Castleview

by Gene Wolfe

  Fee nodded, with a suppressed smile.

  “I love my sister, if that’s what you’re asking. Not that it’s any of your business. Has something happened to Kate too?”

  “You would not prefer … ?”

  “Nol For God’s sake what is it?”

  “Per’aps it would be better if you sat. If you will just come into my living room … .”

  “What is it!”

  “Your sister has shot herself in the head. Intentionally, or so it would appear.”

  The old Victorian house spun as though it were the Gale’s, flung aloft by the tornado that would carry Dorothy to Oz. The hall light winked and flickered, and Sally’s purse was no longer in Sally’s hands.

  I’m not going to faint, she thought. Women don’t really. Faint.

  Fee fluttered like a rag in the wind, first present, then replaced by something else, then replaced by nothing at all, so that she stood—stumbled—all alone in the long, cold hall. A siren howled outside; it was still some distance away, but came perceptibly nearer before the hall light vanished.

  Lisa was sitting with Mr. Roberts when Dr. de Falla came to speak to them. Rising, she asked, “Is Wrangler going to be all right?”

  “Yes, I’ve got good news for you there. He lost a great deal of blood, but I think he’s out of danger now.”

  “Thank God!”

  Dr. de Falla glanced at the gray-haired receptionist, who ignored him studiously. “I’m not supposed to do this, but if you like I could take you up to see him, just for a few minutes. He’s fully conscious—talking about going back to Meadow Grass, actually—and I think it might do him good.”

  Lisa nodded mutely, her eyes shining.

  Mr. Roberts said, “Don’t worry about me, Doc. I’ll wait right here.”

  “Fine.”

  De Falla’s voice sounded curiously flat; Lisa looked from one man to the other, and at last knew what de Falla had known before he came into the reception area, what Roberts had known as soon as he had seen de Falla. “She’s dead, isn’t she? She died here, so far from home.”

  Abruptly, Lisa’s eyes filled with tears and Roberts’s arms were around her. “There, there,” Roberts said softly. “There, there, there.”

  De Falla told her, “The sheriff’s going to want to talk to you afterward. I thought perhaps Bob here could be talking to him now. That should keep him off your back—and mine—for half an hour or so.”

  Lisa raised her head. “I’ve called Rio. Did anybody tell you? I talked to their chef; he speaks a little English. Her parents are in Europe, he doesn’t know where. He said he’d tell them the next time they phoned, that he’d pray.”

  “You did all you could,” de Falla told her.

  “No.” Lisa pulled a red bandana from her hip pocket, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. “Now I’m going to have to call Rio again.”

  Ann shouldered the nurse aside for the third time. “Let’s get this straight. If my daughter’s in here, I’m going to see her. And if you have him grab me and toss me out,” she jerked her head in the direction of the large attendant, “I’m going to sue this place for every dollar it’s got. Now take those rules and do something obscene with them.”

  The attendant, who was black and well over six feet tall, tried to look serious and even frightening but signally failed.

  “So where is she? Mercedes Schindler-Shields.”

  “Right down here,” the nurse said, capitulating. “That room.”

  “My baby!” Ann rushed past her, stopped, and stared. The bed was empty, the bedclothes thrown back. A muddy smudge as big as a man’s hand soiled the sheet where Mercedes should have lain.

  Behind Ann, the nurse said, “She may still be talking with the sheriff. He’s been questioning lots of people.”

  “That’s a dog’s footprint,” Ann gasped. “Somebody brought a dog in here.” Five whole eggs … two egg-yolks … one third cup whipping cream … .

  26

  FROM THE DAOINE INSTITUTE

  “MERC!” NOT without pain, Shields sat up in his hospital bed. “Merc, what the hell are you doing here, and what happened to your arm?”

  “Hi, Dad. I’m afraid it’s broken; we were in an accident.”

  The big, blond man who had come in with Mercedes rumbled, “That, of course, is why your daughter is here in this hospital. But if you’re asking why she’s here, now—here in your room—it is because I brought her.”

  Mercedes nodded. “That’s right, Dad. I didn’t know you were in here any more than you knew I was. This is Dr. von Madadh.”

