Epiphany of the Long Sun (9 page)

"I never liked working for anybody but me," Auk told him.

"You got to have somebody outside. Or anyhow I do. You feeling pretty good now?"

"Better'n I did."

"I been watching you, 'cause that's what Patera wants. And you can't hardly walk. You hit your head when the talus bought it, and we figured you were KIA. Patera sort of liked it at first. Only then, not so much. His essential nobility of character coming out. Know what I'm saying?"

Dace put in, "That big gal cryin an' yellin' at him."

"Yeah, that too. Look here-"

"Wait a minute," Auk told them. "Chenille. She cried?"

Dace chuckled. "I felt sorrier fer her than fer you."

"She wasn't even there when I woke up!"

"She run off. I was over talkin' ter that talus, but I seen her."

"She was around when I came to," Hammerstone told Auk. "She had that launcher, only it was empty. There was another one, all smashed up, where we were. Maybe she brought it, I don't know. Anyhow, after I talked to Patera about you and a couple other things, I showed her how to disarm the bad one's magazine and load the SSMs in the good one."

Dice told Hammerstone, "She got her'n up the tunnel whilst the augur was fixin' you. This big feller, he was off watch, and didn't nobody know rightly how bad he'd got hurt. When she come back an' seen he wasn't comin' 'round, she foundered."

Auk scratched his ear.

"You've broke your head-bone, big feller, don't let nobody tell you no different. I seen it afore. Feller on my boat got a rap from the boom. He laid in the cuddy couple nights 'fore we could fetch him ashore. He'd open the point an' talk, then sheer off down weather. We fetched him the doctor an' I guess he done all he was able but that feller died next day. You're in luck you wasn't hit no worse."

"What makes it good luck?" Hammerstone asked him.

"Why, stands ter reason, don't it? He don't want ter be dead, no more'n me!"

"All you meatheads talk like that. Only look at it. No more trouble and no more work. No more patrols through these tunnels looking everywhere for nothing and lucky to get a shot at a god. No more-"

"Shot god?" Oreb inquired.

"Yeah," Auk said. "What the shag are you talking about?"

"That's just what we call them," Hammerstone explained. "They're really animals. Kind of like a dog, only ugly where a real dog's all right, so we say it backwards."

"I've never seen any kind of shaggy animal down here."

"You haven't been down here long, either. You just think you have. There's bats and big blindworms, out under the lake especially. There's gods all around here, only there's five of us and me a soldier, and quite a few lights on this stretch. When we get to someplace darker, watch out."

"You don't mind dyin'," Dace reminded him. "That's what you says a little back."

"Now I do." Hammerstone pointed up the tunnel to Incus, a hundred cubits ahead. "That's what I was trying to tell you. Auk said he didn't need an outfit or a leader like Patera, or anything like that."

"I don't," Auk declared. "It's the shaggy truth."

"Then sit down right here. Go to sleep. Dace and me will keep going. You feel pretty sick, I can tell. You don't like walking. Well, there's no reason you've got to. I'll wait till we're about to lose sight of you, then I'll put a couple slugs in you."

"No shoot!" Oreb protested.

"I'll wait till you've settled down, see? You won't know it's coming. You'll get to thinking I'm not going to. What do you say?"

"No thanks."

"All right, here's what I been trying to get across. It doesn't sound that good to you. If I kept on about it, you'd say you had to take care of your girl, even when you're hurt so bad you can't hardly take care of yourself. Or maybe look out for your talking bird or something. Only it'd all be gas, 'cause you really don't want to, even when you know it makes more sense than what you're doing."

Sick and weak, Auk shrugged. "If you say so."

"It's not like that for us. Just sitting down somewhere down here and letting everything slow down till I go to sleep, and sleeping, with nobody ever coming by to wake me up, that sounds pretty good. It would sound all right to my sergeant, too, or the major. The reason we don't is we're supposed to look out for Viron. That means the Caldé, 'cause he's the one that says what's good for Viron and what's not."

"Silk's supposed to be the new Caldé," Auk remarked. "I know him, and that's what Scylla said."

