In Green's Jungles (12 page)

"She'd like you to think it, sir. Madame's brother's son was married to her mother. I think that's the way of it. Only he got killed in a war, and she married somebody else, and that when she"-she meant Torda-"got born. It's some story like that, sir. Anyhow she came here in rags, that's what cook says, expecting to be treated like Mora, you know. Only they was always fighting. That was how it was when I came and I've got to go."

This tray she brought me holds a cup and saucer, a little pot of very good tea, sugar whiter than I was accustomed to in Gaon, half a lemon, and enough cherry tarts for four or five persons. I am drinking the tea, but I intend to leave the tarts for Oreb. That business about fresh bread for breakfast suggests a substantial meal.

Looking back over what I wrote an hour ago, I find my speculations on the motives of the Neighbor on Green who recruited me to clean his sewer. Let us try another, one I think deeper and more difficult.

Why (I asked) did he not do it himself? I am going to propose two theories; neither or both may be correct. The first is that the Neighbors find it hard to move some kinds of objects. So it seems to me after the dealings I have had with them. I do not think that they are here in the sense we are, even when they are standing beside us. This is only speculation, but I believe they may be able to move natural objects such as sticks and stones, and things that they themselves made when Blue and Green were their homes, better than other things. The silver cup they gave me (which I am very sorry I left behind), the door the Neighbor opened for me when I was confined on Green, and the sword and light he gave me are all examples. We human beings are native to the Long Sun Whorl, and not to Blue or Green; and so the tangled corpses of so many hundreds of us would have presented a Neighbor with great difficulties, if I am correct.

Second, he wished me to see (and to smell and touch) those bodies. He might have freed me in many ways, and made me the leader of my fellow prisoners in many ways, too. But I cannot think of any other way in which he could have been half so effective. The horror of the inhumi that I had when I set out from the Lizard had been blunted by living with Krait on the sloop. If the Neighbor wanted to renew it as much as it could be renewed, he chose the most effective possible way of doing it.

I believe, however, that his true goal was to give me a realistic understanding of what we faced.

Before moving ahead, I ought to double back to the time after Mora left me. I've written nothing about that.

When I received the letters, it struck me that if I was going to ride out here with Mora and Fava it would be of value to know at what time their palaestra ended. I asked directions and walked over to it, and fin ii_.g the coachman already waiting for them, I wrote Inclito a note thanking him for his invitation and saying that I could not come that day but hoped to come the next, and asked him to tell his coachman to allow me to ride with Mora and her friend.

The owner of the stationery store had invited me to share his supper; it was a simple meal of bread and soup, and I surprised and pleased him and his wife by eating little of either and amusing them with stories of my journey to Viron with Pig and Hound. Before we ate (as should have said in the beginning) they asked me to invoke the gods. I blessed our meal in the name of the Outsider, making the sign of addition as solemnly as I would have when I was a boy, and talked about him for a few moments afterward. There is a great hunger for the gods here on Blue, I believe; but without their presence it lacks a focus.

Onorifica came back, perspiring from her bread-making but with her hair in better order. She had appeared frightened when she carried my tray in, her eyes darting around the room; I had thought that she was afraid of Oreb and had assured her that he was gone. This time she seemed more resolute; I made her sit down and offered her one of her own tarts.

"Cook was like to die at me for that, sir." She sat gingerly, picked up a tart in both hands, and nibbled at it like a fat -.quirrel.

I remained silent.

"She's afraid of you, sir. Swears she won't show her face in the kitchen door as long as you're here."

Of course I said that she had no reason to be, although I wondered how true it was; it seemed barely possible that his cook was the spy Inclito felt certain he was harboring.

"They're afraid of you in town, too, sir. Terrible afraid's what I hear."

I asked whether she had been there, and when she said she had not, how she knew.

"Coachman says, sir." She paused, worried (I believe) that she might be getting her informant into trouble. "He's got to come straight back after he drops them off in the morning, sir, and he does."