  Von Madadh bowed, his head inclined three degrees from the perpendicular. “And I’m here in pursuance of my volunteer work for the Daoine Institute, Mr. Shields. Although I’m an M.D., I’m not associated with this hospital; I practice at Ravenswood, in Chicago.”

  Shields said, “I see—or rather, I guess I don’t. Merc, you said we were in an accident. You don’t mean you and your mother, since she drove me here just a little while ago. Who were you with?”

  “Seth Howard. Remember, Dad? That guy at the house we looked at. Only he wasn’t—oh, it’s all so complicated.”

  Von Madadh had found a white plastic chair on casters for her. He pushed it into position and steadied it while she sat. “Mr. Shields, what your daughter is trying to tell you is that Seth Howard was not driving at the time of their accident; the police here insist that he was. In my view, they’re mistaken.”

  Shields nodded. “If Merc says he wasn’t, you’re right. Who was, Merc?”

  “A man named Jim. There was a woman with him who said her name was Viviane Morgan; she was in the back with me.” Mercedes turned to von Madadh. “I didn’t tell you that she came in while I was talking to the sheriff, did I?”

  Von Madadh shook his head.

  “Well, she did. She said she was from a newspaper, and she took our pictures. I kept waiting for her to say hello, but she never even smiled.”

  Von Madadh nodded. “Has it occurred to you, Mercedes, that it may not actually have been the same woman?”

  “It was her! I recognized her.”

  “Mr. Shields, do you mind if I smoke? Do you, Mercedes?”

  She shook her head, and Shields said, “No, not at all.”

  From a gold-plated cigar case, von Madadh produced a long, dark cigar; he rolled it between his palms as he spoke. “What Mercedes has just told us carries me nicely to the work of the Daoine Institute—the work that brought me here to Castleview. From your expressions I judge that neither of you are familiar with it.”

  Shields shook his head.

  “I assumed you wouldn’t be, which was why I wanted to speak to you together. I’m a bore on the subject, but though I must necessarily bore others from time to time, I much prefer to bore myself as infrequently as I can.” With surprisingly sharp white teeth, he bit the tip from his cigar and spat.

  “Let me begin with Michael Daoine, an Irish immigrant. He came to this country, a boy of seventeen, in the closing years of the preceding century. Like so many of his countrymen, he entered one of the building trades—first carrying a hod, then laying brick, then subcontracting brick and stone construction, and at last becoming a full contractor. America was expanding rapidly in those days. There was a great deal of construction and thus a great deal of work for such contractors. Daoine was a good one, and he became rich.”

  Mercedes asked, “He founded your institute?”

  “Correct. He was an intelligent man, you understand. When he came to America he could scarcely write his name, but he read widely, as so many poorly educated people in his day did; public libraries encouraged it, a thing that seems almost inconceivable now.” Von Madadh clamped his extraordinary teeth on the cigar and produced a gold lighter. “Sure it won’t bother either of you? Thank you.”

  Shields said, “I take it this has something to do with the photographer, Dr. von Madadh—the woman who was with Mercedes at the time of the accident.”

  “I think
so. Probably with one and possibly with both. My first name’s Rex, by the way, and it’s a whole lot shorter.”

  “Call me Will,” Shields told him; rather belatedly, the two shook hands.

  “Have you ever heard of the Fairy Faith?”

  Mercedes said, “There was a thing about it on TV—people in Ireland who still believe in leprechauns and banshees.”

  Von Madadh nodded. “It’s found in many parts of the world; among Caucasians, belief is actually strongest in Iceland. It’s weakest in the Western Hemisphere—in fact it can hardly be said to exist here at all. That was something Michael Daoine found puzzling. The Fairy Faith was widespread in western Ireland at the time he was growing up; his parents had been believers, and several relatives had actually had brushes with the fairies, or at least claimed to have had them. He studied the matter in his spare time, talked with his workmen—there were Swedes, Greeks, and Italians among them, as well as Irishmen and black Americans—and read a good deal of folklore and a great deal of history. As you might expect he came across quite a few oddities, such as the giants of Patagonia.”

  Von Madadh puffed his black cigar, staring not at them but out the dark window of the hospital room.

  Shields cleared his throat. “Are you talking about man-like apes?”

