by Gene Wolfe
“And you were vacuuming, weren’t you? That was wonderful of you.”
Von Madadh shook his head. “Not wonderful at all, since my racket woke you. I didn’t think it would, with the hall between us. At any rate, I called it quits when I heard the shower. To tell the truth, I’m ready for a few comestibles myself. You’ll have some eggs, I assume? I’ve decided upon three—the laborer is worthy of his hire, as whoosis says. Scrambled? Sunny-side? Basted? We called that blinded in my youth, and I’m partial to those unseeing eggs even today—I don’t feel so bad when I stick a sharp piece of toast into them.”
Sally smiled, despite her best efforts. “Blinded will be fine. I’ll set the table.”
“The shirred is king of eggs, in my humble opinion, and I confess I’m an expert; but we really haven’t the time for them.” With one quick motion he cracked two eggs against the frying pan and opened them together. “Blind three for you?”
“Two,” Sally told him. “You said we wouldn’t have time. Did the hospital call?”
“About Seth? No, I—”
“Or about Kate.”
Von Madadh shook his head. “They didn’t call at all, about anybody. I merely meant that our ham would be overcooked if we took the time for shirred eggs. We shall enjoy shirred eggs à la von Madadh tomorrow morning. That is we will if …” He let the thought hang.
“Oh, you’re perfectly welcome to stay here, Doctor. For as long as you want. I mean that.”
“Thank you. I like it here, although I hope I won’t have to impose on you for more than a few days. You’re really very kind.” He was ladling hot ham drippings onto the eggs with a cooking spoon.
“You’re sure they didn’t call?”
“The hospital? No. Someone did call, however, although I had hoped to postpone the news until you’d finished your coffee.”
Sally had been setting a cup and saucer at his place; they rattled in her hand. “Who?”
“A funeral parlor. Fuchs? I believe that was it—fox in German. Ugly, sneaking, thieving little critters.” He had left the stove to pour coffee into her cup. “Now sit down and drink this.”
“What did they want?”
Von Madadh replaced the coffee pot on its burner. “Follow my prescription, please, and I’ll tell you. You do know your father’s safe, don’t you? You recall that from last night?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right, he was missing, wasn’t he? But he was here, later, after they …”
“After your sister was taken to the hospital,” von Madadh prompted her.
“That’s right, you came back. I was at the hospital, and the receptionist wouldn’t call a taxi for me. I couldn’t find you. Where were you?”
“With Seth, in a little break area he’d discovered. There was water for tea there and a pop machine. I suppose the place was really intended for nurses, but the deputies had been using it, which was how Seth knew about it. He wanted to go home, you see—just walk out of the hospital and come back here, and I had to talk him out of it. That took quite a time.”
Sally nodded, mostly to herself. “I should have known it was something like that.”
“When I got back to the lobby, the receptionist said you’d left. I felt like stretching my legs and was rather hoping to run into a friend I’d seen in town earlier, so I walked, too.” With the dash of a card sharp, von Madadh dealt a smoking slice of ham to each of the plates Sally had taken from the cupboard, and added basted eggs.
It was nice, she reflected, to have a man in the house. It had been nice to have Tom. She had loved Tom and still did; but it was nice now to have this doctor, to have Rex. She attempted to picture herself living nearer Chicago, “where my husband’s practice is.” It wasn’t terribly far, really. Three hours or less, if you drove fast.
Boomer was galloping no longer, had not galloped much in a long while; he trotted now except when there was a fallen tree to jump, and once Lucie had dismounted and led him for a mile or more.
A fresh wind stirred the hemlocks and sang among the naked branches of the oaks, chanting sometimes of bears, sometimes of wolves or rabbits, sometimes of other things that Boomer did not know; always he pricked his ears to listen, flaring his nostrils as his heart remembered the old, wild ways of the uplands, the gray dawns when stallion fought stallion with teeth and flashing hooves, and neither was ever stalled, nor knew the touch of man.
Bushes parted on his mounting side. A slender woman had separated them with thorn-torn hands; her cheeks bled, and her ragged dress was stiff with blood. “Please,” she murmured. “Miss? Oh, Miss?”
