by Gene Wolfe
Candy croaked, “Has anybody got a cigarette? Please?”
Stubb shook his head.
“Ozzie, please? Cigarette?” She made smoking motions.
“I’m out,” Barnes told her.
The witch opened her purse, then snapped it shut again. “I have none either. I recall now that I got my last from Mr. Illingworth. You do not know him.”
Stubb said, “Publisher of Natural Supernaturalism and that other one. Sandy’s boss.”
“Look!” Candy pointed out a window. The city seemed to fill the sky, an untidy constellation. “It’s beautiful! My God, isn’t it beautiful?” Her voice was slurred.
“Sure,” Stubb said. He pressed her hand.
“Mr. Illingworth smoked English cigarettes,” the witch continued. “Players. One can buy them everywhere in this country now, but he did not know that. I have always preferred what are called Russian cigarettes, though mine were made in Turkey. But now that I have neither, I find myself wondering if my preference were not a pose, as I am certain his was. I doubt that he either was willing to admit he played the poseur, even to himself.”
Candy asked, “Has anybody got any liquor?”
No one answered.
“Or aspirins. Alka-Seltzer. My head hurts.”
“Mine too,” Stubb told her. “And I can’t even remember to carry Sight Savers.”
Barnes, who had been slumped with his head in his hands, tapped her on the shoulder and pointed toward the young man, who was fumbling under his flight jacket.
“Oh, thank God!”
The young man held them out to her, shouting to make himself heard. “Camels okay, Ma’am?”
“I love’em!” Candy staggered from her seat. Stubb caught her and held her up, bending to peer at the package as she extracted a cigarette.
“Li’l too much wine with dinner,” Candy said. “Sorry.”
The young man nodded. “I know how it is, Ma’am. Sir, if you want one too, take it.”
“I will,” Stubb said. “Thanks.”
When they were back in their seats again, Stubb patted his pockets. Barnes said, “Here,” and extended a folder of matches.
Stubb lit both cigarettes. Candy asked, “Would you like a drag, Madame Serpentina?”
“No, thank you. I shall wait.” She was seated nearest the young man in the flight jacket, and she spoke loudly enough for him to hear. “Unless perhaps—”
“Sure,” he said, and once more held out the pack.
Madame Serpentina took one. “You need not bother, Mr. Stubb. I still have my lighter.”
Stubb was staring at the matches. “Can I hold on to these, Ozzie? Where’d you get them?”
Barnes thought for a moment. “They’re Robin’s, I guess. When they gave me my old clothes back, they switched the stuff in the pockets.”
Stubb stared at the matches. He could think of nothing, nothing but crazy talk he would rather die than utter. The idea that they were in the wrong movie came back to him with unexpected force, but now it seemed to him that they were not actors but a part of the audience. He had flown to California and back once, and both ways had sat in the plane watching a bad film. He wondered who was flying it now. Reagan, he thought. Ronald Reagan in Hellcats of the Navy. But no, that had been on old Ben Free’s TV, Free coming out of the kitchen and switching on the TV, the heavy, old-fashioned tommy gun in his hands.
Perhaps that was what the script had called for. It was the wrong movie, and now though he had bought his ticket only a minute ago, it was nearly at an end. The lights would go up, and he would walk out of the theater with the rest of the audience. To what streets?
Then he realized he was thinking about death, his own death, that his mind was circling his death like the roaring old airplane circling the city, climbing, climbing, never quite ready to admit where it was. Why had he always thought of death as dark? Why not a flash of light, an end to the pictures on the dirty, sagging screen of his eyes? When Cliff, that son of a bitch, had sapped him, he had seen flashes of light, had seen the stars, not the dark.
I’ll get up now, he thought. Go out like I was going to buy a candy bar, hide in the john. I wonder if the fire exits are locked? Maybe those go right to the stars without your having to go through the other thing. The lobby. They’re not supposed to lock the fire exits, but sometimes they do, wrap chains around the handles, padlock them.
