Litany of the Long Sun (7 page)

"The second is even more important, Maytera. It's that our manteion can be saved. It's endangered, not doomed, in other words. He wouldn't have ordered me to save it if that couldn't be done, would he?"

"Please come in and sit down, Patera," Maytera Marble pleaded. "I don't want you to catch cold."

Silk re-entered the arbor, and she stood. "You don't have-" he began, then grinned sheepishly. "Forgive me, Maytera. Forgive me, please. I grow older, learning nothing at all,"

She swung her head from side to side, her silent laugh. "You're not old, Patera. I watched you play a while today, and none of the boys are as quick as you are."

"That's only because I've been playing longer," he said, and they sat down together.

Smiling she clasped his hand in hers, surprising him. The soft skin had worn from the tips of her fingers long ago, leaving bare steel darkened like her thoughts by time, and polished by unending toil. "You and the children are the only things at this manteion that aren't old. You don't belong here, neither of you."

"Maytera Mint's not old. Not really, Maytera, though I know she's a good deal older than I am."

Maytera Marble sighed, a soft hush like the weary sweep of a mop across a terrazzo floor. "Poor Maytera Mint was born old, I fear. Or taught to be old before she could talk, perhaps. However that may be, she has always belonged here. As you never have, Patera."

"You believe it's going to be torn down, too, don't you? No matter what the Outsider may have told me."

Reluctantly, Maytera Marble nodded. "Yes, I do. Or as I ought to say, the buildings themselves may remain, although even that appears to be m doubt. But your manteion will no longer bring the gods to the people of this quarter, and our palaestra will no longer teach their children."

Silk snapped, "What chance would these sprats have without your palaestra?"

"What chance do children of their class have now?" He shook his head angrily, and would have liked to paw the ground.

"Such things have happened before, Patera. The Chapter will find new manteions for us. Better manteions, I think, because it would be difficult to find worse ones. I'll go on teaching and assisting, and you'll go on sacrificing and shriving. It will be all right."

"I received enlightenment today," Silk said. "I've told no one except a man I met in the street on my way to the market and you, and neither of you have believed me."

"Patera-"

"So it's clear that I'm not telling it very well, isn't it? Let me see if I can't do better." He was silent for a moment, rubbing his cheek.

"I'd been praying and praying for help. Praying mostly to the Nine, of course, but praying to every god and goddess in the Writings at one time or another; and about noon today my prayers were answered by the Outsider, as I've told you. Maytera, do you…" His voice quavered, and he found that he could not control it. "Do you know what he said to me, Maytera? What he told me?"

Her hands closed upon his until their grip was actually painful. "Only that he has instructed you to preserve our manteion. Please tell me the rest, if you can."

"You're right, Maytera. It isn't easy. I had always thought enlightenment would be a voice out of the sun, or in my own head, a voice that spoke in words. But it's not like that at all. He whispers to you in so many voices, and the words are living things that show you. Not just seeing, the way you might see another person in a glass, but hearing and smelling-and touch and pain, too, but all of them wrapped together so they become the same, parts of that one thing.

"And you understand. When I say he showed me, or that he told me something, that's what I mean."

Maytera Marble nodded encouragingly.

"He showed me all the prayers that have ever been said to any god for this manteion. I saw all the children at prayer from the time it was first built, their mothers and fathers too, and people who just came in to pray, or came to one of our sacrifices because they hoped to get a piece of meat, and prayed while they were here.

"And I saw the prayers of all you sibyls, from the very beginning. I don't ask you to believe this, Maytera, but I've seen every prayer you've ever said for our manteion, or for Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint, or for Patera Pike and me, and-well, for everyone in this whole quarter, thousands and thousands of prayers. Prayers on your knees and prayers standing up, and prayers you said while you were cooking and scrubbing floors. There used to be a Maytera Milkwort here, and I saw her praying, and a Maytera Betel, a big dark woman with sleepy eyes." Silk paused for breath. "Most of all, I saw Patera Pike."

"This is wonderful!" Maytera Marble exclaimed. "It must have been marvelous, Patera." Silk knew it was impossible, that it was only their crystalline lenses catching the light, but it seemed to him that her eyes shone.

