Epiphany of the Long Sun (22 page)

Chenille sat up and began to take off her jade earrings. "Ooh, did I dream!" She shuddered. "I was lost, see? All alone down here, and this tunnel I was in kept going deeper both ways. I'd walk one way for a long, long while, and it would just keep going down. So I'd turn around and walk the other way, only that way went down, too, deeper and deeper all the time."

"Recollect that the
immortal gods
are always with you, my daughter," Incus told her.

"Uh-huh. Hackum, I've got to get hold of some clothes. My sunburn's better. I could wear them, and it's too cold down here without any." She grinned. "A bunch of new clothes, and a double red ribbon. After that, I'll be ready for ham and half a dozen eggs scrambled with peppers."

"Watch out," Hammerstone warned her, "I don't think your friend's ready for inspection."

Auk rose, laughing. "Look at this," he told Hammerstone, and kicked Urus expertly, bending up his bare toes so that Urus's ribs received the ball of his foot.

Urus blinked and rubbed his eyes just as Auk had, and Auk realized that he himself was the long sun. He had awakened himself with his own light, light that filled the whole tunnel, too dazzlingly bright for Urus's weak eyes.

"The way you been carrying the old man," he told Urus, "I don't like it." He wondered whether his hands were hot enough to burn Urus. It seemed possible; they were ordinary when he wasn't looking at them, but when he did they glowed like molten gold. Stooping, he flicked Urus's nose with a forefinger, and when Urus did not cry out, jerked him to his feet.

"When you carry the old man," Auk told him, "you got to do it like you love him. Like you were going to kiss him." It might be a good idea to make Urus really kiss him, but Auk was afraid Dace might not like it.

"All right," Urus said. "All right."

Bustard inquired, How you feelin', sprat?

Auk pondered. "There's parts of me that work all right," he declared at length, "and parts that don't. A couple I'm not set about. Remember old Marble?"

Sure.

"She told us she could pull out these lists. Out of her sleeve, like. What was right and what wasn't. With me, it's one thing at a time."

"I can do that," Hammerstone put in. "It's perfectly natural."

Chenille had both earrings off, and was rubbing her ears. "Can you put these in your pocket, Hackum? I got no place to carry them."

"Sure," Auk said. He did not turn to look at her.

"I could get a couple cards for them at Sard's. I could buy a good worsted gown and shoes, and eat at the pastry cook's till I was ready to split."

"Like, there's this dimber punch," Auk explained to Urus. "I learned it when I wasn't no bigger than a cobbler's goose, and I always did like it a lot. You don't swing, see? Culls always talk about swinging at you, and they do. Only this is better. I'm not sure it still works, though."

His right fist caught Urus square in the mouth, knocking him backward into the shiprock wall. Incus gasped.

"You sort of draw your arm up and straighten it out," Auk explained. Urus slumped to the tunnel floor. "Only with your weight behind it, and your knuckles level. Look at them." He held them out. "If your knuckles go up and down, that's all right, too. Only it's a different punch, see?" Not as good, Bustard said. "Only not as good," Auk confirmed.

I kin walk, big feller, he don't have to carry me, nor kiss me neither.

The dead body at his feet, Auk decided, must be somebody else. Urus, maybe, or Gelada.

Maytera Marble tried to decide how long it had been since she had done this, entering
roof
and when that evoked only a flood of dripping ceilings and soaked carpets,
attic
.

A hundred and eighty-four years ago.

She could scarcely believe it-did not wish to believe it. A graceful girl with laughing eyes and industrious hands had climbed this same stair, as she still did a score of times every day, walked along this hall, and halted beneath this odd-looking door overhead, reaching up with a tool that had been lost now for more than a century.

She snapped her new fingers in annoyance, producing a loud and eminently satisfactory clack, then returned to one of the rooms that had been hers and rummaged through her odds-and-ends drawer until she found the big wooden crochet hook that she had sometimes plied before disease had deprived her of her fingers. Not these fingers, to be sure.

Back in the hall, she reached up as the girl who had been herself had and hooked the ring, wondering whimsically whether it had forgotten how to drop down on its chain.

