On Blue's waters

Sinew muttered, “It doesn’t come from a pure strain at all. It comes from the good crop, and the good crop was good but it wasn’t pure.” He tilted his chair until its back struck the wall, something that always annoyed me. “The god that stocked the landers put all that mixed seed in them, didn’t he? No pure strains, so we can’t make new mixes ourselves.”

“Pas,” you told him. “Pas prepared the landers for us out of his infinite wisdom. You may not credit him, but Pas is a very great god.”

“Back on the Long Sun Whorl, maybe.” Sinew shrugged. “Not here.”

Hoof said, “All those gods you talk about, they’re only back there. Scylla and her sisters.”

Your smile was sad then, Nettle darling-it hurt me to see it. “Yet they are beautiful and true,” you told him, “as real as my parents and your father’s father, who are not here either.”

“That’s right,” I told Hoof, “but what you said wasn’t. You implied that Pas was a god only in the Long Sun Whorl.” Secretly I agreed with him, although I did not want to say so.

Sinew came to his brother’s defense, surprising and pleasing me. “Well, Pas isn’t much of a god here, no matter what the old Prolocutor in town says.”

“I agree. The point that you’re both forgetting… I’m not sure how I can explain. We call this whorl Blue, and call our sun here the Short Sun.”

“Sure.”

“At home, we called the whorl our ancestors came from the Short Sun Whorl. Your mother will remember that, I’m sure, and I remember talking with Patera Silk about all the wisdom and science that we left behind there.”

You said, “We put that in our book.”

“Yes, we certainly did.”

Hide had been waiting for a chance. “I don’t see what any of this has to do with maize.”

“It has everything to do with it. I was about to say that when Pas stocked the landers it was on that earlier Short Sun Whorl. He was a god there, you see, and I think probably the greatest. Since he was, he’s capable of becoming a god here, too, although he hasn’t done it, or at least hasn’t let us know he’s done it yet.”

No one contradicted me.

“One evening, when I was being punished for making fun of Patera Silk, he and I talked about the science of the Short Sun Whorl. The wrapping that healed his ankle had been made there. We couldn’t make it, we didn’t know how. Glasses and the Sacred Windows, and so many other wonderful things we had at home, we had only because they had been made on the Short Sun Whorl and put into ours by Pas. Chems, for example-living people of metal and sun-fire.”

At that, Sinew’s chair came down with a thump; but he said nothing.

I ate, and cut another slice for myself. “You used your bow when you killed this greenbuck for us,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m going to offer a prayer. If any of you want to join in, you’ll be welcome. If you prefer to continue eating, that’s a matter between you and the god.”

Hide began, “Father, I-”

I was already making the sign of addition over my plate. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, imploring the Outsider, whom Silk had honored above all the other gods, to help me act wisely.

When I opened them and began to eat again, Hoof said, “You jumped from maize to all the other things you and Mother had in the Whorl.”

At the same moment, Hide said, “You promised you’d tell us what those people wanted.”

You motioned them to silence, telling Hide, “Your brother knows, I think. What was it, Sinew?”

Sinew shook his head.

Hoof asked him, “Why did he say about your bow?”

“He meant they had better things,” Sinew grunted. “Slug guns and needlers. But they’re making slug guns now in town. Father’s still got his needier. You’ve seen it. He let me hold it one time.”

“I am going to give it to you,” I told him. “Tonight or tomorrow, perhaps.”

Sinew stared, then shook his head again.

Hoof said, “If we could make those here, we’d have a lot more to eat, I bet.”

“The new slug guns aren’t nearly as good as the old ones,” Sinew told him, “but they’re still too expensive for us, and conjunction’s coming. It’s only a couple years now. You sprats don’t remember the last one.”

Hide said, “A whole bunch of inhumi came and killed lots of people.”

Hoof added, “If we had more needlers and a new slug gun, we could fight them better.”

You-I am nearly certain it was you, Nettle darling-said, “The slug gun we’ve got is just about worn out.”

No one spoke after that; the boys ate, and I made a show of eating, although I have never been less hungry than I was then. When a minute and more had passed, Sinew asked, “Why you?”

“Because I built our mill, and because I knew Patera Silk better than almost anyone else in New Viron did.”

Shaking his head, Sinew bent over his plate again.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Hide wanted to know.

“A great deal, I’m sure,” you told him, Nettle. “May I, Horn? I think I’ve followed everything.”

I suppose I said that you could, or indicated it by some gesture.