by Gene Wolfe
“My dear—”
“As for all those things you say they offer us, you have not so much as touched upon the crux. Wealth and power we have already too much of—we suffocate. Longer life? We outstay the lion and the elephant. Hardly a day passes that we do not meet some man or woman who should be dead, who has outlasted his own time by decades; you are such a one yourself, Mr. Illingworth. As for healing, it is not we who require it but the world, which requires to be cured of us. Serenity would indeed be a benefit, but we do not seek it; if we did, we might find it required us to abandon wealth and power, and we love them too much. No, what we require from whatever Powers may be entitled to give it is some indication of how far we may go. Like tigers, we must kill to live, and like rats destroy; but we do not know what is permitted to us, and that ignorance paralyzes those who might otherwise refrain, while the worst of us kill every living thing and ruin all they reach.” I have been inspired, she thought. I myself sought power and never knew a word of that.
“Mademoiselle,” Illingworth said softly, “look about you.”
Tall figures stood at the right side of the Packard, some almost at her elbow. They wore ankle-length capes, and their heads were the heads of jackals.
“Goodbye,” Illingworth said. “Need I tell you, Mademoiselle, that I wish you well?”
The witch nearly surrendered to a wild urge to lock herself in. “You are not going with me? Did I not hear you say you would not miss this for gold?”
“Perhaps I shall see you later tonight.”
One of the jackal-headed figures opened the Packard’s door.
“I know you,” the witch said. “Are you not the servants of Upuaut, the Pathfinder? Or should I call him here Khenti Amenti, the Ruler of the West?”
The jackal-headed figures said nothing, staring boldly into her face with bright eyes, then looking away. Their jaws moved, and it seemed for a moment that, even in the faint light reflected by the snow, she could see scarlet tongues caressing white teeth and hairy lips. She was no longer certain the jackal heads were masks and wondered if she had been drugged. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing; yet perhaps some odorless gas had been released in the Packard, perhaps the cigarettes Illingworth had given her had contained some hallucinogen.
“You are of good omen, I know,” she said. “You lead the procession of Osiris.”
At that, the jackal-headed figures turned from her, falling into single file as they walked between the dark buildings. They were very tall, and their footprints in the snow seemed the tracks of beasts. The witch hesitated for a moment, then stepped from the running board to follow the last.
* * *
Standing motionless beside his car, Illingworth watched her go. I could never give it up, he thought vaguely. The old Packard; but soon nobody will be able to fix it for me. I could get a Ford. (He still thought of Fords as small, cheap cars, the coupes and hunchbacked sedans of his youth.) Ford be damned! I’ll get a Buick.
He took out his old-fashioned silver cigarette case again and lit a Player with the lighter built into the end. Someone had given him the case, and he tried to recall whom. Dion Fortune? When its flame was snuffed, the night was too dark for him to admire the art-deco design. Very modern though, he thought. More modern than anything they make these days. But smoking in the cold was bad for your heart; he had read that someplace.
He dropped the unconsumed cigarette into the snow and entered one of the dark buildings. A young man at a desk nodded to him. He nodded in return and went past him into another office where a duffle coat hung on a hook and an older man (though Illingworth thought of him as young) sat behind a larger desk.
Illingworth tossed the key onto the desk. “Well, sir,” he said, “I’ve done it.”
The Carpet Night Of Ozzie
The gray sedan swung off the Interstate, then off the side road and into a plowed parking lot, now walled with snow. As Robin had predicted, Little Ozzie was still asleep on the back seat; and as she had suggested, Barnes covered him with his fur-collared coat.
“You think he’ll be all right?” Barnes pushed the lock button down; he tried to close the door quietly, and Little Ozzie hardly stirred.
“Of course. He’ll be warm under there, and anyway, we won’t be inside long. Besides, you can come out and look at him if you’re worried. I’ll give you the keys so you can run the engine a little.”
A blue neon sign blinked overhead: FLYING CARPET. One thousand feet above it, a big jet was coming in with its landing lights blazing and its windows shining.
It looks like a whole city, Barnes thought. Like the flying saucer in that movie.
