The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction

by Gene Wolfe

  N

  ine chimes sounded from the old clock in the steeple of Father Karl’s church, and Herr Zimmer did not appear.

  Dr. Eckardt, who had been chosen again to hold the stakes, came forward and whispered for some time with Professor Baumeister. The professor (if the truth were known) was beginning to believe that perhaps Lame Hans had decided it was best to forfeit after all—though in fact, if anyone had looked, he would have seen Lame Hans sitting at the bar of the inn at that very moment, having a pleasant nip of plum brandy and then another, while he allowed the suspense to build up as a good showman should.

  At last Dr. Eckardt climbed upon a chair and announced: “It is nearly ten. When the bet was made it was agreed by both parties that if either failed to appear—or, appearing, failed to play—the other should be declared the winner. If the worthy stranger, Herr Zimmer, does not make an appearance before ten minutes past ten, I intend to award the money entrusted to me to our respected acquaintance Professor Baumeister.”

  There was a murmur of excitement at this, but just when the clock began to strike, Lame Hans called from the door of the inn: “Wait! ” Then hats were thrown into the air, and women stood on tiptoes to see, and fathers lifted their children up as the lame Herr Zimmer made his way down the steps of the inn and took his place in the chair that had been arranged in front of the board.

  “Are you ready to begin?” said Dr. Eckardt.

  “I am,” said Lame Hans, and opened.

  The first five moves were made just as they had been rehearsed. But in the sixth, in which Gretchen was to have slid her queen half across the board, the piece stopped a square short.

  Any ordinary player would have been dismayed, but Lame Hans was not. He only put his chin on his hand, and contrived (though wishing he had not drunk the brandy) a series of moves within the frame of the fourteen-move game, by which he should lose despite the queen’s being out of position. He made the first of these moves, and black moved the queen again, this time in a way that was completely different from anything on the paper Hans had given Gretchen. She was deceiving me when she said she did not know how to play, he thought to himself. And now she feels she can’t read the paper in there, or perhaps she has decided to surprise me. Naturally she would learn the fundamentals of the game, when it is played in the inn parlor every night. (But he knew that she had not been deceiving him.) Then he saw that this new move of the queen’s was in fact a clever attack, into which he could play and lose.

  And then the guns around Kostrzyn, which had been silent since the early hours of the morning, began to boom again. Three times Lame Hans’s hand stretched out to touch his king and make the move that would render it quite impossible for him to escape the queen, and three times it drew back. “You have five minutes in which to move,” Dr. Eckardt said. “I will tell you when only thirty seconds remain, and count the last five.”

  The machine was built to play chess, thought Lame Hans. Long ago, and they were warlocks in those days. Could it be that Gretchen, in kicking about . . . ?

  Some motion in the sky made him raise his eyes, looking above the board and over the top of the machine itself. An artillery observation balloon (gray-black, a German balloon then) was outlined against the blue sky. He thought of himself sitting in a dingy little shop full of tobacco all day long, and no one to play chess with—no one he could not checkmate easily.

  He moved a pawn, and the black bishop slipped out of the king’s row to tighten the net.

  If he won, they would have to pay him. Heitzmann would think everything had gone according to plan, and Professor Baumeister, surely, would hire no assassins. Lame Hans launched his counterattack: the real attack at the left side of the board, with a false one down the center. Professor Baumeister came to stand beside him, and Dr. Eckardt warned him not to distract the player. There had been seven more than fourteen moves—and there was a trap behind the trap.

  Lame Hans took the black queen’s knight and lost a pawn. He was sweating in the heat, wiping his brow with his sleeve between moves.

  A black rook, squat in its iron sandbags, advanced three squares, and he heard the crowd cheer. “That is mate, Herr Zimmer,” Dr. Eckardt announced. Lame Hans saw the look of relief on Professor Baumeister’s face, and knew that his own was blank. Then over the cheering someone shouted: “Cheat! Cheat!” Gray-black pillbox police caps were forcing their way through the hats and parasols of the spectators.

