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

by Gene Wolfe

  Anyway, it was a grand feast with pineapples and native beer, and my rum, and lots of pork. It was nearly morning by the time we got back here, where Mary was asleep with Mark and Adam.

  Which was a very good thing, since it gave us a chance to swim and otherwise freshen up. By the time they woke up, Langi had prepared a fruit tray for breakfast and woven the orchids, and I had picked them for her and made coffee. Little boys, in my experience, are generally cranky in the morning (could it be because we do not allow them coffee?), but Adam and Mark were sufficiently overwhelmed by the presence of a brown lady giant and a live skeleton that conversation was possible. They are fraternal twins, and I think they really are mine; certainly they look very much like I did at their age. The wind had begun to rise, but we thought nothing of it.

  “Were you surprised to see me?” Mary was older than I remembered, and had the beginnings of a double chin.

  “Delighted. But Pops told me you’d gone to Uganda and you were on your way here.”

  “To the end of the earth.” (She smiled, and my heart leaped.) “I never realized the end would be as pretty as this.”

  I told her that in another generation the beach would be lined with condos.

  “Then let’s be glad that we’re in this one.” She turned to the boys. “You have to take in everything as long as we’re here. You’ll never get another chance like this.”

  I said, “Which will be a long time, I hope.”

  “You mean that you and . . . ?”

  “Langitokoua.” I shook my head. (Here it was, and all my lies had melted away.) “Was I ever honest with you, Mary?”

  “Certainly. Often.”

  “I wasn’t, and you know it. So do I. I’ve got no right to expect you to believe me now. But I’m going to tell you, and myself, God’s own truth. It’s in remission now. Langi and I were able to go to a banquet last night, and eat, and talk to people, and enjoy ourselves. But when it’s bad, it’s horrible. I’m too sick to do anything but shake and sweat and moan, and I see things that aren’t there. I—”

  Mary interrupted me, trying to be kind. “You don’t look as sick as I expected.”

  “I know how I look. My mirror tells me every morning while I shave. I look like death in a microwave oven, and that’s not very far from the truth. It’s liable to kill me this year. If it doesn’t, I’ll probably get attacks on and off for the rest of my life, which is apt to be short.”

  There was a silence that Langi filled by asking whether the boys wanted some coconut milk. They said they did, and she got my heletay and showed them how to open a green coconut with one chop. Mary and I stopped talking to watch her, and that’s when I heard the surf. It was the first time that the sound of waves hitting the beach had ever reached as far inland as my bungalow.

  Mary said, “I rented a Range Rover at the airport.” It was the tone she used when she had to bring up something she really did not want to bring up.

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “It’s fifty dollars a day, Bad, plus mileage. I won’t be able to keep it long.”

  I said, “I understand.”

  “We tried to phone. I had hoped you would be well enough to come for us, or send someone.”

  I said I would have had to borrow Rob’s Jeep if I had gotten her call.

  “I wouldn’t have known where you were, but we met a native, a very handsome man who says he knows you. He came along to show us the way.” (At that point, the boys’ expressions told me something was seriously wrong.) “He wouldn’t take any money for it. Was I wrong to offer to pay him? He didn’t seem angry.”

  “No,” I said, and would have given anything to get the boys alone. But would it have been different if I had? When I read this, when I really get to where I can face it, the thing I will miss on was how fast it was—how fast the whole thing went. It cannot have been a hour between the time Mary woke up and the time Langi ran to the village to get Rob.

  Mark lying there whiter than the sand. So thin and white, and looking just like me.

  “He thought you were down on the beach, and wanted us to look for you there, but we were too tired,” Mary said.

  That is all for now, and in fact it is too much. I can barely read this left-handed printing, and my stump aches from holding down the book. I am going to go to bed, where I will cry, I know, and Langi will cuddle me like a kid.

  Again tomorrow.

  17

  Feb. Hospital sent its plane for Mark, but no room for us. Doctor a lot more interested in my disease than my stump. “Dr. Robbins” did a fine job there, he said. We will catch the Cairns plane Monday.

  I should catch up. But first: I am going to steal Rob’s Jeep tomorrow. He will not lend it, does not think I can drive. It will be slow, but I know I can.

  19

  Feb. Parked on the tarmac, something wrong with one engine. Have I got up nerve enough to write about it now? We will see.

  Mary was telling us about her guide, how good-looking, and all he told her about the islands, lots I had not known myself. As if she were surprised she had not seen him sooner, she pointed and said, “Here he is now.”

  There was nobody there. Or rather, there was nobody Langi and I or the boys could see. I talked to Adam (to my son Adam; I have to get used to that) when it was over, while Rob was working on Mark and Mary. I had a bunch of surgical gauze and had to hold it as tight as I could. There was no strength left in my hand.

  Adam said Mary had stopped and the door opened and she made him get in back with Mark. The door opened by itself. That is the part he remembers most clearly, and the part of his story I will always remember too. After that Mary seemed to be talking all the time to somebody he and his brother could not see or hear.

  She screamed, and there, for just an instant, was the shark. He was as big as a boat, and the wind was like a current in the ocean, blowing us down to the water. I really do not see how I can ever explain this.

