Silk took a step backward, b.u.mping against one of the onlookers. "I didn't call myself enlightened, sir."

"You didn't have to. I've been listening to you. Now you listen to me. I'm not giving you these cards, not for your holy sacrifice or for anydiing else. I'm paying you to answer my questions, and this is the last one. I want you to tell me-right now-what enlightenment is, when you got it, and why you got it. Here diey are." He held them up again. "Tell me, Patera, and they're yours."

Silk considered, then plucked them from Blood's hand. "As you say. Enlightenment means understanding everything as the G.o.d who gives it understands it. Who you are and who everyone else is, really. Everything you used to think you understood, you see with complete clarity in that instant, and know that you didn't really understand it at all."

The onlookers murmured, each to his neighbor. Several pointed toward Silk. One waved over die drawer of a pa.s.sing handcart.

"Only for an instant," Blood said.

"Yes, only for an instant. But the memory remains, so that you know that you knew." The three cards were still in Silk's hand; suddenly afraid that they would be s.n.a.t.c.hed away by one of the ragged throng around him, he slipped them into his pocket

"And when did this happen to you? Last week? Last year?"

Silk shook his head, glancing up at the sun. The thin black line of the shade touched it as he watched. "Today.

Not an hour ago. A ball-I was playing a game with the

boys...

Blood waved the game away.

"And it happened. Everything seemed to stand still. I really can't say whether it was for an instant, or a day, or a year, or any other period of time-and I seriously doubt that any such period could be correct Perhaps that's why we call nun the Outsider because he stands outside of time, all the time."

"Uh-huh." Blood favored Silk with a grudging smile. "I'm sure it's all smoke. Just some sort of daydream. But Fve got to admit it's interesting smoke, the way you tell it I've never heard of anything like this before."

"It's not exactly what they teach you in the schola," Silk conceded, "but I feel in my heart that it's the truth." He hesitated. "By which I mean that it's what I was shown by him-or rather, that it's one of an endless panorama of things. Somehow he's outside our whorl in every way, and inside it with us at the same time. The other G.o.ds are only inside, I think, however great they may appear inside."

Blood shrugged, his eyes wandering toward the ragged listeners. "Well, they believe you, anyhow. But as long as we're in here too, it doesn't make a bad bit's difference to us, does it, Patera?"

"Perhaps it does, or may in the future. I don't know, really. I haven't even begun to think about that yet." Silk glanced up again; the sun's golden road across the sky was markedly narrower already. "Perhaps it will make all the difference in the whori," he said. "I think it will."

"I don't see how."

"You'll have to wait and see, my son-and so shall I." Silk shivered, as he had before. "You wanted to know why I received this blessing, didn't you? That was your last question: why something as tremendous as this should happen to someone as insignificant as I am. Wasn't that it?"

24.

Gene Wolfe

NlGHTSIDE THE LONG SUN

25.

"Yes, if this G.o.d of yours will let you tell anybody."

Blood grinned, showing crooked, discolored teeth; and Silk, suddenly and without in the least willing it, saw more vividly than he had ever seen the man before him the hungry, frightened, scheming youth who had been Blood a generation before.

"And if you don't gibbe yourself, Patera."

"Gibbe?"

"If you've got no objections. Don't feel like you're stepping over his line."

"I see." Silk cleared his throat. "I've no objection, but no very satisfactory answer for you, either. That's why I s.n.a.t.c.hed my three cards from your hand, and it's why I need them, too-or a part of it. It may be only that he has a task for me. He does, I know, and I hope that that's all it is. Or, as I've thought since, perhaps it's because he means to destroy me, and felt he owed this to me before he struck. I don't know."

Blood dropped to his seat in the pa.s.senger compartment, mopping his face and neck with his scented handkerchief, as he had before. "Thanks, Patera. We're quits. You're going to the market?"

"Yes, to buy him a fine victim with these cards you've given me."

"Paid you. I'll have left your manteion before you get back, Patera. Or anyhow I hope I will." Blood dropped into the floater's velvet seat. "Get the canopy up, Grison."

Silk called, "Wait!"

Blood stood again, surprised. "What is it, Patera? No hard feelings, I hope."

"I lied to you, my son-misled you at least, although I didn't intend to. He-the Outsider-told me why, and I remembered it a few minutes ago when I was talking with a boy named Horn, a student at our palaestra." Silk stepped closer, until he was peering at Blood over the edge

of the half-raised canopy. "It was because of the augur who had our manteion when I came, Patera Pike. A very good and very holy man."

"He's dead, you said."

"Yes. Yes, he is. But before he died, he prayed-prayed to the Outsider, for some reason. And he was heard. His prayer was granted. All this was explained to me, and now I owe it to you, because it was part of our bargain."

"Then I may as well have it explained to me, too. But make it as quick as you can."

"He prayed for help." Silk ran his fingers through his careless thatch of straw-colored hair. "When we-when you pray for his help, to the Outsider, he sends it."

"Nice of him."

"But not always-no, not often-of the sort we want or expect. Patera Pike, that good old man, prayed devoudy. And I'm the help-"

"Let's go, Grison."

The blowers roared back to life. Blood's black floater heaved uneasily, rising stern first and rocking alarmingly.

"-the Outsider sent to him, to save the manteion and its palaestra/' Silk concluded. He stepped back, coughing in the billowing dust Half to himself and half to the shabby crowd kneeling around him, he added. "I am to expect no help from him. I am help."

If any of them understood, it was not apparent. Still coughing, he traced the sign of addition and muttered a brief formula of blessing, begun with the Most Sacred Name of Pas, Father of the G.o.ds, and concluded with that of his eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this, Our Holy City of Vkon.

As he neared the market, Silk reflected on his chance en-Gounter with the prosperous-looking man in the floater. Blood, his driver had called him. Three cards was far, far

26 Gene Wolfe

too much to pay for answers to a few simple questions, and in any case one did not pay augurs for their answers; one made a donation, perhaps, if one was particularly grateful. Three full cards, but were they still there?