Hammerstone nodded. "That'll be great if it happens, but it hasn't happened yet and maybe it never will. Only I've got Patera now, see? Right now I can walk in back of him like this and keep looking at him just about all the time, and he isn't even telling me not to look like he did at first. So I don't want to sit down and die any more than you do."

Oreb bobbed his approval. "Good! Good!"

Farther along the tunnel, Incus asked with some asperity, "Are you
sure
that's all, my daughter?"

"That's everything since Patera Silk shrived me, like I said," Chenille declared, "everything that I remember, anyhow." Apologetically she added, "That was Sphixday, so there wasn't time for a lot, and you said things I did when I was Kypris or Scylla don't count."

"Nor
do
they. The gods
can
do no evil. At least, not on
our
level." Incus cleared his throat and made sure that he was holding his prayer beads correctly. "That being the case, I bring to you, my daughter, the pardon of all the gods. In the name of
Lord Pas
, you are forgiven. In the name of
Divine Echidna
, you are forgiven. In the
glorious ever-efficacious
name of
Sparkling Scylla, loveliest
of goddesses and
firstborn of the Seven and ineffable patroness
of
this
, our-"

"I'm not her any more, Patera. That's lily."

Incus, who had been seized by a sudden, though erroneous, presentiment, relaxed. "You are forgiven. In the name of
Molpe,
you are forgiven. In the name of
Tartaros,
you are forgiven. In the name of
Hierax,
you are forgiven."

He took a deep breath. "In the name of
Thelxiepeia,
you are forgiven. In the name of
Phaea,
you are forgiven. In the name of
Sphigx,
you are forgiven. And in the name of
all lesser gods
, you are forgiven. Kneel now, my daughter. I must trace the sign of addition over your head."

"I'd sooner Auk didn't see. Couldn't you just-"

"Kneel!"
Incus told her severely, and by way of merited discipline added,
"Bow
your head!" She did, and he swung his beads forward and back, then from side to side.

"I hope he didn't see me," Chenille whispered as she got to her feet, "I don't think he's jump for religion."

"I dare say
not."
Incus thrust his beads back into his pocket. "While you
are,
my daughter? If that's so, you've deceived me most completely."

"I thought I'd better, Patera. Get you to shrive me, I mean. We could've been killed back there when our talus fought the soldiers. Auk just about was, and the soldiers could have killed us afterwards. I don't think they knew we were on his back, and when he caught fire they were afraid he'd blow up, maybe. If they'd been right, we'd have got killed by that."

"They will return for their
dead,
eventually. I must say the prospect
concerns
me. What if we
encounter
them?"

"Yeah. We're supposed to get rid of the councillors?"

Incus nodded. "So
you,
possessed by Scylla, instructed us, my daughter. We are to displace
His Cognizance
as well." Incus permitted himself a smile, or perhaps could not resist it. "I am to have the office."

"You know what happens to people that go up against the Ayuntamiento, Patera? They get killed or thrown in the pits. All of them I ever heard of."

Incus nodded gloomily.

"So I thought I'd better get you to do it. Shrive me. I've got a day left, maybe. That's not a whole lot of time."

"Women, and
augurs,
are usually spared the ignominy of execution, my daughter."

"When they go up against the Ayuntamiento? I don't think so. Anyhow, I'd be locked up in the Alambrera or tossed in a pit. They eat the weak ones in the pits."

Incus, a full head shorter than she, looked up at her. "You've
never
struck me as
weak,
my daughter. And you
have
struck me, you know."

"I'm sorry, Patera. It wasn't personal, and anyhow you said it doesn't count." She glanced over her shoulder at Auk, Dace, and Hammerstone. "Maybe we'd better slow down, huh?"

"Gladly!" He had been hard put to keep up with her. "As I said, my daughter, what you did to me is not to be accounted
evil. Scylla
has every right to strike me, as a mother her child. Contrast that with that man
Auk's
behavior toward me. He seized me
bodily
and cast me into the lake."

"I don't remember that."

