Epiphany of the Long Sun (68 page)

Spider nodded. "Plenty of room left, but we got three in the guardroom, and Paca back in the big tunnel, and me."

"You-ah-depression. A mere, um, state of mind, my son. Emotion, hey?"

"Yes," Maytera Mint agreed heartily. "You mustn't talk as if your death were inevitable, Spider. I mean now, killed by those soldiers. It isn't, and I pray it won't happen."

"That devil you called your sib's granddaughter, General. What'd it say?"

"She is not a devil," Maytera Mint delared firmly. "She is a living girl, one who has been shamefully mistreated."

Spider grunted, picking up a long-handled spade that had lain between two rolls of synthetic.

"This, er, granddaughter, General. An-ah-difficult child?" Remora bit into a strip of dried beef.

Maytera Mint nodded absently, and found herself staring at one of the grim slips of soiled paper. Bending and squinting, she read a name, a date, and a few particulars of the dead man's life. "Is this the most recent one, Spider? The paper seems cleaner than the others."

"Yeah. Last spring."

There was still half a loaf. Deep in thought, she tore away piece after piece, chewing and swallowing slowly, and drank from her bottle.

"I'm about done here." Spider had ceased to dig, leaning on his spade. "Think you two could fetch a cull out for me? Door's not locked."

"I was about to suggest it myself," Maytera Mint told him.

"We-ah-trust, hey? On our honor?"

"I have his needler, Your Eminence. We could go at any time, and I could shoot him if he tried to stop us."

"In that case, um, the circumstances-"

"But he gave it to me, remember? Besides, he knows these tunnels, and we don't."

"Ah-the soldiers."

"I feel certain they'd help up if we could find them, but what if we couldn't? Spider, we'll be happy to bring one of your late friends here for burial. Thank you for your trust in us. It is not misplaced."

He nodded. "Cut off a big hunk of poly. You can lay him on that and drag him, it's real slick. When you get him here, I'll wrap him up in it."

"May I borrow your knife?"

He got it from his pocket and handed it to her, then went back to his digging. Remora held the ends of the smaller roll while she pulled out and slashed free a length twice the height of a man.

As they carried it back to the guardroom, Remora muttered, "You, um, wonders with him, Maytera. I congratulate you."

She shrugged, unconsciously thrusting her hand into her pocket to grasp Spider's needler. "He has no slug gun, Your Eminence, and without one he would be defenseless against the soldiers. He's hoping our presence will make it possible for him to surrender."

"I, ah-" Remora opened the guardroom door and glanced around. Their stools stood in a circle as they had left them, and the three dead men still sprawled on the gritty shiprock floor, untouched. "One can always, eh? Give up? Capitulate. Not, um, that we-"

"One can always raise one's hands and step into full view of the enemy," Maytera Mint told him. "A good many troopers lose their lives doing it. This one nearest the door, I think. If Your Eminence will unfold that synthetic, we can roll him onto it, poor spirit."

"You, er, concerned, eh?" Remora spread the synthetic winding sheet, holding it down with his knees as he wrestled with the dead man's shoulder. "I observed your demeanor in-ah-there. As you ate."

"Puzzled." She forced her gaze away from the dead man's eyes, wishing that it had been possible to roll him so that he lay face down again. "There was fresh earth on the blade of that spade. At least, I think it was fresh, or fairly fresh. Maytera has a little garden back at the cenoby, Your Eminence. I've helped her with it now and then, hoeing, and spading in the spring. I don't think that Spider noticed it."

"I fail to see the, um, import. Someone else, eh? Could be Councillor Potto, another-hum-subordinate."

"I fail to see it too," she told Remora. "Take the other corner, will you?"

Back at the end of the tunnel, Spider had completed the first grave and begun a second. "That's Hyrax." He produced a stump of pencil and a battered notebook. "I'll write, you two cap for him."

They knelt. Maytera Mint found herself, rather to her own surprise, clasping the cold hand. If things had been different, she thought, we might have been man and wife, you and I. We must be nearly of an age.

The drone of Remora's prayer reminded her of the singsong voices of children in the classroom, recifing the multiplication table, memorizing prayers for meals, for betrothals, for the dead. Had she taught girls this year? Or boys? She could not remember.

