Home Fires

by Gene Wolfe

  Chelle made a soft little sound that might have meant anything or nothing.

  Vanessa gasped.

  And Chelle said, “Listen, we gotta keep in touch, all of us. You tell Joe and the sarge. Tell everybody.”

  There was a soft sigh—perhaps from Don.

  Chelle turned. “Hey, Skip, what’s our address?”

  He gave it.

  “What’s the apartment number? I forgot.”

  “Penthouse,” he said. “Just tell them to write penthouse.”

  She stared at him.

  “We were renegotiating the penthouse lease. Before we left I told the manager to terminate the negotiations, that we’d move in when we got home.”

  Don borrowed a pen and a used envelope from the white-bearded man and began scribbling rapidly.

  “I don’t know about e-mail or any of that shit yet,” Chelle told him. “Only I’ll give you my phone number if you’ll hand over that pen.”

  “Thanks!” Don said. “I’ll be calling you.”

  “Sure.” When he had gone, Chelle sat down and took a sip of wine and a bite of fish. “You know, I donno why the fuck I stood up when he came. He’s not an officer.”

  The white-bearded man told her, “All of us have forces within us, honey. Energies unseen by our conscious minds.”

  “Isn’t he just amazing?” Vanessa looked from Skip to Chelle—then back to Skip, seeking confirmation. “Why did I void our contract, Charles? I’ve forgotten.”

  “I treated you shamefully, showering you with money, then stealing it back when you were out shopping. When I stole the money other men had given you—”

  “Why you big liar! No wonder I voided it!”

  “And now you know.” The white-bearded man winked at Skip. “Which is what you wanted.”

  “What I want to know,” Skip said, “is why you booked under an assumed name.”

  “Did I?” The white-bearded man looked puzzled. “Really? I have forgotten.”

  “I got a ship’s officer to call the purser’s office for me. He asked whether there were any passengers named Blue. The purser’s office, which would surely know, said there was one and only one. That was Mastergunner Chelle Sea Blue. No other Blues.”

  “I see.”

  “I’d like to see, too,” Skip said. “What name did you book under?”

  “It hardly matters, does it? I could explain how I came to use my friend’s reservation, but you wouldn’t believe me—or at least you would ask confirmation, which I could not provide beyond a phone call.”

  “You would give me your friend’s number?”

  “Of course I will.” The white-bearded man smiled. “His name as well.”

  “I’d like them both. Will you lend me that pen?”

  He did, and Skip’s wallet provided a scrap of paper.

  “The number is two, one, two, nine…” The white bearded man paused.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Three, three, four, one, one, seven, seven, two, two. My friend is Cole Baum. Coleman A. Baum, if you wish to be precise.”

  Skip wrote.

  “I have a phone, if you’d like to borrow it.”

  Skip shook his head. “I have one, too, and I’d like to eat before my food gets cold.”

  “You should trust Charles,” Vanessa said.

  “I’ll begin as soon as Charles trusts me.”

  Although Skip was returning the paper to his wallet, he saw the white mustache twitch.

  REFLECTION 17: Looking Over the Rail

  Down there, four decks below me, five tugs prepare to bring us up to the wharf. They are long and rather narrow craft with fifty oars a side. One hundred and one men in each tug, including the tug’s captain. Five hundred and five men, five hundred of whom are certainly making the Union Employment Administration wage—forty-three noras a week, enough to support a couple with one child (no more than one child) in subsidized housing, if both parents work.

  Forty-three noras a week keeps these strong men busy and tired, too tired to riot. Too tired to steal, at least in theory. Our seamen mock them, although it seems good-natured. What is it the seamen get? The captain told me. Seventy noras a week, so one thousand per hundred-day. With a thousand noras every hundred-day, plus food and a bed, they have a right to mock.

  I wonder how much he makes? He looked grim at dinner last night, though a part of that may have been the thought of losing Virginia.

  That dinner … It will haunt me for a long time, I’m afraid—our last dinner on the Rani. We’ll be going ashore in what? An hour? More like two, I imagine. We may get lunch before we go ashore.

