by Gene Wolfe
“Kip never suspected?”
“She knew something had happened,” Free said. “When I came back from Virginia, came back in that second June of my nineteen forty-two, she told me how good I looked. I was prominent enough in Buffalo then that they had quite a few pictures of me on file at the paper. I got them to let me examine them.”
Candy asked, “And you looked the way you had a couple of years back?”
“You’re a very clever woman, Miss Garth. No. That was what I expected, but it wasn’t what I saw. Younger, yes, but different too. Stronger. I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Better. That’s really all I can say. When I went into the plant, some of the problems we’d been having, things that had worried me for months, seemed simple. I saw where we might get a local substitute for the high silicon sand we’d imported from the Philippines before Pearl Harbor, for example. I think now that what happened was that my two selves had merged, and that the coming together made a single self that was stronger than either.” He stamped one foot, and all of them jumped a bit. “Plywood,” he said. “Each ring on a tree is a year’s growth. When you make plywood, you peel those rings apart, then glue them back so the grains cross. What you get is a piece of wood that’s stronger than both were in the old trunk.”
Stubb said, “What if one of the layers were rotten, General? Wouldn’t the plywood be rotten too?”
Free nodded.
“General, I’m going to tell you something you won’t like to hear. When I was living in your house, you told me you had a ticket that would take you back to the High Country. But you told me too that it was too late for you to use it. You weren’t senile, or at least I don’t think you were, not really. But you were a very old man.”
Free nodded. “You’re telling me I’m going to die, Mr. Stubb. Every man does. Unlike other men, I know how I’ll die as well. It’s the simple truth.”
“Wait just a minute!” Candy exclaimed. “You said Kip had reported to you. I heard you. That means there were two of you then.”
Free did not reply. A long moment passed. At last Stubb said, “No, it doesn’t. She reported after the Ben Free we knew was dead.”
“Miss Garth, I think that when I went to your time, to this time now, Ben Free wasn’t there. How long did you—did all four of you—live with him?”
“Three nights, Master,” the witch said. “After the third, the house was partly torn down.”
“I think he must have gone to some other time, although I have no idea what that time might be. To the Lewis and Clark expedition, I hope. Decades later, old and sick, he came back and discovered what he told Mr. Stubb: that it was too late.
“And when he came back I disappeared, as far as Kip and the rest were concerned. Kip thought Free had done it, and she must have been frantic. We had people monitoring the papers and the television news fulltime, as you can imagine. When one of them spotted Free, Kip threw caution to the winds. She assigned an agent to watch the house, and she and Robin questioned a woman in the neighborhood and got your names. She got the FBI to put a mail cover on all of you, and when they found that Mr. Barnes here was answering lonelyhearts ads, she had Robin write to him. Eventually she had all four of you under surveillance. Then Free returned to his house, and she got him.”
There was another pause. “And she killed him,” Stubb said softly.
Free nodded. “I won’t tell you what she told me about it. She was lying, and I could always tell. Hell, I raised her, and that’s the truth. I think she took him to the house because he—I—told her the portable gizmo was still there, built into a wall; and that when they were alone, I explained everything to her. After that she must have known she would never get her father back as long as I—Free—refused to go back.
“If you’re wondering where the general is now, let me assure you he’s gone. Not vanished because I’m here, but gone to a better time, taking his portable gizmo with him. He deduced the location of Free’s ‘ticket’ you see, and carried the one he’d brought from nineteen forty-two through it.
“And now we’ve come to what Miss Garth calls the payoff. I don’t know who you four are, but I know I’ll let you live with me when the time comes. I know you’ll fight to save my house, the house that was my base for so many years, and fight pretty well from what Kip told me. And that you’ll try to find me when you think I may be in trouble, though all of you have troubles enough of your own. The message I left for the general I used to be—I wired a calendar clock to turn on the radio and one of your neat little tape recorders, by the way—said you should get your greatest desires. I did it because I’ve learned we all have to get them before we can have better ones.”
Stubb said, “I don’t think we have them yet. At least I don’t.”
Free nodded. “I’m about to give you one, I hope. There are two doors out of this High Country, you see. One is the one you came through. The other is the gizmo. I’m offering all of you a chance to go back, to fold yourselves in upon your earlier selves and live new lives, if you want them.”
“Yes!” Candy shouted. The witch threw herself at Free’s feet, as Stubb nodded and rose from where he sat.
Barnes said, “Swee’ pea—”
* * *
“Mr. Free—or rather, the person we call by that name—has concealed a talisman. The acaryas do so at times, putting by their unearthly crowns and orbs to walk among mortals. Now he lacks strength to take it up again. But if we could find it …”
“You mean this,” Barnes said. “You’re serious.”
“I was never more so. Do not think to cheat me of the prize, Ozzie. You could no more wield such a talisman than you could summon the green-haired wantons of the sea. But if you help me, you shall be my vizier in an empire encompassing the world.” The witch’s hands toyed with his own, stroking their backs, tickling their palms.
Icy though the room was, his face was damp with sweat. “I wish I knew if you’re crazy.”
Epilogue
The ragged man and the ragged boy came down the alley slowly, picking their way between pools of melting slush. The air was cold, but the sun was bright. “There it is,” the man said, pointing. “See, I told you they wouldn’t bother to fence off the back. Think you can climb over that junk?”
