"Nor was he, Rajan."

"I didn't want protection, I wanted Pig's sight restored, and I knew that if the Fliers said it could be done at the West Pole, it could be. Most people have never spoken to a Flier, but I knew one once. They are Crew, and know a great deal we do not." He paused, chuckling. "Patera Gulo came to Ermine's to warn me. I'm sure I haven't told you about that."

Hari Mau shook his head.

"I didn't think so. Patera Gulo was my acolyte long ago. Pardon me--I misspoke. He was Silk's acolyte. I don't know how I came to make such a mistake."

Hari Mau said, "One that I can easily forgive, Rajan."

"He was Silk's acolyte, but he's coadjutor now. I supposed in my stupidity that His Cognizance had sent him, and was quite surprised that he would use the such a high-ranking prelate for a mere errand. Normally he would have sent a page with a note, or his prothonotary.

"The truth of the matter, as I came to understand afterward, was that Gulo had come on his own. He owed his high position to his past a.s.sociation with Silk. When His Cognizance learned of his little visit--as he surely did very soon--he saw to it that it wasn't repeated, and claimed credit for it. He even went so far as to warn me about you and your Gaonese, as Bison did. Neither, of course, took steps to prevent your taking me. Did you have much trouble finding me in the sacristy, Hari Mau?"

"One of your priests told us where you were, and pointed it out to us when we told him we desired to speak to you. But, Rajan, you would not think they had treated you ill if you could see your house. It will be the biggest in Gaon. A house, a garden, and a fountain, all beautiful. Your wives will choose the furnishings."

"My wives? wives?" He stared.

"Only four when we left, Rajan, but the most beautiful in Gaon, and we have suggested to other towns that they send their daughters. Most will. That is what Rajya Mantri thinks, and he is wise in such matters. Besides why would--"

"You must send them back!"

"No girl?" Oreb inquired sleepily.

"No. No, indeed. In the first place, Hari Mau, I have a wife already. In the second I have never even seen these women. Nor have they seen me."

"You will disgrace them, Rajan. No one wants a cast-off wife. Besides, you must have wives to cook and clean."

Sitting in the little horse-drawn tonga, he recalled that conversation. From the way the men running ahead (they were good runners here) were pointing, this was certainly it, this three-storied stucco structure with turrets and peculiarly shaped windows, behind this low plastered wall. The gray-bearded man with the big scarlet head-cloth, bowing as soon as the Rajan's eye fell upon him, was presumably Rajya Mantri.

The curtain of one of the upper windows was twitched aside just long enough to reveal two lovely, laughing faces with frightened eyes, then let fall again.

19.

THE L LAST T TIME.

J uganu and Scylla wanted to go back to the Red Sun Whorl right away; but Father said there was no point in going from the boat and most likely we would end up back on the river boat if we did, which was not where we wanted. What we needed was a nice safe house where things would be all right the whole time we were gone. That meant we had to go back to New Viron, and what with bad wind and no wind it took three days. Juganu did not like it, but there was nothing we could do about it. uganu and Scylla wanted to go back to the Red Sun Whorl right away; but Father said there was no point in going from the boat and most likely we would end up back on the river boat if we did, which was not where we wanted. What we needed was a nice safe house where things would be all right the whole time we were gone. That meant we had to go back to New Viron, and what with bad wind and no wind it took three days. Juganu did not like it, but there was nothing we could do about it.

I thought we would go to Uncle Calf's, but Father decided on another place instead, in a good big house that belonged to a lady named Capsic.u.m. Hide had met her already and she never did get over thinking I was him. But she was a nice old lady.

Father explained what we wanted, and she said she had just the place, it was a guest room that only had one window but there were two beds in it. We went in there, and it was a big window but there were bars on it. She did not call them bars and they were twisted around pretty to make a flower in the middle, but they were bars. I grabbed hold and tried to pull them out, and I could not even get them to bend a little.

She went away, and we shut the door and bolted it, and lay down on the beds, Father and me on one and Juganu on the other. After that I stared at the ceiling for a long time and nothing happened. It was about two o'clock and the sunshine in there was pretty bright. It was an interesting ceiling, because somebody had painted it like you were upside-down and looking down at a garden. There was a fountain with Green reflected in it, and those big white flowers that bloom at night, and even a bat. But after a while I got pretty tired of it.

I guess Father did too, because he said, "What are you thinking about Juganu? You're fighting me in some way."