  But that dinner … What was it Mick wanted? He got it, Virginia said, whatever it was. Whatever information or confirmation he was after.

  One possibility is that he wanted to find out whether I blamed him for bringing Rick. Another, and this one’s my favorite, is that he wanted to see how complete my recovery was. Certainly he seemed happy when he left. And then there’s the real reason, about which he was quite wrong.

  Hooked up now, a suggestive phrase. The Rani moves slowly through the water, sidewise. The gulls wheel and shriek, the rowers strain at their oars, and we move—how fast? Two hundred meters per hour, perhaps. Certainly no more than that.

  So much to think about, and so little to reason with. Coal is black and Mr. Blue was Mr. White. Chelle Sea Blue—Shell Sea Blue. He likes to play games with colors. He’s playing a deep game now, and I may be better off not knowing what it is. Someone had talked to Don while I was unconscious. Was it Charles? More probably, it was Chelle herself.

  Someone paging me. She wants to go to lunch. She doesn’t want me to see her naked. Was it the same with Jerry? Is it the same with Mick?

  18. NOT THE END

  Formal Night over, Chelle dropped into a chair as soon as the door of their stateroom closed. “Sit down. I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Not yet,” Skip said. “I want to get out of this outfit.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you talk better in your underwear?”

  “I talk better in anything. I’d talk better in a diving suit.”

  “You can’t unfasten that fake bow tie, can you?”

  “Yes, I can; but I can’t see what I’m doing, so it may take a while.”

  She rose, and in another second his tie was gone. “Now the collar stud.”

  “Who the hell invented these clothes?”

  “You really want to know?” She was grinning. “You won’t like it.”

  “Lawyers?”

  “Huh uh.” The collar stud gone, Chelle stepped away. “Guys who wore them every day, like Lord This-‘n’-that who always dressed for dinner. Band leaders and headwaiters. Guys like that.”

  Taking out one last shirt stud, Skip grunted.

  “While you’re doing that, how about unzipping me?”

  A tug at the keeper at the back of Chelle’s neck opened the graceful blue gown she had chosen to match her eyes. It fell around her feet, and she stepped out of it, a blue chemise half concealing a blue bra and blue panties. “Think you’re going to get an eyeful? This is as far as I go until the lights are out.”

  “Fine.”

  She picked up her gown and hung it in the closet they shared, then returned to her chair, plainly waiting for him to speak. Silently, he stuffed his shirt, damp with sweat, into his dirty clothes bag.

  She snorted. “You’re waiting for me to make the first move, damn you.”

  “Or not. As you wish.” He was stepping out of his trousers.

  “Okay, I will. Did you believe Charlie?”

  “Hardly a word of it. Do you believe he was Charlie? Is that man in actual fact your biological father?”

  “Yeah. You don’t think so?”

  “I wasn’t sure. Are you?”

  “Hell, yes. Can I prove it? No. But that’s him.”

  “Did you tell him about the College Inn? Firing his secretary?”

  “Of course not. I never saw him un
til he came in with Mom tonight. You were there. If I’d told him, you’d have heard it.”

  “You saw him when you were being held in Lieutenant Brice’s stateroom.”

  “Yeah. You’re right, I did. Only I didn’t know who he was then. He was just a nice old guy who was talking them out of shooting me.” Chelle’s deep sigh was followed by a wistful smile. “I loved him then. I could’ve kissed him, mustache and all. But I didn’t know it was Charlie.”

  “They gave you deeptrance. I don’t suppose you know what you told them.”

  “While I was under? All I know is they didn’t get what they wanted. They put me under four times, I think it was, and every time I came to, Rick was madder.”

  “In that case, you might have told the man with the beard about dinner at the Old College Inn.”

  “I suppose, if he’d asked the right questions.”

  “I admit is isn’t likely,” Skip said. He leaned back in his chair. “It’s possible, however. He could also have planted the suggestion that you would recognize him as your father the first time you saw him with your mother. I’ll admit that neither of those are very plausible.”