He handed Robin out and closed her door as softly as he had closed his own. There were cars enough in the lot to show the Flying Carpet was doing business. He and Robin walked across the ice and the hard, black asphalt together.
Inside, it seemed a bar like any other. Robin found them a table near the little stage. There was a Reserved sign on it, but she handed it to a waiter, who took it without protest. The stage was dark, making the whole bar very dark.
“You phoned a reservation?” Barnes asked.
Robin shook her head. “They don’t take them. I come here a lot.”
“The sign said reserved.”
“For the owner and his friends. I’m a friend.”
“I see.” Barnes realized with some surprise that he was jealous.
“No, you don’t. Buck knows a hundred women. I’m one of the hundred. If he comes around, I’ll massage the back of his neck and rub his shoulders with the jugs, that’s all.”
“Bullshit!”
The waiter had reappeared; he said, “Yes, sir. Bullshot. Pink lady, Miss Valor?”
“What’s the new one you told me about, Jack? A screwdriver. I’ll try it. Ozzie, don’t be mad. Let me tell you something funny Jack saw one time. A crowd was sitting around in a bar—not this place, another one—listening to some guy with a guitar, and after a while one woman stands up and kind of staggers over to the bartender and says, ‘You got a screwdriver?”’
Three white musicians and two black ones were settling into the positions on stage: piano, drums, bass, saxophone, and vibraharp. The whites looked too young to be very good.
“So the bartender made her a screwdriver,” Robin said.
It was “Sophisticated Lady,” booming and whirling, filling the room with music somehow palely green, music like a perfumed green chiffon scarf, a swirling green chiffon skirt. The waiter brought their drinks; Barnes sipped and listened.
When it was over, Robin said, “Good, huh?”
“No mikes? No speakers?”
She shrugged. “This isn’t Symphony Hall, and they’re not recording.”
Barnes nodded.
“You know what it made me feel like?” Robin asked. “Delaguerra. Did you ever read that?”
Barnes shook his head. “Who’s Delaguerra?”
“A tough cop, a long time ago in a story called ‘Spanish Blood.’ A thirties story. Delaguerra said, ‘I never shot a deer in my life. Police work hasn’t made me that tough.”’ Robin grinned at him. “I guess I thought about that because I told you I was half Spanish, out in the car. That was why I read the story, back when I was just a kid—because of the title.”
Barnes grinned back. “I’m surprised you didn’t order a margarita.”
“Spanish, not Mex. Half Spanish and half devil. You know what they say about Spanish women? ‘A lady in the street, an angel in church, and the devil in bed.’ I don’t go to church.”
“I don’t either, but I wish you did so I could take you.”
“Our family swore never to go back until there was another Borgia Pope. How do you feel about strippers, Ozzie?”
“I’m not usually close enough to feel.”
“I can fix that.”
“What?”
“I said I can fix it. I’m a friend of Buck’s, remember? Watch my purse.”
She pushed it across the tiny table,
drained her screwdriver, and vanished into the darkness. The band was beginning a new number, “Now’s the Time.” Barnes opened her purse and got out a fresh cigar and a folder of matches, letting the purse remain open on the table while he lit the cigar. In the flare of the match, he could see that the little automatic was gone. He recalled its bright chrome, the black grips showing a horse with an arrow in its mouth. A lighter like the one he had bluffed Proudy with? She had made a joke of it in the car, and it seemed too early to ask her about it.
She’s gone to the john, he thought. My God, what a jerk I am! She has to pee, and she’s afraid somebody will jump her in there. It happens all the time to women, and what the hell, in a place like this …
Then he remembered he had seen her compact in the purse. When women went to the john, in his experience, they always took their compacts.
“Now’s the Time” sang itself to sleep. The sax player propped his instrument against the piano, got a mike from a stand at one side of the stage, switched it on, tapped it half humorously with a fingernail, and said, “Now then, ladies an’ gents, an’ all you just plain folks out there too, if you will but be so very kind as to give me an’ my boys a chance to grab a drink while all them chicks back there are gettin’ undressed up for your pleasure, why we’ll be back practically ’fore you know we’re gone. Why don’t you just have another drink your own self?”