"And the Outsider decided to grant all those prayers. He told Patera Pike, and Patera Pike was so happy! Do you remember the day I came here from the schola, Maytera?" Maytera Marble nodded again.

"That was the day. The Outsider granted Patera Pike enlightenment that day, and he said-he said, here's the help that I'm-that I'm…"

Silk had begun to weep, and was suddenly ashamed. It was raining harder now, as if encouraged by the tears that streaked his cheeks and chin. Maytera Marble pulled a big, clean, white handkerchief out of her sleeve and gave it to him.

She's always so practical, he thought, wiping his eyes and nose. A handkerchief for the little ones; she must have a child sobbing in her class every day. The record of her days is written in tears, and today I'm that sobbing child. He managed to say, "Your children can't often be as old as I am, Maytera."

"In class, you mean, Patera? They're never as old. Oh, you must mean the grown men and women who were mine when they were boys and girls. Many of them are older than you are. The oldest must be sixty, or about that. I was- didn't teach until then." She called her memorandum file, chiding herself as she always did for not calling it more often. "Which reminds me. Do you know Auk, Patera?"

Silk shook his head. "Does he live in this quarter?"

"Yes, and comes on Scylsday, sometimes. You must have seen him. The large, rough-looking man who sits in back?"

"With the big jaw? His clothes are clean, but he looks as if he hasn't shaved. He wears a hanger-or perhaps it's a hunting sword-and he's always alone. Was he one of your boys?"

Maytera Marble nodded sadly. "He's a criminal now, Patera. He breaks into houses."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Silk said. For an instant he had a mental picture of the hulking man from the back of the manteion surprised by a householder and whirling clumsily but very quickly to confront him, like a baited bear.

"I'm sorry, too, Patera, and I've been wanting to talk to you about him. Patera Pike shrove him last year. You were here, but I don't think you knew about it."

"If I did, I've forgotten." To quiet the hiss of the wide blade as it cleared the scabbard, Silk shook his head. "But you're right, Maytera. I doubt that I knew."

"I didn't learn about it from Patera myself. Maytera Mint told me. Auk still likes her, and they have a little talk now and then."

Blowing his nose in his own handkerchief, Silk relaxed a trifle. This, he felt certain, was what she had wanted to speak to him about

"Patera was able to get Auk to promise not to rob poor people any more. He'd done that, he said. He'd done it quite often, but he wouldn't any more. He promised Patera, Maytera says, and he promised her, too. You're going to lecture me now, Patera, because the promise of a man like that-a criminal's promise-can't be trusted."

"No man's promise can be trusted absolutely," Silk said slowly, "since no man is, or can ever be, entirely free from evil. I include myself in that, certainly."

Maytera Marble pushed her handkerchief back into her sleeve. "I think Auk's promise, freely given, can be relied on as much as anybody's, Patera. As much as yours, and I don't intend to be insulting. That was the way he was as a boy, and it's the way he is as a man, too, as well as I can judge. He never had a mother or a father, not really. He- but I'd better not go on, or I'll let slip things that Maytera's made me promise not to repeat, and then I'll feel terrible, and I'll have to tell both of them that I broke my word." "Do you really believe that I may be able to help this man, Maytera? I'm surely no older than he is, and probably younger. He's not going to respect me the way he respected Patera Pike, remember."

Rain dripping from the sparkling leaves dotted Maytera Marble's skirt; she brushed at the spots absently. "That may be true, Patera, but you'll understand him better than Patera Pike could, I think. You're young, and as strong as he is, or almost. And he'll respect you as an augur. You needn't be afraid of him. Have I ever asked a favor of you, Patera? A real favor?"

"You asked me to intercede with Maytera Rose once, and I tried. I think I probably did more harm than good, so we won't count that. But you could ask a hundred favors if you wanted to, Maytera. You've earned that many and more." "Then talk with Auk, Patera, some Scylsday. Shrive him if he asks you to."

"That isn't a favor," Silk said. "I'd do that much for anyone; but of course you want me to make a special effort for this Auk, to speak to him and take him aside, and so on; and I will."

"Thank you, Patera. Patera, you've known me for over a year now. Am I lacking in faith?"

