"I don't know, Patera. I never thought about it. Does it?"

Silk had not replied, continuing in silence down the muddy street, matching Auk stride for stride.

"I guess it don't. You couldn't see them skylands up there nightside, if it did."

"So it is with the G.o.ds, Auk. They speak to us all the time, exactly as the sun shines all the time. When the dark cloud that we call the shade gets between us and the sun, we say

it's night, or nightside, a term I never heard until I came to Sun Street."

"Itdon't really mean night, Patera. Notexactly.Itmeans... All right, look at it like this. There's a day way of doing, see? That's the regular way. And then there's the other way, and nightside's when you do this other way-when everything's on the night side of the shade."

"We're on the night side of the shade for only half the day," Silk had told him. "But we are on the night side of whatever it is that bars us from the G.o.ds almost constantly, throughout our whole lives. And we really shouldn't be. We weren't meant to be. I got that one small ray of sunshine, you see, and it shouldn't be strange at all. It should be the most ordinary thing in the whorl."

He had expected Auk to laugh, and was surprised and pleased when he did not.

They had rented donkeys from a man Auk knew, a big gray

*for Auk and a smaller black for Silk. "Because I'll have to lead him back," Auk had said. "We got to get that straight right now. He don't stay with you."

Silk had nodded.

"You're going to get caught, like I told you, Patera. You'll talk to Blood, maybe, like you want. But it'll be after they get you. I don't like it, but there it is. So you're not going to need him to ride back on, and I'm not going to lose what I'm giving this donkey man to hold, which is double what he'd cost in the market."

"I understand," Silk had a.s.sured him.

Now, as they trotted along a narrow track that to him at

least was largely invisible, with the toes of his only decent

shoes intermittently intimidated by the stony soil, Auk's

_ words returned to trouble him. Tearing his eyes from the

- skylands, he called, "You warned me that Blood was going to catch me, back there in the city while you were renting

94 Gene Wolfe

NlGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN

95.

these donkeys for us. What do you think he'll do to me if

he does?"

Auk twisted about to look at him, his face a pale blur in the shadow of the crowding trees. "I don't know, Patera. But you're not going to like it."

"You may not know," Silk said, "but you can guess much better than I can. You know Blood better than I do. You've been in his house, and I'm sure you must know several people who know him well. You've done business with

him."

*Tried to, Patera."

"All right, tried to. Still you know what kind of man he is. Would he kill me, for breaking into his house? Or for threatening him? I fully intend to threaten his life if he won't return our manteion to the Chapter, a.s.suming that I get that far."

"I hope not, Patera."

Unbidden and unwanted, Musk's features rose from Silk's memory, perfect-yet corrupt, like the face of a devil. So softly that he was surprised that Auk heard it, Silk said, "I have been wondering whether I shouldn't take my own life if I am caught If I am, I say, although I hope not to be, and am determined not to be. It's seriously wrong to take one's own life, and yet-"

A chain or more ahead, Auk chuckled. "Kill yourself, Patera? Yeah, it could be a good idea. Keep it in mind, depending. You won't tell Blood about me?"

"I've sworn," Silk reminded him. "I would never break that oath."

"Good." Auk turned away again, his posture intent as his eyes sought to penetrate the shadows.

Clearly Auk had been less than impressed by his mention of suicide, and for a moment Silk resented it. But Auk was right. How could he serve any G.o.d if he set out determined to resign his task if it became too difficult? Auk had been

correct to laugh; he was no better than a child, sallying forth with a wooden sword to conquor the whorl-something that he had in fact done not too many years ago.

Yet it was easy for Auk to remain calm, easy for Auk to mock his fears. Auk, who had no doubt broken into scores of these country villas, was not going to break into this one, or even to a.s.sist him in doing it. And yet, Silk reminded himself, Auk's own position was by no means impregnable.

"I would never violate my solemn oath, sworn to all the G.o.ds," Silk said aloud. "And besides, if Blood were to find out about you and have you killed-he didn't strike me as the type who kill men themselves-there would be no one to help me escape him."

Auk cleared his throat and spat, the sound unnaturally loud hi the airless stillness of the forest. "I'm not going to do a s.h.a.ggy thing for you, Patera. You can forget about that. You're working for the G.o.ds, right? Let them get you out."

Almost whispering, because he was saddened by the knowledge, Silk said, "Yes, you will, Auk."

"Sneeze it!"

"Because you couldn't ever be certain that I wouldn't tell, eventually. I won't, but you don't trust me. Or at least not that much."

Auk snorted.

"And since you're a better man than you pretend to be, the knowlege that I-not I particularly perhaps, but an augur who had been a companion of sorts, if only for this one night-required your help would devour you, even if you denied it a hundred times or more, as you very probably would. Thus you'll help me if you can, Auk, eventually and possibly quite quickly. I know you will. And because you will, it will go much better for me if Blood doesn' t know about you."

"I'd crawl a long way in for a while, maybe, but that's all.

96Gene Wolfe

Maybe go see Pal.u.s.tria for a year or three till Blood was gone or he'd forgotten about me. People ain't like you think, Patera. Maybe you studied a long time, but there's a lot that you don't know."

Which was true enough, Silk admitted to himself. For whatever inscrutable reasons, the G.o.ds thrust bios into the whorl knowing nothing of it; and if they waited until they were so wise as to make no mistakes before they acted, they waited forever. With sudden poignancy Silk wished that he might indeed wait forever, as some men did.

And yet he felt certain that he was right about Auk, and Auk wrong about himself. Auk still returned at times to talk with little Maytera Mint; and Auk had killed a man that evening-a serious matter even to a criminal, since the dead man had friends-because that man had been about to kill the big man called Gib. Auk might be a thief and even a murderer, but he had no real talent for murder, no innate bent toward evil. Not even Blood had such a bent, perhaps. He, Silk, had seen someone who did in Blood's gla.s.s, and he promised himself now that he would never again mistake mere dishonesty or desperation for it again.

"But I know you, Auk," he said softly. He shifted his weight in the vain hope of finding a more comfortable spot on the crude saddle. "I may be too trusting of people in general, as you say; but I'm right about you. You'll help me when you think that I require it."