Return To The Whorl Part 50

"Who?" I think it had surprised her.

"Our other brother. He's older than Hide and me. Father says he's still alive on Green and has two sprats, but he used to talk like that a lot. Our real father would try to get him to help in the mill, and there would be big fights. Or he would start some kind of work and go away, so our father would have finish it, or Hide and me would."

"Like slave!" That had gotten to her. "Pas say. I do."

I said, "He was your father. He fed you and gave you a place to live, and clothes."

"I fed! Eat sheep. Eat boy."

"Like Juganu."

She let the bird talk a while after that, and I tried to get it to come to me, but it would not. "Bad boy! No, no!"

Pretty I stopped trying. I let out a reef in the mainsail, and trimmed it a little.

"Kill bird?"

I said, "You think I'd wring your bird's neck if I could catch it?"

"Yes!"

I spat.

"You would!"

I showed the bird my slug gun. "See this? If I wanted to kill you, I could just shoot your s.h.a.ggy bird and throw it over the side. It would take about ten seconds. Only I'm not going to do it. Or wring its neck, either. In the first place you stole it. It's Father's bird. Besides, just because I don't like somebody doesn't mean I want to kill them. That's what you G.o.ds used to do, from what I hear. But I'm not like you."

"No need," she said. "I die."

"Sure, when the bird does."

Juganu said, "Tomorrow. Didn't the Rajan tell you?"

I had not known he was back, but he was right at my elbow.

"We're going back tomorrow. I wanted to go back at once, but he wouldn't agree. We'll have to find the grave of Typhon's daughter Cilinia. It's in a place called the Necropolis."

I said, "What for?"

"That will be the last time. The Rajan said after that I might as well leave you, and I probably will."

I wanted to know if he knew why Father wanted to go to Cilinia's grave, and the bird said, "Why ask?"

"He made an agreement with Scylla," Juganu told me.

"What was it?"

Juganu shrugged and sat down on the gunwale. His arms had gotten short and round again, and his legs and his feet were not big and flat anymore like they are when they fly. He was just a little old man, naked, with blood on his breath; and I thought how if it had been Jahlee she would have made big t.i.ts to tease me. He said, "I thought you might know."

I said I did not.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Unless he said not to."

The bird laughed. I had heard it laugh before, but I did not like it.

"He made an agreement with that monster in the water," Juganu said again. "Favor for favor. He told me that much. He promised to take Scylla to the grave. That was his part of their bargain, but I don't know hers."

I was thinking about finding the grave. "It's been three hundred years. That's what they say."

Father was coming up out of the cabin, and he said, "It's been much longer than that, but I have a friend who knows the place like the back of his hand."

I am stopping here so that the others can write for a while. It has been a lot of work, a lot more than I expected. So I will let them tell about what Juganu did and all that. I will just help. I will get Daisy to go over this and fix it up, too. Or Hide and Vadsig would.

18.

HOW H HE C CAME TO B BLUE.

Y er come ter see auld Pig. 'Twas good a' yer, bucky." Pig's beard and s.h.a.ggy hair were gone, but his head was still huge. er come ter see auld Pig. 'Twas good a' yer, bucky." Pig's beard and s.h.a.ggy hair were gone, but his head was still huge.

"No, Pig." Pig's visitor shook his own much smaller head, knowing that Pig could not see it. "I came so that you might see me."

Pig touched the bandage above his nose, the self-sterilizing pad that had replaced his gray rag. "They winna take h'it h'off, bucky. Gang ter do h'it yerself?"

He looked at the nurse in the gla.s.s, who nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Pig. I am."

His fingers located the knot, and he slipped one slender blade of the surgical scissors beneath it. "Silk found scissors like this in the balneum, and later Doctor Crane used scissors of the same kind when he treated Silk. I don't know why that should touch me, but it does." Savoring the sensation, he cut.

"Bucky . . ."

"If you cannot see, you will be no worse than you were."

The nurse said, "And we'll find out why, and fix it." There was a warmth in her voice that made each word a benediction.

Pig said nothing, but his big hands were shaking.

"You haven't had much practice lately, Pig." The bandage was loose, lying limply across Pig's eyes. "That's what they told me, and I must tell you the same thing. If you can see--"

Apropos of nothing, Oreb announced, "Good Silk."

"What you see may be blurred until you re-learn how to interpret visual images."