  N

  o takeoff yet, so I have to try. It is easy to say what was not happening. What is hard is saying what was, because there are no words. The shark was not swimming in air. I know that is what it will sound like, but he was not. We were not under the water either. We could breathe and walk and run just as he could swim, although not nearly so fast, and even fight the current a little.

  The worst thing of all was he came and went and came and went, so that it seemed almost that we were running or fighting him by flashes of lightning, and sometimes he was Hanga, taller than the king and smiling at me while he herded us.

  No. The most worst thing was really that he was herding everybody but me. He drove them toward the beach the way a dog drives sheep, Mary, Langi, Adam, and Mark, and he would have let me escape. (I wonder sometimes why I did not. This was a new me, a me I doubt I will ever see again.)

  His jaws were real, and sometimes I could hear them snap when I could not see him. I shouted, calling him by name, and I believe I shouted that he was breaking our agreement, that to hurt my wives and my sons was to hurt me. To give the devil his due, I do not think he understood. The old gods are very wise, as the king told me today; still, there are limits to their understanding.

  I ran for the knife, the heletay Langi opened coconuts with. I thought of the boar, and by God I charged them. I must have been terrified. I do not remember, only slashing at something and someone huge that was and was not there, and in an instant was back again. The sting of the windblown sand, and then up to my arms in foaming water, and cutting and stabbing, and the hammerhead with my knife and my hand in his mouth.

  We got them all out, Langi and I did. But Mark has lost his leg, and jaws three feet across had closed on Mary. That was Hanga himself, I feel sure.

  H

  ere is what I think. I think he could only make one of us see him at a time and that was why he flashed in and out. He is real. (God knows he is real!) Not really physical the way a stone is, but physical in other ways that I do not understand. Physical like and unlike ligh
t and radiation. He showed himself to each of us, each time for less than a second.

  M

  ary wanted children, so she stopped the pill and did not tell me. That was what she told me when I drove Rob’s Jeep out to North Point. I was afraid. Not so much afraid of Hanga (though there was that too) but afraid she would not be there. Then somebody said, “Banzai!” It was exactly as if he were sitting next to me in the Jeep, except that there was nobody there. I said, “Banzai,” back, and I never heard him again, but after that I knew I would find her and I waited for her at the edge of the cliff.

  She came back to me when the sun touched the Pacific, and the darker the night and the brighter the stars, the more real she was. Most of the time it was as if she were really in my arms. When the stars got dim and the first light showed in the east, she whispered, “I have to go,” and walked over the edge, walking north with the sun to her right and getting dimmer and dimmer.

  I got dressed again and drove back and it was finished. That was the last thing Mary ever said to me, spoken a couple of days after she died.

  She was not going to get back together with me at all; then she heard how sick I was in Uganda, and she thought the disease might have changed me. (It has. What does it matter about people at the “end of the earth” if you cannot be good to your own people, most of all to your own family?)

  T

  aking off.

  We are airborne at last. Oh, Mary! Mary starlight!

  L

  angi and I will take Adam to his grandfather’s, then come back and stay with Mark (Brisbane or Melbourne) until he is well enough to come home.

  The stewardess is serving lunch, and for the first time since it happened, I think I may be able to eat more than a mouthful. One stewardess, twenty or thirty people, which is all this plane will hold. News of the shark attack is driving tourists off the island.

  As you see, I can print better with my left hand. I should be able to write eventually. The back of my right hand itches, even though it is gone. I wish I could scratch it.

  Here comes the food.

  A

  n engine has quit. Pilot says no danger.

  H

  e is out there, swimming beside the plane. I watched him for a minute or more until he disappeared into a thunderhead. “The tree is my hat.” Oh, God.

  Oh my God!

  My blood brother.

  What can I do?

  AFTERWORD

  Some things you may have thought fantastic in this are simply true. There really were Japanese detachments left behind on various Pacific islands, marooned detachments that stayed right where they were until the local people turned on them and killed those left alive.

  And there really are mysterious ruins on many South Pacific islands.

  This story was done as a radio play by Lawrence Santoro, with Neil Gaiman playing Rev. Robbins. Gahan Wilson was our announcer—but when we closed our eyes it was Boris Karloff. There was weird music, and the whole production was far grander than I could have imagined. Thank you, Larry!

  HAS ANYBODY SEEN JUNIE MOON?

  T

  he reason I am writing this is to find my manager. I think her name is really probably June Moon or something, but nobody calls her that. I call her Junie and just about everybody else calls her Ms. Moon. She is short and kind of fat, with a big, wide mouth that she smiles with a lot and brown hair. She is pretty too. Real pretty, and that is how you can be sure it is her if ever you see her. Because short fat ladies mostly do not look as good as Junie and nobody thinks, Boy, I would really like to know her, like I did that time in England when we went in the cave so she could talk to that crabby old man from Tulsa because Junie believes in dead people coming back and all that.

  She made me believe it too. You would too if you had been with Junie like I have.

