Long Sun - Nightside The Long Sun Part 21

after all, had loomed large in the back of his mind when he had gathered up his horsehair rope and his hatchet and gone out looking for Auk, then only a vague figure recalled from Scylsdays past. And if it had not been for Auk and Maytera Mint, if it had not been for the repairs he had been making on the roof of the manteion, but most of all if it had not been for that well-remembered house whose rear window he had helped to force-if it had not been for all those things together, he would never have undertaken to break into this villa of Blood's. Or rather, into an imagined house on the Palatine belonging to Blood. On the Palatine where, as he realized now, the respectable rich would never have allowed such a man as Blood to live. Instead of this preposterous, utterly juvenile escapade, he would have . . .

Would have what? Have penned another appeal to Patera Remora, the coadjutor of the Chapter, perhaps, although die Chapter had, as seemed clear, already made its decision. Or have sought an interview with His Cognizance the Prolocutor-the interview that he had tried and failed to get weeks before, when it had at last become apparent to him (or so he had thought at the time) exactly how serious the manteion's financial situation was. His hands clenched as he recalled the expression of His Cognizance's sly little prothonotary, his long wait, ended only when he had been informed that His Cognizance had retired for the night. His Cognizance was quite elderly, the prothonotary had explained (as though he, Patera Silk, had been a foreigner). His Cognizance tired very easily these days.

And with that, the prothonotary had grinned his oh-so-knowing, vile grin; and Silk had wanted to strike him.

All right then, those possibilities had been explored already, both of them. Yet surely there was something else he might have done, something sensible, effectual, and most significantly, legal.

108 Gene Wolfe

He was still considering the matter when the talus Auk had mentioned glided ponderously around a corner of the more remote wing, appearing briefly only to vanish and reappear as its motion carried it from skylight into shadow and from shadow into bright skylight again.

Silk's first thought was that it had heard him, but it was moving too slowly for that. No, this was no more than a routine patrol, one more among the thousands of circuits of Blood's high, crenelated villa it must have made since Blood engaged its services. Nervously, Silk wondered how good the big machine's vision was, and whether it routinely scanned the top of the wall. Maytera Marble had told him once that hers was less acute than his own, though he had worn gla.s.ses for reading since turning twelve. Yet that might be no more than the effect of her great age; the talus would be younger, although cruder as well. Certainly movement was more apt to betray him than immobility.

And yet he found immobility more and more difficult to maintain as the talus drew nearer. It appeared to wear a helmet, a polished brazen dome more capacious than many a respectable tomb. From beneath that helmet glared the face of an ogre worked in black metal: a wide and flattened nose, bulging red eyes, great flat cheeks like slabs of slate, and a gaping mouth drawn back in a savage grin. The sharp white tusks that thrust beyond its crimson lips were presumably mere bl.u.s.ter, but the slender barrel of a buzz gun flanked each tusk.

Far below that threatening head, the talus's armored, wagon-like body rolled upon dark belts that carried it in perfect silence over the close-sheared gra.s.s. No needier, no sword, and certainly no hatchet like the one he grasped could do more than scratch the talus's finish. Met upon its own terms, it would be more than a match for a whole platoon of armored Guardsmen. He resolved-fervently-

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never to meet it on its own terms, and never to meet it at all if he could manage it.

As it neared the pale swath that was the white stone roadway, it halted. Slowly and silently, its huge, frowning head revolved, examining the back of the villa, then each of the outbuildings in turn, then staring down the roadway, and at last looking at the wall itself, tracing its whole visible length (as it appeared) twice. Silk felt certain that his heart had stopped, frozen with fear. A moment more and he would lose consciousness and fall forward. The talus would roll toward him, no doubt, would dismember him with brutal steel hands bigger than the largest shovels; but that would not matter, because he would already be dead.

At length it seemed to see him. For a long moment its head ceased to move, its fierce eyes staring straight at him. As smoothly as a cloud, as inexorably as an avalanche, it glided toward him. Slowly, so slowly that he would not at first permit himself to believe it, its path inclined to the left, its staring eyes left him, and he was able to make out against its rounded sides the ladders of bent rod that would permit troopers to ride into battle on board its flattened back.

He did not move until it had vanished around the corner of the nearer wing; then he stepped across the spikes again, pulled his rope and the forked limb free, and jumped after them. Although he struck the drought-hardened ground with bent knees and rolled forward, putting back into practice the lessons of boyhood, die drop stung the soles of his ifeet and left him sprawled breathless.

The rear gate, to which the white roadway ran, was a grill of bars, narrow and recessed. A bellpull beside it might (or might not, Silk reflected) summon a human servant from Within the house. Suddenly reckless, he tugged it, watching through the four-finger interstices to see who might appear, while the bell clanged balefully over his head. No dog

HOGene Wolfe

barked at the sound. For a moment only, it seemed to him that he caught the flash of eyes in the shadow of a big willow halfway between the wall and the house; but the image had been too brief to be trusted, and the eyes (if eyes they had been) at a height of seven cubits or more.

The talus itself threw open the gate, roaring, "Who art you!'' It seemed to lean forward as it trained its buzz guns at him.

Silk tugged his wide-brimmed straw hat lower. "Someone with a message for Blood, your master," he announced. "Get out of my way." Quickly, he stepped under the gate, so that it could not be dropped again without crus.h.i.+ng him. He had never been so close to a talus before, and there seemed no harm in satisfying his curiosity now; he reached out and touched the angled plate that was the huge machine's chest. To his surprise he found it faintly warm.

