Castle of Days (1992) SSC

by Gene Wolfe

  Forlesen said, “All right,” and did as he was told; but found (to his own very great surprise) that he was not frightened.

  When he was behind the wheel of his own car again, the man from the blue car re-entered it, and (so it appeared to Forlesen) seemed to holster his gun beneath the car’s dashboard. “I’m back in my car now,” Forlesen said. “Can I tell you what it was I saw?”

  The man in the blue car said to his speaker: “This is two oh four twelve forty-three. Subject has returned to his vehicle. Repeat—subject has returned to his vehicle.”

  “Those pillars or columns or whatever they are that hold this road up—one of them moved, or at least its shadow did. I saw it.”

  The man in the blue car muttered something under his breath.

  “Are they falling down?” Forlesen asked. “Have you been noticing cracks?”

  The speaker in his car said: “Information received indicates an unauthorized stop. Continue toward your destination at once.” He noticed that the speaker in the blue car seemed to be talking to its driver as well; but he could not hear what was being said. After a moment (his own speaker had fallen silent) he heard the driver say, “Yes, ma’am. Over and out.” Then the pistol was aimed at him once more, this time at his face, through the window of the blue car. The driver said, “You roll that thing, bud, and you roll it now or I shoot.”

  Forlesen stepped on the accelerator, and his car began to move forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed until he felt sure it was traveling much faster than a man could run. In the mirror above the windshield he could see the blue car; it did not turn—as he had supposed it might—to follow him, but after a delay continued to descend the road he himself was going up.

  He had supposed that this road would lead him to Model Pattern Products (whatever that might be), but when he had been following it for some time it joined another, similar but far wider, highway. There were now multiple lines of traffic all going in the same direction, and by traveling in the fast lane he could avoid looking over the side. It was a relief he accepted gratefully; he had a good head for heights, but he had found himself studying the long shadows of the supports whenever the twistings of the road put them on the side upon which he drove.

  With that distraction out of the way he discovered that he enjoyed driving, though the memory of the twisted columns remained in the back of his mind. Yet the performance of the yellow car was deeply satisfying: it sped to the top of the high, white, billowing undulations of the highway with a power slight yet sure, and descended in a way that made him almost believe himself a hawk—or the operator of some fantastic machine that could itself soar like a bird—or even such a winged being as had appeared on the cover of the red book. The clear sky, which lay now to the right and left of the highway as well as above it, promoted these fantasies; and its snowy clouds might almost have been other highways like the one on which he traveled—indeed, from time to time he seemed to see moving dots of color on them, as though cars like his own, but immensely remote, dashed over plains and precipices of vapor. He used the defecator and the urinal, dispensed himself a sparkling green beverage; the car was a cozy and secret place of retirement, a second body, his palace and his fortress; he imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.

  He had been traveling in this way for a long while when he saw the hitchhiker. The man did not stand at the side of the road where Forlesen would have expected to see a pedestrian if, indeed, he had anticipated seeing any at all; but balanced himself on the high divider that separated the innermost lane from those on which traffic moved in the opposite direction. As he was some distance ahead, Forlesen was able to observe him for several minutes before reaching the point at which he stood.

  He appeared to be a tall man, much stooped; and despite the ludicrousness of his position, his attitude suggested a certain dignity. His hands and arms were in constant motion—not only as he sought to maintain his balance, but because he mimed to each car that passed his desire to ride, acting out in pantomime the car’s stopping—his haste to reach it—his opening the door and seating himself—his gratitude.

  Nor did he care, apparently, in which direction he rode. While Forlesen watched, he turned around and for a few moments sought to attract the attention of a passing vehicle on the opposite side; then, as though he realized that he was unlikely to have better fortune there than in the direction he had chosen originally, turned back again. His clothing was stiffly old-fashioned; once fairly good perhaps, but now worn and dusty. When Forlesen stopped before this scarecrow figure and motioned toward the seat beside him, the hitchhiker seemed so startled at having gotten a ride at last that he wondered if he were going to get in. Traffic zoomed and swirled around them like a summer storm.