  “There is a man in there! There is someone inside!” It was too clear and too loud—a showman’s voice. A tall stranger was standing on the topmost bench waving Heitzmann’s sweat-stained velvet hat.

  A policeman asked, “The machine opens, does it not, Herr Professor? Open it quickly before there is a riot.”

  Professor Baumeister said, “I don’t know how.”

  “It looks simple enough,” declared the other policeman, and he began to unfasten the catches, wrapping his hand in his handkerchief to protect it from the heat of the brass.

  “Wait!” ordered Professor Baumeister, but neither one waited; the first policeman went to the aid of the other, and together they lifted away one side of the machine and let it fall against the railing. The movable circuit card had not been allowed to swing back into place, and Gretchen’s plump, naked legs protruded from the cavity beneath the chessboard. The first policeman seized them by the ankles and pulled her out until her half-open eyes stared at the bright sky.

  Dr. Eckhardt bent over her and flexed her left arm at the elbow. “Rigor is beginning,” he said. “She died of the heat, undoubtedly.”

  Lame Hans threw himself on her body weeping.

  S

  uch is the story of Lame Hans. The captain of police, in his kindness, has permitted me to push the machine to a position which permits Hans to reach the board through the bars of his cell, and he plays chess there all day long, moving first his own white pieces and then the black ones of the machine, and always losing. Sometimes when he is not quick enough to move the black queen, I see her begin to rock and to slide herself, and the dials and the console lights to glow with impatience, and then Hans must reach out and take her to her new position at once. Do you not think that this is sad for Lame Hans? I have heard that many who have been twisted by the old wars have these psychokinetic abilities without knowing it; and Professor Baumeister, who is in the cell next to his, says that someday a technology may be founded on them.

  AFTERWORD

  Most games do not inspire the human imagination. A few—a very few—do. Or so it seems to me. There may be a good football story, but I have never come across it. My guess is that there are some good cricket stories, but I couldn’t name even one. Ditto for soccer stories. But baseball! We could start with Michael Bishop’s novel Brittle Innings, then go down a whole list of Ring Lardner short stories—see his collection You Know Me Al. I’ve even committed a baseball story myself, “The On-Deck Circle.”

  Chess is like that. Can anybody name a checkers story? I can’t. Monopoly? Dominoes? But chess! Through the Looking-Glass alone would make my point; and there’s Rex Stout’s chess mystery, Gambit, and a whole host of short stories, including this one. One of these days I want to write a chess story that returns chess to its origin, a story in which the rooks are war elephants, the knights chariots, the bishops cavalry, the queens viziers commanding elite corps, and the kings rajas with their bodyguards. If you don’t play chess, you should learn; and then, perhaps, you will see the tall swordsmen we call pawns, nearly naked behind their big rhinoceros-hide shields, see the chariots charging—then wheeling like a flock of birds to rain javelins and arrows upon the enemy’s line.

  Hear those trumpetings? No metal horn ever voiced such music. Hear the thunder of their feet? Tigers cower before these soldiers. Their faces are painted a score of colors and their tusks made longer and sharper by steel blades; each bears a painted wooden castle manned by half a dozen archers.

  No wonder there are so many chess stories!

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sp; STRAW

  Y

  es, I remember killing my first man very well; I was just seventeen. A flock of snow geese flew under us that day about noon. I remember looking over the side of the basket and seeing them, and thinking that they looked like a pike head. That was an omen, of course, but I did not pay any attention.

  It was clear, fall weather—a trifle chilly. I remember that. It must have been about the midpart of October. Good weather for the balloon. Clow would reach up every quarter hour or so with a few double handfuls of straw for the brazier, and that was all it required. We cruised, usually, at about twice the height of a steeple.

  You have never been in one? Well, that shows how things have changed. Before the Fire-wights came, there was hardly any fighting at all, and free swords had to travel all over the continent looking for what there was. A balloon was better than walking, believe me. Miles—he was our captain in those days—said that where there were three soldiers together, one was certain to put a shaft through a balloon; it was too big a target to resist, and that would show you where the armies were.

