Free The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

of my cabin, diminished further as I descended. Earlier, when I had climbed the rigging, I had noticed that it dwindled as I ascended; it therefore followed that it should increase as I moved down from level to level in the bowels of the ship. I can only say that it was not so, or at least that it did not seem so to me, but the very reverse of that. Soon I heard footsteps on the stair below me. If I had learned anything during the past few watches, it was that any chance-met stranger might be bent upon my death. I halted to listen, and drew my pistol.
    The faint clanging of metal stopped with me, then sounded again, rapid and irregular, the noises of a climber who stumbled as he ran. Once there was a clatter, as of a sword or helmet dropped, and another pause before the faltering footsteps came again. I was descending toward something that some other fled; there seemed no doubt of that. Common sense told me I should flee too, and yet I lingered, too proud and too foolish to retreat until I knew the danger.
    I did not have to linger long. After a moment I glimpsed a man in armor below me, climbing with fevered haste. In a moment more, only a landing intervened, and I could see him well; his right arm was gone, and indeed appeared to have been torn away, for tattered remnants still dangled and bled from the polished brassard. There seemed little reason to fear that this wounded and terrified man would attack me, and much more to think that he might fly if I appeared dangerous. I holstered my pistol and called to him, asking what was wrong and whether I could help him.
    He stopped and lifted his visored face to look at me. It was Sidero, and he was trembling.
    "Are you loyal?" he shouted.
    "To what, friend? I intend you no harm, if that's what you mean."
    "To the ship!"
    It seemed pointless to promise loyalty to what was no more than an artifact of the Hierodules, however large; but this was clearly no time to debate abstractions. "Of course!" I called. "True to the death, if need be." In my heart I begged Master Malrubius, who had once tried to teach me something of loyalties, to forgive me. Sidero began to climb the steps again, a little more slowly and calmly this time, yet stumbling still. Now that I could see him better, I realized that the dark oozing fluid I has supposed human blood was far too viscid, and a blackish green rather than crimson. The tatters I had thought shredded flesh were wires mingled with something like cotton. Sidero was an android, then, an automaton in human form such as my friend Jonas had once been. I upbraided myself for not having realized it sooner, and yet it came as a relief; I had seen blood enough in the cabin above.
    By this time, Sidero was mounting the last steps to the landing where I stood. When he reached me, he halted, swaying. In that gruff, demanding way one unconsciously assumes in the hope of inspiring confidence, I told him to let me see his arm. He did, and I recoiled in amazement.
    If I merely write that it was hollow, that will sound, I fear, as if it were hollow as a bone is said to be. Rather, it was empty. The tiny wires and wisps of fiber soaked with dark liquid had escaped from its steely circumference. There was nothing—nothing at all—within.
    "How can I help you?" I asked. "I've had no experience in treating such wounds." He seemed to hesitate. I would have said that his visored face was incapable of expressing emotion; and yet it contrived to do so by its motions, the angles at which he held it, and the play of shadow created by its features.
    "You must do exactly as I instruct. You will do that?"
    "Of course," I said. "I confess I swore not long ago that I'd someday cast you from a height as you cast me. But I won't avenge myself upon an injured man." I remembered then how much poor Jonas had wanted to be thought a man, as indeed I and many others had thought him, and to be a man in fact.
    "I must trust you," he said.
    He stepped back, and his chest—his entire