by Gene Wolfe
“Want some help with those?”
“I do it, mon. I drop, I get back.” He held the stack down with the side of his left hook and folded it over with his right, held it between both hooks, and bit the fold. One hook pulled his filthy shirt out; he bent his head and dropped the bills into it
“You’re amazing, Achille.”
“Got to be, mon. You know what I do now? Get new hands, the best. They got good here.”
Skip nodded.
“I clean up, first. You think I like be dirty? I don’, only I been long time. On ship I get shower. Got soap in bottle. I pour on my head, rub with arms, only I don’ wash clothes. Need woman for wash. New clothes now an’ get room.”
Skip smiled. “And after that?”
“New hands, the best. Go somewhere, not here. Only I need paper for police. You know?”
“Indeed I do. Wait a minute.” Skip clicked an icon, scrolled, wrote on a pad, and tore off the sheet. “Can you read this?”
Achille glanced at the sheet. “Sure, mon. Miguel Fonseca.”
“Correct. He may be able to help you. Tell him I sent you.”
“I got it, mon. What cost?”
Skip considered. “It should be under two hundred. He’ll ask a lot more if he knows how much you have.”
“You say him?”
“No. Of course not.”
“I don’ neither, mon.” Achille rose, grinning. “I got hands, know what I do here? I hold gun, you give me noras, an’ I run.”
“Would you really do that? I don’t believe you.”
Achille shrugged. “Maybe. I don’ know. Merci pour votre aide, mon. Get new hands, papers, go new place. Go Cayenne, maybe. You know Cayenne?”
Skip shook his head.
“I don’ neither. Maybe nice place for me. Only I don’ see you no more.” Achille held out his spiked hook.
Skip rose and shook it. “It’s possible we’ll meet again. I doubt it, but you never know.”
“Is so, mon.”
A minute or more after Achille had gone, Skip sat down. For a still longer time, he stared at nothing, sitting quietly with both hands flat upon the polished surface of his desk.
At last he picked up one of the compact telephones there. “Dianne, there’s a legal arm down at the south end of the city that represents all the armed services; I think it may be called the Judge Advocate’s Department. I want to talk to somebody there, a receptionist if I have to, or a liaison with the civilian justice establishment, if they have one.”
He was silent for a few seconds, listening.
“Yes, whatever you can get. I don’t know who I should be talking to, but I’ve got to start somewhere.” He hung up.
Another telephone chimed at once, and he answered it. Boris’s long, worried face filled the tiny screen. “I’ve been looking for Stanley Zygmunt, Christine Vergara, and Wendy Kaya, sir.”
Skip nodded. “What have you got?”
“Stanley Zygmunt is dead, sir. That was why I called. His body turned up this morning. As of now, I haven’t been able to find out where it was or how he died. Or even what condition it was in. They’re being very closemouthed about the whole thing.”
“I see.”
“The women seem to be missing, sir. Both of them. The police have them listed as missing persons.” Boris cleared his throat. “There’s no investigation of missing persons, sir. I’m sure you know. They just wait for something to show up on the computer.”
“Correct. Discontinue your inquiry—I don’t want to lose you.”
For a moment Boris was quiet; then he said, “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome.” Skip hung up.
REFLECTION 19: Cobblestones
Someone once said that to destroy a man one need only bring his work to naught. I would say instead that to destroy a man the Fates need only grant his wish. For me—
What of Chelle? She went into space, saying that when she returned she would have a rich contracto and I a young and beautiful contracta. Chelle hasn’t been destroyed, nor would I wish her to be. As for me … Well, I wished more deeply. For Chelle on Johanna or Gehenna or wherever it was, there can only have been the wish to live. That wish, and that wish alone, if not always at least on many days. She will have wanted life and natural sleep, and no death, no pain.
She very nearly died. Without Jane Sims, she would have died, perhaps; she can’t have thought a lot about Earth and a rich contracto. I dreamed of Chelle for hours, almost every day. Granted one wish, I would have wished for what I got, Chelle stepping out of the shuttle, Chelle in my arms.
Yes, even though she did not know me.
I knew then what I had known earlier, although I was loath to admit it. I knew I’d have to win her again, win her a second time; and I told myself that as I had won her once I would win her again, and that I’d begin my second courtship with enormous advantages I had lacked for the first: wealth, position, and a contract already in force.
They have not availed. Should I give up? To give up would be to welcome death, to agree to it, to surrender to it. I will not. My wish has never changed. “If wishes were cobblestones there would be no grass.” Cobblestones could not hurt more.
I never welcomed death on the Rani. Some hid and some cowered, and I understood both all too well. The courtroom had given me so much practice, putting on a brave face for clients I knew would perish, pressing each argument with every fact I could lay hand to—and every sophistry. With conviction, above all. Conviction is the seed of passion, and before nine juries in ten passion will carry the day. How often have I won cases I knew were lost?
Ellen Woodward had a rifle that might have served some soldier fifty years ago, Connell a pistol Ellen had to explain to him, and Auciello a kitchen knife. I told all three to follow me and I kept my game face, though my heart pounded and my bowels had turned to slop. They followed. Ellen’s bullet took their leader in the face as he aimed at me, and we won.
