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

by Gene Wolfe

  It had been cool, that day. Cool, with a little breeze he had fought the whole way over, keeping his airbike below the treetops and following groundtrucks when he could, pulled along by their wake.

  Cold in the old barn, then—cold, and dusty—dust motes dancing in the sunbeams that stabbed between its old, bent, and battered aluminum panels.

  Rex had crouched as he had before, but he was bigger now, bigger than ever, and his smooth reptilian skin had felt like glass, like ice under which oiled muscles stirred like snakes. He had fallen, and Rex had picked him up in the arms that looked so tiny on Rex but were bigger and stronger than a big man’s arms, saying, “That’s what these are for,” and set him on Rex’s shoulders with his legs—his legs—trying to wrap around Rex’s thick, throbbing neck . . .

  Had opened the big doors from inside, had gone out almost crawling and stood up.

  It had not been the height. He had been higher on his airbike almost every day. It had not been his swift, swaying progress above the treetops, treetops arrayed in red, gold, and green so that it seemed that he followed Rex’s floating head over a lawn deep in fallen leaves.

  It had been—

  He shrugged the thought away. There were no adequate words. Power? You bought it at a drugstore, a shiny little disk that would run your house-bot for three or four more years or your drill forever. Mastery? It was what people had held over dogs while private ownership had still been legal.

  Dogs had four fangs in front, and that was it, fangs so small they did not even look dangerous. Rex had a mouthful, every one as long as Roderick’s arm, in a mouth that could have chewed up an aircar.

  No, it had not been the height. He had ridden over woods—this wood among them—often. Had ridden higher than this, yet heard the rustling of the leaves below him, the sound of a brook, an invisible brook of air. It had been the noise.

  That was not right either, but it was closer than the others. It had been the snapping of the limbs and the crashing of the trees falling, or at least that had been a lot of it, the sound of their progress, the shattering, splintering wood. In part, at least, it had been the noise.

  “He did a great deal of damage,” the teaching cyborg was saying, as her female attendant nodded confirmation. “Much worse, he terrified literally hundreds of persons. . . .”

  Sitting on Rex’s shoulders, he had been able to talk almost directly into Rex’s ear. “Roar.”

  And Rex had roared to shake the earth.

  “Keep on roaring.”

  And Rex had.

  The red and white cattle Rex ate sometimes, so short legged they could scarcely move, had run away slowly only because they were too fat to run any faster, and one had gotten stepped on. People had run too, and Rex had kicked over a little prefab shed for the fun of it, and a tractor-bot. Had waded hip deep through the swamp without even slowing down, and had forded the river. There were fewer building restrictions on the north side of the river, and the people there had really run.

  Had run except for one old man with a bushy mustache, who had only stood and stared pop-eyed, too old to run, Roderick thought, or maybe too scared. He had looked down at the old man and waved, and their eyes had met, and suddenly—just as if the top of the old man’s head had popped up so Roderick could look around inside it—he had known what the old man was thinking.

  Not guessed, known.

  And the old man had been thinking that when he had been Roderick’s age he had wanted to do exactly what Roderick was doing now. He had never been able to, and had never thought anybody would be. But somebody was; that kid up there in the polka-dot shirt was. So he, the old man, had been wrong about the whole world all his life. It was much more wonderful, this old world, than he, the old man, had ever supposed. So maybe there was hope after all. Some kind of a hope anyhow, in a world where things like this could go on, on a Monday right here in Libertyberg.

  Before the old man could draw his breath to cheer, he had been gone, and there had been woods and cornfields. (Roderick’s suit AC shuddered and quit.) And after lots of corn, some kind of a big factory. Rex had stepped on its fence, which sputtered and shot sparks without doing anything much, and then the air-car had started diving at them.