Lucie clucked and dug his ribs with both heels.
“Judy? Have you seen Judy, my daughter? My little girl, Judy? Please, oh, please stop.”
Boomer broke into a weary canter, iron-shod feet wounding the moss with every stride. The woman and her plaintive voice were left far behind, and with them the quick, muffled drumming of other hooves upon the moss—hoofbeats not his, tapping out a rhythm that reminded him of the barn, and long, easy rides with laughing girls.
“How are we this morning, Mr. Shields?”
Making a face, Shields sat up. A perky nurse’s aide put a green tray across his lap, and he dumped the skimpy jigger of whitish powder into the noxious-looking coffee. “Starved,” he told her. “Starved and in agony.”
“You’re one of the last ones getting breakfast. You were asleep when I came in at eight.”
He nodded. “I drifted off around seven forty.” The coffee was every bit as awful as it looked, and boiling hot. As it happened, he liked boiling-hot coffee. Score three points. “Am I getting out of this place today?”
“I expect you will, but I don’t really know.” The nurse’s aide lowered her voice. “Mr. Shields, isn’t Mercedes Schindler-Shields your daughter?”
“Sure.” A tablespoon of hard scrambled eggs (they’d better never give Ann that one) a slice of white toast, and Corn Flakes and milk.
“Do you know what’s happened to her?”
He looked up, startled. “What’s happened to her? Run some tests, for God’s sake! This is a hospital, isn’t it? Do a CAT-scan. If you haven’t got the equipment, send her somewhere that does.”
The nurse’s aide put a finger to her lips and looked about conspiratorially. “What I meant was what’s become of her. She walked, sometime last night.”
“Then she’s with my wife, Ann Schindler. Ann’s at the Red Stove Inn.”
The nurse’s aide brushed back her hair. “Not now she’s not. She’s in Dr. Bray’s office. She came here to see you—visiting’s at nine—and naturally Jan grabbed her right away. Jan’s Dr. Bray’s secretary.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The Howard boy’s gone, too. Everybody says they eloped.”
“She’s only sixteen, for Pete’s sake!”
“Shh! You don’t know?”
“Get out of here,” Shields ordered her. “If you can’t find her, I’ll have to.”
The nurse’s aide left, looking offended; he picked up the telephone beside his bed and dialed the agency.
“View Motors. This is Bob Roberts.”
It was astonishingly good to hear Roberts’s voice. “Hello, Bob. Will Shields. How’s it going?”
“Good morning, Mr. Shields! Not too bad. Remember the big blue Linc?”
“You sold it?” Even the coffee tasted better.
“They signed ‘bout fifteen minutes ago. I had to give ’em a pretty good allowance, but I think it was justified. How are you feeling, Mr. Shields?”
“Not bad. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can get the paperwork done.”
There was a pause, slight but significant. “Mr. Shields, you haven’t heard anything about my daughter, have you?”
“Your daughter? Mrs. Howard?”
“No, my daughter Kate, Mr. Shields. Kate Roberts.”
“I don’t believe I’ve even heard her name before.”
“Or Judy Youngberg? Judy’s my granddaughter.”
; “No, I haven’t,” Shields told him. “What happened?”
“Kate and Judy went over to Sally’s place last night, Mr. Shields. Mother—that’s my wife—had been trying to call Sally to tell her I was back safe. Mother doesn’t more than half believe me about all that happened, I’m afraid, but she’s glad I’m back just the same. Anyhow Sally didn’t answer, so Mother and Kate thought she was most likely asleep, with the bedroom phone pulled out. Mother wanted to stay home for when I got there, but she thought Sally ought to know. So Kate and Judy drove over.”
Shields said, “Go on.”
“Only Sally wasn’t there—she’d gone to the hospital to see Seth. She must have left her door unlocked, because Kate went inside and she didn’t have a key. Then there was some kind of accident.”
“Is she badly hurt, Bob?”
“She’s in a coma, there at the hospital, Mr. Shields, which is why I thought maybe you’d heard something I hadn’t. Mother’s there sitting with her.”