I won’t surrender now. Third time’s the charm, they say. Once more, just once more, and I win. Omnia vincit amor.
20. ’TIL THEN
Winter had ended, spring had forgotten the city, and the heat had come. A lanky young woman with mismatched hands sweated beside two open windows, under a sodden sheet.
* * *
There was a street carnival, and it was already very late. She dodged a man with the pale face of an absentminded angel; he was juggling too many things to count, balls of silver and gold, painted eggs, a black-and-white kitten, a little brown rabbit that looked dead. The crowd jostled her and she jostled back, glad she was on skates when they had none.
A fire-eater lit his torch with a great puff of orange flame; and the rockets came in as if it had been a signal, rockets that flew without a sound, the explosions throwing stones and bodies high into the air. No one in the crowd paid the least attention. She tried to hit the dirt, to fall facedown and take what shelter she could from the cobblestone street; but the crowd pressed her too tightly, the big, fat, frowning, moon-faced man shoving her aside.
“Where’s Mick?” She had intended a demand and voiced a plea. An exploding rocket shook the ground and somehow harmed her head. “Where’s Mick? I know you know. Please tell me! I’ve got to find Mick.”
The moon-faced man seemed not to hear her and pushed past again, his expression intent and inscrutable.
“Mick! Skip! Skip!”
Someone had opened a cage of white doves, a cage that must have held thousands. They fluttered above the crowd, which fired on them.
“Don! Donny! Where are you, Donny? Where have you gone?”
Something was shaking her shoulders. She trembled, her teeth chattering, as a wounded dove spattered her feet with blood.
“Wake up, Chelle.”
Her face was wet. She blinked.
“That’s better. I’m right here, darling. Don’t be afraid.”
He lifted her, sat beside her, and put his arm around her. “What were you dreaming about
?”
She wiped away tears with the edge of the sheet, and for a moment failed to recognize him.
“You were talking in your sleep. Then you started crying, and I thought I’d better wake you up.”
“I’ve got a headache.” Pressing her temples eased the pain, but only a little.
“Sure, darling,” Mick Tooley said. He left, and returned moments later with white tablets and a tinkling glass. Chelle swallowed the tablets without protest and sipped from the glass. Soda water.
“Drink it all,” Tooley said, “that’s what you need.”
She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”
He glanced at his watch. “I will be in twenty minutes.”
“About that job…”
He shook his head. “I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. How would it look? He’s a senior partner, and he’ll be in the office two or three times a week.”
“If I could earn some money—”
“We’d get a better place and get out of his building. Right. And I’ll find you a job, and we will. Only not at Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. That’s out.”
“How was I last night?”
“Fine. You were fine.” He kissed her forehead. “Now listen up. You drink all of that, then lie back down and go back to sleep if you can. Let those pills work. You’ll wake up again around ten, and I’ll call you if we can go out to lunch together.”
She nodded, and found that nodding hurt. “You can’t say for sure?”
He shook his head. “It’ll depend on how things go at the office. Every day is different. I told you.”
She sipped the soda until the door closed behind him, then held the glass up to the light, which hurt almost as much as nodding. There was no color, but he might have put vodka in it, or gin.
Hoping for vodka, she finished it and carried it out to the kitchen. There would be more soda somewhere, and vodka, too.
Dishes in the cabinet and dirty dishes in the sink. Ice in the little refrigerator, but no vodka and no soda. Come on! It’s just a fucking two-room apartment.
There was vodka in the other room, next to the tele—vodka, but no soda. She poured what was left in the bottle over the ice in her glass, and carried the bottle back to the kitchen; there she ran it through the disposer, where it crashed, clicked, and growled.
No soda. She sipped the neat vodka. It burned her throat, and she turned the tap. There was pressure for a change, but the water smelled like sewage.
She threw the whole mess down the drain.
Army water on Johanna had smelled like chlorine; but once she had found a little trickling creek there, and the water had been cold and clean and good, better than any bottled water.
The screen buzzed. Automatically, she blacked the camera and flicked on the picture. Buckhurst’s face appeared in the screen, big, black, and scowling. “Ms. Blue? Is this you?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going to turn the camera on. You got me out of bed.”
“Sorry, Ms. Blue. Mr. Tooley, he done gone, so I think you be up, too. Man here say he got a package for you. Say you don’t know him, only you know the man sent him. I say what his name, only he won’t tell. His name Smeedy. He show me his card. Got his name on it an’ say he a musician.”
“Did he say what was in the package?”
“No, ma’am. Say he don’t know.”
“Put him on, please.”
Buckhurst turned away, and a familiar face appeared on the screen. “I’d like to come up, Ms. Blue. All I have to do is hand you this.” The package that he presented for her inspection could easily have been a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. “I’m told it belongs to you.”
“I was up late last night,” she told him, “and I’m sure I must look like hell. It’s twenty-nine eighty-nine, and the door’ll be open. Come in and sit down. I’ll be in the bathroom splashing stinking water and combing my hair. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”
Softly: “I can just leave your package and go, honey.”