  It had been red and fast, and Roderick remembered it as clearly as if he had seen it yesterday. It would dive, trying to hit Rex’s head, and then the override would say, “My gosh, that’s a great big dinosaur! You’re trying to crash us into a great big dinosaur, you jerk!” The override would pull the aircar up and miss, and then it would give it back to the driver, and he would try the same thing all over.

  Roderick had followed it with his eyes, especially after Rex started snapping at it, and the sky had been a wonderful cool blue with little white surgical-ball clouds strolling around in it. He had never seen a better sky—and he never would, because skies did not get any better than that one. After a while he had spotted the channel copter, flying around up there and taking his picture to run on everybody’s threedeevid, and had made faces at it.

  Another child, a scrubbed little girl with long, straight, privileged-looking yellow hair, had her hand up. “Did he kill a whole lot of people?”

  The teaching cyborg interrupted her own lecture. “Certainly not, since there were no people in North America during the Upper Cretaceous. Human evolution did not begin—”

  “This one.” The scrubbed little girl pointed to Rex. “Did he?”

  Rex shook his head.

  “That was not the point at issue,” the teaching cyborg explained. “Disruption is disrupting, and he and his maker disrupted. He disrupted, I should say, and his maker still more, since Rex would not have been in existence to disrupt had he not been made in violation of societal standards. No one of sensitivity would have done what he did. Someone of sensitivity would have realized at once that their construction of a large dinosaur, however muted in coloration—”

  Rex interrupted her. “I’m purple. It’s just that it’s gotten sort of dull lookin’ now that I’m older. Looky here.” He bent and slapped at his water trough with his disproportionately small hands. Dust ran from his hide in dark streaks, leaving it a faded mulberry.

  “You are not purple,” the teaching cyborg admonished Rex, “and you should not say you are. I would describe that shade as a mauve.” She spoke to her female attendant. “Do you think that they would mind very much if I were to start over? I’ve lost my place, I fear.”

  “You mustn’t interrupt her,” the female attendant cautioned the little girl. “Early Tertiary-in-the-Upper-Eocene-was-the-Moeritherium-the-size-of-a-tuber-but-more-like-a-hippopotamus.”

  “Yum,” Rex mumbled. “Yum-yum!”

  A small boy waved his hand wildly. “What do you feed him?”

  “Tofu, mostly. It’s good for him.” The teaching cyborg looked at Rex as she spoke, clearly displeased at his thriving upon tofu. “He eats an airtruckload of it every day. Also a great deal of soy protein and bean curd.”

  “I’d like to eat the hippos,” Rex told the small boy. “We go right past them every time I take you kids for a ride, and wow! Do they ever look yummy!”

  “He’s only joking,” the teaching cyborg told the children. She caught her female attendant’s left arm and held it up to see her watch. “I have a great deal more to tell you, children, but I’ll have to do it while we’re taking our ride, or we’ll fall behind schedule.”

  She and her female attendant opened the gate to Rex’s compound and went in, preceded, accompanied, and followed by small girls and boys. While most of the children gathered around him, stroking his rough, thick hide with tentative fingers, the teaching cyborg and her female attendant wrestled a stepladder and a very large howdah of white pentastyrene Wicked wicker from behind Rex’s sleeping shed. For five minutes or more they struggled to hook the howdah over his shoulders and fasten the Velcro cinch, obstructed by the well-intended assistance of four little boys.

  Roderick joined them, lifted the howdah into place, and
released and refastened the cinch, getting it tight enough that the howdah could not slip to one side.

  “Thank you,” the female attendant said. “Haven’t I seen you here before?”

  Roderick shook his head. “It’s the first time I’ve ever come.”

  “Well, a lot of men do. I mean it’s always just one man all by himself, but there’s almost always one.”

  “He used to lie down so that we could put it on him,” the teaching cyborg said severely, “and lie down again so that the children didn’t have to use the ladder. Now he just sits.”

  “I’m too fat,” Rex muttered. “It’s all that good tofu I get.”

