“The funeral bronze is so like me, so much like the way I look now. Then there was Apu-Punchau. When he appeared…the Cumaean, she was a Hierodule, like you. Father Inire told me.”
Famulimus and Barbatus nodded.
“When Apu-Punchau appeared, he was me. I knew it, but I didn’t understand.”
“Neither did we,” Barbatus said, “when you told us about it. I think I may now.”
“Then tell me!”
He gestured toward the corpse. “There is Apu-Punchau.”
“Of course, I knew that long ago. They called me by that name, and I saw this place built. It was to be a temple, the Temple of Day , the Old Sun. But I’m Severian, and Apu-Punchau the Head of Day, too. How could my body rise from death? How could I die here at all? The Cumaean said it wasn’t his tomb, but his house.” I seemed to see her before me as I spoke, the old woman hiding the wise snake.
“She told you too that she knew not that age,” Famulimus sang.
I nodded.
“How could the warm sun die that rose each day? And how could you then die, that were that sun? Your people left you here with many a chant. And sealed your door, that you might live forever.”
Barbatus said, “We know that eventually you’ll bring the New Sun, Severian. We’ve passed through the time, as through many others, to that meeting with you in the giant’s castle — which we thought would be our last. But do you know when the New Sun was made? The sun you brought to this system to heal its old one?”
“When I was landed on Urth it was the age of Typhon, when the first great mountain was carved. But before that I was on Tzadkiel’s ship.”
“Which sometimes sails more swiftly than the winds that drive it,” Barbatus grunted. “So you know nothing.”
Famulimus sang, “If you would have our counsel now, tell all. We cannot be good guides if we walk blind.”
And so, beginning with the murder of my steward, I recounted everything that had happened to me from that time until the last moment I could recall before I woke in the House of Apu-Punchau. I have never been apt in winnowing needed details from the rest (as you, the reader of this, know too well), in part because it seems to me that all details are needed. Still less so was I then, when I could labor with my tongue and not my pen; I told them a great many things that I have not put into this record.
While I spoke, a sunbeam found its way through some chink; so I knew that I had returned to life in the night, and that a new day had begun.
And I was talking still when the potters’ wheels began their whir, and we heard the chatter of women trooping to the river that would fail their town when the sun cooled.
At last I said, “So much for me, and now for you. Can you unravel the mystery of Apu-Punchau for me now that you’ve heard all this?”
Barbatus nodded. “I believe we can. You know already that when a ship sails swiftly between the stars, minutes and days on board may be years or centuries on Urth.”
“It must be so,” I admitted, “when time was first measured by the coming and going of the light.”
“Therefore your star, the White Fountain, was born some while, and doubtless a long while, before the reign of Typhon. I’d guess that the time is not far distant now.”
Famulimus appeared to smile, and perhaps it was in fact a smile. “Indeed it must be so, Barbatus, when by the star’s own power he came here. Flying his time, he runs till he must halt; then halts he here because he cannot run.”
If Barbatus was discomposed by this interruption, nothing indicated it. “It may be that your power will return when the light of your star is first seen on Urth. If that is so, when that time comes Apu-Punchau may waken, provided he chooses to leave the place where he has found himself.”
“Wake to death in life?” I asked. “How horrible!”
Famulimus disagreed. “Say wonderful, Severian, instead. To life from death to aid the folk that loved him.”
I considered that for a time while all three stood waiting patiently. At last I said, “’Perhaps death is only horrible to us because it’s a dividing of the terror of life from the wonder of it. We see only the terror, which is left behind.”
Ossipago rumbled, “So we hope, Severian, as much as you.”
“But if Apu-Punchau is myself, what was the body I found on Tzadkiel’s ship?”
Nearly whispering, Famulimus sang, “The man whom you saw dead your mother bore. Or so it seems to me from what’s been said. Now I would weep for her if I had tears, though not — perhaps — for you still living here. What we did here for you, Severian, the mighty Tzadkiel accomplished there, remembrance taking from your dead mind to build your mind and you anew.”
“Do you mean that when I stood before Tzadkiel’s Seat of Justice, I was an eidolon Tzadkiel himself had made?”
Ossipago muttered, “Made’s too strong a term, if I have as much, access to your tongue as I like to think. Made tangible, possibly.”
I looked from him to Famulimus for enlightenment.
“You were reflected thought in your dead mind. He fixed the image, make it whole, mended the fatal wound you’d borne.”
“Made me a walking, speaking picture of myself.” Although I pronounced the words, I could scarcely bring myself to think about what they meant. “The fall killed me, just as my people killed me here.”
I bent to look at the corpse of Apu-Punchau more closely. Barbatus muttered, “Strangled, I believe.”
“Why couldn’t Tzadkiel have called me back as I called back Zama ? Healed me as I healed Herena? Why did I have to die?”
I have never been more startled than I was by what happened next: Famulimus knelt and kissed the floor before me.
Barbatus said, “What makes you think Tzadkiel wields such power? Famulimus and Ossipago and I are nothing before him, but we’re not his slaves; and great though he is, he’s not the head of his race and its savior.”
No doubt I should have felt ennobled. The fact is that I was merely stunned and excruciatingly embarrassed. I motioned urgently to Famulimus to rise again and blurted, “But you walk the Corridors of Time!”
Barbatus prostrated himself in turn as Famulimus rose.
She sang, “For but a little way, Sevenan — that we may speak with you, do common things. Our clocks run widder-shins round both your suns.”
From his knees Barbatus said, “If we’d let Ossipago take us to a better place, as he wished, it would have been an earlier one. That would not have been a better place for you, I think.”
“One further question, illustrious Hierodules, before you return me to my own period. When I spoke with Master Malrubius beside the sea, he dissolved into a glittering dust. And yet—” I could not say it, but my eyes sought out the corpse.
Barbatus nodded. “That eidolon, as you call them, had been in existence only briefly. I don’t know what energies Tzadkiel called upon to support you on the ship; it may even be that you yourself drew the support you needed from whatever source was at hand, just as you took power from the ship when you tried to raise your steward. But even if it was a source you left behind when you came here, you had lived a long time before that, on the ship, in Yesod, on the ship again, in the tender, in Typhon’s time, and so on. During all that time you breathed, ate, and drank matter that was not unstable, converting it to your body’s use. Thus it became a substantial body.”
“But I’m dead — not even here, dead back there on Tzadkiel’s ship.”
“Your twin lies dead there,” Barbatus told me. “As another lies dead here. I might say in passing that if he weren’t dead, we couldn’t have done what we did, because every living being is more than mere matter.” He paused and glanced toward Fainulimus for help, but received none. “What do you know of the anima?”