“Some of the islanders gave me an escort,” I said, trying to put the best face I could on things. “You must know of them. They live on the floating masses of reeds in the lake.”
“They are rising against you!” Dr. Talos told the giant. “I warned you this would happen.” He rushed to the window through which the being called Ossipago seemed to look, shouldering him to one side, and stared out into the night. Then, turning toward the cacogen, he knelt, seized his hand, and kissed it. This hand was quite plainly a glove of some flexible material painted to resemble flesh, with something in it that was not a hand.
“You will help us, Worship, will you not? You have fantassins aboard your ship, surely. Once line the walls with horrors, and we will be safe for a century.”
In his slow voice, Baldanders said, “Severian will be the victor. Else why did they kneel to him? Though he may die, and we may not. You know their ways, Doctor. The looting may disseminate knowledge.”
Dr. Talos turned upon him furiously. “Did it before? I ask you!”
“Who can say, Doctor?”
“You know it did not. They are the same ignorant, superstitious brutes they have always been!” He whirled again. “Noble Hierodules, answer me. You must know, if anyone does.”
Famulimus gestured, and I was never more aware of the truth behind his mask than I was at that moment, for no human arm could have made the motion his did, and it was a meaningless motion, conveying neither agreement nor disagreement, neither irritation nor consolation.
“I will not speak of all the things you know,” he said. “That those you fear have learned to overcome you. It may be true that they are simple still; still, something carried home may make them wise.”
He was addressing the doctor, but I could contain myself no longer and said, “May I ask what you’re talking about, sieur?”
“I speak of you, of all of you, Severian. It cannot harm you now, that I should speak.”
Barbatus interjected, “Only if you don’t do it too freely.”
“There is a mark they use upon some world, where sometimes our worn ship finds rest at last. It is a snake with heads at either end. One head is dead — the other gnaws at it.”
Without turning from the window, Ossipago said, “That is this world, I think.”
“No doubt Camoena could reveal its home. But then, it doesn’t matter if you know it. You will understand me the more clearly. The living head stands for destruction. The head that does not live, for building. The former feeds upon the latter; and feeding, nourishes its food. A boy might think that if the first should die, the dead, constructive thing would triumph, making his twin now like himself. The truth is both would soon decay.”
Barbatus said, “As so often, my good friend is less than clear. Are you following him?”
“I am not!” Dr. Talos announced angrily. He turned away as if in disgust and hurried down the stair.
“That does not matter,” Barbatus told me, “since his master does.”
He paused as though waiting for Baldanders to contradict him, then continued, still addressing me. “Our desire, you see, is to advance your race, not to indoctrinate it.”
“Advance the shore people?” I asked.
All this time, the waters of the lake were murmuring their night-grief through the window. Ossipago’s voice seemed to blend with it as he said, “All of you…”
“It is true then! What so many sages have suspected. We are being guided. You watch over us, and in the ages of our history, which must seem no more than days to you, you have raised us from savagery.” In my enthusiasm, I drew out the brown book, still somewhat damp from the wetting I had given it earlier in the day, despite its wrappings of oiled silk. “Here, let me show you what this says: ‘Man, who is not wise, is yet the object of wisdom. If wisdom finds him a fit object, is it wise in him to make light of his folly?’ Something like that.”
“You are mistaken,” Barbatus told me. “Ages are aeons to us. My friend and I have dealt with your race for less than your own lifetime.”
Baldanders said, “These things live only a score of years, like dogs.” His tone told me more than is written here, for each word fell like a stone dropped down some deep cistern.
I said, “That cannot be.”
“You are the work for which we live,” Famulimus explained. “That man you call Baldanders lives to learn. We see that he hoards up past lore — hard facts like seeds to give him power. In time he’ll die by hands that do not store, but die with some slight gain for all of you. Think of a tree that splits a rock. It gathers water, the sun’s life-bringing heat… and all the stuff of life for its own use. In time it dies and rots to dress the earth, that its own roots have made from stone. Its shadow gone, fresh seeds spring up; in time a forest flourishes where it stood.”
Dr. Talos emerged again from the stairwell, clapping slowly and derisively.
I asked, “You have left them these machines, then?” I was acutely conscious, as I spoke, of the eviscerated woman mumbling beneath her glass somewhere behind me, a thing that once would not have bothered the torturer Severian in the least.
Barbatus said, “No. Those he found, or constructed for himself. Famulimus said that he wished to learn, and that we saw to it that he did, not that we taught him. We teach no one anything, and only trade such devices as are too complex for your people to duplicate.”
Dr. Talos said, “These monsters, these horrors, do nothing for us. You’ve seen them — you know what they are. When my poor patient ran wild through them in the theater of the House Absolute, they nearly killed him with their pistols.”
The giant shifted in his great chair. “You need not feign sympathy, Doctor. It suits you badly. Playing the fool while they looked on…” His immense shoulders rose and fell. “I shouldn’t have let it overcome me. They’ve agreed now to forget.”
Barbatus said, “We could have killed your creator easily that night, as you know. We burned him only enough to turn aside his charges.”
I recalled then what the giant had told me when we parted in the forest beyond the Autarch’s gardens — that he was the doctor’s master. Now, before I had time to consider what I was doing, I seized the doctor’s hand. Its skin seemed as warm and living as my own, though curiously dry. After a moment he jerked away.
“What are you?” I demanded, and when he did not answer, I turned to the beings who called themselves Famulimus and Barbatus. “Once, sieurs, I knew a man who was only partly human flesh…”
They looked toward the giant instead of replying, and though I knew their faces were only masks, I felt the force of their demand.
“A homunculus,” Baldanders rumbled.
XXXIV
Masks
THE RAIN CAME as he spoke, a cold rain that struck the rude, gray stones of the castle with a million icy fists. I sat down, clamping Terminus Est between my knees to keep them from shaking.
“I had already concluded,” I said with as much self-possession as I could summon, “that when the islanders told me of a small man who paid for the building of this place, they were speaking of the doctor. But they said that you, the giant, had come afterward.”
“I was the small man. The doctor came afterward.”
A cacogen showed a dripping, nightmare face at the window, then vanished. Possibly he had conveyed some message to Ossipago, though I heard nothing. Ossipago spoke without turning. “Growth has its disadvantages, though for your species it is the only method by which youth can be reinstated.”
Dr. Talos sprang to his feet. “We will overcome them! He has put himself in my hands.”
Baldanders said, “I was forced to. There was no one else. I created my own physician.”