  One by one, the children climbed the ladder, the teaching cyborg’s female attendant standing beside it to catch each if he or she fell, cautioning each to grasp the railings and urging each to belt himself or herself in once he or she had chosen a seat. The teaching cyborg and her female attendant boarded last of all, the teaching cyborg resumed her lecture, and Rex stood up with a groan and began yet again the slow walk around the zoo that he took a dozen times a day.

  It had been a fall day, Roderick reminded himself, a fall day bright and clear, a more beautiful day than days ever were now. A stiff, bright wind had been blowing right through all the sunshine. He had worn jeans, a Peoria White Sox cap, and a polka-dot shirt, had kept his airbike low where the wind wasn’t quite so strong, had climbed on Rex’s shoulders and watched as Rex had taken down the bar that held the big doors shut. . . .

  “Now,” the teaching cyborg said, “are there any additional questions?” And Roderick looked up just in time to see the corner of the white Wicked wicker howdah vanish behind Rex’s sleeping shed.

  “Yes.” He raised his hand. “What became of the boy?”

  “The government assumed responsibility for his nurturing and upbringing,” the teaching cyborg explained. “He received sensitivity training and reeducation in societal values and has become a responsible citizen.”

  When the teaching cyborg, her female attendant, and all the children had gone, Rex said, “You know, I always wondered what happened to you.”

  Roderick mopped his perspiring forehead. “You knew who I was all the time, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  There was a silence. Far away, as if from another time or another world, children spoke in excited voices and a lion roared. “Nothing happened to me,” Roderick said; it was clearly necessary to say something. “I grew up, that’s all.”

  “Those reeducation machines, they really burn it into you. That’s what I heard.”

  “No, I grew up. That’s all.”

  “I see. Can I ask why you keep lookin’ at me like that?”

  “I was just thinking.”

  “Thinkin’ what?”

  “Nothing.” With iron fists, stone shoulders, and steel-shod feet, words broke down the doors of his heart and forced their way into his mouth. “Your kind used to rule the Earth.”

  “Yeah.” Rex nodded. He turned away, leaving Roderick his serpentine tail and wide, ridged back, both the color of a grape skin that has been chewed up and spit out into the dust. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “You too.”

  AFTERWORD

  I think I must have taken my mental picture of a boy riding a dinosaur from the Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strip. With it came another picture, one of that same boy grown to manhood staring at his caged dinosaur. Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us.

  THE TREE IS MY HAT

  30

  Jan. I saw a strange stranger on the beach this morning. I had been swimming in the little bay between here and the village; that may have had something to do with it, although I did not feel tired. Dived down and thought I saw a shark coming around the big staghorn coral. Got out fast. The whole swim cannot have been more than ten minutes. Ran out of the water and started walking.

  There it is. I have begun this journal at last. (Thought I never would.) So let us return to all the things I ought to have put in and did not. I bought this the day after I came back from Africa.

  No, the day I got out of the hospital—I remember now. I was wandering around, wondering when I would have another attack, and went into a little shop on Forty-second Street. There was a nice-looking woman in there, one of those good-looking black women, and I thought it might be nice to talk to her, so I had to buy something. I said, “I just got back from Africa.”

  She: “Really. How was it?”

  Me: “Hot.”

  Anyway, I came out with this notebook and told myself I had not wasted my money because I would keep a journal, writing down my attacks, what I had been doing and eating, as instructed, but all I could think of was how she looked when she turned to go to the back of the shop. Her legs and how she held her head. Her hips.

  After that I planned to write down everything I remember from Africa, and what we said if Mary returned my calls. Then it was going to be about this assignment.

  31

  Jan. Setting up my new Mac. Who would think this place would have phones? But there are wires to Kololahi, and a dish. I can chat with people all over the world, for which the agency pays. (Talk about soft!) Nothing like this in Africa. Just the radio, and good luck with that.

  I was full of enthusiasm. “A remote Pacific island chain.” Wait. . . .