  With his long legs folded high and the edge of the dashboard pressing against his shins he looked (Forlesen thought) like a cricket. An old cricket, for despite his agility and air of alertness the hitchhiker was old, his mouth full of crooked and stained old teeth and new white straight ones which were surely false, his bright, dark eyes surrounded by wrinkles, the hand he extended crook-fingered and callused. “Name’s Abraham Beale.” Bad teeth in a good smile.

  “Emanuel Forlesen,” Forlesen said, taking the hand as he started the car rolling again. “Where are you going, Mr. Beale?”

  “Anywhere.” Beale was craning his neck to look out the small window in the back of the car. “Glad you didn’t get hit,” he said. “‘Fraid you would.”

  “I’m sure they could see I had stopped,” Forlesen said, “and there are plenty of other lanes.”

  “Half of them’s asleep. More’n half. You’re awake, so I guess you thought everybody was, ain’t that right?”

  “They’re driving; I’d think they’d run off the road if they were sleeping.”

  Beale was dusting his high-crowned, battered old hat with his big hands, patting and brushing it gently as though it were a baby animal of some delicate and appealing kind, a young rabbit or a little coati mundi. “I could see them,” he said. “From where I was up there. Most of them didn’t even see me—off in cloudland somewheres.”

  “I’m going to Model Pattern Products,” Forlesen said.

  The older man shook his head, and, having finished with his hat, set it on one knee. “I already tried there,” he said, “nothin’ for me.” In a slightly lower voice, the voice of a man who is ashamed but feels he should not be, he added: “Lost my old job. I been trying to hook on somewhere else.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Forlesen found, somewhat to his surprise, that he was sorry. “What did you do?”

  “About everything. There ain’t much I can’t turn a hand to. By rights I’m a lawyer, but I’ve soldiered some and worked stock out West, and lumberjacked, and once I fired on the railroad. And I’m a pretty good reaper mechanic if I do say so myself.” Beale took a round tin box of snuff from one of the pockets of his shabby vest and put a pinch of the brown contents under his lip, then offered the box to Forlesen.

  “You’ve had an interesting time,” Forlesen said, waving it away. “I would have guessed you were a farmer, I think, if I had had to guess.”

  “Well, I’ve followed a plow and I ain’t ashamed to say it. I was raised on the farm—oldest of thirteen children, and we all helped. I’d farm again if I had the land; it would be something. You know what? My dad, he left the old place to me, and the same day I got the letter that said I was to have it—from a esteemed colleague there, you know, a old fellow named Abner Bunter, we used to call him Banty, my dad’d had him do his will for him, me not being there—I got another that said the state was taking her for a highway. Had it and lost it between rippin’ up one envelope and the other. I remember when it happened I went out and bought a cigar; I had been workin’ but I couldn’t work no more, not right then.”

  “Didn’t they pay you for it?” Forlesen asked. He had been coming up behind a car the color
of sour milk, and changed lanes as he spoke, shooting into an opening that allowed him to pass.

  “You bet. There was a check in there,” Beale said. “I planted her, but she didn’t grow.”

  Forlesen glanced at him, startled.

  “Hey!” The older man slapped his leg. “You think I’m touched. I meant I invested her.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you lost your money,” Forlesen said.

  “I didn’t exactly lose it.” Beale rubbed his chin. “It just sort of come to nothing. I still got it—draw the interest every year, they post her in the book for me—but there ain’t nothing left.” He snapped his fingers. “Tell you what it’s like. We had a tree once on the farm, a apple tree—McIntoshes I think they were. Well, it never did die, but every winter it would die back a little bit, first one limb and then another, until there wasn’t hardly anything left. Dad always thought it would come back, so he never did grub it out; but I don’t believe it ever bore after I was big enough to go to school; and I remember the year I left home he cut a switch of it for Avery—Avery was the youngest of us brothers, he was always getting into trouble, like I recollect one time he let one of Dad’s blueslate gamecocks in the pen with our big Shanghai rooster; said he thought the blueslate was too full of himself, and the big one would take him down a piece; well, what happened was the blueslate ripped him right up the front; any fool could have told him; looked like he was going to clean him without picking first. Dad was mad as hell—he thought the world of that rooster, and he used to feed him cake crumbs right out of his hand.”