“Don’t you dare!” Raising her voice, she added, “Let him in, Buckhurst. He’s okay.”
* * *
She had carried a bottle of cologne into the bathroom, and smelled like a flower garden when she came out. He was sitting in Tooley’s big vinyl-covered chair, with the package on his lap.
She smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”
“No thanks?” His eyes—the bright blue eyes she had inherited—twinkled. “I risked prison for you. I deserve a kiss.”
“You didn’t. But you’ll get one anyway.” She bent, and her lips brushed his.
“Since I’m no longer your father, I can ask you for a date.”
She straightened up. “You can, and I might go. Is it a good show?”
“How about a picnic?”
“You’re serious?”
“Entirely serious, honey.”
“I’d offer you a drink if it wasn’t so early. Would you like me to make coffee?”
He shook his head. “We need to talk to you, honey.”
“We?”
“I thought I’d bring my wife.”
She sat on the couch, one long leg drawn up. “You two think I’m getting fat.”
He shook his head again.
“Do you know about her? That’s not really Vanessa.”
“Depends on what you mean by really.”
“Well, I am getting fat. Fat and soft. See, I know all about it, so Mother doesn’t have to make those cream-cheese-and-watercress sandwiches.”
He said nothing.
“Fat and soft, and I’ve been drinking too much. I know that, too. What else is there?”
“Now it’s my turn to change the subject. Do you want to open this box? Check it over?”
“No, I don’t. How much is she costing you? How much a hundred-day, or how much a year? However you’re paying.”
He grinned, displaying teeth more regular than she remembered. “Your mother ought to have taught you that it’s impolite to ask how much things cost.”
She started to say, I don’t consider her a thing, when she realized she did. She substituted, “There are times when I’ve got to make exceptions. How much, and when will you get tired of paying?”
“She’s cost me quite a bit so far. Dresses and shoes and jewelry, none of them cheap.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
“Then nothing.” He was no longer grinning. “You’re asking about Reanimation?”
She nodded.
“Nothing. That file is closed, and Reanimation gets to stay in business. They were greatly relieved.”
“I don’t even know whose body it was. Skip knew, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“That was probably wise.”
“So you’re not going to tell me either?”
“At the picnic, perhaps. It will be up to my wife. What would you do if you knew the name?”
“Damned if I know. Find her family, I guess, and tell them what happened.”
“They think she’s dead, and they’re right. She was suicidal, honey. That’s why she did it, why she went to work for Reanimation. This is what she was hoping for.”
Chelle rose and went into the bathroom. When she came out, her eyes were dry once more and the lean, white-haired man who was no longer her father had gone.
* * *
She had gotten dressed slowly, thinking of breakfast. As a civilian, she had always hated going into restaurants alone. Now she was a civilian again. She could make her own breakfast—SoySunRise, milk, and coffee or tea—or go out.
Find a restaurant and go into it alone.
The street was filled with sunshine and clogged with patient trucks, hulking yellow buses, gliding bicycles, and hunchbacked cars. She flipped a mental coin and turned to her left, a slender, hard-faced blonde taller than most men. After two blocks of shops, she was about to stop someone and ask about a good place to eat when she saw the cheerful red-and-white sign: Carrera’s Ca
fé. The café was plainly open and serving, though not now (Chelle glanced at her watch) terribly busy. She went in and took a booth.
She had finished ordering by the time the lost woman came in. The lost woman looked at her and looked again; Chelle looked back and—after a second or two—waved. “Sit down.”
“I … Really, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not.” Chelle kept her voice low. “There’s nobody seating people, and you don’t want to sit alone. So you sit here with me. Solves both problems.”
The lost woman nodded gratefully. “My name’s Martha Ott.”
“Pleased to meet you, Martha,” Chelle said, and held out her hand.
The lost woman accepted it doubtfully, held it a moment, and released it.
“What would you like for breakfast? I’m having ham and pancakes.”
“Oh, I’ve already eaten breakfast.” The lost woman tittered. “That was hours ago! I just—just wanted a place…”
“Where you could sit down,” Chelle added helpfully.
“Y-yes. And have some tea.”
“And toast? I like toast myself, when I’m not having pancakes.”
“Oh! So do I, ever so much! Cinnamon toast.”
Chelle waved at a waitress. “Martha wants tea and cinnamon toast. Put it on my bill.”
“I don’t know about the cinnamon toast,” the waitress told her. “It’s not on the menu.”
Chelle leveled a finger at her. “Any jerk can make cinnamon toast—it takes about five seconds. You tell your fucking cook we want cinnamon toast, and we want it fast. Now get going!”
The lost woman tittered and the waitress scampered.
“You and me,” Chelle said, “are going to help each other out. You’re going to tell me your troubles, and I’m going to sympathize with you. Then I’m going to tell you mine, and you’re going to sympathize with me. By that time we ought to be through eating, and we’ll both feel a whole lot better.”
“Do you know,” the lost woman said, “you remind me of somebody I went to school with. That’s why I was looking at you.”
Chelle grinned. “She was shot up, too, I guess.”