We would have kissed and held hands, and done what men and women do, and I would have borne you a child, perhaps, my own child. But when I met Bison…

"All right, General, let him go. I got to fold this over him." Suddenly Hyrax was no longer a dead man, but a statue or a picture, still visible but blurred and faintly blue through the synthetic.

"His knife." She rose, dusting loose earth from her black skirt by reflex. "You'll need his knife for the paper."

"I already got it. You want to help, Patera? I could do it alone, but it'll be easier with two." They crouched, one on either side, and Spider said, "Lift when I do, see? A-one and a-two and a-
three!
"

Raising the shrouded corpse to waist level, they slid it into its grave; and he began shovelling earth after it, pausing from time to time to tamp the damp dark face of death with the handle of his spade. He said, "You're wonderin' why we don't dig them down the way you usually do, I guess."

"The, um, papers," Remora ventured. "Stepped upon, eh? Trodden."

"There's that. But mostly it's easier to dig here. Then too, we'd have to walk on the old ones to bury the new ones."

As they were leaving the guardroom with Guan stretched on a fresh sheet of poly, laughter, faint and mad, echoed in the main tunnel. "Wait!" Maytera Mint told Remora. "Did you hear that? You must have!"

He shuddered. "I-ah-possibly."

"Will you do me a favor, Your Eminence?" She did not wait for his assent. "Go back in there and get two packages of that dried meat. One for yourself, and one for me. We can put them in our pockets."

"That-ah-merriment…"

"I have no idea, Your Eminence. I have a feeling, a presentiment, if you will, that we may need food."

"If we-er-never mind." Remora vanished into the guardroom.

When he returned, Maytera Mint handed him a needler.

"But I am-er-better, perhaps, with you, eh, General? Your, um, forte."

"That isn't Spider's, it's Guan's," she told him. "Spider said a needler was what he usually used, remember? It didn't really make much of an impression at the time, but afterward, thinking about that poor man who dressed as a woman, it struck me that the other spy-catchers must have done the same thing. They would want some sort of a weapon, and before the rebellion nobody but a Guardsman could walk around the city carrying a slug gun. Then I wondered-this was while we were bringing Hyrax-what they did with them when they got their slug guns. It seemed likely that most of them had simply put them in their waistbands, under their tunics, where they were accustomed to carrying them."

"Most, um, sagacious."

"Thank you, Your Eminence. Anyway, whatever that was we heard wasn't a soldier. Do you agree?"

"I, um, indubitably." Remora stared down at the needler in his hand.

"Or a chem at all, any kind of chem. So a needler should work, and we may need them, just as we may need this meat, for which I haven't yet thanked you. Thank you very much, Your Eminence. It was a great condescension for you to oblige me as you have."

"You must know how to, um, operate? Manage this?" Remora might not have heard her.

"It's not difficult. Push that down," she pointed to the safety catch, "when you wish to shoot. Point it, and pull the trigger. If you want to shoot a second needle, pull it again. I won't show you how to reload now. There isn't time, and we don't have any more needles anyway."

Remora gulped and nodded.

"In your waistband under your robe, perhaps. I believe that's where our Caldé must carry his."

"I-ah. It would be, er, inadvisable, hey? When we return to the-ah-up there."

"I won't tell anyone if you don't." Maytera Mint stooped for a corner of the sheet of synthetic on which Guan's body lay. "We'd better go now, and quickly, or Spider will wonder what delayed us."

At the end of the side tunnel she knelt as she had before, trying to keep her mind upon appropriate petitions to the gods. Guan had kicked her shortly before Spider had locked her away with Remora so that he and his men could sleep; the right side of her thigh was still sore and stiff. She had scarcely given it a thought since it had happened, or so she had convinced herself. Now that Guan was dead, now that Guan lay before her, she found she could not free her mind from the memory of that kick. It was easy to mouth
I forgive you
, and to ask the gods, Echidna particularly, not to hold the kick against him; yet she felt that her forgiveness did not reach her heart, however hard she tried to bring it there.