  “I’ll say! That’s Charlie. A lot older, but still Charlie. Did you buy that story about his just happening to go into the cabin looking for me?”

  “Certainly not.” Skip paused. “He lied about having met Jerry Brice and half a dozen other things.”

  Chelle nodded. “He said all he had to do was say he’d been sent by headquarters, and they bought it. It was damn hard not to laugh in his face.”

  “Hard but wise.”

  “Yeah. He came to save me, just like you did. Only he pulled it off.”

  Skip nodded. “You don’t know how he established his bona fides?”

  “I’m pretty sure I was under when he came in, but I know somebody who does.”

  “Who might,” Skip said. “So do I, and I want to talk to her.”

  “Will she tell you the truth?”

  He shrugged. “Susan won’t lie to me intentionally. But she may not have understood what was said or what sort of ID was shown. She may have been busy doing something, most probably because Rick Johnson saw to it that she was.”

  “Do you really think there would be papers? Something like a service card?”

  Skip shrugged again. “Almost certainly not, but there may have been something else. A ring, a coin, a button. Maybe a gesture. A secret handshake sounds absurd, I know; but it might be good for just that reason. Or the repeated use of some particular phrase. Or something else—there’s always the chance it was something else.”

  Chelle grinned. “You said ‘something else’ twice. I bet you thought I wouldn’t catch it.”

  “I said it three times. Seriously now, it might be good for us to know what the ID was; but I doubt that we can get it from Susan because I doubt that she has it. I hoped you did.”

  Chelle shook her head. “Do you really, seriously think Charlie might be spying for the Os?”

  “You knew him far better than I did, and your memories of him will be far more recent. Do you?”

  “You want to give me time to think about it?”

  “No. Off the top of your head. Would he do it?”

  Chelle looked thoughtful. “For enough money, yes, he might. But he’d double-cross them as soon as he found out how to make double-crossing pay. You want more?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Charlie’s loyal to Charlie. If God pays off on total no-slacking loyalty to a cause, there’s a gold throne in heaven just waiting for Charlie. If he doesn’t kill goats in front of his own picture, it’s because he’s never found goats good enough.”

  “He tried to save your life.”

  “Wrong. He saved it. It kind of worries me, because he figured he’d get something out of it and I don’t know what. I’ve got a dozen guesses when what I need’s one good one.”

  “He sees you as a detached part of himself. All right if I have the first shower?”

  “No way. You’ll be all nice and clean and smell good, and I won’t take one at all. So me first. Do you think that’s really it? I’m part of him? In his mind, I mean?”

  “Biologically you are. You’ve got a bunch of his genes, and he certainly knows that. Would Virginia be as quick to take him back if she didn’t know he’d saved you?”

  Chelle rose. “I think so. It’s money, not me. He’s rich, or she thinks he is, or anyway she thinks he might be. She’s poor now, and she doesn’t like it. I’ll try to leave you a dry towel.”

  There would be no one in Zygmunt’s office this late, but there would be an answering machine. Skip selected Zman from his contacts list. “This is Skip Grison. Here’s a phone number.” He read the number the white-bearded man had supplied. “Find out who’s answering that number and what they’re doing. It’s supposed to belong to somebody named Coleman Baum.” He spelled it. “See if he’s real.”

  He leaned back, conscious that he was very tired, and conscious, too, that he sometimes made bad decisions when he was tired. Something hard tapped the door softly. He stood, went to the peephole, and opened the door to admit Achille.

  “You want see me, mon?”

  “Sit down.” Skip motioned toward the other chair. “Chelle’s taking a shower, and that ought to give us all the time we need. We’ll make port tomorrow. Will you go ashore?”

  Achille shrugged. “Got to, mon. They don’t let me on the ship no more.”

  “You could hide on board so that they would never find you. We both know that. Are you going to?”

  “What you want, mon?”

  “I want you to bring something in for me. There’ll be money in it for you.”

  Achille thrust out his lower lip. “I’m going, mon. What you want?”