“You didn’t have to come to work today, Bob; you know that.”
“Sure, I figured, but it’s Saturday. Saturday’s usually a real good day for us, and I knew you wouldn’t be in. I couldn’t leave Teddie here all by himself.”
Shields reflected that there would be medical bills, in all probability. Bob’s daughter might have insurance, but it didn’t seem likely; in any case, insurance never paid the whole cost of treatment, no matter what they implied when you signed.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Shields?”
“To start with, make over the title of the Cherokee; we’re selling it back to Miss Lisa Solomon for one dollar and other considerations. Mail it.”
“That’s already taken care of, Mr. Shields. I did it this morning before anybody came in.”
“Good. Has she got the car yet?”
Shields could almost see Roberts shake his head. “No, not if you mean right this minute, Mr. Shields. I drove her back to Meadow Grass last night and dropped her off. She was worried on account of the horses—”
“That took some guts.”
A slight hesitation. “They were gone, Mr. Shields. I felt it as soon as we got there; so did she, I think. I went through the barn with her—there’s a couple horses missing—and through the lodge, too; but I knew there wasn’t any use in it. If there had been, I’m not sure I’d have done it.”
Shields said, “It took guts all the same.”
“Anyhow, I drove her car back here. I said if you could give it to her, I could fix her windshield. Pay for it, that is.”
“Bob—”
“That one’s on me, Mr. Shields. I’ll have the boys do it Monday, and I’ll write you a check.”
“Okay, Bob, if that’s how you want it.” Shields decided to try a shot in the dark himself. “Did you say your granddaughter was missing?”
“That’s right. We’re hoping she’ll turn up soon.”
“You were missing yourself yesterday, Bob.”
“That’s right, too, Mr. Shields.”
“Do you think that what happened to you could have happened to her?”
In the same flat voice, Roberts answered, “I suppose that’s possible.”
“So do I. There are a couple of other people missing as well. Do you know about that? My daughter and your grandson.”
For twenty seconds or so, Roberts did not speak. At last, when Shields was about to call his name, he said, “I see.”
“Here at the hospital they think they’ve gone off together; I hope to God that’s all it is. I want you to check with Mrs. Howard and see if she knows where they are. See her in person, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know as soon as you find out anything. And there’s a doctor here from Chicago, looking into the sort of thing that happened to you and me last night. He had a talk with Merc and me, and from several things he said I gathered that he’d talked to Seth earlier. His name’s von Madadh. Let me know where he is, if you run into him.”
As Shields hung up, the nurse’s aide pushed a wheelchair into his room. “This is Mr. Shields,” she announced. “Mr. Shields, this is Mr. Dunstan.”
The deeply tanned young man in the wheelchair extended his hand. “You call me Wrangler,” he said. “I’m just awfully proud to meet up with you.”
28
FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT
JUDY AWAKENED on a gargoyle. He was a specially big one, nicer than most of them, having a cat’s head and wide wings poised for flight. His wings had been the railings of a cozy little bed for her, and more than enough ivy grew between them to make a rough mattress.
More than once this gargoyle had made personal appearances in Judy’s dreams, walking along his own back or balancing upon one of his own wingtips, and at last he had brought her a dead sparrow and lain down beside her, black and very soft, warm and comforting, smelling slightly of Hartz Three-in-One Flea Collar. And after what seemed a very long time, filled with that strange dream and many others, he sniffed her lips (being by then a bit peckish himself) to find out whether she had entirely finished his sparrow. His whiskers tickled; Judy sneezed and sat up. “Why, Kitty,” she said, “it’s really you.”
G. Gordon Kitty blinked twice and nodded, his eyes blazing like emeralds.
Shield’s telephone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Wrangler, “this might be news. Hello?”
“Mr. Shields. This’s Lisa. I had to tell you—absolutely had to! You and your wife were so grand last night, but they won’t let patients take calls before nine, and then I tried to tell Wrangler first and he wasn’t there. I hope he’s all right. I hope—”
“He’s fine,” Shields told her. “He’s right here in my room, talking to me.”