It had not. She tugged. Puffs of dust emerged from the edges of the door above her head. The hall would have to be swept again. She hadn't been up there, no one had-

A harder tug, and the door inclined reluctantly downward, exposing a band of darkness. "Am I going to have to swing on you?" she asked. Her voice echoed through all the empty rooms, leaving her sorry she had spoken aloud.

Another tug evoked squeals of protest, but brought the bottom of the door low enough for her to grasp it and pull it down; the folding stair that was supposed to slide out when she did yielded to a hard pull.

I'll oil this, she resolved. I don't care if there isn't any oil. I'll cut up some fat from that bull and boil it, and skim off the grease and strain it, and use that. Because this
isn't
the last time. It is
not
.

She trotted up the folding steps in an energetic flurry of black bombazine.

Just look how good my leg is! Praise to you, Great Pas!

The attic was nearly empty. There was never much left when a sibyl died; what there was, was shared among the rest in accordance with her wishes, or returned to her family. For half a minute, Maytera Marble tried to recall who had owned the rusted trunk next to the chimney, eventually running down the whole list-every sibyl who had ever lived in the cenoby-without finding a single tin trunk arnong the associated facts.

The little gable window was closed and locked. She told herself that she was being foolish even as she wrestled its stubborn catch. Whatever it was that she had glimpsed in the sky while crossing the playground was gone, must certainly be gone by this time if it had ever existed.

Probably it had been nothing but a cloud.

She had expected the window to stick, but the dry heat of the last eight months had shrunk its ancient wood. She heaved at it with all her strength, and it shot up so violently that she thought the glass must break.

Silence followed, with a pleasantly chill wind through the window. She listened, then leaned out to peer up at the sky, and at last (as she had planned the whole time, having a lively appreciation of the difficulty of proving a negative after so many years of teaching small boys and girls) she stepped over the sill and out onto the thin old shingles of the cenoby roof.

Was it necessary to climb to the peak? She decided that it was, necessary for her peace of mind at least, though she wondered what the quarter would say if somebody saw her there. Not that it mattered, and most were off fighting anyhow. It wasn't as noisy as it had been during the day, but you could still hear shots now and then, like big doors shutting hard far away. Doors shutting on the past, she thought. The cold wind flattened her skirt against her legs as she climbed, and would have snatched off her coif had not one hand clamped it to her smooth metal head.

There were fires, as she could see easily from the peak, one just a few streets away. Saddle Street or String Street, she decided, probably Saddle Street, because that was where the pawnbrokers were. More fires beyond it, right up to the market and on the other side, as was to be expected. Darkness except for a few lighted windows up on Palatine Hill.

Which meant, more surely than any rumor or announcement, that Maytera Mint had not won. Hadn't won yet. Because the Hill would burn, would be looted and burned as predictably as the sixth term in a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole. With the Civil Guard beaten, nothing-

Before she could complete the thought, she caught sight of it, way to the south. She had been looking west toward the market and north to the Palatine, but it was over the Orilla… No, leagues south of that, way over the lake. Hanging low in the southern sky and, yes, opposing the wind in some fashion, because the wind was in the north, was blowing cold out of the north where night was new, because the wind must have come up, now that she came to think of it, only a few minutes before while she had been in the palaestra cutting up the last of the meat and carrying it down to the root cellar. She had come upstairs again and found her hoarded wrapping papers blown all over the kitchen, and shut the window.

So this thing-this huge thing, whatever it might be-had been over the city or nearly over it when she had glimpsed it above the back wall of the ball court. And it wasn't being blown south any more, as a real cloud would be; if anything, it was creeping north toward the city again, was creeping ever so slowly down the sky.

She watched for a full three minutes to make sure.

Was creeping north like a beetle exploring a bowl, losing heart at times and retreating, then inching forward again. It had been here, had been over the city, before. Or almost over it, when the wind had risen-had been taken unawares, as it seemed, and blown away over the lake; and now it had collected its strength to return, wind or no wind.

So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had squeezed an igniter.

