Текст книги "[New Sun 04] The Citadel of the Autarch"

Автор книги: Gene Wolfe

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The other explanation I mentioned is hardly more than a speculation. But if, as Master Malrubius told me, those who will judge me among the stars will take my manhood should I fail their judgment, is it not possible also that they will confirm me in some gift of equal worth should I, as Humanity’s representative, conform to their desires? It seems to me that justice demands it. If that is the case, may it not be that their gift transcends time, as they do themselves? The Hierodules I met in Baldanders’s castle said they interested themselves in me because I would gain the throne—but would their interest have been so great if I were to be no more than the embattled ruler of some part of this continent, one of many embattled rulers in the long history of Urth?

On the whole, I think the first explanation the most probable; but the second is not wholly unlikely.

Either would seem to indicate that the mission I am about to set out on will succeed. I will go with good heart.

And yet there is a third explanation. No human being or near-human being can conceive of such minds as those of Abaia, Erebus, and the rest. Their power surpasses understanding, and I know now that they could crash us in a day if it were not that they count only enslavement, and not annihilation, as victory. The great undine I saw was their creature, and less than their slave: their toy; It is possible that the power of the Claw, the Claw taken from a growing thing so near their sea, comes ultimately from them. They knew my destiny as well as Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus and they saved me when I was a boy so that I might fulfil it. After I departed from the Citadel they found me again, and thereafter coarse was twisted by the Claw. Perhaps they hope to triumph by raising a torturer to the Autarchy, or to that position that is higher than the Autarch’s.

Now I think that it is time to record what Master Malrubius explained to me. I cannot vouch for its truth, but I believe it to be true. I knew no more than I set down here. Just as a flower blooms, throws down its seed, dies, and Rises from its seed to bloom again, so the universe we know Diffuses itself to nullity in the infinitude of space, gathers its Fragments (which because of the curvature of that space meet at last where they began) and from that seed blooms again. Each such cycle of flowering and decay marks a divine year.

As the flower that comes is like the flower from which it came, so the universe that comes repeats the one whose ruin was its origin; and this is as true of its finer features as of its grosser ones: The worlds that arise are not unlike the worlds that perished, and are peopled by similar races, though just as the flower evolves from summer to summer, all things advance by some minute step.

In a certain divine year (a time truly inconceivable to us, though that cycle of the universes was but one in an endless succession), a race was born that was so like to ours that Master Malrubius did not scruple to call it human. It expanded among the galaxies of its universe even as we are said to have done in the remote past, when Urth was, for a time, the centre, or at least the home and symbol, of an empire.

These men encountered many beings on other worlds who had intelligence to some degree, or at least the potential for intelligence, and from them—that they might have comrades in the loneliness between the galaxies and allies among their swarming worlds—they formed beings like themselves.

It was not done swiftly or easily. Uncountable billions suffered and died under their guiding hands, leaving ineradicable memories of pain and blood. When their universe was old, and galaxy so far separated from galaxy that the nearest could not be seen even as faint stars, and the ships were steered thence by ancient records alone, the thing was done. Completed, the work was greater than those who began it could have guessed. What had been made was not a new race like Humanity’s, but a race such as Humanity wished its own to be: united, compassionate, just.

I was not told what became of the Humanity of that cycle. Perhaps it survived until the implosion of the universe, then perished with it. Perhaps it evolved beyond our recognition. But the beings Humanity had shaped into what men and women wished to be escaped, opening a passage to Yesod, the universe higher than our own, where they created worlds suited to what they had become.

From that vantage point they look both forward and back, and in so looking they have discovered us. Perhaps we are no more than a race like that who shaped them. Perhaps it was we who shaped them—or our sons—or out fathers. Malrubius said he did not know, and I believe he told the truth.

However it may be, they shape us now as they themselves were shaped; it is at once their repayment and their revenge.