  So I am looking for a Moon just like she is, only she is the Moon that I am looking for. The one she is looking for is the White Cow Moon. That is an Indian name and there is a story behind it just like you would think, only it is a pretty dumb story so I am going to save it for later. Besides, I do not think it is true. Indians are nice people except for a couple I used to know, but they have all these stories that they tell you and then they laugh inside.

  I am from Texas, but Junie is from Oklahoma.

  That is what started her off. She used to work for a big school they have there, whatever it says on that sweatshirt she wears sometimes. There was this cranky old man in Tulsa that knew lots of stuff, only he was like an Indian. He would tell people, this was when he was still pretty young I guess, and they would never believe him even if it was true.

  I have that trouble too, but this cranky old man got real mad and did something about it. He changed his name to Roy T. Laffer and after that he would tell things so they would not believe him or understand, and then laugh inside. Junie never said what the T. stood for, but I think I know.

  Do you know what it says on the tea boxes? The ones with the man with the cap on them? It says honest tea is the best policy. I know what that means, and I think that cranky old Roy T. Laffer knew it too.

  He gave big boxes full of paper to the school Junie worked for, and Junie was the one that went through them and that was how she found out about White Cow Moon. He had a lot of stuff in there about it and Junie saw her name and read it even if his writing was worse even than mine. He had been there and taken pictures and she found those too. She showed me some.

  It goes slow. Junie said that was the greatest secret in the world, so I guess it is. And there were pictures of a big old rock that Roy T. Laffer had brought back.

  One picture that I saw had it sitting on a scale. The rock was so big you could not hardly see the scale, but then another picture showed the part with numbers and that big old rock was only about a quarter ounce. It was kind of a dirty white like this one cow that we used to have.

  Maybe that was really why they call it that and not because a cow jumped over it like those Indians say. That would make a lot more sense, only I did not think of it till just now.

  I ought to tell you things about me here so you understand, but first I want to tell more about Junie because I am looking for her, but I know where I am already, which is here in Florida at the Museum of the Strange and Occult. Only it is all big letters like this on our sign out front: THE MUSEUM OF THE STRANGE AND OCCULT ADMISSION $5.50, CHILDREN $2, CHILDREN IN ARMS FREE, SENIORS $3 OR $2 WITH ANOTHER PAID ADMISSION. The letters are gold.

  Junie had been to college and everything and was a doctor of physic. When she got out, she thought she was the greatest since One Mug. That is what she says it means, only it is German. I do not remember the German words.

  So she went to work at this big laboratory in Chicago where they do physic, only they had her answer the phone and empty the wastebaskets and she quit. Then she went back home to Oklahoma and that is why she was at the big school and was the one that went through Roy T. Laffer’s papers. Mostly I do not much like Oklahoma people because they think they are better than Texas people, only Junie really is.

  So if you see her or even just talk to somebody that has, you could come by and tell me, or write a letter or even just phone. I will be glad any way you do it. Dottie that works in our office here is putting this in her computer for me and printing it too, whenever I have got a page done. She says you could send e-mail too. That would be all right because Dottie would tell me. I would be very happy any way you did it. Dottie says www.Hercules@freaky.com.

  My name is not really Hercules; that is just the name I work under. My name is really Sam, and that is what Junie calls me. If you know her and have talked to her and she said anything about Sam, that was me. If you want to be really formal it is Sam Jr. Only nobody calls me that. Most people I know call me Hercules. Not ever Herk. I do not like it.

  Let me tell you how bad I want to find Junie. Sometimes there is a man in the tip that thinks he is stronger. I really like that when it happens because it is usually fun.
I will do some things that I figure he can do too, like bending rebars and tearing up bottle caps. Then if I see the tip likes him, I will say something hard and let him win.

  A week ago maybe there was this one big guy that thought he was really strong, so I did him like I said. I threw him the two-hundred-pound bell and he caught it, and when he threw it back to me I pretended like I could not catch it and let it fall when I had my legs out of the way and everybody was happy. Only yesterday he came back. He called me Herk and he said I was afraid to go up against him again. The tip was not with him then. So I said all right, and when he could not lift my five-hundred-pound iron I did it with one hand and gave it to him. And when he dropped it I picked him up by his belt and hung him on this high hook. I use for the pulley. I left him up there until everybody was gone too, and when I took him down he did not say a word. He just went away.

  Well, I want Junie back so bad that if he was to tell me where she was I would let him win anytime he wanted.

  I do not make a lot of money here. It is just five hundred a month and what I make selling my course, but they have got these trailers out back for Jojo and Baby Rita, who is a hundred times fatter than Junie or anybody. So I have one too and it is free. I eat a lot, but that is about all I spend much on. Some fishing gear, but I have got a real good reel and you do not need much else.

  Well, you do, but it does not cost the world.

  So I have a lot saved and I will give you half if you tell me where Junie Moon is and she is really there when I go look.

  This is the way she got to be my manager. I was in England working at a fair that they had at this big castle where King Arthur was born and Junie was in the tip. So when it was over and they were supposed to go see Torchy, Junie would not go. The steerer said she had to, but she kept saying she wanted to talk to me and I could tell she was American like me. So after a while I said she probably knew that if she really wanted to talk to me all she had to do was meet me out back. So then she went.