Juganu said he was not, and they talked about that awhile. The bird started to talk, sometimes on its own and sometimes Scylla. I did not like that, and I think Father must have seen it, because he told it to be still. Then he said for Juganu to come over and lie down where I was, and for me to lie down in his bed. I did not like that either, because I was naturally worried about Father. But I did it.

Then he started talking to Juganu about the place we were trying to go to. I never heard him talk like that before, or anybody. I am going to write down all I can remember, but I do not think I can make you hear it the way I did, lying on my back looking at the bat and watching how the room got dark.

"Think of a whorl so old that even its seasons have worn out," Father said, "a whorl on which they had jungles like yours once, with wide-leafed plants and many flowers and huge trees. It is too cold for that in our time, and when the people of that whorl speak of the present they intend five hundred years.

"The sun is red. Shadeup is always cold, and it is cool even when the red sun is at its highest. You can see the stars all day long, unless they are hidden by clouds. Think of a whorl where beggars kill stray dogs for their pelts."

He talked a lot more, and then he said, "What fills your mind's eye, Juganu? Where do your thoughts fly? Be honest with me."

"I was thinking about the whorl you described," Juganu said, "about the whorl we visited, and the boat of the winged woman."

"What else?"

"That I'll be a man like you there, a better man than you, Rajan, because I'll be younger and stronger, as young and strong as your son, and I won't have to feed from him to make me strong. Do you know how we breed, Rajan? We of The People?"

"I know that your eggs must be hatched in sun-warmed water. Nothing beyond that."

The bird said, "Not man. People? Never! No Whorl, Whorl," and I knew it was Scylla. "No there. Good! Bad things!"

Juganu sat up. "We were there! They brought us! We're everywhere!"

Father made him lie back down and told Scylla to be quiet if she wanted to do what the Great Scylla had told her to. She did not say much after that. Maybe not anything.

"How do you breed, Juganu? If it's not too personal, I would be interested to know."

"The man must build a hut for decency's sake," Juganu began in his old, cracked voice. "He selects a good place, a private place where the sun you call short kisses the water. He builds it of little green branches woven together. Weaving is difficult for us but we can do it, and if a man wishes to mate that is what he must do."

Father said, "This is on Green."

"Always on Green. Your waters aren't warm enough for us, and haven't the right life in them. There must be life of the right kind in the water, or the children will starve.

"He builds the hut and trims it with flowers, and he goes away for a day. When he returns there is no one, perhaps, and his flowers have wilted. He takes them far away and throws them into the water, and in the morning he gathers fresh ones, more than before, and trims the hut again. Once again he goes away.

"At evening he returns. The flowers he picked that morning have faded, and the leaves of the green branches from which he built his hut are flaccid and yellow. He destroys it, and carries the withered branches far away to throw in the water. Next morning he begins a new hut, higher and longer and more cunningly woven than the first. Its building requires a day. Next day he trims it with flowers both inside and out. And then he goes away."

I was about ready to go away myself by then, but Father was lying there very quietly waiting to hear more. Their bed was only about two cubits from mine, and he was lying on the side nearest me. So I could see his face pretty good just by turning my head, and he looked like he was hearing something important.

"This time a woman has come," Juganu said. "She is lying in his hut. How does he know? By a thousand signs, and none. Perhaps some small plant that he spared for the beauty of its foliage has been trodden upon. Perhaps she has taken a single blossom from his hut to wear.

"He knows. He reshapes himself then, becoming a man both young and strong. Within--"

I said, "You can't do that." It got me a look from Father.

"She has made herself such a woman as young men dream of. You have told me about your daughter Jahlee, how lovely she was. Your son has told me, too. That is how the woman looks when he sees her in the dimness of the hut he built and made beautiful for her. All these things, you understand, are their promises to each other. Their promises concerning the children they will have. You, Rajan, will understand what I mean by this. Your son will not, and should not."

Father said, "Yes, I understand. Please continue."

"In his hut they love as men and women love. There is a game they play. I think, Rajan, that you can guess what that game is."

His pet said, "Tell bird."

"He is a human man for her, and she is a human woman for him. He tells her that he came to Green on a lander, as human men do, and she tells him that she ran away from her father's house and happened upon his beautiful hut. It is not a lie."

I wanted to say that it was, but Father said, "No, it isn't. I understand. It is a drama."

"Exactly. They are the audience as well as the actors. I have been an actor, Rajan."

Father said, "I understand," again.

"This lasts all night. In the morning, when the sun's hot kisses fall on the water, they say, 'We must wash ourselves after so much love.' They swim together, and she releases her eggs and he his sperm, and it is over."