The Hierodules they have found too, and formed more quickly, to serve them in this universe. On their instructions, the Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me from the jungle to the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius and Triskele may serve them also With these tongs, we are held in the forge. The hammer they wield is their ability to draw their servants back, down the corridors of time, and to send them hurtling forward to the future. (This power is in essence the same as that which permitted them to evade the death of their universe—to enter the corridors of time is to leave the universe.) On Urth at least, their anvil is the necessity of life: our need in this age to fight against an ever-more-hostile world with the resources of the depleted continents. Because it is as cruel as the means by which they themselves were shaped, there is a conservation of justice; but when the New Sun appears, it will be a signal that at least the earliest operations of the shaping are complete.

XXXV. Father Inire’s Letter

THE QUARTERS ASSIGNED to me were in the most ancient part of the Citadel. The rooms had been empty so long that the old castellan and the steward charged with maintaining them supposed the keys to have been lost, and offered, with many apologies and much reticence, to break the locks for me.

I did not permit myself the luxury of watching their faces, but I heard their indrawn breath as I pronounced the simple words that controlled the doors.

It was fascinating, that evening, to see how much the fashions of the period in which those chambers were furnished differed from our own. They did without chairs as we know them, having for seats only complex cushions; and their tables lacked drawers and that symmetry we have come to consider essential. By our standards too, there was too much fabric and not enough wood, leather, stone, and bone; I found the effect at once sybaritic and uncomfortable.

Yet it was impossible that I should occupy a suite other than that anciently set aside for the autarchs; and impossible too that I should have it refurnished to a degree that would imply criticism of my predecessors. And if the furniture had more to recommend it to the mind than to the body, what a delight it was to discover the treasures those same predecessors had left behind: There were papers relating to matters now utterly forgotten and not always identifiable; mechanical devices ingenious and enigmatic; a microcosm that stirred to life at the warmth of my hands, and whose minute inhabitants seemed to grow larger and more human as I watched them; a laboratory containing the fabled “emerald bench” and many other things, the most interesting of which was a mandragora in spirits.

The cucurbit in which it floated was about seven spans in height and half as wide; the homuncule itself no more than two spans tall. When I tapped the glass, it turned eyes like clouded beads toward me, eyes blinder far in appearance than Master Palaemon’s. I heard no sound when its lips twitched, yet I knew at once what words they shaped—and in some inexplicable sense I felt the pale fluid in which the mandragora was immersed had become my own blood-tinged urine.

“Why have you called me. Autarch, from the contemplation of your world?” —

I asked, “Is it truly mine? I know now that there are seven continents, and none but a part of this are obedient to the hallowed phrases.”

“You are the heir,” the wizened thing said and turned, I could not tell if by accident or design, until it no longer faced me.

I tapped the cucurbit again. “And who are you?”

“A being without parents, whose life is passed immersed in blood.”

“Why, such have I been! We should be friends then, you and I, as two of similar background usually are.”

“You jest.”

“Not at all. I feel a real sympathy for you, and I think we are more alike than you believe.”

The tiny figure turned again until its little face looked up into my own. “I wish that I might credit you.

Autarch.”

“I mean it. No one has ever accused me of being an honest man, and I’ve told lies enough when I thought they would serve my turn, but I’m quite sincere. If I can do anything for you, tell me what if is.”

“Break the glass.”

I hesitated. “Won’t you die?”

“I have never lived. I will cease thinking. Break the glass.”

“You do live.”

“I neither grow, nor move, nor respond to any stimulus save thought, which is counted no response. I am incapable of propagating my kind, or any other. Break the glass.”

“If you are indeed unliving, I would rather find someway to stir you to life.”

“So much for brotherhood. When you were imprisoned here, Thecla, and that boy brought you the knife, why did not you look for more life then?”

The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony baculus, but I did not strike. “Alive or dead, you have a penetrating intelligence. Thecla is that part of me most prone to anger.”

“If you had inherited her glands with her memories, I would have succeeded.”

“And you know that. How can you know so much, who are Mind?”

“The acts of coarse minds create minute vibrations that stir the waters of this bottle. I hear your thoughts.”

“I notice that I hear yours. How is it that I can hear them, and not others?”

Looking now directly into the pinched face, which was lit by the sun’s last shaft penetrating a dusty port, I could not be sure the lips moved at all. “You hear yourself, as ever. You cannot hear others because your mind shrieks always, like an infant crying in a basket. Ah, I see you remember that.”