  Still watching the night, von Madadh grinned and shook his head. “No, not at all. Those are so common there’s no need to go afield for them. Mercedes, can you name the first man to circumnavigate the earth?”

  “Was it Magellan?”

  “Correct. He was a Portuguese explorer, and what he and his bold crew accomplished in the Sixteenth Century was every bit as brilliant and every bit as important as all the triumphs of all the cosmonauts and astronauts in our own. The record of their voyage was compiled by an Italian named Antonio Pigafetta; he survived it, as Magellan himself did not. As far as we are able to judge, he was a thoroughly reliable officer. Certainly the rest of the crew seemed to think so; and if ever a group of men had passed through fire, it was that crew.”

  Mercedes asked, “Did he say he’d seen giants?”

  “Yes, he did. Oh, not giants as lofty as church steeples, such as one finds in children’s books—it’s easy enough to show that those could not exist. What Pigafetta actually wrote was, ‘This man was so tall our heads scarcely came to his waist; his voice was like the bellowing of a bull.’

  “In other words, Pigafetta didn’t merely see his giant—he stood beside him and talked to him. Now the distance from the ground to the waist of a normally-proportioned man is just about fifty-five percent of his height. Let’s say that Pigafetta and the rest averaged five foot five—men were smaller four hundred years ago. That would make Magellan’s giant slightly less than ten feet tall.”

  Von Madadh turned back toward them. “But we don’t believe them, do we? Spics and wops.” He drew deeply on his cigar and puffed pale, fragrant smoke, like an incense burner. “In fact, most of the safety and sanity of our safe and sane little world depends upon our disbelieving anyone who doesn’t speak English. Your name’s Schindler-Shields, isn’t it, Mercedes? That’s what Seth told me.”

  Mercedes nodded. “Schindler for my mom.”

  “Then your ancestry is German and Irish; so is mine. Your forefathers spoke Gaelic or German, and are thus entitled to no credence.” Von Madadh chuckled. “Besides—Pigafetta? Who’d believe somebody with a name like that! And it was four hundred years ago, so let’s move up to the Eighteenth Century —George Washington’s time. Everybody believed George, eh? A British warship, the Dolphin, dropped anchor at Patagonia. Her skipper was a Commodore Byron—that’s a step above captain, notice; if the commodore was promoted again, he died an admiral.

  “Commodore Byron was just under six feet. He could barely reach the tops of the natives’ heads when standing on tiptoe. That makes them at least eight feet tall; and in fact a report by one of the Dolphin’s officers states, ‘There was hardly a man there less than eight feet, most considerably more; the women, I believe, run from seven and a half to eight feet.’ Science, to be sure, denies the existence of any such race.”

  Shields asked, “Does this have anything to do with Mercedes’s accident?”

  “Perhaps not,” von Madadh admitted. “I can take it, then, that neither of you have seen any giants?”

  Shields shook his head.

  “We did, Dad!” Mercedes exclaimed. “Don’t you remember the man on the horse? We just about hit him. I bet he was at least eight feet tall.”

  “But he was mounted?”

  Shields said, “He was a big man, certainly, riding a very big horse; but I don’t think he was eight feet tall or anything close to it. Six feet six, maybe. It was raining and getting dark, and we only got a glimpse of him.”

  Von Madadh puffed thoughtful smoke. “You didn’t see his face?”

  Shields shook his head; so did his daughter.

  “How was he dressed?”

  Shields shrugged. “I’d say he had on a long coat of some kind, probably a slicker or something like that. I remember it covered him to the ankles.”

  Von Madadh nodded. “Riding boots, I suppose?”

  Mercedes closed her eyes to summon up the dark figure once more. “I don’t think we could see them, because his feet were inside the whatchacallums—the stirrups.”

  “A stirrup doesn’t really cover much of the rider’s foot,” von Madadh protested mildly. “They’re just iron rings, shaped like the letter D lying on its face.”

  Mercedes shuddered and shook her head. “These weren’t—or anyhow the one I could see wasn’t. You know what it reminded me of? A wooden shoe! Grandmother had one she used to grow ferns in, remember, Dad? Only it was—I think it was metal.”