  “What happened to the apple tree?” Forlesen asked.

  “That’s what I said myself,” Beale said. Forlesen waited for him to continue, but he did not. The miles (hundreds of miles, Forlesen thought) slipped by; at long intervals the speaker announced the time: “It is oh sixty-three, oh sixty-five, oh sixty-eight thirty ours.” The road dropped by slow degrees until they were level with the roofs of buildings, buildings whose roofs were jagged sawblades fronted with glass.

  Forlesen said, “Model Pattern Products is in an industrial park—the Highland Industrial Park; maybe you’ll be able to get a job there.”

  Beale nodded slowly. “I been looking out for something that looked to be in my line,” and after a moment added, “I guess I didn’t finish tellin’ you ‘bout my check I got, did I? Look here.” His left hand fumbled inside his shabby coat, and Forlesen noticed that the elbows were so threadbare that his shirt could be seen through the fabric as though the man himself had begun to be slightly transparent, at least in his external and nonessential attributes. After a moment he held out a small, dun-colored bankbook, opening it dextrously with the fingers of one hand, but to the wrong page, an empty and unused page, which he presented for Forlesen’s inspection. “That’s all there is,” he said. “I never drew a nickel, and I put the interest, most times, right smack back in; and that’s all that’s left. That’s Dad’s farm, them little numbers in the book.”

  Forlesen said, “I see.”

  “They didn’t cheat me,” Beale continued, “that was a good hunk of money when they give it to me, big money. But it’s went down and down since till it’s only little money, and little money ain’t hardly worth nothing. Listen, you’re young yit—I suppose you think two dollars is twice as much as one? Like, if you’re paid one and some other feller gits two, he’s got twice as much as you? Or the other way around?”

  “I suppose so,” Forlesen said.

  “Well, you’re right. Now suppose you’ve got—I won’t ask you to tell me, I’ll just strike upon a figure here from your general age and appearance and whatnot—five thousand dollars. And the other’s got fifty thousand. Would you say he had ten times what you did?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong; he’s got fifty times, a hundred times what you do—maybe two hundred. Ain’t you never noticed how a man with fifty thousand cold behind him will act? Like you’re nothin’ to him, you don’t even weigh in his figuring at all.”

  Forlesen smiled. “Are you saying five thousand times ten isn’t fifty thousand?”

  “Look at it this way: you take your dollar to the store and you can git a dozen of eggs and a can of beans and a plug of tobacco. The other takes his two and gits two dozen of eggs, two cans of beans, and two plugs—ain’t that right? But a man that has big money don’t pay fifteen cents a plug like you and me; he can buy by the case if he feels inclined, and if he gits very much he gits it cheap as the store. Another thing—some things he can buy you and me can’t git at all. It ain’t that we can buy less, we can’t git even a little bit of it. Let me give you an example: the railroads and the coal mines buy your state legislatures, right? Sure they do, and everybody knows it. Now there’s thousands and thousands of people on the other side of them, and those thousands of people, if you was to add their money up, would be worth more. But they can’t buy the legislature at all, ain’t that right?”

  “Go on,” Forlesen said.