“I remember a time very long ago when I was cold and hungry. I lay upon my back, encircled by brown walls, and heard the sound of my own screams. Yes, I must have been an infant Not old enough to crawl, I think. You are very clever. What am I thinking now?”

“That I am but an unconscious exercise of your own power, as the Claw was. It is true, of course. I was deformed, and died before birth, and have been kept here since in white brandy. Break the glass.”

“I would question you first,” I said.

“Brother, there is an old man with a letter at your door.”

I listened. It was strange, after having listened only to his words in my mind, to hear real noises again—the calling of the sleepy blackbirds among the towers and the tapping at the door.

The messenger was old Rudesind, who had guided me to the picture-room of the House Absolute. I motioned him in (to the surprise, I think, of the sentries) because I wanted to talk to him and knew that with him I had no need to stand upon my dignity.

“Never been in here in all my years,” he said. “How can I help you. Autarch?”

“We’re served already, just by the sight of you. You know who we are, don’t you? You recognized us when we met before.”

“If I didn’t know your face. Autarch, I’d know a couple dozen times over anyhow. I’ve been told that often. Nobody here talks about anything else, seems like. How you was licked to shape right here.

How they seen you this time and that time. How you looked, and what you said to them. There ain’t one cook that didn’t treat you to a pastry often. All them soldiers told you stories. Been a while now since I met a woman didn’t kiss you and sew up a hole in your pants. You had a dog—”

“That’s true enough,” I said. “We did.”

“And a cat and a bird and a coti that stole apples. And you climbed every wall in this place. And jumped off after, or else swung on a rope, or else hid and pretended you’d jumped. You’re every boy that’s ever been here, and I’ve heard stories put on you that belong to men that was old when I was just a boy, and I’ve heard about things I did myself, seventy years ago.”

“We’ve already learned that the Autarch’s face is always concealed behind the mask the people weave for him. No doubt it’s a good thing; you can’t become too proud once you understand how different you really are from the thing they bow to. But we want to hear about you. The old Autarch told us you were his sentinel in the House Absolute, and now we know you’re a servant of Father Inire’s.”

“I am,” the old man said. “I have that honour, and it’s his letter I carry.” He held up a small and somewhat smudged envelope.

“And we are Father Inire’s master.”

He made a countrified bow. “I know so. Autarch.”

“Then we order you to sit down, and rest yourself. We’ve questions to ask you, and we don’t want to keep a man your age standing. When we were that boy you say everyone’s talking of, or at least not much older, you directed us to Master Ultan’s stacks. Why did you do that?”

“Not because I knew something others didn’t. Not because my master ordered it, either, if that’s what you’re thinking. Won’t you read his letter?”

“In a moment. After an honest answer, in a few words.”

The old man hung his head and pulled at his thin beard. I could see the dry skin of his face rise in hollow-sided, tiny cones as it sought to follow the white hairs. “Autarch, you think I guessed at something back then. Perhaps some did. Perhaps my master did, I don’t know.” His rheumy eyes rolled up under his brows to look at me then fell again. “You were young, and seemed a likely-looking boy, so I wanted you to see.”

“To see what?”

“I’m an old man. An old man then, and an old man now. You’ve grown up since. I see it in your face. I’m hardly any older because that much time isn’t anything to me. If you counted all the time I’ve spent just going up and down my ladder, it’d be longer than that. I wanted you to see there has been a lot come before you. That there was thousands and thousands that lived and died before you was ever thought of, some better than you. I mean. Autarch, the way you was then. You’d think anybody growing up here in the old Citadel would be born knowing all that, but I’ve found they’re not. Being around it all the time, they don’t see it. But going down there to Master Ultan brings it home to the cleverer ones.”

“You are the advocate of the dead.”

The old man nodded. “I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much or what we have we got from them. I figure while I’m still here I ought to put a word in for them.—And now, if you don’t mind. Autarch, I’ll just lay the letter here on this funny table—”

“Rudesind ...”

“Yes, Autarch?”

“Are you going to clean your paintings?”

