Gene Wolfe - CALDE OF THE LONG SUN

As unruffled by the disturbances shaking the city as by the furious

thunderstorm that threatened with every gust to throw down its

shiprock and return its mud brick to the parent mud, His Cognizance

Patera Quetzal, Prolocutor of the Chapter of This Our Holy

City of Viron, studied his present sere and sallow features in the

polished belly of the silver teapot.

As at this hour each day, he swung his head to the right and

contemplated his nearly noseless profile, made a similar inspection

of its obverse, and elevated his chin to display a lengthy and notably

wrinkled neck. He had shaped and colored face and neck with care

upon arising, as he did every morning; nevertheless, there remained

the possibility (however remote) that something had gone awry by

ten: thus the present amused but painstaking self-examination.

"For I am a careful man," he muttered, pretending to smooth one

thin white eyebrow.

A crash of thunder shook the Prolocutor's Palace to its

foundations at the final word, brightening every light in the room to a

glare; rain and hail drummed the windowpanes.

Patera Remora, Coadjutor of the Chapter, nodded solemnly.

"Yes indeed, Your Cognizance. You are indeed a most--ah--advertent man."

Yet there was always that possibility. "I'm growing old, Patera.

Even we careful men grow old."

Remora nodded again, his long bony face expressive of regret.

"Alas, Your Cognizance."

"As do many other things, Patera. Our city... The whorl itself

grows old. When we're young, we notice things that are young, like

ourselves. New grass on old graves. New leaves on old trees."

Quetzal lifted his chin again to study his bulging reflection through

hooded eyes.

"The golden season of beauty and--um--elegiacs, Your Cognizance."

Remora's fingers toyed with a dainty sandwich.

"As we notice the signs of advancing age in ourselves, we see them

in the whorl. Just a few chems today who ever saw a man who saw a

man who remembered the day Pas made the whorl."

A little bewildered by the rapid riffle through so many generations,

Remora nodded again. "Indeed, Your Cognizance. Indeed

not." Surreptitiously, he wiped jam from one finger.

"You become conscious of recurrences, the cyclical nature of

myth. When first I received the baculus, I had occasion to survey

many old documents. I read each with care. It was my custom to

devote three Hieraxdays a month to that. To that alone, and to

inescapable obsequies. I gave my prothonotary the straitest instructions

to make no appointments for that day. It's a practice I recommend, Patera."

Thunder rattled the room again, lightning a dragon beyond the windows.

"I will, um, reinstitute this wise usage at once, Your Cognizance."

"At once, you say?" Quetzal looked up from the silver pot,

resolved to repowder his chin at the first opportunity. "You may go

to young Incus and so instruct him, if you want. Tell him now,

Patera. Tell him now."

"That is--ah--unfeasible, I fear, Your Cognizance. I sent Patera

Incus upon a--um--errand Molpsday. He has not--um--rejoined us."

"I see. I see." With a trembling hand, Quetzal raised his cup until

its gilt rim touched his lips, then lowered it, though not so far as to

expose his chin. "I want beef tea, Patera. There's no strength in this.

I want beef tea. See to it, please."

Long accustomed to the request, his coadjutor rose. "I shall

prepare it with my own hands, Your Cognizance. It will--ah--occupy

only an, um, trice. Boiling water, an, um, roiling boil. Your

Cognizance may rely upon me."

Slowly, Quetzal replaced the delicate cup in its saucer as he

watched Remora's retreating back; he even spilled a few drops

there, for he was, as he had said, careful. The measured closing of

the door. Good. The clank of the latchbar. Good again. No one

could intrude now without noise and a slight delay; he had designed

the latching mechanism himself.

Without leaving his chair, he extracted the puff from a drawer on

the other side of the room and applied flesh-toned powder delicately

to the small, sharp chin he had shaped with such care upon arising.

Swinging his head from side to side as before, frowning and smiling

by turns, he studied the effect in the teapot. Good, good!

Rain beat against the windows with such force as to drive trickles

of chill water through crevices in the casements; it pooled invitingly

on the milkstone windowsills and fell in cataracts to soak the carpet.

That, too, was good. At three, he would preside at the private

sacrifice of twenty-one dappled horses, the now-posthumous offering

of Councillor Lemur--one to all the gods for each week since

Thin more substantial than a shower had blessed Viron's fields. They

could be convened to a thank offering, and he would so convert them.

Would the congregation know by then of Lemur's demise?

Quetzal debated the advisability of announcing the fact if they did

not. It was a question of some consequence and at length, for the

temporary relief the act afforded him, he pivoted his hinged fangs

from their snug grooves in the roof of his mouth, snapping each

gratefully into its socket and grinning gleefully at his distorted image.

The rattle of the latch was. nearly lost in another crash of thunder,

but he had kept an eye on the latchbar. There was a second and

louder rattle as Remora, on the other side of the door, contended

with the inconveniently-shaped iron handle that would, when its

balky rotation had been completed, laboriously lift the clumsy bar

clear of its cradle.

Quetzal touched his lips almost absently with his napkin; when he

spread it upon his lap again, his fangs had vanished. "Yes, Patera?"

he inquired querulously. "What is it now? Is it time already?"

"Your beef tea, Your Cognizance." Remora set his small tray on

the table. "Shall I--um--decant a cup for you? I have, er, obtained a

clean cup for the purpose."

"Do, Patera. Please do." Quetzal smiled. "While you were gone, I

was contemplating the nature of humor. Have you ever considered it?"

Remora resumed his seat. 'i fear not, Your Cognizance."

"What's become of young Incus? You hadn't expected him to be

gone so long?"

"No, Your Cognizance. I dispatched him to Limna." Remora spooned beef salts

into the clean cup and added water from the small copper kettle he had

brought, producing a fine plume of steam. "I am--ah--moderately

concerned. An, um, modicum of civil unrest last night, eh?" He stirred

vigorously. "This--ah--stripling Silk. Patera Silk, alas. I know him."

"My prothonotary told me." With the slightest of nods, Quetzal

accepted the steaming cup. "I'd have thought Limna would be safer."

"As would I, Your Cognizance. As did I."

A cautious sip. Quetzal held the hot, salty fluid in his mouth,

drawing it deliciously through folded fangs.

"I sent him in search of a--ah, um--individual, Your Cognizance.

A, er, acquaintance of this Patera Silk's. The Civil Guard is

searching for Patera himself, hey? As are, er, certain others.

Other--ah--parties. So I am told. This morning, Your Cognizance, I

dispatched still others to look for young Incus. The rain, however,

ah, necessitous, will hamper them all, hum?"

"Do you swim, Patera?"

"I, Your Cognizance? At the--um--lakeside, you mean? No. Or

at least, not for many years.

"Nor I."

Remora groped toward a point he had yet to discern. "A healthful