Epiphany of the Long Sun (6 page)

Incus seemed to explode. "How can you sit here talking about
nothing
when
men
are
dying
down there!"

"Before I asked you, you looked pretty calm yourself."

Dace, the old fisherman, chuckled.

"I was
praying
for them!"

Auk got to his feet again. "Then you won't mind jumping off to bring 'em the Pardon of Pas."

Incus blinked.

"While you're thinking that over," Auk frowned for effect and felt himself grow genuinely angry, "maybe you could tell me what your jefe wanted with Chenille."

The talus fired, a deafening report from a big gun he had not realized it possessed; the concussion of the bursting shell followed without an interval.

"You're
correct."
Incus stood up. His hand trembled as he jerked a string of ranling jet prayer beads from a pocket of his robe. "You're right, because Hierax has
prompted
you to recall
me
to my duty. I-I
go.
"

Something glanced off the talus's ear and ricocheted down the tunnel, keening like a grief-stricken spirit. Oreb, who had perched on the crest of its helmet to observe the battle, dropped into Auk's lap with a terrified squawk. "Bad fight!"

Auk ignored him, watching Incus, who with Dace's help was scrambling over the side of the talus. Behind it, the tunnel stretched to the end of sight, a narrowing whorl of spectral green varied by fires.

When he caught sight of Incus crouched beside a fallen soldier, Auk spat. "If I hadn't seen it… I didn't think he had the salt." A volley pelted the talus like rain, drowning Dace's reply.

The talus roared, and a gout of blue flame from its mouth lit the tunnel like lightning; a buzz gun supported its flamer with a long, staccato burst. Then the enormous head revolved, an eye emitting a pencil of light that picked out Incus's black robe. "
Return to me!
"

Still bent over the soldier, Incus replied, although Auk could not make out his words. Ever curious, Oreb fluttered up the tunnel toward them. The talus stopped and rolled backward, one of its extensile arms reaching for Incus.

This time his voice carried clearly.
"I'll
get back on if you take
him,
too."

There was a pause. Auk glanced behind him at the metal mask that was the talus's face.

"
Can he speak!
"

"Soon,
I hope. I'm
trying
to repair him."

The huge hand descended, and Incus moved aside for it. Perched on the thumb, Oreb rode jauntily back to the talus's back. "Still live!"

Dace grunted doubtfully.

The hand swept downward; Oreb fluttered to Auk's shoulder. "Bird homer'

With grotesque tenderness fingers as thick as the soldier's thighs deposited him between bent handholds.

"Still live?" Oreb repeated plaintively.

Certainly it did not seem so. The fallen soldier's arms and legs, of painted metal now scratched and lusterless, lay motionless, bent at angles that appeared unnatural; his metal face, designed as a model of valor, was filled with the pathos that attaches to all broken things. Singled out inquiringly by one of Oreb's bright, black eyes, Auk could only shrug.

The talus rolled forward again as Incus's head appeared above its side. "I'm going to-he's not
dead,"
the little augur gasped. "Not completely."

Auk caught his hand and pulled him up.

"I was-was just reciting the
liturgy
you know. And I saw-The gods provide us such graces! I looked into his
wound,
there where the chest plate's sprung. They train us, you know, at the schola, to repair Sacred Windows."

Afraid to stand near the edge of the talus's back, he crawled across it to the motionless soldier, pointing. "I was quite good at it. And-And I've had occasion since to-to
help
various chems.
Dying
chems, you understand."

He took the gammadion from about his neck and held it up for Auk's inspection. "This is Pas's voided cross. You've seen it many times, I'm sure. But you can undo the catches and open up a chem with the pieces.
Watch.
"

Deftly he removed the sprung plate. There was a ragged hole near its center, through which he thrust his forefinger. "Here's where a flechette went in."

Auk was peering at the mass of mechanisms the plate had concealed. "I see little specks of light."

"Certainly you do!" Incus was triumphant. "What you're seeing is what
I
saw under this plate when
I
was bringing him the Pardon of Pas. His primary cable had been severed, and those are the ends of the fibers. It's
exactly
as if your spinal cord were cut."

