Exodus from the Long Sun

— a man scarcely larger than the child lying naked on the ground, his stark ribs and emaciated face black with bruises, his arms chained around a tent pole.

— a madman among tombs, howling that the sun would die.

— Violet embraced by Siyuf in the room below.

— Auk asleep on his back before the smoking, unpurified altar of the Grand Manteion.

“Auk? Auk?”

He sat up blinking, and rubbed his eyes. Chenille slept at his side, her head pillowed on muscular arms, her skirt hiked to her knees. Sergeant Sand slept in death at the foot of the Sacred Window; about him lay Pateras Jerboa, Incus, and Shell, Incus face up and snoring.

On the farther side of the lofty marble ambion, Spider and Eland slept as well, watched by three soldiers; Slate nodded in friendly fashion and touched his forehead. In the third row of pews, Maytera Mint knelt in prayer.

“Somebody call me?” Auk asked Slate softly.

Slate’s big steel head swung from side to side. “I’d of heard. Must of been a dream.”

“I guess.” Auk lay down again; he was as tired as he could ever remember being, and it was good not to have been called.

Sciathan soared above a leafless plain at sunset. Far ahead, Aer flew a little higher and a little faster. He called to her aloud, knowing somehow that her helmcom was out or had been turned off. She looked back, and he glimpsed her smile, the roses in her cheeks, and a tendril of flaxen hair that had escaped her helmet. Aer! he called. Aer, come back! But she did not look back at him again, and his PM was overheating. Moment by moment, over a long hour of flight, he watched her dwindle into the dark sky ahead.

“Auk? Auk!”

He sat up stiffly, conscious that he had slept for hours. The great arched windows of the Grand Manteion, which had been featureless sheets of black by night, showed vague tracings now — gods, animals, and past Prolocutors half visible.

He stood, and Maytera Mint looked up from her vigil at the scrape of his boots on the floor. Leaving the sanctuary, he knelt beside her. “Did you call me? I thought I heard you.”

“No, Auk.”

He considered that, rubbing his chin. “You been awake all this time, Mother?”

“Yes, Auk.” (A tiny spark of happiness appeared in her red-rimmed eyes; it warmed him like a blaze.) “You see, Auk, I swore I would wait here in prayer until Pas came, or shade up. I’m keeping that vow.”

“You’ve kept it already, Mother. Look at those windows.” He gestured. “I was so tired I lay down with my boots on, see? I bet you were just as tired, but you haven’t slept a wink. You know what I’m going to do?”

“No, Auk, how could I?”

“I’m going to lay down again and sleep some more. Only first I’m going to take off my boots. Now you lay down and sleep too, or I’m going to make a fuss and wake up everybody. The job’s done. You did it just like you promised.”

Hyacinth woke and went to the open window to examine her ring in the faint gray light of morning — a tarnished silver ring like a rose with a woman’s tiny face at its heart, framed by petals. She had bought it because a clerk at Sard’s had said it resembled her, never guessing that she was buying her own wedding ring. She had worn it once or twice, tossed it into a drawer, and forgotten it.

It didn’t really look like her at all, she decided. The woman in the rose was older, at once more come-on and more… She groped for a word. Not just pretty.

Though Silk thought her beautiful, or said he did.

She kissed him as he slept, went into the dressing room, and tapped the glass.

“Yes, madame.”

“Show me exactly the way I look right now. Oh, gods!”

Her own face, puffy-eyed and retaining traces of smeared cosmetics, said, “You are actually quite attractive, madame. If I might suggest—”

She waved the suggestion away. “Now look at this face in my ring. See it? Make me look just a tiny little like that.”

For a few seconds she studied the result, turning her head left, then right. “Yes, that’s good. Hold that.” She picked up the hairbrush and began a process that Tick the catachrest watched approvingly.

“Auk? Auk!”

He sat up and stared at the Sacred Window. The voice had come from there — this time he was certain of it. He got up, grasping his hanger to keep the brass fip of the scabbard from rattling on the floor, and padded across the sanctuary. Shell and Incus were clearly sound asleep, but Jerboa’s eyes were not quite closed. Old people didn’t need much sleep, Auk reminded himself.

He squatted beside Jerboa. “It’s all right, I wasn’t going to nip your case or anything, Patera. Is that what you thought? Anything you got you can keep.”

Jerboa did not reply.

“Only somebody over here’s been calling me. Was that you? Like when you were dreaming, maybe?”

Shell grunted something unintelligible and turned his head away, but Jerboa did not stir. Suddenly suspicious, Auk picked up Jerboa’s left hand, then slid his own under Jerboa’s tunic.

He rose, wiping his hands absently on his thighs; it would be well, certainly, to move the old man’s body to some private spot. The sibyls were sleeping in the sacristy; that, at least, was where Maytera Mint had gone when he had persuaded her to lie down for an hour or two, and Auk thought he recalled old Maytera Wood and the others — sibyls whose names he had not learned — going in there at about the time he had stretched himself on the terrazzo floor.

Squatting again, he picked up the old augur’s body and carried it to the ambulatory. Schist straightened up as they came into view. “He dead?”

“Yeah,” Auk whispered. “How’d you know?”

Schist’s steel shoulders rose and fell with a soft clank. “He looks dead, that’s all.”

Shale asked, “How’s Pas supposed to get his part back if he’s dead?”

Without answering, Auk carried the body into the chapel of Hierax and laid it on the altar there.

Slate inquired, “You goin’ back to sleep?”

“Shag, I don’t know.” Auk discovered that he was wiping his hands again and made himself stop. “I think maybe I’ll fetch my boots and walk around outside a little.”

“I thought maybe you could wake the rest of ’em up.” Slate waited longer for his reply than a bio would have, then asked, “What you lookin’ at over there? Must be shaggy interesting.”

“Him.”

Slowly, Slate clambered to his feet. “Who?”

“Him.” Auk turned away impatiendy, striding toward the Sacred Window. “This soldier. He got it in the autofunction coprocessor, see?” Auk knelt beside Sergeant Sand. “Only his central could handle that stuff if it had to. There’s lots of redundancy there. His voluntary coprocessor could, even.”

He fumbled for his boot knife, discovered that he was not wearing his boots, and got it. “Look alive, Patera!” He shook Incus’s shoulder. “I need that gadget you got.”

“Up!” A boot prodded the captive Flier’s ribs. “Reveille an hour ago. Didn’t you hear it?”

Blinking and shivering, Sciathan sat up.

“You speak the Common Tongue well,” the uniformed woman looming over him said. “Answer me!”

“Better than most of us, yes.” Sciathan paused, struggling to clear his brain of sleep. “I did not hear it, that word you used. I know I did not since I heard nothing. But if I heard it, I would not know what it was.”

The woman nodded. “I did that to establish a point. Any question I ask, you are to answer. If you do, and I like your answer, you may get clothes or something to eat. If you don’t, or I don’t, you’ll wish you’d been killed, too.” She clapped. “Sentry!”

A younger and even taller woman ducked through the door of the tent and stood stiffly erect, her gun held vertically before her left shoulder. “Sir!”