  P.D.: “Baden, we’re going to send you to the Takanga Group.”

  No doubt I looked blank.

  “It’s a remote Pacific island chain.” She cleared her throat and seemed to have swallowed a bone. “It’s not going to be like Africa, Bad. You’ll be on your own out there.”

  Me: “I thought you were going to fire me.”

  P.D.: “No, no! We wouldn’t do that.”

  “Permanent sick leave.”

  “No, no, no! But, Bad.” She leaned across her desk and for a minute I was afraid she was going to squeeze my hand. “This will be rough. I’m not going to try to fool you.”

  Ha!

  Cut to the chase. This is nothing. This is a bungalow with rotten boards in the floors that has been here since before the British pulled out, a mile from the village and less than half that from the beach, close enough that the Pacific smell is in all the rooms. The people are fat and happy, and my guess is not more than half are dumb. (Try and match that around Chicago.) Once or twice a year one gets yaws or some such, and Rev. Robbins gives him arsenic. Which cures it. Pooey!

  There are fish in the ocean, plenty of them. Wild fruit in the jungle, and they know which you can eat. They plant yams and breadfruit, and if they need money or just want something, they dive for pearls and trade them when Jack’s boat comes. Or do a big holiday boat trip to Kololahi.

  There are coconuts too, which I forgot. They know how to open them. Or perhaps I am just not strong enough yet. (I look in the mirror, and ugh.) I used to weigh two hundred pounds.

  “You skinny,” the king says. “Ha, ha, ha!” He is really a good guy, I think. He has a primitive sense of humor, but there are worse things. He can take a jungle chopper (we said upanga, but they say heletay) and open a coconut like a pack of gum. I have coconuts and a heletay, but I might as well try to open them with a spoon.

  1

  Feb. Nothing to report except a couple of wonderful swims. I did not swim at all for the first couple of weeks. There are sharks. I know they are really out there because I have seen them once or twice. According to what I was told, there are saltwater crocs too, up to fourteen feet long. I have never seen any of those and am skeptical, although I know they have them in Queensland. Every so often you hear about somebody who was killed by a shark, but that does not stop the people from swimming all the time, and I do not see why it should stop me. Good luck so far.

  2

  Feb. Saturday. I was supposed to write about the dwarf I saw on the beach that time, but I never got the nerve. Sometimes I used to see things i
n the hospital. Afraid it may be coming back. I decided to take a walk on the beach. All right, did I get sunstroke?

  Phooey.

  He was just a little man, shorter even than Mary’s father. He was too small for any adult in the village. He was certainly not a child, and was too pale to have been one of the islanders at all.

  He cannot have been here long; he was whiter than I am.

  Rev. Robbins will know—ask tomorrow.

  3

  Feb. Hot and getting hotter. Jan. is the hottest month here, according to Rob Robbins. Well, I got here the first week in Jan. and it has never been this hot.

  Got up early while it was still cool. Went down the beach to the village. (Stopped to have a look at the rocks where the dwarf disappeared.) Waited around for the service to begin but could not talk to Rob; he was rehearsing the choir—“Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

  Half the village came, and the service went on for almost two hours. When it was over I was able to get Rob alone. I said if he would drive us into Kololahi I would buy our Sunday dinner. (He has a Jeep.) He was nice, but no—too far and the bad roads. I told him I had personal troubles I wanted his advice on, and he said, “Why don’t we go to your place, Baden, and have a talk? I’d invite you for lemonade, but they’d be after me every minute.”

  So we walked back. It was hotter than hell, and this time I tried not to look. I got cold Cokes out of my rusty little fridge, and we sat on the porch (Rob calls it the veranda) and fanned ourselves. He knew I felt bad about not being able to do anything for these people, and urged patience. My chance would come.

  I said, “I’ve given up on that, Reverend.”

  (That was when he told me to call him Rob. His first name is Mervyn.) “Never give up, Baden. Never.” He looked so serious I almost laughed.