The transparent sheet covered Guan as a sister sheet from the parent roll had covered Hyrax, and Maytera Mint got to her feet. What was the third man's name? He had been the quietest of their captors; she had thought him sullen and marked him as potentially the most dangerous. She would never know, now, whether she had been correct.

"How 'bout if you dig for Sewellel, Patera? I'll go back with General Mint here and fetch him."

"Why, ah-"

She saw Remora assure himself that his needler was in place with a touch of his forearm, and said, "He's not going to attack me, Your Eminence. He would like to speak to me in private, I imagine."

Remora managed to smile. "In that, um, circumstances, I shall-ah-comply. With all good will."

"What it really is," Spider told him, "is I want to see if you can do it right. You'll have to dig for me, see? You seen me do it. Now you do for Sewellel and Paca, and that'll be two for each of us. Let's move out, General."

Obediently, she followed him down the side tunnel. "What I told Patera's lily," Spider said as they walked. "You know that word? Means the truth."

"Yes, I do, though I've always considered it children's slang. My pupils use it sometimes."

"But that you said, General. That was the lily too."

She nodded, striving to make her nod sympathetic.

"I'm sorry about the way I talk. Sometimes I swear when I didn't mean to. It's just that I always do."

"I understand, believe me."

He stopped abruptly. "Thing is, I don't believe you. Or him, back there. Patera What'shisface.

"Remora."

Spider waved aside Remora's identity. "Echidna made you a general? She talked to you about it?"

"She certainly did."

"Could you see her like you're seein' me now? Could you make out what she was sayin'? She talked to you out of one of those big glasses they got in manteions?"

"Exactly. I can repeat everything she said, if you wish. I'd be happy to." This was a return to familiar ground, and Maytera Mint felt more confident than she had since she and Remora had passed through the ruined gate of Blood's villa.

"I know somebody that says he couldn't really hear the words. He just knew what she meant."

"He had known woman," Maytera Mint explained, hoping that Spider would understand what she intended by
known.
"Or else he had… Excuse this, please. The indelicacy."

"Sure thing."

"He had known another man, or a boy, as men know women. That man you told us about? Titi? I should imagine-"

"Yeah, so do I, and the other way, too. Sure he did. Is that the only reason?"

"It is. By Echidna's will, those who have enjoyed carnal knowledge of others may not behold the gods. Nor may they hear them distinctly, though in most cases they understand them. It varies between individuals, and several reasons have been put forward for that. If you don't mind, I won't explain those in detail. They concern the frequency and the specific natures of various sexual relations. You can readily construct them, or similar theories, for yourself."

"Sure, General. You can skip all that."

"I have never known Man. Therefore I saw the face of the goddess exactly as I see yours. More clearly, because her face was very bright. I heard each word she uttered, and can repeat them verbatim, as I said. When I have known Man…"

The guilty words had slipped out; she hurried on, conscious that her cheeks were reddening. "I shall no longer be able to see Echidna. No more than your friend could. In the event that I know Man-I mean, have relations with a-with a husband. My husband. Then I won't be able to repeat the words of the gods any more than you could."

"That was the thing I was wanting to talk to you about."

"The words of the goddess? She said-"

Spider waved Echidna's words aside. "You gettin' married and knowin' a man, like you said. I got to tell you."

Her hand closed about the needler in her pocket. "Do you mean yourself, Spider? No. Not willingly."

He shook his head. "Bison. I'm fly, see? I can tell from how you talk about him. It got you worried when I said I got culls you think's yours. You were scared Bison was one."

"Certainly not!" Maytera Mint took three deep breaths and relaxed her hold on the needler. "I suppose I was, a little."

"Yeah, I know. You kept tellin' yourself it couldn't be like that, on account of stuff he's said to you."

She had taken a step backward; she found that her shoulders were pressed against the tunnel's cold shiprock. "I haven't said anything to him, Spider, nor has he said a single such word to me. Nothing! But I've seen-or believed I saw… And he, Bison, no doubt has-has. Seen me. And heard me, too. My voice. In the same fashion."

"Yeah, I got you, General." To her surprise, Spider leaned against the wall next to her, sparing her the embarrassment of his gaze. "How old are you?"

"That is none of your affair." She made her voice as firm as she could.