearly as loud as his own. A whiff of fragrant smoke reached his nostrils.

"The Writings did not say it in the passage we read; but if we had read another-one I have read often-we would have been told that the gods require us to serve in one way at one time, and in a different way at another."

He had hoped to see General Mint's chair in one of the aisles, and had failed to find it. As he spoke, he discovered her at the end of the fourth row, having presumably been lifted into her seat by an attendant who had rolled her chair away. Bison sat beside her, watching through narrowed eyes and watched himself by Oreb, perched upon a cornice.

"So it is with us. Not long ago, it was our duty to leave, to board landers and cross the abyss to Blue or Green. Many of us did, and so pleased the gods. Now they wish those of you who have not gone to remain-to remain indefinitely, in fact, presumably for the rest of your lives."

Bison was nodding and smiling, his teeth gleaming in his black beard.

"Two nights ago, I conversed with a godling who informed me of this, and told me to tell you, as I now have. I would be neglecting my duty if I did not do so, given this opportunity. I have fulfilled it instead, and I pray the blessing of the gods, of the Outsider and Silk particularly, in the days ahead."

He had watched Pig as he spoke; but if Pig's expression had altered in the slightest, the distance between them had been too great. Now a venerable augur approached the ambion carrying a gleaming sacrificial knife upon a black velvet pillow. The heat of the altar fire was palpable.

"We are ready, Patera," the augur whispered.

"No." As his hand closed on the jeweled hilt, two more augurs led a great, gray stallion into the central aisle.

"This's what we call the sacristy? It's where we all vest, even His Cognizance, sometimes." The voice of the eager young augur who had gone to get Pig and Hound floated through the open doorway. "His Cognizance isn't in there now, or I don't think so. But Patera Horn is."

He sighed as he dabbed at the bloodstains that spattered his robe, telling himself that it was at least an improvement on "Silk."

The brass tip of Pig's long sword tapped the stone floor and rattled against the sides of the doorway. "Man come," Oreb announced superfluously.

"Come in, Pig. Most of us have finished cleaning up. I'm almost finished myself."

Pig did, forced to duck only slightly to get through the doorway and looking pleased about it.

The eager young augur followed him. "I'm sorry, Patera, but I couldn't bring the other gentleman. He had to go. A man spoke to him, and he said he had leave."

"'Twas candles, bucky," Pig rumbled. "Couple a' hundred fer a card, an' Hound h'off like a h'arrow."

"He did appear to me to be a merchant," the eager young augur added. "I endeavored to get his name, but he was engaged with the other gentleman and did not reply. If you're concerned I could make inquiries."

"I doubt that it matters." He dried his hands on a spotless white towel, watching the blood-tinged water in the washbowl drain away, then used the towel again to mop his sweating face. "He'll rejoin us this evening, I feel sure. Pig, would you like a chair? I'll fetch you one."

"I'll do it, Patera," the eager young augur said, and did.

"Thank yer," Pig rumbled.

"Wouldn't you like a chair too, Patera Horn?"

He shook his head, trying to indicate by his expression that the eager young augur had better go.

"This is a very, very great honor for me, Patera. Was, I mean. I, uh… I mean you. And His Cognizance, naturally."

"One that you have more than earned, I feel certain." He motioned toward the door.

When the eager young augur had gone, Pig said, "Win't, hain't yer, bucky? Nae wonner, h'all yer done."

"Tired? Actually, I'm not. His Cognizance had me toiling like a whole slaughterhouse and more than half sick at the thought of so many valuable animals dying. But I'm not tired now. Far from it." He got his knobbed staff from a corner and twirled it, although he knew that Pig could not see the gesture. "If it were up to me, I'd be out on the streets looking for Silk this very minute."

"Good Silk!"

"Time tint be time toom, bucky."

"Wasted time cannot be recovered? Is that what it means?"

"Stray't."

