Where I put you, there you lie,

Never let a stranger spy,

Like grass grow to any eye,

Not of me.

Here be safe, never leave it,

Should a hand come, deceive it,

Let strange eyes not believe it,

Till I see.

The stone was smaller and lighter than I remembered. The coin beneath it had grown dull with damp; but it was still there, and in a moment I held it again and recalled the boy I had been, walking shaken back to the torn wall through the fog.

Now I must ask you, you that have pardoned so many deviations and digressions from me, to excuse one more. It is the last.

A few days ago (which is to say, a long time after the real termination of the events I have set myself to narrate) I was told that a vagabond had come here to the House Absolute saying that he owed me money, and that he refused to pay it to anyone else. I suspected that I was about to see some old acquaintance, and told the chamberlain to bring him to me.

It was Dr. Talos. He appeared to be in funds, and he had dressed himself for the occasion in a capot of red velvet and a cechia of the same material. His face was still that of a stuffed fox; but it seemed to me at times that some hint of life crept into it, that something or someone now peered through the glass eyes.

“You have bettered yourself,” he said, making such a low bow that the tassel of his cap swept the carpet. “You may recall that I invariably affirmed you would. Honesty, integrity, and intelligence cannot be kept down.”

“We both know that nothing is easier to keep down,” I said. “By my old guild, they were kept down every day. But it is good to see you again, even if you come as the emissary of your master.”

For a moment the doctor looked blank. “Oh, Baldanders, you mean. No, he has dismissed me, I’m afraid. After the fight. After he dived into the lake.”

“You believe he survived, then.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure he survived. You didn’t know him as I did, Severian. Breathing water would be nothing to him. Nothing! He had a marvellous mind. He was a supreme genius of a unique sort: every thing, turned inward. He combined the objectivity of the scholar with the self-absorption of the mystic.”

I said, “By which you mean he carried out experiments on himself.”

“Oh, no, not at all. He reversed that! Others experiment upon themselves in order to derive some rule they can apply to the world. Baldanders experimented on the world and spent the proceeds, if I can put it so bluntly, upon his person. They say—” here he looked about nervously to make sure no one but myself was in earshot “—they say I’m a monster, and so I am. But Baldanders was more monster than I.

In some sense he was my father, but he had built himself. It’s the law of nature, and of what is higher than nature, that each creature must have a creator. But Baldanders was his own creation; he stood behind himself, and cut himself off from the line linking the rest of us with the Increate. However, I stray from my Subject.” The doctor had a wallet of scarlet leather at his belt; he loosened the strings and began to rummage in it. I heard the chink of metal.

“Do you carry money now?” I asked. “You used to give everything to him.”

His voice sank until I could hardly hear it. “Wouldn’t you, in my present position, do the same thing?

Now I leave coins, little stacks of aes and orichalks, near water.” He spoke more loudly: “It does no harm, and reminds me of the great days. But I am honest, you see! He always demanded that of me. And he was honest too, after his fashion. Anyway, do you recall the morning before we came out the gate? I was handing round the receipts from the night before, and we were interrupted. There was a coin left, and it was to go to you, I saved it and meant to give it to you later, but I forgot, and then when you came to the castle....” He gave me a sidelong glance. “But fair-trade ends paid, as they say, and I have Abere.”

The coin was precisely like the one I had taken from under the stone.

“You see now why I couldn’t give it to your man—I’m sure he thought me mad.”

I flipped the coin and caught it. It felt as though it had been lightly greased. “To tell the truth. Doctor, we don’t.”

“Because it’s false; of course. I told you so that morning. How could I have told him I had come to pay the Autarch, and then given him bad coin? They’re terrified of you, and they’d have disembowelled me looking for a good one Is it true you’ve an explosive that takes days to go up, so you can blow people apart slowly?”

I was looking at the two coins; They had the same brassy shine and appeared to have been struck in the same die. But that little interview, as I have said, took place a long tame after the proper close of my narrative. I returned to my chambers in the Flag Tower by the way I had come, and when I reached them again, took off the dripping cloak and hung it up. Master Gurloes used to say that not wearing a shirt was the hardest thing about belonging to the guild. Though he meant it ironically, it was in some sense true. I, who had gone through the mountains with a naked chest, had been softened sufficiently by a few days in the stifling autarchial vestments to shiver at a foggy autumn night.