On Blue's waters by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online

that one which does not is profound. At home, that part of the sun that was directly overhead always appeared brightest; to east and west it was less bright, and the farther you looked the dimmer it became. At noon, the sun here does not look very different; but the Long Sun is fixed, and seems to speak of the immortality of the human spirit. This Short Sun is well named; it speaks daily of the transitory nature of all it sees, drawing for us the pattern of human life, fair at first and growing ever stronger so that we cannot help believing it will continue as it began; but losing strength from the moment it is strongest.
    What good are its ascension and domination, when all its heat cannot halt its immutable decline? Augurs here (such augurs as there are) still prattle of an immortal spirit in every human being. No doctrine could be less convincing. Like certain seeds from the landers, it was grown beneath another sun and can scarcely cling to existence in the light of this one. I preach it like the rest, convincing no one less than myself.
    When I left home, I had promised myself that by noon I would tie up at the wharf in New Viron, having supposed, or hoped at least, that the west wind would last. It had been weakening since midmorning, and while I washed my fork and little, red-brown plate, it died away altogether. I lay down in the shade beneath the foredeck and slept.
    Less than two hours had passed, I believe, when I woke. The shadow of the mainsail was slightly larger and had moved a trifle; otherwise everything was the same. For half a minute, the sloop rose a hand’s breadth upon the oily water, and for the next half minute descended again. Halfway to the horizon, one of the snake-necked seabirds skimmed the water hunting fish, a creature capable of soaring almost to the stars that rarely rose higher than a donkey’s ears.
    It was only then, after I had truly slept, that the full weight of my decision fell upon me. The leaders (self-appointed, you may be sure) who had come to speak to us had believed (or had pretended to believe) that my absence from my family, and the house and mill that Nettle and I had built together, would be merely temporary, like a trip to Three Rivers. I would discover the location of Pajarocu without difficulty, board a lander just as we had boarded the one that had brought us there and revisit the Long Sun Whorl, find Silk (again without difficulty), easily persuade him to accompany me, procure samples of maize and other seeds, learn all I could about the manufacture of this and that-or still better, find someone skilled who would come with us-and return home. They had spoken of it as something that might with a little good luck be accomplished in a few months. On the sloop that day I realized that I might as well have volunteered to fly to Green by flapping my arms and wipe out every inhumu there. One would be no more difficult than the other.
    The enormity of the oath I had taken so lightly back on the Tail had not yet sunk in, and would not until Babbie and I were sailing alone, north along the coast. If I had been able to reach New Viron, I would have gone to Marrow and the rest and declared that I had changed my mind, gone back to the sloop, and gone back to Lizard at once. But I could no more give up my errand than I could continue it. The reefs and rocks of the mainland waited immobile to my left. The horizon ducked away from my eyes to starboard. Nothing moved except the white bird, which flew back and forth with a slow, sad motion that seemed so weary that every time two wings rose I felt that it was about to fall into the sea, and the Short Sun, which crept down to the empty horizon as remorselessly as every man creeps toward his grave.

-2-
    BECALMED
    T o do nothing is a talent, one I have not got. I have known a few people who possessed it to a superlative degree, as one of my scribes here does. They can, if they wish, sit or even stand for hours without occupation and