Free Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Page A

isn’t a favor,” Silk said. “I’d do that much for anyone; but of course you want me to make a special effort for this Auk, to speak to him and take him aside, and so on; and I will.”
    â€œThank you, Patera. Patera, you’ve known me for over a year now. Am I lacking in faith?”
    The question caught Silk by surprise. “You, Maytera? Why—why I’ve never thought so. You’ve always seemed, I mean to me at least—”
    â€œYet I haven’t had the faith in you, and the god who enlightened you, that I should’ve had. I just realized it. I’ve been trusting in merely human words and appearances, like any petty trader. You were saying that the god had promised Patera Pike help, I think. Could you tell me more about that? I was only listening with care before. This time I’ll listen with faith, or try to.”
    â€œThere’s more than I could ever tell.” Silk stroked his cheek. He had himself in check now. “Patera Pike was enlightened, as I said; and I was shown his enlightenment. He was told that all those prayers he had said over so many years were to be granted that day—that the help he had asked for, for himself and for this manteion and the whole quarter, would be sent to him at once.”
    Silk discovered that his fists were clenched. He made himself relax. “I was shown all that; then I saw that help arrive, alight as if with Pas’s fire from the sun. And it was me. That was all it was, just me.”
    â€œThen you cannot fail,” Maytera Marble told him softly.
    Silk shook his head. “I wish it were that easy. I can fail, Maytera. I dare not.”
    She looked grave, as she often did. “But you didn’t know this until today? At noon, in the ball court? That’s what you said.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t. He told me something else, you see—that the time has come to act.”
    Maytera Marble sighed again. “I have some information for you, Patera. Discouraging information, I’m afraid. But first I want very much to ask you just one thing more, and tell you something, perhaps. It was the Outsider who spoke to you, you say?”
    â€œYes. I don’t know a great deal about him, however, even now. He’s one of the sixty-three gods mentioned in the Writings, but I haven’t had a chance to look him up since it happened, and as I remember there isn’t a great deal about him anyway. He told me about himself, things that aren’t in the Writings unless I’ve forgotten them; but I haven’t really had much time to think about them.”
    â€œWhen we were outside like him, living in the Short Sun Whorl before this one was finished and peopled, we worshipped him. No doubt you knew that already, Patera.”
    â€œI’d forgotten it,” Silk admitted, “but you’re right. It’s in the tenth book, or the twelfth.”
    â€œWe chems didn’t share in sacrifices in the Short Sun Whorl.” Maytera Marble fell silent for a moment, scanning old files. “It wasn’t called manteion, either. Something else. If only I could find that, I could remember more, I think.”
    Without understanding what she meant, Silk nodded.
    â€œThere have been many changes since then, but it used to be taught that he was infinite. Not merely great, but truly without limit. There are expressions like that—I mean in arithmetic. Although we never get to them in my class.”
    â€œHe showed me.”
    â€œThey say that even the whorl ends someplace,” Maytera Marble continued, “immense though it is. He doesn’t. If you were to divide him among all the things in it, each part of him would still be limitless. Didn’t you feel awfully small, Patera, when he was showing you all these things?”
    Silk considered his answer. “No, I don’t think I did. No, I didn’t. I felt—well, great. I felt that way even though he was