Dace asked, "Can't you splice her?"

"Indeed!"
Incus positively glowed. "Such is the mercy of Pas! Such is his
concern
for us, his adopted sons, that here upon the back of this valiant talus is the one man who can
in actual fact
restore him to health and strength."

"So he can kill us?" Auk inquired dryly Incus hesitated, his eyes wary, one hand upraised. The talus was advandng even more slowly now, so that the chill wind that had whistled around them before the shooting began had sunk to the merest breeze. Chenille (who had been lying flat on the slanted plate that was the talus's back) sat up, covering her bare breasts with her forearms.

"Why, ah,
no,"
Incus said at last. He took a diminutive black device rather like a pair of very small tongs or large tweezers from a pocket of his robe. "This is an opticsynapter, an
extremely
valuable tool. With it-Well, look there."

He pointed again. "That black cylinder is the triplex, the part corresponding to
your
heart. It's idling right now, but it pressurizes
his
working fluid so that he can move his limbs. The primary cable runs to his microbank-this big silver thing below the triplex-conveying instructions from his postprocessor."

Chenille asked, "Can you really bring him back to life?"

Incus looked frightened. "If he were
dead,
I could not, Superlative Scylla-"

"I'm not her. I'm me." For a moment it seemed that she might weep again. "Just me. You don't even know me, Patera, and I don't know you."

"I don't know you either," Auk said. "Remember that? Only I'd like to meet you sometime. How about it?"

She swallowed, but did not speak.

"Good girl!" Oreb informed them. Neither Incus nor Dace ventured to say anything, and the silence became oppressive.

With an arm of his gammadion, Incus removed the soldier's skull plate. After a scrutiny Auk felt sure had taken half an hour at least, he worked one end of a second gamma between two thread-like wires.

And the soldier spoke: "K-thirty-four, twelve. A-thirty-four, ninety-seven. B-thirty-four…"

Incus removed the gamma, telling Dace, "He was scanning, do you follow me? It's as if
you
were to consult a physician. He might listen to your chest and tell you to cough."

Dace shook his head. "You make this sojer well, an' he could kill all on board, like the big feller says. I says we shoves him over the side."

"He
won't."
Incus bent over the soldier again.

Chenille extended a hand to Dace. "I'm sorry about your boat, Captain, and I'm sorry I hit you. Can we be friends? I'm Chenille."

Dace took it in his own large, gnarled hand, then released it to tug the bill of his cap. "Dace, ma'am. I never did hold nothin' agin you."

"Thank you, Captain. Patera, I'm Chenille."

Incus glanced up from the soldier. "You asked whether I could restore
life,
my daughter. He isn't dead, merely unable to actuate those parts that require fluid. He's unable to move his head, his arms, and his legs, in other words. He can
speak,
as you've heard. He
doesn't
because of the shock he's suffered. That is my
considered
opinion. The problem is to reconnect all the severed fibers correctly. Otherwise, he'll move his
arms
when he
intends
to take a step." He tittered.

"I still say-" Dace began.

"In
addition,
I'll attempt to render him
compliant.
For our safety. It's not
legal,
but if we're to do as
Scylla
has commanded…" He bent over the recumbent soldier again.

Chenille said, "Hi, Oreb."

Oreb hopped from Auk's shoulder to hers. "No cry?"

"No more crying." She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip. "Other girls are always tellirig me how tough I am, because I'm so big. I think I better start trying to live up to it."

Incus glanced up again. "Wouldn't you like to borrow my robe, my daughter?"

She shook her head. "It hurts if anything touches me, and my back and shoulders are the worst. I've had men see me naked lots. Usually I've had a couple, though, or a pinch of rust. Rust makes it easy." She turned to Auk. "My name's Chenille, Bucko. I'm one of the girls from Orchid's."

Auk nodded, not knowing what to say, and at length said, "I'm Auk. Real pleased, Chenille."

