I turned to Apheta and began, “What I want to know—”
But Gunnie caught me by the shoulder, her hand large and strong for a woman’s, and drew me back to her. “We thought it wouldn’t be for a long while yet, a long while after we were dead.”
Apheta whispered, “When you sign aboard that ship, you sail from the Beginning to the End. All sailors know that.”
“We didn’t think about it. Not until you made us. He made us see it. Zak.”
I asked, “And you knew it was Zak?”
Gunnie nodded. “I was with him when they caught him. I don’t think I would have known otherwise. Or maybe I would. He’d changed a lot, so I knew already he wasn’t what we thought at first. He’s — I don’t know.”
Apheta whispered, “May I tell you? He is a reflection, an imitation, of what you will be.”
I asked, “You mean if the New Sun comes?”
“No. I mean that it is coming. That your trial is over. You have been obsessed with it for so long, I know, and it must be difficult for you to realize that it is truly over. You have succeeded. You have saved your future.”
“You have succeeded too,” I said.
Apheta nodded. “You understand that now.”
Gunnie said, “I don’t. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see? The Hierarchs and their Hierodules — and the Hierogrammates too — have been trying to let us become what we were. What we can be. Isn’t that right, my lady? That’s their justice, their whole reason for being. They bring us through the pain we brought them through. And—” I could not complete the thought. The words had become iron on my lips.
Apheta said, “You in turn will make us go through what you did. I think you understand. But you” — she looked to Gunnie — “do not. Your race and ours are, perhaps, no more than each other’s reproductive mechanisms. You are a woman, and so you say you produce your ovum so that there will someday be another woman. But your ovum would say it produces that woman so that someday there will be another ovum. We have wanted the New Sun to succeed as badly as he has wanted to himself. More urgently, in all truth. In saving your race he has saved ours; as we have saved ours of the future by saving yours.”
Apheta turned back to me. “I told you that you had brought unwelcome news. The news was that we might indeed lose the game you and I spoke of.”
I said, “I have three questions, my lady. Let me ask them and I’ll go, if you’ll let me.”
She nodded.
“How is it that Tzadkiel could say my examination was over, when the aquastors had to fight and die to save me?”
“The aquastors did not die,” Apheta told me. “They live in you. As for Tzadkiel, he spoke as he did because it was the truth. He had examined the future and found the chance high that you would bring a fresh sun to your Urth, and thus save that strand of your race, so that it might produce ours in your Briahtic universe. It was on that examination that everything hinged; it was over, and the result favorable to you.”
Gunnie looked from Apheta to me and seemed about to speak, but she said nothing.
“My second question. Tzadkiel said also that my trial could not be just, and that he would make what reparation he could. You have said that he is truthful. Did my trial differ from my examination? How was it unjust?”
Apheta’s voice seemed no more than a sigh. “It is easy for those who need not judge, or judging need not toil for justice, to complain of inequity and talk of impartiality. When one must actually judge, as Tzadkiel does, he finds he cannot be just to one without being unjust to another. In fairness to those on Urth who will die, and especially to the poor and ignorant people who will never understand what it is they die for, he summoned their representatives—”
“Us, you mean!” Gunnie exclaimed.
“Yes, you shipmen. And he gave you, Autarch, those who had reason to hate you for your defenders. That was just to the shipmen, but not to you.”
“I have deserved punishment often before, and not received it.”
Apheta nodded. “For that reason certain of the scenes you saw, or at least might have seen had you troubled to look, were made to appear in the narrow passage that rings this room. Some recalled your duty. Others were meant to show you that you yourself had often meted out the harshest justice. Do you see now why you were chosen?”
“A torturer, to save the world? Yes.”
“Take your head out of your hands. It is enough that you and this poor woman can scarcely hear me. At least permit me to hear you. You have asked the three questions you spoke of. Have you more?”
“Many. I saw Dana. And Guasacht and Erblon. Had they reason to hate me?”
“I do not know,” Apheta whispered. “You must ask Tzadkiel, or those who assisted him. Or ask yourself.”
“I suppose they had. I would have displaced Erblon if I could. As Autarch, I could have promoted Guasacht, but I did not; and I never tned to find Dana after the battle. There were so many other things — so many important things — to do. I see why you called me a monster.”
Gunnie exclaimed, “You’re no monster, she is!”
I shrugged. “Yet all of them fought for Urth, and so did Gunnie. That was wonderful.”
“Not for the Urth you have known,” Apheta whispered. “For a New Urth many will never see, except through your eyes and the eyes of others who recall them. Have you more questions?”
Gunnie said, “I’ve got one. Where are my shipmates? The ones who ran and saved their lives?”
I sensed that she was ashamed for them. I said, “Their running saved ours too, very likely.”
“They will be returned to the ship,” Apheta told her.
“What about Severian and me?”
I said, “They’ll try to kill us on the voyage home, Gunnie; or perhaps not. If they do, we’ll have to deal with them.”
Apheta shook her head. “You will be returned to the ship indeed, but by a different way. Believe me, the problem will not arise.”
Dark-robed Hierarchs came down the aisle with travails, gathering the dead. “They will be interred in the grounds of this building,” Apheta whispered. “Have we reached your last question, Autarch?”
“Nearly. But look there. One of those bodies belongs to one of your own people, to Tzadkiel’s son.”
“He will lie here as well, with those who fell with him.”
“But was it intended so? Did his father plan that too?”
“That he should die? No. But that he should risk death. What right would we have to risk your life and the lives of so many others if we would bear no risk ourselves? Tzadkiel risked death with you on the ship. Venant here.”
“He knew what would happen?”
“Do you mean Tzadkiel or Venant? Venant surely did not know what would happen, yet he knew what might happen, and he went forth to save our race, as others have gone forth to save theirs. For Tzadkiel I cannot speak.”
“You told me each of the isles judges a galaxy. Are we — is Urth — important to you after all?”
Apheta rose, smoothing her white gown. Her floating hair, which had seemed uncanny to me when I had seen it first, was familiar now; I felt sure that such a dark aureole was depicted somewhere in old Rudesind’s illimitable gallery, though I could not quite call the proper painting to mind. She said, “We have watched with the dead. Now they go, and it is time that we went also. It may be that from your ancient Urth, reborn, the Hieros will come. I believe it to be so. But I am only one woman, and of no high position. I said what I did so that you would not die despairing.”
Gunnie started to speak, but Apheta motioned her to silence, saying, “Now follow me.”
We did, but she walked only a step or two to the spot where Tzadkiel’s Seat of Justice had stood. “Severian, take her hand,” she told me. She herself took my free hand, and Gunnie’s.