  Skip unlocked his bag, rummaged through his dirty laundry, and produced the pistol he had wrested from Rick Johnson’s dead hand. “You could sell this in the city for a good price.”

  Lips pursed, Achille nodded.

  “I think I know about what you could get for it, but I’d like to hear your guess.”

  Achille leaned closer to inspect the pistol. At last he shrugged. “I ask five thous’. You give it to me, mon? I split.”

  “You’d ask five. What would you settle for?”

  The spike that had replaced Achille’s right hand scratched his chin. “For four thous’, I think.”

  “What about thirty-five hundred?”

  “You sell for this? Sell to me?”

  Skip shook his head.

  “Then I don’ sell for him too.”

  “All right, here’s my offer. This gun’s mine. If you can get it ashore and deliver it to me, at my office, I’ll give you three thousand noras. If you don’t deliver it, you’ll have turned a good friend into an enemy. I’ll see to it that you’re picked up and deported. Say no deal and walk away, if you won’t bring it to me. That way, we’re still friends.”

  Achille hesitated. “Cash. Must be cash, mon, or I don’ bring.”

  “Three thousand noras in cash. Furthermore, if you’re caught trying to bring it in, I’ll defend you; but only if you say nothing about me to anyone.”

  Achille nodded. “I don’ never talk, mon.”

  “I may have another gun for you before we dock. If so, I expect the same deal. You’ll get three thousand more when you deliver it to me. Six thousand in all.”

  “I need him soon, mon. Where your office?”

  Skip gave him a business card, tucking it into his shirt pocket.

  When Achille had gone and Chelle remained in the bathroom, Skip telephoned the bridge. “Is Captain Kain there?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Skip Grison.”

  “I’ll see, sir.”

  A moment later the captain was on the line. “What’s up, Skip?”

  “You dropped by our table at dinner. Virginia was there with an elderly man. Virginia Healy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I need i
nformation about the elderly man, and I’m hoping you’ve got some. Who is he?”

  “His name? I think it’s Coleman Baum. He’s a first-class passenger.”

  “Didn’t he shoot somebody? I think I heard that.”

  “When we were fighting the hijackers? I doubt it. He’s too old.”

  “Later. I’ve been told he shot one of Mick Tooley’s volunteers, a man named Rick Johnson.”

  “I’ll call you back,” the captain said, and hung up.

  Skip went out onto the veranda and sat down, staring at the sea.

  * * *

  He was still there when Chelle joined him.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? Beautiful and immoral.”

  “I would have said amoral. What have you got on under that robe?”

  “Nothing you can see until we’re in the cabin with the doors locked and the lights out.”

  He smiled. “In that case—”

  “Not yet. I want to talk. Women want to talk. Have you noticed?”

  “No.” Skip shook his head.

  “Liar! Everybody has. Did I ever tell you how I got to be a mastergunner?”

  “I’m not a liar, I’m a lawyer. Tell me how you got to be a mastergunner.”

  “I’ll bet I’ve told you before, but it’s an excuse to talk.”

  “You haven’t.” He felt a surge of genuine curiosity. “How did you do it, Chelle?”

  “Women make better shots than men. Wait, let me explain. There are men who shoot as well as any woman, a few men who shoot as well as anybody ever can. But men always think they know everything already. They’ll keep doing the same thing the instructor has told them twenty times not to do. Like this one student we had, Corporal Nesse. He could make a good fast shot and good slow shot. He could take his time and squeeze off four-hundred-meter groups about as good as you could get with a machine rest.”

  Skip nodded, feeling it was expected of him.

  “Only nothing in between. Put a target at the seventy-meter line drifting off to one side, and he’d shoot like it was ten meters. They sent him to sniper. Buck sergeant is all you get there.”

  “What about you?” Skip asked.

  “I noticed that all the other women wanted to sit down with the instructors and vent. The instructors didn’t have time for that. They had a lot to do. So I didn’t do it. Anytime I wanted to vent, I vented to somebody else. When I had something to say to an instructor, I said it and got the hell out. It meant I got special attention, because I didn’t take up any more time than they needed to give me.”