"Near enough, then. But we can't go, or at least not yet. There's a crowd waiting for us. For me. Several of these augurs told me about it, and that was when I sent that one for you and Hound. I thought that since we had to wait, we might as well wait together." He paused, smiling. "They'll forget about us in half an hour or so, I imagine. Or at least they'll think we went out some other way, and go on about their business. Were you able to follow the ceremony?"

"Ho, aye. Hound tittled ter me. Bucky…?"

"Yes, Pig." He grounded his staff. "What is it?"

"'Tis nae me fash, bucky. But yer were ter h'ask h'about yer frien' Silk, were yer nae? Yer dinna."

"No. No, you're quite right. I did not."

He carried over a second chair for himself and sat down. "I didn't ask them-ask you, I should say, you of the congregation-about Silk for one simple reason."

"Good Pig," Oreb muttered.

"You're right," Oreb's master told him. "Pig is a good man, and he knows the reason as well as I. So does Hound for that matter."

"Know h'it? He does nae."

"I believe he does. I did not ask the congregation, Pig, because I knew that everyone in it thought that I myself was Silk. As you do."

Pig did not speak. The blind face was tilted upward and to the left; as the silent seconds passed, two dots of moisture darkened the dirty gray rag that covered his empty sockets.

"They left you tears. I'm glad. But if they're for me-"

"Men come," Oreb announced distinctly.

"There's no need. I know who I am, and what I am to do."

A very tall man in an immaculate white head-cloth, darkcomplexioned and strikingly handsome, strode into the sacristy, followed by similar men less richly dressed. "Patera Silk."

He shook his head.

The tall man knelt, one hand holding up the gilded scabbard of a long, sharply curved sword. "We come to proclaim you Rajan of Gaon, Patera Silk. Hail the Rajan!"

"Hail!" shouted the six with him. Their swords were out almost before the first cheer. They waved them above their heads, and one fired a needler into the ceiling. "Rajan Silk!" Oreb fled through an open window.

"No." He rose. "I am not Silk. I appreciate the honor you seek to do him. Believe me, I do. But you are addressing the wrong man."

"Tentie noo, bucky. Tentie be."

"I don't believe they have come to harm us, Pig. They want me to go to their town, or so I imagine."

The tall man stood, and was half a head the taller. "To judge our town, Rajan. That is why we have come."

He nodded to himself. "I thought it was something like that. You created a disturbance at Ermine's. Beat the clerk."

"Yes, Rajan." The tall man's smile was as bright as the sapphire over his forehead. "We knew you were there. Someone had seen you go in. The clerk would not tell us, so with our belts we chastised him. Our belts and the flats of our swords. A donkey beaten is well next day."

"I see." He paused. "And you would like to have Patera Silk judge you."

"You." The tall man bowed profoundly, his hands together. "You, Rajan, are he."

"My proper name is Horn. This is my friend Pig."

The tall man bowed again. "Your servant is called Hari Mau, Rajan." The others bowed too, and there was a flurry of names and shining smiles. "You must come with us," Hari Mau said, still smiling.

"I will not."

"Tentie," Pig rumbled again, and stood.

"You must. Hear me, Rajan. Echidna herself demands it."

He raised his eyebrows. "You have a Sacred Window on Blue?"

"No, Rajan. Yet we still serve the gods, and they speak to us in dreams. I swore-"

There was a murmur of objections behind him.

"We swore, we brothers, that we would not return to our homes and wives without you. We will do you no hurt." Hari Mau's smile had faded; his eyes were serious. "You will live in the palace we are building you, and judge us with justice."

He sighed. "Did you read about me in a book, Hari Mau? Before your dream?"

"Yes, Rajan. Afterward, too. Many, many others had the same dream, even the priests in the temple of the goddess."

"You cannot compel me." His right hand gripped the knobbed staff; his left touched the hilt of the azoth under his tunic.

"We do not seek to compel you, Rajan. Far better that you come willingly."