Christ, look at me. I’m supposed to be a tough guy; and look at me, I’m scared to death, my palms are wet. Only nobody ever really thought I was a tough guy but me. Maybe Candy. Because I’m so God-damned little, but little doesn’t have a thing to do with tough. I wonder what Cliff thought, that son of a bitch. Wait till I get hold of him; I’ll teach him what to think.
I wonder whatever happened to the clown, and was he gay? I think so, maybe he was, he was the kind of guy who gets hurt so much by women when he’s still young that something breaks inside him, and he goes gay. Comes out, that’s what they call it. He comes out and gets all those broads off his back, off his back forever—no wonder he’s gay. I’d be gay too. Gets AIDS and dies.
Wait till I get my hands on Kip, that rich bitch. I’ll kill her. You know what did it to me? It was Candy, first of all. A tramp, sure she was, I knew the minute I saw her in old Free’s front room, but she kind of liked me, she kind of went for me, I know she did.
And I kind of went for her.
And so I thought, hell, I don’t have to go my whole life paying for it, and even if I pay her for it, it’s better I should pay somebody who kind of likes me, kind of keep the thing in the family, as the family used to say.
Then I met Sandy, and she kind of liked me too, and she was an inch or so shorter than I am. Hell, an inch easy if we took off our shoes. And she kind of went for me. She didn’t want to show it because she was on that career trip, but she did. Hell, we could have danced together, maybe if I ever get down alive we will. She was cute too.
And then I met Kip, and oh, Jesus, it was like I could see the best part of all, like right at the end where Linda Loring calls Robert Mitchum from Paris just before the credits roll. Only they didn’t. Jesus, wait till I get my hands on her, I’ll beat her, I’ll tear her clothes off, I’ll strip her naked. But, Jesus, if she ever kissed me and said, “Jim, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I’d pick her up and hug her and kiss her, and we’d go out and do—
Something. Something wonderful. Have a drink, or go stand on the bridge and look at the river, drive up into the hills in my convertible and look down at the city. Because if Kip ever told me she was sorry, I’d have a convertible.
“I hope she’s okay,” Barnes said.
“Sure she’s okay,” Stubb told him, pressing his hands together so Barnes would not see them shake. “Why shouldn’t she be okay? We’re the ones that aren’t okay.”
“I think maybe she’s passed out again. Maybe you ought to take that cigarette away from her,” Barnes said.
“Oh, you mean Candy.” Stubb pulled the cigarette from her fingers. He had finished his own and ground it out on the metal floor. There were still a few puffs left of hers.
The young man in the flight jacket said, “How about lighting me, sir?” He had his pack of Camels out again. It still did not look quite right.
Stubb handed him the butt. “I got to go,” he said.
“There’s a thing in back,” the young man told him.
He walked back toward the blue light. His ears were popping, and the slanting, shaking floor made it hard to walk. After a moment, he realized what the rubber funnel and hose were for. A sniff brought a faint odor, with the smell of oil and a thinning cold.
He stood facing the funnel, his back toward the front of the plane, and examined the match folder. It was black, printed in white: a stork in a top hat on both sides, one leg separating the words STORK CLUB. Much smaller lettering on the fold gave the address—3 East 53rd Street, N.Y.C. No zip.
He did not know Candy was behind him until she tapped him on t
he shoulder. “Is there any water back here, Jim?”
He dropped the match folder into his pocket. “Haven’t seen any.”
“The guy said there was.”
“Maybe he was putting you on. He’s probably dead by now anyway. What the hell would he know about water?” He could not bite back the words.
“I’m really—there it is.”
It was a sheet-metal container with a spigot. A clamp beside it held an aluminum cup with a folding handle. He filled the cup for her, and she emptied it, a few drops furrowing what remained of the powder on her cheeks. “I’m thirsty as hell,” she said. “I guess a lot of that stuff was salty.”
He motioned toward the water can.
“Yeah, do it again. I didn’t want to say this, but I’m a little sicky too. You know? I’ll go back up front if you want me to.” She drank again.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“Hold my hand, will you, Jim? You know that was the best meal I ever had in my life. I want to keep it down.”