  No, we would not have been killed. You would have had to slit the thing wide open before it would fall fast, and a little hole like the business end of a pike would make would just barely let you know it was there. The baskets do not swing either, as people think. Why should they? They feel no wind—they are traveling with it. A man just seems to hang there, when he is up in one of them, and the world turns under him. He can hear everything—pigs and chickens, and the squeak the windlass makes drawing water from a well.

  “Good flying weather,” Clow said to me.

  I nodded. Solemnly, I suppose.

  “All the lift you want, in weather like this. The colder it is, the better she pulls. The heat from the fire doesn’t like the chill, and tries to escape from it. That’s what they say.”

  Blond Bracata spit over the side. “Nothing in our bellies,” she said, “that’s what makes it lift. If we don’t eat today you won’t have to light the fire tomorrow—I’ll take us up myself.”

  She was taller than any of us except Miles, and the heaviest of us all, but Miles would not allow for size when the food was passed out, so I suppose she was the hungriest too.

  Derek said, “We should have stretched one of that last bunch over the fire. That would have fetched a pot of stew, at the least.”

  Miles shook his head. “There were too many.”

  “They would have run like rabbits.”

  “And if they hadn’t?”

  “They had no armor.”

  Unexpectantly, Bracata came in for the captain. “They had twenty-two men, and fourteen women. I counted them.”

  “The women wouldn’t fight.”

  “I used to be one of them. I would have fought.”

  Clow’s soft voice added: “Nearly any woman will fight if she can get behind you.”

  Bracata stared at him, not sure whether he was supporting her or not. She had her mitts on—she was as good with them as anyone I have ever seen—and I remember that I thought for an instant that she would go for Clow right there in the basket. We were packed in like fledglings in the nest, and fighting, it would have taken at least three of us to throw her out—by which time she would have killed us all, I suppose. But she was afraid of Clow. I found out why later. She respected Miles, I think, for his judgment and courage, without being afraid of him. She did not care much for Derek either way, and of course I was hardly there at all as far as she was concerned. But she was just a little frightened by Clow.

  Clow was the only one I was not frightened by—but that is another story too.

  “Give it more straw,” Miles said.

  “We’re nearly out.”

  “We can’t land in this forest.”

  Clow shook his head and added straw to the fire in the brazier—about half as much as he usually did. We were sinking toward what looked like a red and gold carpet.

  “We got straw out of them anyway,” I said, just to let the others know I was there.

  “You can always get straw,” Clow told me. He had drawn a throwing spike and was feigning to clean his nails with it. “Even from swineherds, who you’d think wouldn’t have it. They’ll get it to be rid of us.”

  “Bracata’s right,” Miles said. He gave the impression that he had not heard Clow and me. “We have to have food today.”

  Derek snorted. “What if there are twenty?”

  “We stretch one over the fire. Isn’t that what you suggested? And if it takes fighting, we fight. But we have to eat today.” He looked at me. “What did I tell you when you joined us, Jerr? High pay or nothing? This is the nothing. Want to quit?”

  I said, “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  Clow was scraping the last of the straw from the bag. It was hardly a handful. As he threw it in the brazier Bracata asked, “Are we going to set down in the trees?”

  Clow shook his head and pointed. Away in the distance I could see a speck of white on a hill. It looked too far, but the wind was taking us there, and it grew and grew until we could see that it was a big house, all built of white brick with gardens and outbuildings, and a road that ran up to the door. There are none like that now, I suppose.

  L

  andings are the most exciting part of traveling by balloon, and sometimes the most unpleasant. If you are lucky, the basket stays upright. We were not. Our basket snagged and tipped over and was dragged along by the envelope, which fought the wind and did not want to go down, cold though it was by then. If there had been a fire in the brazier still, I suppose we would have set the meadow ablaze. As it was, we were tumbled about like toys. Bracata fell on top of me, as heavy as stone, and she had the claws of her mitts out, trying to dig them into the turf to stop herself, so that for a moment I thought I was going to be killed. Derek’s pike had been charged, and the ratchet released in the confusion; the head went flying across the field, just missing a cow.