"I am going to tell you now, for the final time-"

"Good man?" Oreb spoke from the windowsill.

"That I am not the one you seek-the one whom I sought too. That I am Horn, not Silk."

"Good Silk!"

"Knowing that, do you still want me to come with you?"

Hari Mau said, "We do, Rajan," and the men around him murmured their agreement.

"You have a lander-that's what Calde Bison told me. It's below this city now, guarded by your followers?"

"It is. As soon as you are on board, Rajan, we will fly back to Gaon."

He shook his head. "That's not what I want. I will go with yougo willingly and do as you ask-if you will fly my friend Pig-"

Pig grunted with surprise.

"To the West Pole first. Will you do that, Hari Mau?"

When the operation was over and the last bandage in place, and the tiny hands that had mimicked the surgeon's every motion had withdrawn, the white-haired man who had watched it all let himself breath again. "May I see him now?"

"You are." The surgeon pointed to the glass. "There he is." The surgeon was as tall as Hari Mau, and darker.

"I don't mean that."

The bandaged figure in the glass stirred, and the man who had spoken wondered whether he had been overheard. "I'd like to sit beside him for a minute or two, and pray at his beside. May I do that?"

"It's some distance." The surgeon spoke slowly, and his voice was rich and deep. "I'll give you directions for the tunnels, but I can't go with you. I can't take the time."

"Bird find!" Oreb declared. "Find Pig!"

"I'm going to Blue, and that's a great deal farther. I don't believe I'll ever get back."

The surgeon shook his head, his eyes on Oreb. "We'll leave this system once the Whorl has been repaired, but that won't be for years. A lifetime, likely as not."

"And I can't take the tunnels. My-my friends are anxious to go home. If they see me now, they'll put me on the lander and leave at once, I feel sure. Can't I travel on the surface?"

"I must myself," the surgeon said; from his tone, he had not been listening. "Your name is Horn? Is that correct?"

"Good Silk!"

"Yes," he said.

"I'll tell them to expect you, Horn. And I'll guide you, at least for the first chain or so. It's not going to be easy. I hope you understand."

He said, "I want to just the same."

"All right." The surgeon touched his belt, and a hatch at the top of the room lifted silently and almost smoothly, admitting hot wind and a pinch of wind-blown sand.

"If you could only lend me a propulsion module…"

The surgeon shook his head. "You have been to the East."

He nodded. "They had propulsion modules there, and they even loaned us some to use until we left."

"They need them." The surgeon kicked off, drifting upward until he caught the edge. "They require them for the fliers, so they have spares. We don't need them here, and don't have them. We've learned to do without them. Aren't you coming up?"

He did, rising too slowly because he had been afraid of rising too fast. "Silk come," Oreb announced before Oreb was snatched away by the wind.

"I don't understand all this. I don't understand how you can live like this."

"In the dark?" The surgeon caught his hand; the surgeon's own was twice as long, pink at the palm and the undersides of the fingers. "It's not usually this dark." Scarlet flashes failed to illuminate a pandemonium.

"The wind, and the sand. Is it always like this?"

"Yes," the surgeon said. "Turn on your light."

"I've been trying to." His fingers, fumbling for the tiny switch on his headband, moved it by accident; at once a glow from his forehead lit up the surgeon's dark, severe features. "I didn't realize-I should have, of course-that there would be darkdays here, too. Or that you'd have so few lights."

"We don't usually need them. These," the surgeon lit his own headband, "are medical emergency equipment."

Already his feet were above his head. He snatched at the pale blur that was the surgeon's tunic to keep himself from being blown away.

"You have your radiation monitor?"

He was about to say no when he remembered that it had been pinned over his heart. "Yes-yes, I do."

"Don't ignore it. We can fix most things here, but that one's as tough as it gets."

"Bird back!" Oreb's claws closed upon his shoulder.

