There was a dead woman who had been left in an alley, and Patera Pike, and it was all connected, as if they were pieces of something larger.' Silk paused, remembering.
'Let's get back to the god. Could you hear his voice?'
'Voices,' Silk said. 'One spoke into each ear most of the time. One was very masculine-not falsely deep, but solid, as if a mountain of stone were speaking. The other was feminine, a sort of gentle cooing; yet both voices were his. When my enlightenment was over, I understood far, far better than I ever had before why artists show Pas with two heads, though I believe, too, that the Outsider had a great many more voices as well. I could hear them in back of me at times, although indistinctly. It was as if a crowd were waiting behind me while its leaders whispered in my ears; but as if the crowd was actually all one person, somehow: the Outsider. Do you want to comment?'
Crane shook his head. 'When both voices spoke at once, could you understand what they said?'
'Oh, yes. Even when they were saying quite different things, as they usually did. The difficult thing for me to understand, even now-one of the difficult things, anyway-is that all of this took place in an instant. I think I told someone later that it seemed to last hundreds of years, but the truth is that it didn't occupy any amount of time at all. It took place during something else that wasn't time, something I've never known at any other time. That's badly expressed, but perhaps you understand what I mean.'
Crane nodded.
'One of the boys-Horn, the best player we have-was reaching for a catch. He had his fingers almost on the ball, and then this took place outside of time. It was as if the Outsider had been standing in back of me all my life, but had never spoken until it was necessary. He showed me who he was and how he felt about everything he had made. Then how he felt about me, and what he wanted me to do. He warned me that he wouldn't help me. . . .' The words faded away; Silk pressed his palm to his forehead.
Crane chuckled. 'That wasn't very nice of him.'
'I don't believe it's a question of niceness,' Silk said slowly. 'It's a matter of logic. If I was to be his agent, as he asked-he never demanded anything. I ought to have emphasized that.
'But if I was to be his agent, then he was doing it; he was preserving our manteion, because that was what he wanted me to do. He is preserving it through me. I'm the help he sent, you see; and you don't rescue the rescuer, just as you don't scrub a bar of soap or buy plums to hang on your plum tree. I said I'd try to do it, of course. I said I'd try to do whatever he wanted me to.'
'So then you sallied forth to save that run-down manteion on Sun Street? And that little house where you live, and the rest of it?'
'Yes.' Silk nodded, wished he had not, and added, 'Not necessarily the buildings that are there now. If they could be replaced with new and larger buildings-Patera Remora, the coadjutor, hinted at that the other night-it would be even better. But that answers your question. That tells you whom I'm working for. Spying for, if you like, because I was spying on you.'
'For a minor god called the Outsider.'
'Yes. Correct. We were going-I was going to tell you that I knew you were a spy, the next time you came to treat my ankle. That I'd talked to people who'd provided you with information, without realizing why you wanted it, who'd carried messages for you and to you; and I'd seen a pattern in those things-I see it more clearly now, but I had seen it even then.'
Crane smiled and shook his head in mock despair. 'So did Councillor Lemur, unfortunately.' 'I see other things, too,' Silk told him. 'Why you were at Blood's, for example; and why I encountered Blood's talus here in the tunnels.'
'We're not in the tunnels,' Crane said absently, 'didn't you hear me say that there's water all around us? We're in a sunken ship in the lake. Or to be a little more exact, in a ship that was built to sink, and to float to the surface on the captain's order. To swim underwater like a fish, if you can believe that. This is the secret capital of Viron. I'd be a wealthy man as well as a hero, if only I could get that information to my superiors back home.'
Silk slid from tlie cot and crossed the room to its steel door. It was locked, as he had expected, and there was no pane of glass or peephole through which he could look out. Suddenly conscious of the odor of his body and the smears of ash on his clothing, he asked, 'Isn't there any way we can wash here?'
Crane shook his head again. 'There's a slop jar under the cot, if you want that.'
'No. Not now.'
'Then tell me why you cared whether I was a spy or not, if you weren't going to hand me over to the Ayuntamiento.'
'I was,' Silk said simply, 'if you wouldn't help me save our manteion from Blood. I was going to say that if you did that, I'd let you leave the city.'
He sat down in the corner farthest from the cot, finding the steel floor as cold and as hard as Crane had said. 'But if you wouldn't, I planned to roll you over to the hoppies. That's the way the people of our quarter would say it, and I was working for them as well as for the Outsider, who wanted to save our manteion because he cares so deeply about them.'
He pulled off his shoes. 'By 'hoppies' they mean the troopers of our Civil Guard. They say that the Guardsmen look like frogs, because of their green uniforms.'
'I know. Why did you go into the tunnels? Because I'd asked some people about them?'
Silk was peeling off his stockings as he replied. 'Not really. I didn't intend to enter the tunnels, although I'd heard of them vaguely-circles of black mechanics meeting there and so on, which they told us at the schola was a lot of nonsense. You and this wrapping you lent me had made it possible for me to walk out to Scylla's shrine on the lake. I went out there because Commissioner Simuliid had; and the person who told me that said you'd been interested to learn of it.'
'Chenille.'
'No.' Silk shook his head, knowing that it would hurt, but eager to make his answer as negative as possible.
'You know it was. Not that it matters. I was listening outside while you shrove her, by the way. I couldn't hear a lot, but I wish I'd heard that.' 'You couldn't have heard it, because it was never said. Chenille acknowledged her own transgressions, not yours.' Silk removed the wrapping.
'Have it your way. Did Blood's talus turn you over to Potto?'
'It was more complicated than that,' Silk hesitated. 'I suppose it's imprudent for me to say it; but if Councillor Potto has someone listening to us, all the better-I want to get this off my conscience. I killed Blood's talus. I had to in order to preserve my own life; but I didn't like it, and I haven't come to like it any better since it happened.'
'With . . . ?'
Silk nodded. 'With an azoth I happened to have upon my person. It was later taken from me.'
'I've got you. Maybe we'd better not say anything else about that.'
'Then let's talk about this,' Silk said, and held up the wrapping. 'You very generously lent me this, and I've been as ungrateful as I could possibly be. You know my excuse, which is that I was hoping to do what the Outsider had asked-to justify his faith in me, who in twenty-three years had never paid him even trifling honors. It wouldn't be right for me to keep this, and I'm grateful for this opportunity to return it.'
'I won't accept it. Is it cold now? It must be. Do you want me to recharge it for you?'
'I want you to take it, Doctor. I would have extorted the money I need from you if I could. I deserve no favors from you.'
'You've never gotten any, either.' Crane drew his legs onto the cot to sit cross-legged. 'I didn't invent you, but I wish I had, because I'd like to take credit for you. You're exactly what we've needed. You're a rallying point for the underclass in Viron, and a city divided is a city too weak to attack its neighbors. Now recharge that thing and put it back on your ankle.' 'I never wished to weaken Viron,' Silk told him. 'That was no part of my task.'
'Don't blame yourself. The Ayuntamiento did the damage when they assassinated the calde and governed in defiance of your Charter and their people-which won't save your life when Lemur's finished with you. He'll kill you just like he'll kill me.'
Silk nodded ruefully. 'Councillor Potto said something of the sort. I hoped-I still hope that it was no more than a threat. That he will no more kill me, despite his threat, than Blood would.'
'The situation is entirely different. You'd gone out to Blood's, and it seemed likely that others knew about it.