There was laughter and a little applause. The sax player grinned, switched off the mike, walked over to Barnes’s table and sat down. “You Mr. Barnes?”
Barnes nodded and held out his hand. “Call me Ozzie.”
The sax player shook it solemnly. “You call me Binko, ‘cause that’s my name. Last name. Won’t tell you my first one ’cause it’s one of them Fauntleroy things, you know? Don’t nobody use it. Just call me Binko. Ozzie, now that’s a cool name. Make me think on all them flyin’ monkeys an’ that stuff. You see The Wiz?”
“On TV.”
“Should have seen it on the big screen, man. I went in about seven an’ come out after midnight. Seen the last show an’ ate three buckets of popcorn. I figured you was Barnes, Ozzie, ’cause they say look for this handsome, real sharp dude with a mustache. What it is, they ain’t no announcer for our little do tonight. That eye don’t hardly show, so since you got experience in this line of work, would you do it?”
“Binko, do you happen to know a girl called Robin Valor?”
“Course. Everybody here know Robin. Just a minute ago she was sittin’ with you, an’ you’re smokin‘one of her cigars this second. Robin got the bitchin’est cigars I ever saw any woman to have, white or black, an’ I’ll tell you true, man, whenever I get the chance, why I hit her up. She don’t mind. She’s real nice about givin’ out one.”
Barnes took one of the aluminum cylinders from Robin’s purse and handed it to Binko. “She put you up to this,” he said.
“Her, man? No, not me. Robin’s ’bout as sharp as a chick ever gets, but I don’t take no orders from her. Buck told me. Every night, Buck lay down the bread for my little combo, so he call the shots.”
“I didn’t see anybody talking to you.”
“Hey, what’s the matter, man? You think we out to get you? We just want you to fill in. They slip me a note—maybe you didn’t notice I had this long rest there while ol’ Sunky went to town on his vibes? I hang up my ax an’ step over to one side an’ kind of turn my back, an’ that’s when I read it. You goin’ to do it? Or you just want to sit here like some royal-ass high an’ mighty clown an’ make faces at me while I tries to lead my combo an’ announce both?”
“I’ll do it,” Barnes told him. “I’d just like to know what Robin’s up to.”
For a moment, a mask seemed to fall over the sax man’s face, or perhaps one fell away. The easy, affable smile vanished, and it seemed to Barnes that it was the face of another man altogether, a man he did not wish to meet again. Then the smile returned, broader than ever, white teeth flashing in the dimness. “That’s my man! You my man!” A kitchen match scratched at the bottom of the table, and Binko rotated Robin Valor’s cigar in the flame, puffing with care and obvious enjoyment, then extinguishing the match with a delicately launched breath of smoke. “Now you ain’t goin’ to find it’s much of a chore at all. When we come back, you get up there an’ tell the folks a couple jokes. You know some jokes? You know how to tell them?”
“Yes, I know some jokes.”
“That’s fine. They shouldn’t be too blue—you know what I mean? Or some of these motherfuckers will walk out. But they shouldn’t be Sunday School jokes neither. You know what I mean about that?”
Barnes nodded.
“You are my man. Then you tell them how the Dixie Dukes—that’s us—goin’ to play ’Basin Street.’ An’ you get yourself off the stage an’ let us do it, but you don’t come back to this table here. You go off that way—” Binko pointed, “an’ while you’re waitin’ off to one side, the next act goin’ to tell you how to introduce her. Got it? Now here come my drummer and ol’ Sunky already, so get yourself set.”
Under a spotlight, Barnes said, “Good evening and welcome to the Flying Carpet. If you’ve just arrived in our fair city, we’re glad to see you. If you’re going, well, we’re sorry to see you go, but glad you stopped here first. Do you know we’ve got direct service to China now? Just ask for Dragin’ Home Airlines.”
No one laughed. As far as he could see, no one was paying the slightest attention. He tried to flick his cigar the way Groucho used to. “Tough, huh? If you think you’re tough, wait till you get the chicken over Denver.