"I suppose that's why you're here, so close to the-the…"

"Reactor. Come on." The surgeon was moving away and taking him with him.

"And the whatever you call it-the place where you operated on Pig-"

"Sick bay."

"Is farther away, where the danger isn't so great. Your reactor powers the sun? That's what we were told, though I find it almost impossible to think of anything powering the sun."

"Here, grab this outcrop." The surgeon's hands, so much longer and stronger than his own, guided his to it. "Don't let yourself think you're weightless."

He gripped the sand-smoothed rock with grim determination. "That's how it seems."

"Because of the wind." The white light of the surgeon's headband was moving away. "The wind wants to pick you up and blow you away. If you let yourself believe that you have no weight, it will do it, too."

"No fly," Oreb explained.

"The heat makes the wind?" He was frightened, so much so that his teeth chattered.

"Exactly." The surgeon seemed to be waiting for him, having perhaps noted the chattering. "A darkday makes it worse, because there's none from the sun to counter it. Eventually it would cool off and the wind would drop, but they'll restart the sun long before that. It would take months for the reactor to cool completely."

Staring at the surgeon's light, he said fervently, "I see."

"The sand blows around. One day it will be deeper than a man can dig, and next day it's bare rock. It wears the rock away, and makes more sand, and the rock cracks in the heat."

"It seems very hot now," he ventured.

"It isn't. If the sun were on, all this would be too hot to touch, almost. Keep down, so the wind doesn't get you."

"I'll try," he promised, "but it seems very windy."

"That's because we're going uphill." The white glow of the surgeon's headlamp vanished in the middle distance, but the surgeon's voice still reached him, the only calm element in that wild night. "You've got to kick off with your legs."

"No fly!" Oreb insisted.

The surgeon's light reappeared, surprising close. "Your legs are a lot stronger than your arms."

He gasped for breath and spit out sand. "I didn't even know we were climbing."

The white light had halted. "You don't weight much, but don't let that make you think you won't get hurt if the wind slams you into some rocks. It's happened to me, and it hurt like Holy Hierax. People are killed, sometimes."

He wanted to say that he would try to be careful; but it was all he could do to struggle forward, half crawling.

"We're not supposed to fix up Cargo." They were near enough that his deep-set eyes and broad flat nose showed dimly. "But I'll make exception for you. Ask for me if you get hurt."

"You made…" He was panting. "An exception… For Pig. Thank you."

The surgeon caught his arm and helped him over the final two cubits. "I ought to tell you about that."

"Please do."

"Hold on to this and you can stand up."

Again the surgeon guided his hand to it; over the whistling wind, the snapping of his augur's robe sounded like the incessant cracking of a whip.

"Look over there. Can you see my arm?"

Oreb repeated, "See arm?"

"Yes." The pale sleeve made it easy, although there appeared to be no hand at the end of it.

"That green light. Got it?"

"I think so. Is it blinking?"

"That's where you're going. That's the sick bay. It's a league or a league and a half, something like that. Tell him I said hello."

"I certainly will."

The wind was rising again, and the surgeon had almost to shout to make himself heard. "You're still going?"

"I-yes."

"You can come back with me if you want to."

He nodded, although their faces were nearly touching. "Thank you. You're very kind."

The surgeon took his arm. "Then let's go."

Oreb added his own vote. "Go now!"

"No," he said. "You misunderstood me. I didn't mean that I was going back with you, only that you've shown extraordinary courtesy. I'll always be indebted to you."

"I thought you'd want to turn around once you'd seen it."

"No," he said.

"Just to visit a sick friend."

"It's Pig." At the moment that was all the explanation he could give.

"All right. Look behind you. See the red light?"

He nodded again. "That's where we came from."

"Right. There's a box at the base of the pylon. Open it, pull the lever, and close it again and you can go inside. Not the Remote Viewing Room, but close. Ask for me."

"Will I have to go back there to get back to our lander?" The thought to making the league-long journey twice was almost more than he could bear.

