In Green's Jungles by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online

much bigger than the first. But the first had the girl who won every game and contest that had to do with running or jumping, and also the girl who shone the brightest in arithmetic and composition and every other subject. Then many of the other girls tried to join it. Some were let in halfway, but after a few days it was made clear to them that they were not really members at all.
    Some of you may not think that was a happy ending, but if you don't you've never been in a place like that academy, where everybody who looked at the giant's daughter wore a frown.
    "That was a very good story," Fava told Mora. "I'll vote for it, and I think you might win."
    Mora shook her head.
    "The giant won't say anything," Inclito told his daughter. "He's got troubles of his own, and maybe he hasn't paid enough attention to the troubles others have. Just the same, I'd like to hear what our guest has to say. Incanto?"
    Thinking of my own account of Patera Silk's career in Viron, I said, "I believe that the best stories are those that are true, and those that the teller feels most deeply. Thus yours was one of the best I have heard, Mora."
    Nodding sagely, Inclito turned to his mother. "You want to go next? Or me?"
    "You," she told him.
    Inclito's Witness: The Sentry and His Brother
    T his was ten years ago, when we fought Heleno. I had a hundred men in that, and in my hundred were two brothers. The names were Volto and Mano, and they hated each other. When I found out how much I tried to keep them apart, but with only a hundred you can only separate two men so much.
    Volto was tall and skinny, with a ugly, sour face. Not ugly like me, this is the face Pas gave me. Ugly because he's got ugly thoughts. He was one of them that it's more work to get them to work than the work that they do is, but he was a good fighter.
    The young one, Mano, he's like day instead of night. Always happy, works hard, everybody likes him, and he's brave, too. A brave young man. Just the same it makes no difference. He hates Volto as much as Volto hates him. Once he tells me that when he was a little sprat Volto would beat him every time the mother and father got busy someplace else, and three, four times Volto about kills him.
    We beat Heleno and for a while we stayed in their town trying to take back all they stole. There's a curfew, none of the people can go outside after dark, and I got troopers all over to keep them in, on every corner, almost, one man. Then it is like with my daughter, I think too much about my own troubles. Mano is on a corner and somebody is sick, so my sergeant has Volto take his place. He's got to take Mano's corner at the end of Mano's watch.
    There's a shot and everybody comes running to see what the trouble is, and Volto's dead, too far gone to talk when I got to him. Everybody thinks Mano waits until he comes to take his place, and then he shoots him. Everybody but me thinks that. They don't blame Mano much, but it's murder just the same.
    They bring in a new officer that doesn't know either of them to be the judge, a major. Now I would say it's fair, but then I thought the other way. I go to see Mano where we got him locked up, and I say, "Why did you do this thing? They're going to hang you. What can I tell them?"
    It takes a long time to get the story out.
    "He wanted to kill me," Mano says, "and he told me he was going to do it so our whole family would pretend afterward that I'd never been alive. `No stone for your grave' is what he said. I'll never forget that. I thought it was just more lying, more bluff. Lying was something you had to expect if you were going to talk to Volto, just like you got to know that a horse doesn't ever forget a thing that hurt it if you're going to train horses. With Volto it was that he'd rather lie than tell the truth. If he didn't have to, he'd lie anyway. It made him feel like he was smarter than you."
    "He was going to shoot you?" I said. "You had to shoot first?"
    He wouldn't answer, just shook his