“Did you hear about the cabin attendant and the handsome pilot? This pilot was really good looking and made terrific money, so the stew was thrilled to death when she brought him his drink up in the cockpit—”
There were a few scattered chuckles.
“Don’t laugh, you’re flying with him. She brought his drink and he asked her to marry him. Naturally she said yes. Then he said, ‘Since we’re going to be man and wife, I want you to do so-and-so right now.’ Well, her mother had always told her never do so-and-so. You know what I mean? This isn’t the one where you wait till the kids are in bed—this is the one where you wait till they’ve gone to camp. And so she was so embarrassed she ran out of the cockpit and clear back to the tail section—airplanes have great names for places—and she was back there trying to get hold of herself—the pilot had hold of himself already—and she saw Father Rooney sitting in an aisle seat reading his breviary. So she asked him about it, even though she got as red as a cherry—I love this story—when she had to tell him what the pilot wanted her to do. And he said, ‘Niver! Tell that limb of Satan you’d sooner die! Me dauther, you must leave this vile occupation and niver see the pervert agin!’ Well, that was pretty serious, quitting her job, and besides the pilot was a very good-looking guy and made a lot of money, so she went up the aisle a little farther, and there sat Brother Philbert saying his rosary. The stew told him all about the pilot, but he just jumped up and went back to ask Father Rooney. So she went up the aisle a little farther, and there sat Sister Mary Elephant grading papers. So she told her about it—she was starting to enjoy telling it by now—and Sister Mary Elephant fainted.
“So she went farther up, nearly to the front of the plane, and there was Cardinal Cogan himself, with his hands folded, looking out the window and smiling a little. So she told him. And he said, ‘Bless you, my child, not till after you’re married, and may you both be happy.’ So she said, ‘That’s wonderful, your Archship’—he was a St. Louis Cardinal—‘but why is it that you can say that when Father Rooney told me to quit my job and Sister Mary Elephant fainted and Brother Philbert and so on and so forth?’ And the cardinal said, ‘My child, what do those three know about sophisticated sex? They’re all flying tourist.’”
There was some real laughter from the tables this time and a dutiful belly laugh from the sax man behind him. The laughter faded quickly, leaving only a little mumbled co
nversation and the occasional clink of glass. Barnes tried to look at his audience, but he could see nothing beyond the spotlight. “And now,” he said, “‘Basin Street’! Done as only the Dixie Dukes can do it!”
The spot faded to darkness. At the first wail from the band, he turned to his left. When he had taken a couple of steps, he could see a naked redhead smiling at him from the wings. She had freckles.
On the rough brick wall behind her, someone had spraypainted: KILROY WAS HERE.
* * *
As Sandy Duck’s little car rolled into the parking lot, its headlights picked up a small boy who stood weeping in the snow. Moved by a motherly instinct she would have hotly denied, Sandy got out, picked him up, and sought to comfort him. “Now, now,” she said. “Now, now, now.” It seemed foolish even to her, but she could think of nothing better.
“My—my—Daddy—”
“Yes, he’s gone, isn’t he? And you’re lost, poor little tyke. Where did he go?”
Mutely, the boy pointed to the winking electric sign atop the low, brick building at the end of the parking lot.
“The Flying Carpet?” Sandy asked. “I’m going in there. I’ll take you with me, and maybe we can find your Daddy.”
As she spoke, a side door opened. For an instant, the naked figure of Ozzie Barnes appeared there like the scarlet devil who materializes in a magician’s box; two naked women pulled him backward, and the door swung closed again.
“On second thought,” Sandy said, “I don’t think I’ll go there after all. Not tonight. Maybe you’d better come with me.”
Serving The Country
The waistband of her nurse’s skirt had parted an hour before. One of the lower buttons of her blouse had broken its thread and slipped unnoticed to the carpet; three more had been pulled through their holes. Her belly, drum taut and flushed with wine, protruded through the triangular space, pressing firmly against the table and spilling (as it were) three inches over the snowy tablecloth.