"Scylla
did not order it, my daughter. He acted upon his own
evil impulse
, and were I to be asked to shrive him for it
again
, I am
far
from confident I could bring myself to do so. Do you find him attractive?"

"Auk? Sure."

"I confess
I
thought him a fine specimen when I first saw him. His features are
by no means
handsome, yet his
muscular masculinity
is both real and impressive." Incus sighed. "One
dreams
…I mean
a young woman
such as yourself, my daughter, not infrequently dreams of such a man.
Rough
, yet, one hopes, not entirely lacking inner
sensitivity
. When the
actual object
is encountered, however, one is
invariably
disappointed."

"He lumped me a couple of times while we were hoofing out to that shrine. Did he tell you about that?"

"About visiting a
shrine?"
Incus's eyebrows shot up. "Auk and yourself? No
indeed.
"

"Lumping me, I meant. I thought maybe… Never mind. Once I sat down on one of those white rocks, and he kicked me. Kicked my leg, you know. I got pretty sore about that."

Incus shook his head, dismayed at Auk's brutality. "I should imagine
so,
my daughter. I, for one, am disinclined to criticize you for it."

"Only by-and-by I figured it out. See, Kypris had-you know, what Scylla did. It was at Orpine's funeral. Orpine's a dell I used to know." Transfering the launcher to her other hand, Chenille wiped her eyes. "I still feel really bad about her. I always will."

"Your grief does you
credit,
my daughter."

"Now she's lying in a box in the ground, and I'm walking in this one, only mine's a whole lot deeper. I wonder whether this is what being dead seems like to her? Maybe it is."

"Her
spirit
has doubtless united itself with the gods in Mainframe," Incus said kindly.

"Her spirit, sure, but what about her? What do you call this tunnel stuff? They make houses out of it, sometimes.

"The ignorant say
shiprock,
the learned
navislapis.
"

"A big shiprock box. That's what we're in, and we're just as buried as Orpine. What I was going to say is Kypris never told Auk, Patera. Not like Scylla. She told him right away, but he thought Kypris was me, and he liked her a lot. He gave me this ring, see? Then she talked to people in Limna and went in the manteion and went away. Went clear out of me and left me all alone in front of the Window. I was scared to death. I had some money and I kept buying red ribbon-"

"Brandy, my daughter?"

"Yeah. Throwing it down, trying to pretend it was rust because it's about the same color. It took a lot before I got over being scared, and then I still was, a little, way back in my head and deep down in my tripes. Then I saw Auk, this was still in Limna, so I hooked him because I was out of gelt, and I was just some drunk, some old drunk trull. So naturally he lumped me. He never did lump me as hard as Bass did once, and I'm sorry I lumped you. Aren't the gods supposed to care about us, Patera?"

"They
do,
my daughter."

"Well, Scylla didn't. She could've kept me out of the sun and kept my clothes so I wouldn't get so burned. We got hot when I was running for her and they got in our way, so she just tore them off and threw them down. My best winter gown."

Incus cleared his throat. "I have been meaning to speak to you about
that,
my daughter. Your
nudity.
Perhaps I ought to have done so when I shrove you. I foresaw, however, that you might misunderstand. I,
myself,
am sunburned, and nudity
is
wrong, you know."

"It gets bucks hot. Mine does, I mean, or Violet. I saw a buck practically jump the wall once when Violet took off her gown, and she wasn't really naked, either. She had on one of those real good bandeaus that hike up your tits when they look like they're just shoving them back."

"Nudity,
my daughter," Incus continued gamely, "is wrong not only because it engenders concupiscent thoughts in weak men, but because it is
often
the occasion of
violent
attacks. Concupiscent thoughts are wrong in themselves, as I suggested, though they are not
seriously
evil. Violent
attacks,
on the other hand,
are
seriously evil. In the matter of concupiscent thoughts, the fault lies with you when by
intentional
nudity you give rise to them. In that of
violent attacks
, the fault lies with the
attacker
. He is obliged to
restrain
himself, no matter
how severe
a provocation is offered him. But I ask you to consider, my daughter, whether you wish
any
human spirit to be rejected by the immortal gods."