The surgeon shook his head, and it was possible to think of living again, of Pig resting in a white bed, and silence, and prayer. The surgeon said, "This is in case you turn back."

"I won't."

"You might, if you're hurt." The surgeon clasped his shoulder. "If you don't… Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye, and thank you again." He would have turned then and gone, but the surgeon's hand maintained its grip.

"You'll be farther from the Pole. You'll have a little more weight as you get nearer the sick bay."

"That's good to know."

"I wish I could go with you."

He felt a surge of gratitude. "So do I."

The surgeon released his shoulder. "I'll tell them to expect you, and ask them to change your dressing. There'll be sand in it."

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you again."

He had started down the slope when the surgeon's hail stopped him. "What is it?"

"You thanked me for patching up your friend Pig."

"Yes!" He had to shout to make himself heard.

"They told us to. A flier did. Wait up."

He watched the surgeon's bobbing headlamp ascend the rocky slope a good deal more quickly and skillfully than he had.

"The flier said we should. Maybe I ought to tell you about it. Mainframe's the captain. You probably know."

His instinct urged caution. "I knew it was in the east. I wasn't sure you obeyed it as well."

"We do." The surgeon drew him toward a boulder that offered shelter from the wind-driven sand. "It used to communicate with us directly. It can't anymore because the cable's been cut. So it sends fliers. Or godlings, but mostly fliers."

"No fly!" Oreb advised.

"We've found the break and we're fixing it, but it isn't as simple as hooking your optic nerve up to your friend's. There are millions and millions of fibers and every connection has to be right."

"I believe I understand."

"Still, it's got to be fixed before we leave. So do a lot of other things." The surgeon paused, clearly wrestling with whatever it was he really wanted to say.

"I'm very glad you agreed to operate on Pig, in any case."

"The thing is, we can't always be sure the flier's telling us what Mainframe said. Sometimes we think he may be adding on his own, or leaving something out. You know about the animals?"

"What animals?"

"Great Passilk is supposed to be mad at his wife and half his sprats. Frankly, I don't believe it." (Doctor Crane's chuckle seemed to echo among the rocks.) "But people say they've turned themselves into animals to get away from him."

"No cut," Oreb muttered in his master's ear.

"I heard something about that," he told the surgeon.

"So when we were told to fix up somebody, and it turned out he was called Pig, well, we had to wonder. Do you follow me?"

"Well enough to guess that you're in awe of gods you do not reverence."

"I suppose that's fair." The surgeon turned to go.

"You have been very good to us-to Pig and me. You've been a friend when we needed one in the worst way. So let me assure you that you've nothing to worry about. Pig doesn't harbor Echidna or any of Echidna's children. I won't explain how I know; but I do know. You needn't fear that I'm mistaken."

The surgeon turned back to him. "Thanks. You seem like somebody who can be trusted."

"You can trust me in this, at least."

The surgeon held out his hand. "What's your name? I know you told me, but I've forgotten it."

"Horn," he said; somewhere Doctor Crane chuckled again.

"M'to. It means a river." The surgeon cleared his throat and spat. "Those little men up on the bridge think we're pretty crude here in the black gang, and maybe we are. But we're not tricky, and we know a lot more medicine, because we get a lot more people hurt."

"I doubt that their opinion of you is nearly as low as you believe. The flier who told you about Pig-was Flannan his name?"

The surgeon shook his head. "I didn't talk to him. I don't know what his name was. I've got to get back."

They shook hands again.

When he had crawled over twenty or thirty cubits of rocky, windswept ground, he heard the surgeon's voice behind him, borne on the hot polar gale. "Don't disregard your monitor!"

He shouted, "I won't!" hoping to be heard.

"And don't piss into the wind!"

At his elbow Crane's ghost murmured, "Is it really worth all this to fight free of Hari Mau for an hour or two, Silk?"