He nodded again. “That’s one reason I’m eager to be gone, Autarch. I was at the House Absolute until my master—” here he paused and seemed to swallow, as men do when they fed they have perhaps said too much “—went away north. Got a Fechin to dean, and I’m behind.”

“Rudesind, we already know the answers to the question you think we are going to ask. We know your master is what the people call a cacogen, and that for whatever reason, he is one of those few who have chosen to cast their lots entirely with humanity, remaining on Urth as a human being. The Cumaean is another such, though perhaps you did not know that. We even know that your master was with us in the jungles of the north, where he tried until it was too late to rescue my predecessor. We only want to say that if a young man with an errand comes past again while you are on your ladder, you are to send him to Master Ultan. That is our order.”

When he had gone, I tore open the envelope. The sheet within was not large, but it was covered with tiny writing, as though a swarm of hatchling spiders had been pressed into its surface.

His servant Inire hails the bridegroom of the Urth, Master of Nessus and the House Absolute, Chief of his Race, Gold of his People, Messenger of Dawn, Helios, Hyperion, Surya, Savitar, and Autarch!

I hasten, and will reach you within two days. It was a day and more ere I learned what had taken place. Much of my information came from the woman Agia, who at least by her own account was instrumental in freeing you. She told me also something or your past dealings with her, for I have, as you know, means of extracting information. You will have learned from her that the Exultant Vodalus is dead by her act His paramour, the Chatelaine Thea, at first attempted to gain control of those myrmidons who were about him at his death; but as she is by no means fitted to lead them, and still less to hold in check those in the south, I have contrived to set this woman Agia in her place. From your former mercy toward her, I trust that will meet with your approval. Certainly it is desirable to maintain in being a movement that has proved so useful in the past, and as long as the mirrors of the caller Hethor remain unbroken, she provides it with a plausible commander.

You will perhaps consider the ship I summoned to aid my master, the autarch of his day, inadequate—as for that matter do I—yet it was the best I could obtain, and I was hard pressed to get it.

I myself have been forced to travel south otherwise, and much more slowly; the time may come soon when my cousins are ready to side not just with humankind but with us—but for the present they persist in viewing Urth as somewhat less significant than many of the colonized worlds, and ourselves on a par with the Ascians, and for that matter with the Xanthoderms and many others.

You will perhaps already have gained news both fresher and more precise than mine. On the chance that you have not:

The war goes well and ill. Neither point of their envelopment penetrated far, and the southern thrust, particularly, suffered such losses that it may fairly be said to have been destroyed. I know the death of so many miserable slaves of Erebus will bring no joy to you, but at least our armies have a respite.—

That they need badly. There is sedition among the Paralians, which must be rooted out. The Tarentines, your Antrustiones, and the dry legions—the three groups that bore the brunt of the fighting—having suffered almost as badly as the enemy. There are cohorts among them that could not-muster a hundred able soldiers.

I need not tell you we should obtain more small arms and, particularly, artillery, if my cousins can be persuaded to part with them at a price we can pay. In the meanwhile, what can be done to raise fresh troops must be done, and in time for the recruits to be trained by spring. Light units capable of skirmishing without scattering are the present need; but if the Ascians break out next year, we will require piquenaires and pilani by the hundreds of thousands, and it might be well to bring at least a part of them under arms now.

Any news you have of Abaia’s incursions will be fresher than mine; I have had none since I left our lines. Hormisdas has gone into the South, I believe, but Olaguer may be able to inform you.

In haste and reverence,

INIRE

XXXVI. Of Bad Gold and Burning

NOT MUCH REMAINS to be told. I knew I would have to leave the city in a few days, so all I hoped to do here would have to be done quickly. I had no friends in the guild I could be sure of beyond Master Palaemon, and he would be of little use in what I planned. I summoned Roche, knowing that he could not deceive me to my face for long. (I expected to see a man older than myself, but the red-haired journeyman who came at my command was hardly more than a boy; when he had gone, I studied my own face in a mirror, something I had not done before.)