The room had darkened as he spoke, the lights on the ceiling fading to mere specks of gold; he looked at the gla.s.s and saw the nurse manipulating a control. She nodded, and he lifted the bandage away.

"Bucky . . . ?" One of Pig's hands found his.

"Your eye is still closed, Pig."

"He kens h'it, bucky. Sae braw? He's nae!" Pig's eyelids fluttered.

"Braver than I would be."

Pig's head rolled on the pillow.

The nurse said, "It doesn't exactly go with his coloring."

Pig's right hand left the sheet in a peremptory gesture. "Wants ter see yer, ter see ther twa a' yer tergether. Dinna never want ter forget yer."

"See bird?"

"Aye." Naked now, the wide, thin-lipped mouth curved upward. "Pig sees yer, ter, H'oreb. Bucky . . . ?" Pig choked, coughed, and at last recovered.

"You have a blue eye now, Pig. Like my own."

When the nurse's gla.s.s had faded to silver-gray, Pig ventured, "Yer gang ter stay wit' me, bucky?"

He nodded, knowing Pig could see his nod and glorying in it. "Until Hari Mau finds me, and makes me go with him."

"Bird go?"

"Yes, Oreb. Certainly, if you want it. I'll be flattered."

"Pig ter, bucky?"

He was taken aback. "Would you want to?"

"Aye." Pig's voice was firm.

Slowly, he shook his head.

"Seen me h'ears."

"That has nothing to do with it. I am flattered, Pig. I'm humbled. But unless a G.o.d were to tell me otherwise, my answer must be no, for both our sakes."

"Auld Pig'd gae, bucky."

"I realize that--you would go, and endeavor to help and protect me in every way possible."

"Yer did sae fer him."

"Of course. I am your friend, as you are mine." He paused, his right forefinger tracing small circles on his cheek.

" 'Twill be a lang walk ter na braithrean wi'hout yer."

He nodded, and gloried a second time. "You'll go back to them, at the other end of the whorl?"

" 'Tis me h'only kin."

"Mercenaries. You were a mercenary trooper, Pig?"

"Ho, aye! Was he? He was! Fightin' ter make 'em gae, bucky. Paid ter. Moss-trooper, ter, an' there was nae better."

"Perhaps you'll find someone on the way, Pig. A woman who loves you. Or friends who like you as much as I do."

"Found yer h'already, bucky."

"Yes," he said sadly. "You have. And if I could take you back to New Viron with me, I would do so in an instant. The problem--one problem at least--is that I am not going there. I am going to a town very far from there, to which I promised Hari Mau I would go."

"Dimber wi' me."

"I will be a prisoner, Pig. They want me to judge their disputes, and arrange compromises for them. There are many disputes in which both sides are in the wrong, and many more in which no compromise acceptable to both parties is possible."

He sighed. "I cannot give them all that they hope for, and their disappointment is certain to turn to violence in time, unless I can escape them."

"Would yer do h'it, bucky? Gang awa'?"

Solemnly, he nodded. "I would. I will--if I can. I've promised Hari Mau that I'll go with him to his town, and that I will judge it to the best of my poor ability. But not that I'll remain there indefinitely. I will keep my promise if they'll let me. But when I've done what I can, I'm going home. I've been halfway around Blue already, and home cannot be farther than that."

"Need auld Pig then, bucky."

He sighed again. "No doubt I will, but I won't have you. In the first place, Hari Mau and his friends will learn where I am very quickly--if not today, certainly tomorrow. They'll hold me to my promise then, and insist we leave. You must have expert care for months. Your flesh may not accept your new eye. There are things that can be done should that occur, but they are difficult things and require an expert physician.

"In the second, you would be more of a prisoner than I, and in considerably greater danger, a focus for the discontents of every man I ruled against. I said that you will require months of care, because that is what your surgeon told me, and what they tell me here. If you were to come with me, I doubt that you'd live for months."

Something in Pig's face had changed. He said, "And in the third, Horn?"

"Patera!"

Oreb whistled shrilly.

"I would be a positive danger to you," Pig said. "Strength and a stout heart are hazardous qualities where they cannot prevail."

"Yes." He wiped his eyes.

Naked and subtly altered, the face was still Pig's; Silk's well-remembered voice issued from its lips. "Still, you would take me if you could."

"Yes. Yes, I would. If we reached New Viron, I would not have failed. Or even if you reached it alone."