Neither of them said anything after that. The bird talked a little, but it was not Scylla and did not make sense. Finally I said, "Father wanted to know what you're thinking about that keeps us from going where we want to go, Juganu."

Father told me to be quiet, and I said, "Well, I think he ought to. You're going to take him somewhere where he can be a real man. I think he owes it to you to tell you."

"He has," Father said, and that shut me up.

I do not know how long it was before Father started talking again, but it was a long time. I guess he was thinking of what to say. When he started again his voice was so quiet I could hardly hear.

"Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute drop of blood.

"There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it. There are women in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the feignings of the sea G.o.ddess, but of real women. Some are as tall as towers, some no larger than children. Their hair is green and streams behind them when they swim, their nipples black, and their eyes and lips and nails as red as blood.

"Steps wet and black with river water lead from the river to a street of crumbling tenements. There are women in nearly every room of those tenements, women who will sell their bodies for a round piece of stamped metal. Some are beautiful, and many are less than beautiful in ways you may find attractive."

He said more about that, but I do not remember most of it, and I am not going to write it.

Then he said, "Follow the street higher, and you meet with the iron gates of their necropolis. It is to that necropolis, that silent city of the dead, that we go; but first we must visit the lander beyond it, the ancient lander where the torturers ply their trade. The torturers are men, but there are fair women among their prisoners. They are helpless and afraid, confined to underground cells and grateful--those who have not lost their reason--to anyone who befriends them. Many were the concubines of the calde of the city, and these are the fairest of the fair. Day after day they groom and perfume themselves for the rescuer of whom they dream, the rescuer who for most will never come. Tall and fair they think him, and a thousand times they have practiced the kisses they will give him . . . the caresses that have made him their own. . . ."

Father stopped talking, and it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way from where I was. I opened my eyes and saw daylight and stars, like there were stars painted on the ceiling instead of the white flowers, and broken stuff like gla.s.s. I sat up just as the bird flew through the break, and the first person I saw was the girl that had been inside it. Here I wish I could really say how she looked. It was not exactly happy and was not exactly angry either. She looked the way a person does when all the deciding and worrying is over, and her eyes could have burned right through you.

Father sat up then, and Juganu. Juganu looked the same as on the river boat, but Father looked the way he had in Capsic.u.m's big house, only younger. Before he had looked a lot like our real father, and Hide says that is the way he always looked on the Red Sun Whorl. Now he did not. He looked serious, but he had two eyes again and they just shone. He got up as if he did not weigh anything, and helped me up.

The girl said, "That it?" and pointed.

Naturally I looked where she pointed. There was a little paved place down below with a post in the middle, and on the other side of it a pretty big wall that had fallen down in one place to where it was just a pile of slabs.

On the other side was a cemetery so big it seemed like the whole whorl had to be dead and buried in it. There were graves with every kind of monument, statues of men crying and women crying and I guess of the people who were dead and all sorts of things, and pillars with things on top. Between them were trees and bushes and gra.s.s, and little narrow paths that looked white. I found out later that they were made of bones. It all went on for a long way down the side of the big hill, and past it you could barely make out the buildings Father had talked about, and the river.

The girl had taken hold of his arm and was trying to pull him over to the hatch in the middle of the floor, but he would not go. She said, "We here! Why wait?"

He said, "For shadelow, of course. Do you imagine that we can simply go down there and wander about?"

He always wore that black robe that he had the corn in, but it was different, and it started changing more right then while I looked. The main thing was that it kept getting blacker and blacker. It got so black I thought it could not get any blacker, then it kept on getting blacker after that until it looked like what Azoth did when the blade came out and cut through that boat. Finally it was like it was not there at all, but like you were blind in the part of your eye that was looking at it.

There was a hood, too, with red trim on it.

Juganu went over and lifted the hatch while Father and the girl were arguing and said he was going down but if he got caught he would not tell about us. Father explained that they could not hold him anyway, and helped him make one of the black robes for himself and a big straight sword that was sharp on both sides, and told him the name of his friend and told him to send him up if he met him.

Juganu went, and for a long time nothing happened. Father talked to the girl, but I did not pay much attention. Mostly I looked at the other landers around ours, and the river and the city. I will not try to tell about it, because I could not. You could not imagine it, no matter how hard you tried. Some of the buildings were like mountains, but in it they were not huge or even big, they were just b.u.mps. Father used to talk sometimes about the jungle where Sinew was, how dangerous it was. But that city looked worse to me, leagues and leagues and leagues of stone and brick, and millions and millions and millions of people that were worse than any animal. I would have gone home right then, if I could.