The boy had already begun, scrambling over an abandoned stove and dodging through the gutted body of a wrecked car. The man was still clambering after him when he halted on the porch.
“Can we go in?” the boy asked. “There’s a sign.”
The man nodded, half to himself. The sign, crudely hand-lettered in black paint, read FREE LIVE FREE. It was a trifle weatherworn now.
Through a broken window he saw the looted kitchen and the ruined parlor beyond it, a doll’s room laid open.
The knob turned, and taking the boy by the hand, he stepped over the sill.
Coffee was perking on the stove. A taller Stubb and a slimmer Candy stood beside it, she dressed in some shimmering material he had never seen, a gown of silver light.
In a wall, the ragged man thought. The old fox. Free told me he’d hidden it in a wall. He thrilled with fear, with discovery and joy, an unnamed emotion.
“Glinda!” Candy called. “Look who’s here—it’s Popeye!”
The sorceress’s familiar voice floated in from the parlor. “Ah, Mr. Barnes!” she said. “The quadrumvirate is complete.”
Chronology
A Chronology of the Life of Samuel Benjamin Whitten, Brigadier General, United States Army, Retired b. 1889, d. 1983, age about 82
1803—“Ben Free” joins the Lewis & Clark Expedition during its descent of the Ohio River. Physiologically Whitten is sixty, though he appears younger.
1807-1818—“Free” makes periodic visits to the house at 808 South 38th Street, using the portable gizmo he brought with him to leave the frontier and the gizmo built into the rear door of 808 South 38th Street to return.
1819—“Free” leaves the frontier for good, bringing with him certain valuable
furs, his rifle, and other memorabilia. Recovering the portable gizmo from a cave in central Kentucky, he conceals it in the wall of 808 South 38th Street behind plaster and wallpaper.
1889—Samuel Benjamin Whitten born, Buffalo, New York, the only son of John B. Whitten, founder of Whitten Crystal Works, and Mary Standbridge Whitten.
1917—Whitten, already a member of the New York National Guard, enters the U.S. Army. Commissioned, he volunteers for pilot training.
March 1918—Lt. S. B. Whitten lands in France with the United States Army Air Service.
November 11, 1918, 11:00 A.M.—Hostilities on the Western Front cease. Capt. S. B. Whitten of the 135th Aero Squadron is the pilot of a DH-4 day bomber.
1924—Standbridge “Kip” Whitten born, Manila, Philippine Islands.
1937—Brig. Gen. S. B. “Buck” Whitten retires, aged forty-eight, his career damaged by his support of Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell’s theories of high-altitude bombing.
May 30, 1942—Whitten vanishes from his office at the Whitten Crystal Corp. and returns to High Country from 1952, bringing information on nuclear fission.
June 2, 1942—Whitten returns to Buffalo from Langley Field, Virginia.
July 1942—Whitten joins the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the invitation of William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan.
August 18, 1942—Whitten flown to High Country. Enters space-time singularity induction coil and the year 1952. Returns to Washington, where he is debriefed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and Donovan.
August 20, 1942—Whitten reenters the space-time singularity induction coil, accompanied by Robin Valor, his daughter (Kip), and others. He carries with him the disassembled gizmo.
September 17, 1942—All U.S. atomic research is placed under the direction of Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves and code-named “Manhattan Project.”
December 2, 1942—A self-sustaining nuclear reaction is achieved at the University of Chicago.
July 16, 1945—An atomic bomb is exploded on a steel tower at Alamagordo, New Mexico.
August 6, 1945—The B-29 bomber Enola Gay drops a uranium fission weapon, code-named “Little Boy,” destroying Hiroshima, Japan.
November 5, 1982—On the Five O‘clock News, anchorman Bryan O’Flynn reports sightings of a B-17 and speculates that it may be on its way to an air show. (Newspapers later point out that air shows are not normally scheduled for the winter months.)
November 9, 1982—Buck Whitten buys the Flying Carpet.
Friday, January 14, 1983—“Free” returns to 808 South 38th Street and discovers the house has been condemned. Whitten vanishes from his living quarters at the airport.
Sunday, January 16, 1983—“Free’s” ad appears. He agrees to allow the witch to live in his house.
Monday January 17, 1983—The witch, Osgood M. Barnes, Jim Stubb, and Candy Garth move into the house.
Wednesday, January 18, 1983—Stubb lights Candy’s cigarette in the rain. “Free” watches television in the parlor.
Thursday, January 20, 1983—Kip takes “Free” prisoner. The house is partially wrecked.
Friday, January 21, 1983—Stubb searches the house. Kip and “Free” return to the house, and “Free” dies in its basement. Whitten (the man in the duffle coat) reappears at his headquarters.
Saturday, January 22, 1983 (before dawn)—The man in the duffle coat vanishes again. The witch, Stubb, Candy, and Barnes talk to Whitten (“Free”) in the cockpit of High Country.
Monday, January 24, 1983—The man in the duffle coat deserts, using the gizmo in the wall of the house and taking with him the gizmo he brought from 1942.
Note: This chronology has been prepared at the request of the editor of the U.S. trade edition. It did not appear in the small-press edition and may not appear in the British edition. It attempts to cover only the parts of Whitten’s life stated or implied in Free Live Free.
—Gene Wolfe
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