Free The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe Page B

wanted to keep him talking. "Do you mean the officers of this ship wear you like clothing?"
    "Not often now. The mark is like a star, with a straight mark beside it."
    "I know," I said, debating what I might do and judging the cavity inside him. My belt, with the knife and my pistol in its holster, would never fit, I thought; but without those I might go in well enough.
    I told Sidero, "Wait a moment. I'm having to work in a half crouch to find this thing. These are digging into me." I slipped my belt free and laid it down, with the sheath and holstered pistol beside it. "This would be easier if you'd lie down." He did so, and more quickly and gracefully than I would have thought possible, now that he was no longer bleeding so much. "Be quick. I have no time to waste."
    "Listen," I told him, "if somebody were after you, he'd have been here by now, and I can't even hear anyone." While I pretended to dawdle, I was thinking furiously; it seemed a mad idea, yet it would give protection and a disguise, if it succeeded. I had worn armor often. Why not better armor?
    "Do you think I fled them?"
    I heard what Sidero said, but I paid little attention to it. I had spoken a moment before of listening; now there was something to listen to, and after listening I recognized it for what it was: the slow beating of great wings.
Chapter IX
    The Empty Air
    MY KNIFE point had already found the slot. I twisted it as I snatched off my cloak and rolled into Sidero's open body. I did not so much as try to see what creature those wings bore until I had thrust my head, with some pain, into his and could look out through his visor.
    Even then I saw nothing, or almost nothing. The air-shaft, which had been fairly clear at this depth earlier, now seemed filled with mist; something had carried the cool upper air lower, mixing it with the warm, moist, reeking air we breathed. Something that roiled that mist now, as though a thousand ghosts searched there.
    I could no longer hear the wings, or anything else. I might as well have had my head locked in a dusty strong-box, peeping through the keyhole. Then Sidero's voice sounded—but not in my ear.
    I do not know just how to describe it. I know well what it is to have another's thoughts in my mind: Thecla's came there, and the old Autarch's, before I grew one with them. This was not that. And yet it was not hearing, either, as I had known it. I can come no nearer to it than to say that there is something more that hears, behind the ear; and that Sidero's voice was there, without having passed through the ear to reach it.
    " I can kill you ."
    "After I repaired you? I have known ingratitude, but never such depths as that." His chest had closed tightly, and I struggled to get my legs into his, pushing with hands braced against the hollows of his shoulders. If I had been able to take a moment more outside, I would have removed my boots; then it would have been easy. As it was, I felt I had already fractured both ankles.
    " You have no right in me! "
    "I have every right. You were made to protect men, and I was a man in need of protection. Didn't you hear the wings? You can't make me believe there is supposed to be a creatures like that loose in this ship."
    " They have freed the apports. "
    "Who has?" My sound leg had at last straightened itself. My lame leg ought to have been easier, because its muscles had shrunk; but I could not summon strength enough to force it down.
    " The jibers ."
    I felt myself bent forward, as one sometimes is in wresting; Sidero was sitting up. He stood, and in standing shifted my position just enough for my lame leg to straighten. It was easy then to thrust my left arm into his. My right entered what had been his own right arm equally easily, but emerged from the damaged brassard, protected only at the shoulder.
    "That's better," I said. "Wait a moment."
    He sprang up the stairs instead, able now to take three at a stride. I halted, turned, and descended again.
    " I will kill you for