The Urth of the New Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

places—they must be parallel, and the starlight shines on them." Purn nodded again. "That's what makes the ship go, as the skipper said when they asked about the wench."
    "I once knew a man called Hethor who summoned deadly things to serve him. And I was told by one called Vodalus—Vodalus was not to be trusted, I'll admit—that Hethor used mirrors to bring them. I've a friend who works mirror spells too, though his are not evil. Hethor had been a hand on a ship like this."
    That captured Purn's attention. He withdrew his finger and turned to face me. "You know her name?" he asked.
    "The name of his ship? No, I don't think he ever mentioned it. Wait... He said he'd been on several. 'Long I signed on the silver-sailed ships, the hundred-masted whose masts reached out to touch the stars."'
    "Ah." Purn nodded. "Some say there's only one. That's something I wonder about, sometimes."
    "Surely there must be many. Even when I was a boy, people told me of them, the ships of the cacogens putting into the Port of Lune."
    "Where's that?"
    "Lune? It's the moon of my world, the moon of Urth."
    "That was small stuff, then," Purn told me. "Tenders and launches and so forth. Nobody never said there wasn't a lot of little stuff shuttling around between the various worlds of the various suns. Only this ship here and the other ones like it, allowing that there's more than the one, they don't come in so close, generally. They can do it all right, but it's a tricky business. Then too, there's a good bit of rock whizzing around, close in to a sun, usually." The white-haired Idas appeared carrying a collection of tools. " Hello! " he called, and I waved to him.
    "I ought to get busy," Purn muttered. "Me and that one are supposed to be taking care of
    'em. I was just looking around to be sure they were all right when I saw you, uh, uh..."
    "Severian," I said. "I was the Autarch—the ruler—of the Commonwealth; now I'm the surrogate of Urth, and its ambassador. Do you come from Urth, Purn?"
    "Don't think I've ever been, but maybe I have." He looked thoughtful. "Big white moon?"
    "No, it's green. You were on Verthandi, perhaps; I've read that its moons are pale gray" Purn shrugged. "I don't know."
    Idas had come up to us by then, and he said, "It must be wonderful." I had no notion of what he meant. Purn moved away, looking at the beasts.
    As if we were two conspirators Idas whispered, "Don't worry about him. He's afraid I'll report him for not working."
    "Aren't you afraid I'll report you? " I asked. There was something about Idas that irritated me, though perhaps it was only his seeming weakness.
    "Oh, do you know Sidero?"
    "Who I know is my own affair, I believe."
    "I don't think you know anyone," he said. And then, as if he had committed a merely social blunder, "But maybe you do. Or I could introduce you. I will, if you want me to."
    "I do," I told him. "Introduce me to Sidero at the first opportunity. I demand to be returned to my stateroom."
    Idas nodded. "I will. Perhaps you wouldn't mind if I came there to talk with you sometime?
    You—I hope you'll excuse me for saying this—you know nothing about ships, and I know nothing about such places as, ah..."
    "Urth?"
    "Nothing of worlds. I've seen a few pictures, but other than that, all I know are these." He gestured vaguely toward the beasts. "And they are bad, always bad. But perhaps there are good things on the worlds too, that never live long enough to find their way to the decks."
    "Surely they're not all evil."
    "Oh, yes," he said. "Oh, yes they are. And I, who have to clean up after them, and feed them, and adjust the atmosphere for them if they need it, would rather kill them all; but Sidero and Zelezo would beat me if I did."
    "I wouldn't be surprised if they killed you," I told him. I had no desire to see such a fascinating collection wiped out by this petty man's spite. "Which would be just, I think. You look as though you belong among them yourself."
    "Oh, no," he said