“It was the knock on the head. They sapped me too, and I damn near chucked myself.”
“And my ass is sore. Why should my ass be sore?”
“Search me.”
“Anyway, I want to puke, but I know if I do, in twenty minutes I’ll be so hungry I’ll be sucking my fingers.”
“They cheated,” Stubb told her.
“What does that mean, Jim?”
“All of us got what we wanted, and we couldn’t handle it. Except you—you could have handled it, if only they hadn’t sapped you. It’s no fun, getting it on the head.”
“Everybody got what they were after?”
“Yeah.”
“Madame Serpentina?”
“She won’t talk much, but I think a rap with God. Except it turned out he wasn’t the real McCoy, and she bought it.”
“Oh, wow!”
Stubb braced himself against the motion of the plane. “You’re always asking me what I mean, so what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Most of us wouldn’t even want it. I always figured I’d have to talk to Him when I, you know, went upstairs. I haven’t been looking forward to it much.”
“You’ll charm the pants off God.”
“Jim, I don’t think he wears any.”
“Then you’ve got it knocked. Anyway, what about Mary Magdalene? He went for her big. I bet you’re nicer than she was.”
“Who’s that?”
“A girl like you.”
“You’re stringing me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“How would you know anyway? You go to church?”
“When I was a kid, my folks made me go to parochial school. We used to talk about it—just us kids. We thought that was really a thrill, because there weren’t so many X-rated movies around then.”
“When was that, Jim?”
“Let’s see. Twenty, twenty-five years ago, I guess.”
“Not you. God and Mary Whatshername.”
“Oh, them. Two thousand years.”
“That long, and people are still talking.”
“God gets a lot of press.”
“Uh huh. What about Ozzie? Did he get what he was after too?”
“Women. Showgirls, he called them. He was in a joint, and they got him to stand up and announce, and to tell a couple of jokes. Then he went backstage and the girls crowded all around him. He made it sound like there were about a hundred, but I doubt it. They took his clothes off. I don’t think he could get it up.”
“You don’t think?”
“He wasn’t too clear about it. I think he ran away—onto the stage again.”
“Sounds like fun. I wish I’d seen it.”
“Me too.”
“I’m not going to ask about you.”
“Thanks.”
Candy belched and giggled. “I guess I’m feeling a little better. Only it seems like the floor’s still tilted.”
“It is,” Stubb told her. “We’re still climbing.”
April Is The Cruelest Month
A new universe waited above the snow clouds. The moon shone brightly there, and all the stars were out. The clouds themselves had become the surface of the earth, as to our eyes the clouds of Venus are Venus herself. They were an unending mountain range, silvery white peaks linked by enchanted vales; and the air about them feigned never to have known the smoky filth of human life.
A single pencil wrote there, as though God were still at labor upon the Book of Genesis. It traced a narrow line across heaven, and this line too seemed silver and white in the moonlight, pure, only slightly bent against the night sky, untroubled as yet by any word that should produce a world.
The pencil drew a circle, perhaps. A great circle.
They rose to it. Once or twice the witch glimpsed the line of its tracing, but neither she nor the others saw the pencil itself, though it was far larger than a Boeing 747, though a 767 might have landed upon one of its wings, a DC 10 upon the other.
The sound of their engines altered subtly, waxed, waned, droned. Turbulence made their aircraft pitch and yaw; Candy clutched her belly with both her hands as if afraid she would be sick after all. Stubb wrestled futilely with a seat belt that could never be made to go around her. White knuckled, the witch clung to the sides of her seat. Barnes swore and muttered, stroking his chin, pulling his ear.
There was a clang, a bang as though the plane were about to break apart in mid air. The roar of the engines faded to a whisper. Outside the windows, there was only night, without moon or stars.
The young man in the flight jacket took a deep breath and said, “Well, we did it again.”
The four of them looked at him. No one spoke.
“I hope it didn’t scare you.”