“Oh! Oh, God! Wonderful! Could I? I mean—”
“Of course. Just a minute.” Shields passed the handset to Wrangler. “Lisa wants to speak to you.”
Shields envied him. Had there ever been a time when Ann had been so anxious to hear his voice? Yes, for a few months before their wedding, and a few months after it. It had ended when Ann found that she was carrying Merc, but he had hoped for a year or three that a certain cadence of Ann’s would eventually return. He knew now that it never would.
“What! What’s that you say?” Wrangler leaned forward, his free hand clutching the arm of his wheelchair, his mouth agape. “Lisa, honey … Lisa …”
Shields asked, “What is it?”
Wrangler glanced up. “She’s alive!”
“Who is?”
Wrangler gestured for silence.
“Is it Merc?”
Wrangler paid no heed, listening intently. After a few seconds he said, “Maybe somebody could come out for you. I’ll ask Mr. Shields here about that.”
You’ll play hell getting it, Shields thought grimly; then chuckled inwardly at himself.
Wrangler hung up. “I told her I’d tell you what she was goin’ to tell you, and ask a favor for her and me.”
“She wants a loaner,” Shields said. People who left their cars to be repaired always wanted loaners, as if nobody could live for more than half an hour without having an automobile available at an instant’s notice. In the case of Lisa Solomon, who lived at least five miles outside Castleview, a loaner might even be justified.
“You mean another car? Nope, that’s not it. Miss Lisa can ride into town to see about me. We don’t really need one ‘cept for trailers and haulin’ hay and so forth.” Wrangler hesitated. “Sissy’s gone. You know about that?”
Shields nodded.
“And now it seems like Lucie’s gone, too. She ain’t around, and Miss Lisa says her bed wasn’t slept in.”
Shields grunted. “There are an awful lot of missing people all of a sudden.”
“That’s a certain fact. Anyhow, Miss Lisa wondered if you might know of a lady that could stay with her till I get back.”
Ann’s voice boomed from the doorway. “He certainly does —I’ll be delighted to. Willie, how are you, how are you
feeling? I’ve been talking to the doctor in charge of this place, and he says you can go today. I told him I needed you to help me find Mercedes. How are you feeling, Wrangler? They got you, didn’t they?”
Ann herself looked tired, Shields thought. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the lines about her mouth showed through her makeup. She was wearing her good red dress, however, and exuded energy and confidence as she strode into the room and sat down in the chair that Rex von Madadh had found for Merc.
Wrangler was grinning at her. “Real good to see you again, Miz Schindler. I owe you, ma’am, and I’m grateful.”
“That’s nice,” Ann told him, “because I’m going to ask a favor of you in half a minute. A big favor.”
“After all you done for me? And you’re goin’ to stay with Miss Lisa? I’ll be proud.”
“You’re going to stay out at Meadow Grass with Lisa, too, Willie. So is Wrangler, just as quick as I can get him there.”
“Ann, we can’t—”
“Oh, yes, we can, Willie, till we find Mercedes. I’ve been thinking over this whole crazy business while I was talking to Dr. Bray. Where are they, these lousy people who shot that poor kid from Brazil, sicced their pet gorilla on you in that barn, and left Wrangler for dead, lying in the rain? Where are they coming from?”
Neither man answered her.
“Meadow Grass! The first time I went there, Wrangler stuck a gun in my face because they’d been having all sorts of trouble. Isn’t that right, Wrangler? Besides, Willie, we saw the accident Mercedes got hurt in on the way to Meadow Grass. We were going to pick up that nice old salesman, remember? So where were they going, I ask you?”
Shields shook his head.
“Willie, we were so! You’d phoned Meadow Grass from the Chinese place and talked to Sissy, and—”
He interrupted. “You’re wrong, Ann. I was thinking that way last night, I admit. But as far as you and I are concerned, this whole thing began when Bob and I went to the county museum; and that had nothing to do with Meadow Grass. Hell, I didn’t even know the place existed. I’d seen the castle when we were looking at the Howard house, the same way lots of other people have seen it at one time or another, all over town; and when I got to the dealership, Bob told me they had some information on it there, which they did.”