Return to the Whorl

He shook his head. "I don't wish to impose on you any more. I'll leave now." He glanced at the open window, wincing inwardly at the utter darkness beyond it. "Have you any idea how long it will be until shadeup?"

"Shadeup?" The husband spat through the window.

The woman said, "Forgotten, haven't you."

"Forgotten what?" There was a stick in the corner, a rough stick far from straight that he decided must be his.

"Darkday. Sun goes out. Gone out now."

Vaguely he recalled an incident on Sun Street, the altar in the middle of the street, with the sacred window in which Echidna had appeared, the heat that had followed the darkness, and the blazing fig tree. "I know," he said.

"You'll get hurt." The woman spoke as if the words had been forced from her. "You'll get hurt again. You stay here until the sun comes back."

He looked from one to the other. "Don't you know…?"

"No tellin'." There was anger as well as resignation in the husband's voice. "Gods been blowin' it out to make us go."

The woman sighed. "Something's wrong in your head, or you'd know."

"I'm going to tell you the truth. I mean all the truth. Everything, as I should have from the begi

There was a silence. At last the woman said, "Go on."

"I haven't lied to you. I was born and brought up in Viron, exactly as I said. But I've spent over twenty years on Blue."

The lack of any expression on their plain, work-worn faces seemed to show they had not understood. He said, "Blue is what we call one of the whorls outside the Whorl."

Neither spoke.

"Because it looks blue, you see, when you're high above it in a lander. Blue with streaks of white cloud, really, but you have to be close to see them. From Green it's just a blue dot, when the sky is clear enough for you to see it. I lived on Blue for years, as I said. After that I was on Green for a long time. Or at least, it seemed like a long time to me. I suppose it was actually only half a year or so; but I've been away from this whorl a long time. That's all I'm trying to say."

The woman muttered, "You been where they keep trying to get us to go."

"The gods? Yes. Yes, I have."

The husband asked, "Why'd you come back?"

"To find Silk. Do either of you know Patera Silk? Calde Silk of Viron?"

Neither spoke. They edged closer together, regarding him through slitted eyes.

The rest seemed remote and unimportant, but he included it anyway. "Also to bring back new strains of corn and seeds of other kinds, and to study certain manufacturing processes. But mostly to bring Silk to New Viron, on Blue."

"Seed corn? Can't give you much, need it for us."

He nodded humbly. "A few would be enough. Six, perhaps."

The husband shook his head like a mule that does not want to take the bit. "Can't spare six ears."

"Six seeds, I meant. Six grains of corn."

"That'd be enough?"

"Yes, I'd be very grateful."

The woman asked, "How'd you get back?"

"I don't know." He found that he was staring at the wide, warped boards of the floor, his head between his hands; he forced himself to straighten up and look at her. "The Neighbors did it. The Neighbors are the Vanished People, the people who used to live on Blue a thousand years ago. They brought me here in some fashion, but I don't know how."

"When did you get here?"

"Yesterday. At least, I've slept once since I got here." He strove to remember. "There was sunlight when I arrived. I'm quite certain of that."

The husband nodded. "Days don't matter much. It's sun, or no sun. If you find Silk, how're you going to take him back?"

"In a lander, I suppose. You said the gods were trying to make you go."

Both nodded, their faces grim.

"So there must be landers left, perhaps landers that have come back for more people. The gods wouldn't try to force you out if there were no way for you to leave."

The husband spat out the window again. "They don't work. That's what I hear."

"I've had some experience of that on Green." He crossed the kitchen, finding his legs stronger than he had anticipated, and picked up his stick.

The woman said, "I'm going to fry some bacon. Haven't done it much on account of the heat. But I'm going to fry some soon as I get the stove going."

"That's very kind of you." As he spoke, he realized that he was more sincere than he had imagined. "I'm grateful-really I am. But I don't need food, and certainly don't need luxuries."

She had pushed back a curtain that had once been a sheet to search nearly empty shelves, and seemed not to have heard him. "I'll make coffee, too. Coffee's dear, but there's enough left for another pot."

He recalled the beverage of his childhood. "Mate, please. I'd like some. I haven't drunk mate in a long while."

Her husband said, "You want that seed corn? We got to fetch it out of the barn." He held a stick of his own, a thick staff more like a club than a cane.

"Yes, I do. Very much."

"All right." The husband leaned his staff against a chair, and rummaged under the table.

The woman asked him to pump, and he did so, heaving the big iron handle up and down until the rusty water was past and she had enough clean water to fill her coffeepot.

The husband pulled out a clumsy tin lantern and lit it from the lamp. "We'll go now. That'll take her a bit." An inclination of his head indicated the stove.

The woman murmured, "Coffee, bacon, and bread." She turned to face them. "That be enough?"

"More than enough. And I'd prefer mate, I really would."

The husband opened the door (letting in the ink-black dark), retrieved his staff, and raised his lantern. "Come on," he said, and they went out together.

"Is it dangerous out here? When the sun has gone out, I mean." He was thinking of the husband's staff.

"Sometimes. Horn, that's your name?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm afraid I didn't catch yours."

"Didn't throw it." The husband paused, chuckling at his joke. "You want that seed?"

"Very much." Something or someone was watching them, he felt-some cool intelligence greater than his own who could see in darkness as in daylight. He pushed the thought aside, and followed the husband, walking rapidly across dry, uneven soil as hard as iron.

"Know how to grow corn?"

"No." He hesitated, fearful that the admission would cost him the seed. "I tried once, and learned that I didn't-I had thought I did. But the seeds you give me will be planted by men who know a great deal. My task is to bring it to them."

"Won't grow in the dark."

He recalled speculating that those denied the Aureate Path might grow crops, and smiled. "Nothing does, I suppose."

"Oh, there's things. But not corn." The husband opened a wide wooden door, evoking scandalized protests from chickens. "Sun don't come back, that's the end for us. You comin'?"

He was staring upward into the pitch-black sky. "There's a point of light up there. One very small point of red light. Is it in the skylands? You have skylands here."

"That's right."

"On Blue the night sky is full of stars, thousands upon thousands of them. I'm surprised to see even one here."

"That's a city burnin'."

He looked down, horrified.

"Some city burns up there just about every time they blow the sun out. You want that corn? You come along."

He hurried into the barn.

"I grow my own seed. Two kinds. You can't let 'em cross. Or cross with any other kind, either. You know about that?"

He nodded humbly. "I think so."

"Cross 'em, and you'll get good seed. Plant it to grind and feed the stock. Don't plant the next, though. You got to go back to these old kinds and cross again. Six, you said."

"Yes. I believe that should be sufficient."

"I'm going to give you twelve. Six ain't enough." Butter-yellow lantern light revealed dry ears hanging in bunches.