Candy said, “I’ve been scared so long …” Her voice trailed away.
Stubb told her, “You didn’t act like it, sweetheart.”
“How could I act? Sicky. Woozy. That’s how I acted, but I’ve been scared ever since they put me in that loony bin. Even when I was stuck full of dope or half looped. I couldn’t get high enough to get away from it.”
The young man in the flight jacket cleared his throat. “Folks, I wouldn’t want to hear any classified information.”
The witch said, “You must be tolerant. We are all a bit on edge.”
“Me too,” the young man told her. “Well, it’s over now.” He thrust a key into a keyhole in the fuselage overhead. A section of it angled down, unfolding a thin stair of white metal. A faint light shone somewhere beyond the top of the plane.
The young man grinned. “This is a C-class Fort. The limejuicers didn’t want it, so your guys took out the dorsal turret and put this in. We’re magnetically coupled, and when you go up those steps, you’ll be walking right through the middle of the field. I’m supposed to warn you that it messes up watches. If any of you’ve got one you care about, you’d better leave it with me. I’ll return it when we come back to pick you up.”
Stubb said, “I don’t think—”
The witch said, “I do,” and slipped off a delicate little dial ringed with brilliants. She smiled at the young man in the flight jacket. “Already it does not keep good time, so perhaps I should wear it, no? Perhaps your magnetism would mend it for me?”
He smiled back and managed to touch her hand as he took the watch. “I doubt it, Ma‘am. It’s probably better you leave it with me.” He glanced at the watch’s tiny face, then at the chronometer on his wrist. “Twenty-four hundred. It’s not so far off, Ma’am.”
“And when shall you arrive to take us to solid ground again, Captain?” The witch had risen from her seat.
“It’s Colonel, Ma’am,” the young man told her. “I’m an Army Air Force officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, not a Pan Am pilot. We’ll come for you when they tell us to.”
Candy asked, “Do most people stay long?”
“Not most of them, no, Ma’am. Usually it’s just a few hours. But not very many go up th
ere, and we never take some of them down.”
“Ahhh!” The witch breathed the word with a note of moaning wind. “Perhaps they come down without your assistance?” She made a pushing gesture.
“I doubt that, Ma’am. Now if you folks will just go up. We’ve already lost a little more time than we should have.”
Barnes and Stubb looked at each other, then at the airy metal stair. “I want to help Candy up,” Stubb said.
Barnes nodded, smiled at the two women, and went up briskly.
“I go next,” the witch said. “Oh, I am not brave! I only fear I will not go at all. Candy, can you climb them? With myself before and Mr. Stubb behind?”
“I’m cold sober. Of course I can.”
“I wish a kiss first, Colonel,” the witch said suddenly. “After all, it may be the last. And because I did not know of your rank.”
For an instant she smiled, and there was something so bewitching in her smile that it seemed strange she did it so seldom. She might, the young man thought, have conquered the whole world with that smile; he tended to think in such terms.
Then she threw her arms about him and kissed him. “You do not object?” she asked, still clinging to him.
“Why, no, Ma’am.”
“My breath is not sweet, perhaps. It is so late, and it has been so long since I have eaten. I cannot even recall the last time now. I am very tired, and yet I must do more tonight, and I cannot say how much more.”
The young man said, “Your breath is just as sweet, as—as a breeze in April.”
“Good.” She kissed him again. “I see you like it as well as I, but now I must go. You have been so kind. I would not wish to entangle you in difficulties with your superiors.”
She looked around. Stubb had started up the stair, reaching behind him to extend a hand to Candy. Because he was two steps higher than she, their eyes were at a level.
The young man said, “Uh, Ma’am, would you like a sandwich? I’ve got one up front.”
“Oh! Very much!”
“Just a minute.” He ducked through the doorway. The sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper, was Spam on dark rye. He handed it to the witch, who kissed him again, then started after the groaning Candy. When the witch was halfway up, she turned, took a dainty bite of bread and meat, and blew him a kiss.