"But in the afternoon he has time to-" Gossip clearly would not do. "Talk to people there, assuming that he arrives a little early."

"That's right, sir."

"When I rode out here, Onorifica, Mora and Fava told me that their teachers had been quizzing them about me all day."

She chewed and swallowed. "I think so, sir."

"They also said that they'd given me a good character, and told everyone I was perfectly harmless. That last is quite true, and I'd like to think that the first is, too-though I know better."

"Is that all they said, sir?"

I shook my head. "They said quite a lot, Fava particularly. But that's all they told me that they had told their teachers."

"Mora wouldn't lie to you, sir."

"I'm delighted to hear it." I would have been even more delighted if I had believed it.

"But that Fava! Don't you trust her, sir."

I promised I would not.

"Looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Well, Master don't trust her, let me tell you. I've heard him jawing away sometimes, and she come in the room and that's the end. After that he talks about as much as a sti-" As Onorifica spoke, she caught sight of the staff that Cugino had cut for me. In a markedly different tone she asked, "Does your stick talk, sir?"

I smiled and said that it had not done so recently.

"It has that little face on it, though, don't it, sir?"

"Does it really? Show it to me."

"I'd rather not to touch it, sir, if it's-would you want me to fetch it, sir?" Her eyes pleaded with me to refuse, so I got up and got it myself.

She pointed, her trembling finger a good cubit from the wood. "Right here, sir."

There was a small hole where a knot had come out. Above it, a minute protuberance that might be called a nose, and over that two small, dark markings, that could-with a cartload of imagination-be taken for eyes. I rubbed this "face" with my thumb, dislodging a few dry scraps of inner bark. "Do you mean this, Onorifica?"

"Don't touch it, please, sir." The color left her cheeks. "Don't make it talk."

Suppressing a smile, I promised not to.

"What I got to ask you about, sir, is-is…" Her lips twitched soundlessly.

"Whether I really am a strego, as your mistress calls them? A magic worker?"

Her expression told me I had missed the mark, but her head bobbed.

"No, Onorifica, I'm not. No one is."

I waited for her to speak.

"Nobody is. There is no such thing as magic, in the way you mean it. Things we don't understand, ghosts and sudden storms for instance, make us think that there might be. But ghosts are merely the spirits of the dead, and though I don't know what causes sudden storms, I know they aren't raised by magic. It's true that certain people can predict the future, but they do it by drawing upon insights that they don't know they have, or because they're informed by the gods."

I smiled again, trying to reassure her. "Long ago I was the friend of someone who became a sort of god, an aspect of Pas. He gave me a lot of information and advice, and all of it was valuable. But wise as he was, he taught me no magic. He couldn't have, even if he had considered such a thing desirable."

"Like tonight, sir."

I thought she was referring to Fava's story. "Strange things happen, Onorifica. Nevertheless, it is no explanation to call them magic." There was a tap at the windowpane, and I got up and opened the window to let Oreb in.

"Good girl?" He eyed the good girl (who seemed on the verge of fainting) doubtfully.

"A very good girl," I assured him.

"I told him we shouldn't with you in the house," the good girl blurted, showering me with crumbs.

"Bad thing," Oreb warned me.

I started to ask whom she intended by "him," thinking that there might be an inhumu here, then realized the true state of affairs. Speaking very softly I said, "The friend to whom I referred was spied upon once when he was shriving a young woman. He told me that because the young woman had kept her voice very low, the spy had learned little or nothing." More loudly I concluded, "We should do the same."

"Yes, Master Incanto." From her expression, Onorifica had not the least idea what I was talking about.

"You happened to pass my room tonight on your way back to the kitchen, and very kindly asked whether I needed anything. And I, without in the least meaning to, frightened you by asking where you slept. Isn't that so?"

She seemed almost afraid to move her head, but managed a nod.

"I have no business interfering in my host's affairs, save those in which he has asked my help, and no business interfering in yours at all."