  By the time I recovered my breath and got to my feet, Clow had the envelope under control and was treading it down. Miles was up too, straightening his hauberk and sword belt. “Look like a soldier,” he called to me. “Where are your weapons?”

  A pincer-mace and my pike were all I had, and the pincer-mace had fallen out of the basket. After five minutes of looking, I found it in the tall grass, and went over to help Clow fold the envelope.

  When we were finished, we stuffed it in the basket and put our pikes through the rings on each side so we could carry it. By that time we could see men on horseback coming down from the big house. Derek said, “We won’t be able to stand against horsemen in this field.”

  For an instant I saw Miles smile. Then he looked very serious. “We’ll have one of those fellows over a fire in half an hour.”

  Derek was counting, and so was I. Eight horsemen, with a cart following them. Several of the horsemen had lances, and I could see the sunlight winking on helmets and breastplates. Derek began pounding the butt of his pike on the ground to charge it.

  I suggested to Clow that it might look more friendly if we picked up the balloon and went to meet the horsemen, but he shook his head. “Why bother?”

  The first of them had reached the fence around the field. He was sitting a roan stallion that took it at a clean jump and came thundering up to us looking as big as a donjon on wheels.

  “Greetings,” Miles called. “If this be your land, Lord, we give thanks for your hospitality. We’d not have intruded, but our conveyance has exhausted its fuel.”

  “You are welcome,” the horseman called. He was as tall as Miles or taller, as well as I could judge, and as wide as Bracata. “Needs must, as they say, and no harm done.” Three of the others had jumped their mounts over the fence behind him. The rest were taking down the rails so the cart could get through.

  “Have you straw, Lord?” Miles asked. I thought it would have been better if he had asked for food. “If we could have a few bundles of straw, we’d not trouble you more.”

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sp; “None here,” the horseman said, waving a mail-clad arm at the fields around us, “yet I feel sure my bailiff could find you some. Come up to the hall for a taste of meat and a glass of wine, and you can make your ascension from the terrace; the ladies would be delighted to see it, I’m certain. You’re floating swords, I take it?”

  “We are that,” our captain affirmed, “but persons of good character nonetheless. We’re called the Faithful Five—perhaps you’ve heard of us? High-hearted, fierce-fighting wind-warriors all, as it says on the balloon.”

  A younger man, who had reined up next to the one Miles called Lord, snorted. “If that boy is high hearted, or a fierce fighter either, I’ll eat his breeks.”

  Of course, I should not have done it. I have been too mettlesome all my life, and it has gotten me in more trouble than I could tell you of if I talked till sunset, though it has been good to me too—I would have spent my days following the plow, I suppose, if I had not knocked down Derek for what he called our goose. But you see how it was. Here I had been thinking of myself as a hard-bitten balloon soldier, and then to hear something like that. Anyway, I swung the pincermace overhand once I had a good grip on his stirrup. I had been afraid the extension spring was a bit weak, never having used one before, but it worked well; the pliers got him under the left arm and between the ear and the right shoulder, and would have cracked his neck for him properly if he had not been wearing a gorget. As it was, I jerked him off his horse pretty handily and got out the little dagger that screwed into the mace handle. A couple of the other horsemen couched their lances, and Derek had a finger on the dog-catch of his pike, so all in all it looked as if there could be a proper fight, but “Lord” (I learned afterward that he was the Baron Ascolot) yelled at the young man I had pulled out of his saddle, and Miles yelled at me and grabbed my left wrist, and thus it all blew over. When we had tripped the release and gotten the mace open and retracted again, Miles said, “He will be punished, Lord. Leave him to me. It will be severe. I assure you.”