The bird came back saying, "Good place! Good hole!" I never did like it much, and I think it was afraid of me because I look like my brother but I am somebody else. Anyway, I liked it less after that, and I am not sorry that it went with him.

Then a boy came up. He was one of the apprentices. From the way Father had talked, I thought he was going to be my age, but he was younger. He was pretty big already, though. You could see he was going to be tall.

We sat on the floor then, Father, the girl, the boy, and me. The boy asked Father about his book, whether he was still writing it. Father said, "No, I've put it aside forever. If my sons or my wife wish to read what I have written, they may. But if they want it finished, they will have to finish it themselves. What about yours? The last time we spoke, you said you were going to write someday. Have you begun it?"

The boy laughed and said, no, he was going to wait until he had more time and more to put in it. Then he said something I have remembered a lot. He said, "I won't put you in it, though. No one would believe you."

It is exactly the way I feel about Father. I knew how right it was as soon as I heard it, and it is still right. The others are going to write all the other parts of this, about the wedding and all that. My part is almost over with. So I am going to try to say it, to tell you about Father the way he seemed to me right here. Even if you do not believe me, even if you think that what I say cannot have been true, you will know anyway that I thought it was. It will let you see him the way we did, a little.

Father was good.

That is the hard part to explain to everyone, and it is the thing my aunt is trying to explain, too. If you meet her and she starts telling you about him, how scary he could be, and things moving themselves and the Vanished People coming down the street and knocking on her door, that is what you have to remember if you want to understand.

If somebody frightens people, everybody thinks he has to be bad. But when you were around Father you were practically always scared to death, scared that he might really find out one day the way you were and do something about it.

I was not going to tell why I did not like his bird, but I will just to get you to understand. It was not really a nice bird at all. It was dirty, and it did not sing. It was noisy sometimes when I did not want it to be, and it would eat fish guts and rotten meat. After I got to know Father (this was in Dorp and on Wijzer's boat) I could see that the bird was exactly like me, except that it was a bird and I was a person. Father knew exactly how bad we were but he loved us just the same. Deep down, I think he loved everybody, even Jahlee and Juganu. He loved some people more than others, our mother especially. But he loved everybody, and until you meet somebody like him, you will never know how scary that was.

He was good, like I said up there. He was probably the best man alive, and I think that when somebody is really, really good, as good as he was, the rules change.

"A long time ago," he told the boy, "this girl was a sort of princess here on your whorl. Her name was Cilinia. Have you heard of her?"

The boy said he had not.

"She died here many years ago--many centuries, I believe. Now she must find her grave."

"You're ghosts." The boy looked around at us. He was not afraid, or if he was he did not show it. But he did not smile, either. He did not have a good face for smiling, anyway. "When you were here before you said you weren't."

"That was because you meant the spirits of the dead," Father explained. "My son and I are not dead, and neither is Juganu, the man who sent you to us. This girl is, however, and we must help her. Will you help us?"

He did, too. He took us to an old stone building where there were lots of coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of them were not, and a lot were empty.

"Here," the girl said, and she went into the darkest corner. I did not think there was anything there, but Father was making a light with his hand, and she was right. There was a little coffin only about half the size of the others in there, pushed way over. There were spiderwebs all over it, so it was a lot easier to miss than to see.

She looked down at it awhile, and Father asked if it would be better if he put out his light. She said no, but he closed his hand until it was almost dark. Finally she said it was no good, we would have to take the lid off for her. It took a special tool, but Father made one and gave it to the boy. He said that since the boy was the only one who was really here, it at would be better if he did it.

The boy asked, "I'm just pretending you're really here?" But Father had stepped back into a corner and would not answer him. (It seemed right then like Father was not much more than a shadow and a little gleam of light, like there was a c.h.i.n.k in the wall there that let the sunlight in.) Finally I said, "That isn't quite it either. You better take out those screws like Father told you." I am not sure the boy heard me, though.

He did it anyway. I do not think the tool Father had made felt right, because he kept stopping to look at it. He would use it awhile, maybe taking out one. Then he would stop and study it, and shut his eyes, and study it some more. So it took a while, but eventually the last one was out and he looked around for Father and asked if he should take the top off.

Father was on his knees drawing the sign of addition over and over the way he did sometimes and did not answer, but the girl said, "Yes! Oh, yes! Do it!" That was funny, because I could see the boy could hear her but could not see her.