He told me that he and several others who had been friends of mine more or less close had argued against my execution when the will of most of the guild was to kill me, and I believed him. He also admitted quite freely that he had proposed that I be maimed and expelled, though he said he had only done so because he had felt it to be the only way to save my life. I think he expected to be punished in some way—his cheeks and forehead, normally so ruddy, were white enough to make his freckles stand out like splatters of paint. His voice was steady, however, and he said nothing that seemed intended to excuse himself by throwing blame on someone else.

The fact was, of course, that I did intend to punish him together with the rest of the guild. Not because I bore him or them any ill will, but because I felt that being locked below the tower for a time would arouse in them a sensitivity to that principle of justice of which Master Palaemon had spoken, and because it would be the best way to assure that the order forbidding torture I intended to issue would be carried out. Those who spend a few months in dread of that art are not likely to resent its being discontinued.

However, I said nothing about that to Roche but only asked him to bring me a journyman’s habit that evening and to be ready with Drotte and Eata to aid me the next morning.

He returned with the clothing just after vespers. It was an indescribable pleasure to take off the stiff costume I had been wearing and put on fuligin again. By night, it’s dark embrace is the nearest approach to invisibility I know, and after I had slipped out of my chambers by one of the secret exits, I moved between tower and tower like a shadow until I reached the fallen section of the curtain wall.

Day had been warm; but the night was cool, and the necropolis filled with mist, just as it had been when I had come from behind the monument—to save Vodalus. The mausoleum where I had played as a boy stood as I had left it, its jammed door three-quarters shut.

I had brought a candle, and I lit it when I was inside. The funeral brasses I had once kept polished were green again; drifted leaves lay uncrushed everywhere. A tree had flung a slender limb through the little, barred window.

Where I put you, there you lie,

Never let a stranger spy,

Like grass grow to any eye,

Not of me.

Here be safe, never leave it,

Should a hand come, deceive it,

Let strange eyes not believe it,

Till I see.

The stone was smaller and lighter than I remembered. The coin beneath it had grown dull with damp; but it was still there, and in a moment I held it again and recalled the boy I had been, walking shaken back to the torn wall through the fog.

Now I must ask you, you that have pardoned so many deviations and digressions from me, to excuse one more. It is the last.

A few days ago (which is to say, a long time after the real termination of the events I have set myself to narrate) I was told that a vagabond had come here to the House Absolute saying that he owed me money, and that he refused to pay it to anyone else. I suspected that I was about to see some old acquaintance, and told the chamberlain to bring him to me.

It was Dr. Talos. He appeared to be in funds, and he had dressed himself for the occasion in a capot of red velvet and a cechia of the same material. His face was still that of a stuffed fox; but it seemed to me at times that some hint of life crept into it, that something or someone now peered through the glass eyes.

“You have bettered yourself,” he said, making such a low bow that the tassel of his cap swept the carpet. “You may recall that I invariably affirmed you would. Honesty, integrity, and intelligence cannot be kept down.”

“We both know that nothing is easier to keep down,” I said. “By my old guild, they were kept down every day. But it is good to see you again, even if you come as the emissary of your master.”

For a moment the doctor looked blank. “Oh, Baldanders, you mean. No, he has dismissed me, I’m afraid. After the fight. After he dived into the lake.”

“You believe he survived, then.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure he survived. You didn’t know him as I did, Severian. Breathing water would be nothing to him. Nothing! He had a marvellous mind. He was a supreme genius of a unique sort: every thing, turned inward. He combined the objectivity of the scholar with the self-absorption of the mystic.”

I said, “By which you mean he carried out experiments on himself.”

“Oh, no, not at all. He reversed that! Others experiment upon themselves in order to derive some rule they can apply to the world. Baldanders experimented on the world and spent the proceeds, if I can put it so bluntly, upon his person. They say—” here he looked about nervously to make sure no one but myself was in earshot “—they say I’m a monster, and so I am. But Baldanders was more monster than I.

In some sense he was my father, but he had built himself. It’s the law of nature, and of what is higher than nature, that each creature must have a creator. But Baldanders was his own creation; he stood behind himself, and cut himself off from the line linking the rest of us with the Increate. However, I stray from my Subject.” The doctor had a wallet of scarlet leather at his belt; he loosened the strings and began to rummage in it. I heard the chink of metal.