Whatever it might be, there was no way for her to stop it. It would come, or it would not, and she had work to do, as she always did. Water, quite a lot of it, would have to be pumped to fill the wash boiler. She picked her way back to the gable, wondering how much additional damage she had done to a roof by no means tight to begin with.

She would have to carry wood in, enough for a big fire in the stove. Then she could wash the sheets from the bed she had died in and hang them out to dry. If Maytera Mint came back (and Maytera Marble prayed very fervently that she would) she could cook breakfast for her on the same fire, and Maytera Mint might even bring friends with her. The men, if there were any, could eat in the garden; she would carry one of the long tables and some chairs out of the palaestra for them. Luckily there was still plenty of meat, though she had cooked some for Villus and given more to his family when she had carried him home.

She stepped back into the attic and closed the window.

Her sheets would be dry by shadeup. She could iron them and put them back on her bed. She was still senior sibyl-or rather, was again senior sibyl, so both rooms were hers, though she probably ought to move everything into the big one.

Descending the folding steps, she decided that she would leave them down until she oiled them. She could cut off some fat and boil it in a saucepan while the wash water was getting hot; the boiler wouldn't take up the whole stove. By shadeup, the thing in the air would be back, perhaps; if she stood in the middle of Silver Street she might be able to see it quite clearly then, if she had time.

Auk felt sure they had been tramping through this tunnel forever, and that was funny because he could remember when they had turned off the other one to go down this one that they had been going down since Pas built the Whorl, Urus spitting blood and carrying the body, himself behind them in case Urus needed winnowing out, Dace and Bustard so they could talk to him, then Patera with the big soldier with the slug gun who had told them how to walk and made him do it, and last Chenille in Patera's robe, with Oreb and her launcher. Auk would rather have walked with her and had tried to, but it was no good.

He looked around at her. She waved friendly, and Bustard and Dace had gone. He thought of asking Incus and the soldier what had become of them but decided he didn't want to talk to them, and she was too far in back for a private chat. Bustard had most likely gone on ahead to look things over and taken the old man with him. It would be like Bustard, and if Bustard found something to eat he'd bring him back some.

Pray to Phaea, Maytera Mint instructed him. Phaea is the food goddess. Pray to her, Auk, and you will surely be fed. He grinned at her. "Good to see you, Maytera! I been worried about you." May every god smile upon you, Auk, this day and every day. Her smile turned the cold damp tunnel into a palace and replaced the watery green glow of the crawling light with the golden flood that had awakened him. Why should you worry about me, Auk? I have served the gods faithfully since I was fifteen. They will not abandon me. No one has less reason to worry than I. "Maybe you could get some god to come down here and walk with us," Auk suggested.

Behind him, Incus protested,
"Auk,
my son!"

He made a rude noise and looked around for Maytera Mint, but she was gone. For a minute he thought she might have run ahead to talk to Bustard, then realized that she had gone to fetch a god to keep him company. That was the way she'd always been. The least little thing you happened to mention, she'd jump up and do it if she could.

He was still worried about her, though. If she was going to Mainframe to fetch a god, she'd have to pass the devils that made trouble for people on the way, telling lies and pulling them off the Aureate Path. He should have asked her to go get Phaea. Phaea and maybe a couple pigs. Jugs would like some ham, and he still had his hanger and knife. He could kill a pig and cut it up, and dish up her ham. Shag, he was hungry himself and Jugs couldn't eat a whole pig. They'd save the tongue for Bustard, he'd always liked pig's tongue. It was Phaesday, so Maytera would most likely bring Phaea, and Phaea generally brought at least one pig. Gods generally brought whatever animal theirs was, or anyhow, pretty often.

Pigs for Phaea. (You had to get them all right if you wanted to learn the new stuff next year.) Pigs for Phaea and lions or anyhow cats for Sphinx. Who'd eat a cat? Fish for Scylla, but some fish would be all right. Little birds for Molpe, and the old 'un had limed perches for 'em, salted 'em, and made sparrow pie when he'd got enough. Bats for Tartaros, and owls and moles.