In a hoarse whisper she asked, "Are you going to do anything to me?"

"Punish you? I can't. And wouldn't if I could. He's given you a ring, anyway."

"Only we're not, you know, sir, married."

"You couldn't be, since there are no proper augurs here. My wife and I were united by Patera Remora, who is an augur, so we're really married. Without one, giving a ring is about as much as anyone can do. You might have a child, however. Have you thought about that?"

The fear vanished and she glowed. "I want one, sir. He'll take care of us. I know him."

I rose. I cannot have been impressive in Inclito's borrowed nightshirt, but she seemed impressed. To further impress her, I grasped my staff. Oreb hopped from my shoulder to the angled handle. "I don't have an augur's power to forgive wrongdoing," I told Onorifica, "but I can bless you, and I will. By Great Pas's generosity, anyone may bless." I traced the sign of addition in the air, and asked Pas and the Outsider to look with favor upon her and any children she might bear.

When I finished, she rose smiling. "Thank you, sir. Can Iwould you like anything else?"

"Only a couple of very minor items," I told her. "You were going to tell me what the coachman had learned in town. What was it?"

"Everybody's afraid of you, sir." She licked her fingers. "They won't go near the shop where you're staying when you're there, only when you're gone they all come wanting to hear about you, only he won't tell them anything unless they buy. Cook'll be after me the same way, sir."

"I understand. What do you plan to tell her?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Nothing at all?"

"Well, maybe something." She smiled again, and for the first time I felt that I understood why Inclito was attracted to her. "But not very much."

I said, "That would be wise, I'm sure. But before you return to the kitchen, would you please find the other maid-wake her up if you must-and tell her I need to speak to her?"

"Yes, Master Incanto. Right away."

"And on your way out, you might ask Fava to come in. She's waiting in the hall, or she was."

As soon as I had spoken, Fava entered. Less boldly, Mora shuffled behind her. Both were in their nightdresses.

THE GUESSING GAME

T
here are times when enlightenment comes suddenly, as it did on the ball court; I never think of these sudden illuminations without recalling my second night on Green. I had spent most of the broiling day searching for the gifts I had received from the Neighbor, and had thrown up the task as hopeless. I was ready to justify the worst things that Sinew had ever said or thought by leaving him and the men who had been with us in the lander to their fate. I set off down the river, that river of death that was a sewer when it ran under the City of the Inhumi, determined to put as much distance between myself and its horrors as I could.

For half that night I made my way cautiously through the darkness along its banks, somewhat cheered when the flying dot of sapphire that was Blue crossed the sky, but infinitely saddened by the sight of the faint, unsteady spark that was the Whorl. I should have been up there searching out Viron and its calde, when instead-

I was going to write something about tramping along the riverbank. The truth (which I have only just recalled) is that for a long time after I caught sight of the Whorl among the crowding stars I did not. I sat sweating on a log instead, swatting insects and watching the reflections of those stars on the smooth, oily flow that had succeeded the foaming flood that had carried me so far from the City. At times it seemed to me that a thousand inhumi must have been lurking beneath the water, and that the points of light I saw were their glittering eyes, softened by ripples; but every few minutes a dark shape would pass among them like a floating log, and I would realize yet again that it was we, not they, who populated the water.

Nor was that all I saw. Great hairless beasts, on two legs and four, and six, came to the river to drink or to course our floating corpses as bears pursue fish, and I recalled the strangely named bear with which He-pen-sheep had exchanged blood, and wondered whether such bears sought carrion beside the rivers of Shadelow.

Most vividly I remember the enormous snake I saw swimming swiftly upriver, a snake whose head was as big as a man's coffin and of the same shape. It held up its head and looked around it as it swam, and its head was higher than mine would have been if I had stood upon the log. I was seated, as I wrote a moment ago; I remained completely motionless, and it passed by me. For a long time after the head was out of sight up the river, I watched the progress of its great body, and listened to the gentle slap of the waves that its long, slow curvings created.