  Shields said, “How about leveling with us now, Rex? This is what you’re looking for, isn’t it? This giant, if he really is a giant. He’s the reason that the Daoine Institute sent you up here from Chicago.”

  “That’s right.” Von Madadh tapped ash from his cigar. “I didn’t realize I was quite so transparent; perhaps I should say I hadn’t realized you were quite so percipient. I tried to lead you into it, as you obviously understand. I hope you understand also that I was doing it in a very good cause. One simply can’t go up to strangers and say, ‘Have you met many of the Fair Folk lately? Are you much troubled by trolls this fall? Is there a giant active hereabouts, sir? Madame? Are the jinn abroad?’”

  Mercedes giggled.

  “You see. Yet the answers are frequently yes, because such things are encountered far more often than you might imagine.”

  Shields said, “But still unrecognized by science? That’s pretty hard to swallow.”

  “Indeed it is. And they mean to keep it so, for as long as possible. Have you any notion how many species of animals there are on this planet?”

  “No,” Shields said. “Thousands, I suppose.”

  “You’re being extremely conservative, believe me; there are literally millions; and yet—supposedly—only one has developed sufficient intelligence to make tools and use fire. Do you find that plausible? Honestly, now.”

  Shields shrugged. “It seems to me that if there were any others … .”

  “They would be seen and reported? Yes, of course. And of course they have been, thousands upon thousands of times. The truly surprising thing is how frequently they’re still reported, despite the torrents of ridicule directed at the witnesses. When I brought up giants, you mentioned man-like apes; and there have been tens of thousands of sightings of those hairy giants with protruding teeth—from every state in the Union except Hawaii, and every Canadian province except Nova Scotia. Witnesses in California call the thing they saw Big Foot. At the southern end of our own state it’s the Big Muddy Monster. Here and over in Iowa, it’s generally called Big Mo, presumably because many are seen along the Missouri River. Farther north it becomes the Minnesota Ice Giant. In the mountains of Tibet and Nepal it’s a yeti or an abominable snowman. Over in Northwestern Europ
e it’s a troll, and so on.”

  Mercedes had been staring at her father. “Just exactly what happened to you, Dad? Dr. von Madadh said you’d had an accident. I thought he meant in a car, like Seth and me.”

  Shields grinned at her. “I met a troll, Mercedes. Met—hell, I wrestled one. Your mother hit us both with an old Jeep Cherokee. The troll had its back to her, so she couldn’t see me, or at least I hope she couldn’t. Now if you tell them that here, I’ll disown you. Rex, what about the couple that was in the car with Merc and the Howard boy? They weren’t giants or trolls, from what I’ve heard, and they weren’t kids, either. When are you going to talk about them?”

  Mercedes tried to imagine her father wrestling a troll and failed; the twilit yet vivid memory of the mounted giant rose before her mind’s eye in its place. It still seemed to her that his huge horse had too many legs.

  27

  SATURDAY

  LIKE A giant in golden armor, a Canadian high had driven off the wet and stormy low that had dominated the north-central area for nearly a week. Crystalline and visible, it stood guard above it now, so that the new day was born in sunshine. Flecks of cotton cloud hurried across the blue toward the Great Lakes. It was a lovely morning, but colder than it looked.

  Sally sat up in bed when she heard the whine of the vacuum cleaner. “Seth? Seth, is that you?” Then she remembered that Seth was in the hospital, Tom dead. Passionately she longed to sleep again.

  It was Momma, of course. Only Momma would vacuum her rugs for her. Momma or Kate, and Kate—

  That thought too had to be pushed to one side. Sally went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, took a shower, washed her hair, and put it up. When she came out, the vacuum cleaner was silent, and the rich smell of frying ham filled the hall. She opened the kitchen door, and Dr. von Madadh waved a spatula and wished her a good morning.

  “I’m so sorry, Doctor! I thought you—I must’ve overslept, and—”

  He glanced at the clock in the console of the stove. “Ten till ten. That’s not too late for somebody who was up half the night, I think. Whenever a patient heals too slowly, I ask how much sleep she’s been getting. Nine hours plus does wonders for a post-operative patient, I assure you. I wish I could convince the hospital of that.”