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?”
I thought then of Ava, and what she had said to me: “You’re a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn’t make materialism true.” Little Ava had died with Foila and the rest. “Nothing,” I muttered. “I know nothing of the anima.”
“In a way, it’s like a line of verse. Famulimus, what was the one you quoted to me?”
His wife sang, “Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night, Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight.”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
Barbatus pointed. “Suppose I were to write those lines upon that wall — and then to write them again upon that other wall. Which would be the true lines?”
“Both,” I said. “And neither. The true lines are not writing, nor speech either. I can’t say what they are.”
“That is the way of the anima, as I understand it. It was written there.” He indicated the dead man. “Now it is written in you. When the light of the White Fountain touches Urth, it will be written there again. Yet the anima will not be erased in you by that writing. Unless—”
I waited for him to continue.
Ossipago said, “Unless you come too close. If you write a name in the dust and retrace it with your finger, there are not two names, but one. If two currents flow through a conductor, there is one current.”
While I stared in disbelief, Famulimus sang, “You came too near your double once, you know; that was here, in this poor town of stones. Then he was gone, and only you remained. Our eidolons are always of the dead. Have you not wondered why? Be warned!”
Barbatus nodded. “But as for our returning you to your own time, we can’t help you. Your green man knew more than we, perhaps; or at least he had more energy at his disposal. We’ll leave you food, water, and a light; but you’ll have to wait for the White Fountain. It shouldn’t be long, as Famulimus said.”
She had begun to fade into the past already, so that her song seemed to come from far away. “Do not destroy the corpse, Severian. However tempted you may be — be warned!”
Barbatus and Ossipago had faded while I watched Famulimus. When her voice was gone, there was no sound in the House of Apu-Punchau but his own faint breath.