  “Well, don’t that prove that little money’s power to buy certain things is zero? If it had any at all, thousands and thousands times it would make those people the kings of the state, but the actual fact is they can’t do a thing—thousands time nothing is still nothing.” Suddenly Beale turned, staring out the window of the car, and Forlesen realized that while they had been talking the road had descended to the ground. Still many-laned, it passed now through a level landscape dotted with great, square buildings which, despite their size, made no pretense of majesty or grace, but seemed in every case intentionally ugly. They were constructed of the cheapest materials, mostly corrugated metal and cinderblock, and each was surrounded by a high, rusty, wire fence, with a barren area of asphalt or gravel beyond it as though to provide (Forlesen knew the thought was ridiculous) a clear field of fire for defenders within.

  “Hold up!” Beale said urgently. “Hold up a minute there.” He gripped Forlesen’s right arm, and Forlesen jockeyed the car to the outermost lane of traffic, then onto the rutted clay at the shoulder of the road.

  “Look ’e there!” Beale said, pointing down a broad alley between two of the huge buildings.

  Forlesen looked as directed. “Horses.”

  “Mustangs! Never been broke, you can tell that from looking at ‘em. Whoever’s got ’em’s going to need some help.” Beale opened the car door, then turned and shook Forlesen’s hand. “Well, you’ve been a friend,” he said, “and if ever I can do anything for you just you ask.” Then he was gone, and Forlesen sat, for a moment, looking at the billboard-sized sign above the building into which the horses were being driven. It showed a dog’s head in a red triangle on a field of black, without caption of any kind.

  The speaker said: “Do not stop en route. You are still one and one half aisles from Model Pattern Products, your place of employment.”

  Forlesen nodded and looked at the watch his wife had given him. It was 069.50.

  “You are to park your car,” the speaker continued, “in the Model Pattern Products parking lot. You are not to occupy any position marked VISITORS, or any position marked with a name not your own.”

  “Do they know I’m coming?” Forlesen asked, pressing the button.

  “An employee service folder has already been made out for you,” the speaker told him. “All that needs to be done is to fill in your name.”

  The Model Pattern Products parking lot was enclosed by a high fence; but the gates were open, and the hinges so rusted that Forlesen, who stopped in the gateway for a moment thinking some guard or watchman might wish to challenge him, wondered if they had ever been closed; the ground itself, covered with loose gravel the color of ash, sloped steeply; he was forced to drive carefully to keep his car from skidding among the concrete stops of brilliant orange provided to prevent the parked cars from rolling down the grade; most of these were marked either with some name not his or with the word VISITOR, but he eventually discovered an unmarked position (unattractive, apparently, because s
moke from a stubby flue projecting from the back of an outbuilding would blow across it) and left his car. His legs ached.

  He was thirty or forty feet from his car when he realized he no longer had the speaker to advise him; several people were walking toward the gray metal building that was Model Pattern Products, but all were too distant for him to talk to them without shouting, and something in their appearance suggested that they would not wait for him to overtake them in any case. He followed them through a small door and found himself alone.

  An anteroom held two time clocks, one beige, the other brown. Remembering the instruction sheet, he took a blank timecard from the rack and wrote his name at the top, then pushed it into the beige machine and depressed the lever. A gong sounded. He withdrew the card and checked the stamped time: 069.56. A thin, youngish woman with large glasses and a sharp nose looked over his shoulder. “You’re late,” she said. (He was aware for an instant of the effort she was making to read his name at the top of the card.) “Mr. Forlesen.”

  He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know the starting time.”

  The woman said: “Oh seventy ours sharp, Mr. Forlesen. Start oh seventy ours sharp, coffee for your subdivision one hundred ours to one hundred and one. Lunch one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty-one. Coffee, your subdivision, one fifty to one fifty-one P.M. Quit one seventy ours at the whistle.”

  “Then I’m not late,” Forlesen said. He showed her his card.

  “Mr. Frick likes everyone to be at least twenty minutes early, especially supervisory and management people. The real go-getters—that’s what he calls them—the real go-getters—try to be early. I mean, earlier than the regular early. Oh sixty-nine twenty-five, something like that. They unlock their desks and go upstairs for early coffee, and sometimes they play cards; it’s fun.”