I was still attempting to regain my mental balance as I looked from one to the other; there was no change in the appearance or manner of either. “But he beats you,” I said. “I have seen him.”
“Once I overheard you while you confided in the smaller woman. You destroyed another woman, whom you loved. Yet you were her slave.”
Dr. Talos said, “I must get him up, you see. He must exercise, and it is a part of what I do for him. I’m told that the Autarch — whose health is the happiness of his subjects — has an isochronon in his sleeping chamber, a gift from another autarch from beyond the edge of the world. Perhaps it is the master of these gentlemen here. I don’t know. Anyway, he fears a dagger at his throat and will let no one near him when he sleeps, so this device tells the watches of his night. When dawn comes, it rouses him. How then should he, the master of the Commonwealth, permit his sleep to be disturbed by a mere machine? Baldanders created me as his physician, as he told you. Severian, you’ve known me some time. Would you say I was much afflicted with the infamous vice of false modesty?”
I managed a smile as I shook my head.
“Then I must tell you that I am not responsible for my virtues, such as they are. Baldanders wisely made me all that he is not, so that I might counterweight his deficiencies. I am not fond of money, for example. That’s an excellent thing for the patient, in a personal physician. And I am loyal, to my friends, because he is the first of them.”
“Still,” I said, “I have always been astounded that he did not slay you.” It was so cold in the room that I drew my cloak closer about me, though I felt sure that the present deceptive calm could not long endure.
The giant said, “You must know why I keep my temper in check. You have seen me lose it. To have them sitting there, watching me, as though I were a bear on a chain—”
Dr. Talos touched his hand; there was something womanly in the gesture. “It’s his glands, Severian. The endocrine system and the thyroid. Everything must be managed so carefully, otherwise he would grow too fast. And then I must see that his weight doesn’t break his bones, and a thousand other things.”
“The brain,” the giant rumbled. “The brain is the worst of all, and the best.”
I said, “Did the Claw help you? If not, perhaps it will, in my hands. It has performed more for me in a short time than it did for the Pelerines in many years.”
When Baldanders’s face showed no sign of comprehension, Dr. Talos said, “He means the gem the fishermen sent. It is supposed to perform miraculous cures.”
At that Ossipago turned to face us at last. “How interesting. You have it here? May we see it?”
The doctor looked anxiously from the cacogen’s expressionless mask to Baldanders’s face and back again as he said, “Please, Your Worships, it is nothing. A fragment of corundum.”
In all the time since I had entered this level of the tower, none of the cacogens had shifted his place by more than a cubit; now Ossipago crossed to my chair with short, waddling steps. I must have recoiled from him, for he said, “You need not fear me, though we do your kind much hurt. I want to hear about this Claw, which the homunculus tells us is only a mineral specimen.”
When I heard him say that, I was afraid that he and his companions would take the Claw from Baldanders and carry it to their own home beyond the void, but I reasoned that they could not do so unless they forced him to produce it, and that if they did that, it might be possible for me to gain possession of it, which I might fail to do otherwise. So I told Ossipago all the things the Claw had accomplished while it had been in my keeping — about the uhlan on the highway, and the man-apes, and all the other instances of its power that I have already recorded here. As I spoke, the giant’s face grew harder, and the doctor’s, I thought, more anxious.
When I had finished, Ossipago said, “And now we must see the wonder itself. Bring it out, please,” and Baldanders rose and stalked across the wide room, making all his machines appear mere toys by his size, and at last pulled out the drawer of a little, white-topped table and took out the gem. It was more dull in his hand than I had ever seen it; it might have been a bit of blue glass.
The cacogen took it from him and held it up in his painted glove, though he did not turn up his face to look at it as a man would. There it seemed to catch the light from the yellow lamps that sprouted downward from above, and in that light it flashed a clear azure. “Very beautiful,” he said. “And most interesting, though it cannot have performed the feats ascribed to it.”
“Obviously,” Famulimus sang, and made another of those gestures that so recalled to me the statues in the gardens of the Autarch.
“It is mine,” I told them. “The shore people took it from me by force. May I have it back?”
“If it is yours,” Barbatus said, “where did you get it?”
I began the task of describing my meeting with Agia and the destruction of the altar of the Pelerines, but he cut me short.
“All this is speculation. You did not see this jewel upon the altar, nor did you feel the woman’s hand when she gave it to you, if in fact she did. Where did you get it?”
“I found it in a compartment of my sabretache.” It seemed that there was nothing else to say.
Barbatus turned away as though disappointed. “And you…” He looked toward Baldanders. “Ossipago has the jewel now, and he got it from you. Where did you get it?”
Baldanders rumbled, “You saw me. From the drawer of that table.”
The cacogen nodded by moving his mask with his hands. “You see then, Severian, his claim has become as good as yours.”
“But the gem is mine and not his.”
“It is not our task to judge between you; you must settle that when we are gone. But out of curiosity, which torments even such strange creatures as you believe us to be — Baldanders, will you keep it?”
The giant shook his head. “I would not have such a monument to superstition in my laboratory.”
“Then there should be little difficulty in effecting a settlement,” Barbatus declared. “Severian, would you like to watch our craft rise? Baldanders always comes to see us off, and though he is not the type to rhapsodize over views artificial or natural, I should think myself that it must be worth seeing.” He turned away, adjusting his white robes.
“Worshipful Hierodules,” I said, “I would very much like to, but I want to ask you something before you go. When I arrived, you said you had no greater joy than seeing me, and you knelt. Did you mean what you said, or anything like it? Were you confusing me with someone else?”
Baldanders and Dr. Talos had risen to their feet when the cacogen first mentioned his departure. Now, though Famulimus remained to listen to my questions, the others had already begun to move away; Barbatus was mounting the stair that led to the level above, with Ossipago, still carrying the Claw, not far behind him.
I began to walk too, because I feared to be separated from it, and Famulimus walked with me. “Though you did not now pass our test, I meant no less than what I said to you.” His voice was like the music of some wonderful bird, bridging the abyss from a wood unattainable. “How often we have taken counsel, Liege. How often we have done each other’s will. You know the water women, I believe. Are Ossipago, brave Barbatus, I, to be so much less sapient than they?”
I drew a deep breath. “I don’t know what you mean. But somehow I feel that though you and your kind are hideous, you are good. And that the undines are not, though they are so lovely, as well as so monstrous, that I can scarcely look at them.”
“Is all the world a war of good and bad? Have you not thought it might be something more?”
I had not, and could only stare.