"Who are you!" the talus roared again. "Do you wish my name or the tessera I was given?" Silk replied. "I have both."

Though it had not appeared to move at all, the talus was nearer now, so near that its chest plate actually nudged his robe. "Stand back!"

Without warning, Silk found himself a child once more, a child confronting an adult, an uncaring, shouting giant. In a story his mother had read to him, some bold boy had darted between a giant's legs. It would be perfectly possible now, the seamless black strips on which the talus stood lifted its steel body three cubits at least above the gra.s.s.

Could he outrun a talus? He licked his. lips. Not if they were as fast as floaters. But were they? If this one chose to shoot, it would not matter.

Its chest plate shoved him backward, so that he reeled and nearly fell. "Get out!" "Tell Blood I was here." He would surely be reported; it

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might be best if he appeared to wish it. "Tell him that I have information."

"Who are you?"

"Rust," Silk whispered. "Now let me in."

Suddenly the talus was rolling smoothly back. The gate crashed down, a hand's breadth in front of his face. Quite possibly there was a tessera-a word or a sign that would command instant admittance. But rust certainly was not it

He left the gate, discovering with some surprise that his legs were trembling. Would the talus answer the front gate also? Very probably; but there was no harm in finding out, and the back of the villa seemed unpromising indeed.

As he set off upon the lengthy walk along the wall that would take him to the front gate, he reflected that Auk (and so by implication others of his trade) would have attempted the rear, a foresighted planner might well have antic.i.p.ated that and taken extra precautions there.

A moment later he rebuked himself for the thought Auk would not have dared the front gate, true; but neither would Auk have been terrified of the talus, as he had been. He pictured Auk's coa.r.s.e and frowning face, its narrowed eyes, jutting ears, and ma.s.sive, badly shaved jaw. Auk would be careful, certainly. But never fearful. What was still more important, Auk believed in the goodness of the G.o.ds, hi their benign personal care-something that he, whose own trade it was to profess it, could only struggle to believe.

Shaking his head, he pulled his beads from his trousers pocket, his fingers rea.s.sured by their gla.s.sy polish and the swinging ma.s.s of the voided cross. Nine decades, one with which to praise and pet.i.tion each major divinity, with an additional, unspecified decade from which the voided cross was suspended. For the first time it occurred to him that there were ten beads in each decade as well. Had the Nine been the Ten, once? He pushed the heretical thought aside.

First the cross. "To you, Great Pas . . ."

112.

Gene Wolfe

There was a secret in die empty, X-shaped s.p.a.ce, or so one of his teachers had confided, a mystery far beyond that of the detachable arms he showed die smallest boys and girls at the palaestra and used (as every other augur did) to test and tighten sacred connections. Unfortunately, his teacher had not seen fit to confide the secret as well, and probably had not known it himself-if any such secret actually existed. Silk shrugged aside the memory, ceased fingering die enigmatic emptiness of the voided cross, and clasped it to his chest.

"To you, Great Pas, I present my poor heart and my whole spirit, my mind and all my belief..."

The gra.s.s thinned and vanished, replaced by odd litde plants like multilayered, greenish umbrellas that appeared healthy and flouris.h.i.+ng, yet crumbled to mere puffs of dust when Silk stepped on diem.

Blood's front gate was less promising than die other, if anything, for an eye in a black metal box gleamed above the top of its arch. Should he ring here, Musk or someone like him inside would not only see him, but interrogate him, no doubt, speaking through a mouth in the same box.

For five minutes or more, sitting on a convenient stone while he rubbed his feet, Silk considered the advisability of submitting himself to the scrutiny of that eye, and thus of the unknown inquisitor who would examine him through it. He knew himself to be a less than competent liar, and when he tried to concoct a tale that might get him into Blood's presence, he was dismayed at how feeble and unconvincing even the best of his fabrications sounded. Eventually he was driven to conclude, with a distinct sense of relief, diat the prospect was hopeless; he would have to get into the villa by stealth, if he got into it at all.

Relying his shoes, he rose, advanced another hundred

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paces along the wall, and once more heaved the forked Kmb over its spikes.

As Auk had indicated, there was a central building of two stories, with wings whose rows of windows showed them to be three, although the original structure was nearly as tall as they. Both die original structure and its wings appeared Co be of the same smooth, grayish stone as the wall, and all three were so high that throwing the limb onto the roof of any appeared quite impossible. To enter them direcdy, he would have to discover an unbolted door or force one of the ground-floor cas.e.m.e.nts, exactly as he and the other boys had broken into the deserted house a few years before he left home to attend the schola. He winced at the thought

On the farther end of the wing on die right, however (the structure most remote from his old vantage point), was a more modest addition whose decorative merlons appeared to stand no more than a scant ten cubits above the lawn; die size and close s.p.a.cing of its numerous windows suggested that it might be a conservatory. Silk noted it for future use and turned his attention to the grounds.

The broad gra.s.sway that curved so gracefully up to die pillared portico of Blood's villa was bordered with bright flower beds. Some distance in front of that entrance, a fine porcelain Scylla writhed palely among the sprays of an ostentatious fountain, spewing water alike from her woman's mouth and her upraised tentacles.