“Do you carry money now?” I asked. “You used to give everything to him.”

His voice sank until I could hardly hear it. “Wouldn’t you, in my present position, do the same thing?

Now I leave coins, little stacks of aes and orichalks, near water.” He spoke more loudly: “It does no harm, and reminds me of the great days. But I am honest, you see! He always demanded that of me. And he was honest too, after his fashion. Anyway, do you recall the morning before we came out the gate? I was handing round the receipts from the night before, and we were interrupted. There was a coin left, and it was to go to you, I saved it and meant to give it to you later, but I forgot, and then when you came to the castle....” He gave me a sidelong glance. “But fair-trade ends paid, as they say, and I have Abere.”

The coin was precisely like the one I had taken from under the stone.

“You see now why I couldn’t give it to your man—I’m sure he thought me mad.”

I flipped the coin and caught it. It felt as though it had been lightly greased. “To tell the truth. Doctor, we don’t.”

“Because it’s false; of course. I told you so that morning. How could I have told him I had come to pay the Autarch, and then given him bad coin? They’re terrified of you, and they’d have disembowelled me looking for a good one Is it true you’ve an explosive that takes days to go up, so you can blow people apart slowly?”

I was looking at the two coins; They had the same brassy shine and appeared to have been struck in the same die. But that little interview, as I have said, took place a long tame after the proper close of my narrative. I returned to my chambers in the Flag Tower by the way I had come, and when I reached them again, took off the dripping cloak and hung it up. Master Gurloes used to say that not wearing a shirt was the hardest thing about belonging to the guild. Though he meant it ironically, it was in some sense true. I, who had gone through the mountains with a naked chest, had been softened sufficiently by a few days in the stifling autarchial vestments to shiver at a foggy autumn night.

There were fireplaces in all the rooms, and each was piled with wood so old and dry that I suspected it would fall to dust should I strike it against an andiron. I had never lit any of these fires; but I decided to do so now, and warm myself, and spread the clothes Roche had brought over the back of a chair to dry.

When I looked for my firebox, however, I discovered that in my excitement I had left it in the mausoleum with the candle. Thinking vaguely that the autarch who had inhabited these rooms before me (a ruler far beyond the reach of my memory) must surely have kept some means of kindling his numerous fires close to hand, I began searching the drawers of the cabinets.

These were largely filled with the papers that had so fascinated me before; but instead of stopping to read them, as I had when I had made my original survey of the rooms, I lifted them from each drawer to see if there was not a steel, igniter, or syringe of amadou beneath them. I found none; but instead, in the largest drawer of the largest cabinet, concealed under a filigree pen case, I discovered small pistol.

I had seen such weapons before the first time having been when Vodalus had given me the false coin I had just reclaimed. Yet I had never held one in my own hands, and I found now that it was a very different thing from seeing them in the hands of others. Once when Dorcas and I were riding north toward Thrax we had fallen in with a caravan of tinkers and peddlers. We still had most of the money Dr.

Talos had shared out when we met him in the forest north of the House Absolute; but we were uncertain how far it might carry us and how far we had to go, and so I was plying my trade with the rest, inquiring at each little town if there were not some malefactor to be mutilated or beheaded. The vagrants considered us two of themselves, and though some accorded us more or less exalted rank because I laboured only for the authorities, others affected to despise us as the instruments of tyranny.

One evening, a grinder who had been friendlier than most and had done us several trifling favours offered to sharpen Terminus Est for me. I told him I kept her quite sharp enough for the work and invited him to test her edge with a finger. After he had cut himself slightly (as I had known he would) he grew quite taken with her, admiring not only her blade but her soft sheath, her carven guard, and so on. When I had answered innumerable questions regarding her making, history, and mode of use, he asked if I would permit him to hold her. I cautioned him about the weight of the blade and the danger of striking its fine edge against something that might injure it, then handed her over. He smiled and gripped the hilt as I had instructed him; but as he began to lift that long and shining instrument of death, his face went pale and his arms began to tremble so that I snatched her away from him before he dropped her. Afterward all he would say was I’ve sharpened soldiers’ swords often, over and over.