That was the last thing he could remember. He was lying face down on a cold, damp surface, aware of pervasive pain and soft footsteps hastening to inaudibility. He rolled onto his back and sat up, then discovered that blood from his nose was dribbling down his chin.

"Here, trooper." The voice was unfamiliar, metallic and harshly resonant. "Use this."

A wad of whitish cloth was pressed into his hand; he held it gingerly to his face. "Thanks."

From some distance, a woman called, "Is that you?"

"Jugs?"

The tunnel was almost pitch dark to his left, a rectangle of black relieved by a single remote fleck of green. To his right, something was on fire-a shed or a big wagon, as well as he could judge.

The unfamiliar voice asked, "Can you stand up, trooper?"

Still pressing the cloth to his face, Auk shook his head.

There was someone nearer the burning structure, whatever it was: a short stocky figure with one arm in a sling. Others, men with dark and strangely variegated skins… Auk blinked and looked again.

They were soldiers, chems that he had sometimes seen in parades. Here they lay dead, their weapons beside them, eerily lit by the flames.

A small figure in black materialized from the gloom and gave him a toothy grin.
"I
had sped you to the
gods,
my son. I see
they
sent you back."

Through the cloth, Auk managed to say, "I don't remember meeting any," then recalled that he had, that Scylla had been their companion for the better part of two days, and that she had not been in the least as he had imagined her. He risked removing the cloth. "Come here, Patera. Have a seat. I got to have a word with you."

"Gladly.
I
must speak with
you,
as well." The little augur lowered himself to the shiprock floor. Auk could see the white gleam of his teeth.

"Was that really Scylla?"

"You
know better than
I,
my son."

Auk nodded slowly. His head ached, and the pain made it difficult to think. "Yeah1 only I don't know. Was it her, or just a devil pretending?"

Incus hesitated, grinning more toothily than ever. "This is rather difficult to explain."

"I'll listen." Auk groped his waistband for his needler; it was still in place.

"My son, if a devil were to
personate
a goddess, it would become that goddess, in a way."

Auk raised an eyebrow.

"Or that
god.
Pas, let us say, or
Hierax.
It would run a grave risk of merging into the total god. Or so the science of
theodaimony
teaches us."

"That's abram." His knife was still in his boot as well, his hanger at his side.

"Such are the
facts,
my son." Incus cleared his throat impressively. "That is to say, the facts as far as they can be expressed in purely
human
terms. It's there averred that devils do not often dare to personate the gods for
that very reason
, while the immortal gods, for their part,
never
stoop to personating devils."

"Hoinbuss," Auk said. The man with the injured arm was circling the fire. Changing the subject, Auk asked, "That's our talus, ain't it? The soldiers got it?"

The unfamiliar voice said, "That's right, we got it."

Auk turned. There was a soldier squatting behind him.

"I'm Auk," Auk said; he had reintroduced himself to Chenille with the same words, he remembered, before whatever had happened had happened. He offered his hand.

"Corporal Hammerstone, Auk." The soldier's grip stopped just short of breaking bones.

"Pleased." Auk tried to stand, and would have fallen if Hammerstone had not caught him. "Guess I'm still not right."

"I'm a little rocky myself, trooper."

"Dace and
that young woman
have been after me to have Corporal Hammerstdne carry you, my son. I've
resisted
their importunities for his sake. He would
gladly
do it if I asked. He and I are the
best of friends
."

"More than friends," Hammerstone told Auk; there was no hint of humor in his voice. "More than brothers."

"He would do
anything
for me. I'm tempted to
demonstrate
that, though I refrain. I prefer you to think about it for a while, always with some element of
doubt.
Perhaps I'm teasing you, merely
blustering.
What do you think?"

Auk shook his head. "What I think don't matter.

"Exactly. Because you
thought
that you could throw me from that filthy little boat with
impunity.
That I'd
drown,
and you would be well rid of me. We see
now,
don't we, how
misconceived
that was. You have fodeited any right to have your opinions heard with the
slightest
respect."