The question caught Silk by surprise. "You, Maytera? Why-why I've never thought so. You've always seemed, I mean to me at least-"

"Yet I haven't had the faith in you, and the god who enlightened you, that I should've had. I just realized it. I've been trusting in merely human words and appearances, like any petty trader. You were saying that the god had promised Patera Pike help, I think. Could you tell me more about that? I was only listening with care before. This time I'll listen with faith, or try to."

"There's more than I could ever tell." Silk stroked his cheek. He had himself in check now. "Patera Pike was enlightened, as I said; and I was shown his enlightenment. He was told that all those prayers he had said over so many years were to be granted that day-that the help he had asked for, for himself and for this manteion and the whole quarter, would be sent to him at once."

Silk discovered that his fists were clenched. He made himself relax. "I was shown all that; then I saw that help arrive, alight as if with Pas's fire from the sun. And it was me. That was all it was, just me."

"Then you cannot fail," Maytera Marble told him softly.

Silk shook his head. "I wish it were that easy. I can fail, Maytera. I dare not."

She looked grave, as she often did. "But you didn't know this until today? At noon, in the ball court? That's what you said."

"No, I didn't. He told me something else, you see-that the time has come to act"

Maytera Marble sighed again. "I have some information for you, Patera. Discouraging information, I'm afraid. But first I want very much to ask you just one thing more, and tell you something, perhaps. It was the Outsider who spoke to you, you say?"

"Yes. I don't know a great deal about him, however, even now. He's one of the sixty-three gods mentioned in the Writings, but I haven't had a chance to look him up since it happened, and as I remember there isn't a great deal about him anyway. He told me about himself, things that aren't in the Writings unless I've forgotten them; but I haven't really had much time to think about them."

"When we were outside like him, living in the Short Sun Whorl before this one was finished and peopled, we worshipped him. No doubt you knew that already, Patera."

"I'd forgotten it," Silk admitted, "but you're right It's in the tenth book, or the twelfth."

"We chems didn't share in sacrifices in the Short Sun Whorl." Maytera Marble fell silent for a moment, scanning old files. "It wasn't called manteion, either. Something else. If only I could find that, I could remember more, I think."

Without understanding what she meant, Silk nodded.

"There have been many changes since then, but it used to be taught that he was infinite. Not merely great, but truly without limit. There are expressions like that-I mean in arithmetic. Although we never get to them in my class."

"He showed me."

"They say that even the whorl ends someplace," Maytera Marble continued, "immense though it is. He doesn't If you were to divide him among all the things in it, each part of him would still be limitless. Didn't you feel awfully small, Patera, when he was showing you all these things?"

Silk considered his answer. "No, I don't think I did. No, I didn't. I felt-well, great. I felt that way even though he was immeasurably greater, as you say. Imagine, Maytera, that His Cognizance the Prolocutor were to speak to me in person, assigning me some special duty. I'd feel, of course, that he was a far greater man than I, and a far, far greater man than I could ever be; but I'd feel that I too had become a person of significance." Silk paused, ruminating. "Now suppose a Prolocutor incalculably great."

"I understand. That answers several questions that I've had for a long while. Thank you, Patera. My news-I want to tell you why I asked you to meet me."

"It's bad news, I assume." Silk drew a deep breath. "Knowing that the manteion's at risk, I've been expecting some."

"It would appear to indicate-mistakenly, I feel sure, Patera-that you've failed already. You see, a big, red-faced man came to the palaestra while you were away. He said that he'd just bought it, bought the entire property from the city." Maytera Marble's voice fell. "From the Ayuntamiento, Patera. That's what he told me. He was here to look at our buildings. I showed him the palaestra and the manteion. I'm quite sure he didn't get into the cenoby or the manse, but he looked at everything from the outside."

"He said the sale was complete?"

She nodded.

"You're right, Maytera. This sounds very bad."

"He'd come in a floater, with a man to operate it for him. I saw it when we were going from the palaestra to the manteion. We went out the front, and along Sun Street past the ball court He said he'd talked to you before he came here, but he hadn't told you he'd bought it. He said he'd thought you'd make trouble."