by Gene Wolfe
“Right. I’ve talked to you and I don’t think you did. But you’re the only one that could have. If her body washes up, we’ll have to look into that.”
Tim’s hands tightened on the wooden arms of the chair. The fat cop pushed a box of tissues across the desk.
“Unless it washes up, though, it’s just a missing person, okay? But she’s dead, kid, and you’re going to have to get used to it. Let me tell you what happened.” He cleared his throat.
“She got up while you were still asleep, probably about when it started to get light. She did just what you thought she did—went out for a nice refreshing swim before you woke up. She went out too far, and probably she got a cramp. The ocean’s cold as hell now. Maybe she yelled, but if she did she was too far out, and the waves covered it up. People think drowners holler like fire sirens, but they don’t—they don’t have that much air. Sometimes they don’t make any noise at all.”
Tim stared at the gleaming paperweight.
“The current here runs along the coast—you probably know that. Nobody ought to go swimming without somebody else around, but sometimes it seems like everybody does it. We lose a dozen or so a year. In maybe four or five cases we find them. That’s all.”
T
he beach cottage looked abandoned when he returned. He parked the Triumph and went inside and found the stove still burning, his coffee perked to tar. He took the pot outside, dumped the coffee, scrubbed the pot with beach sand, and rinsed it with salt water. The ship, which had been invisible through the window of the cottage, was almost plain when he stood waist deep. He heaved the coffeepot back to shore and swam out some distance, but when he straightened up in the water, the ship was gone.
Back inside he made fresh coffee and packed Lissy’s things in her suitcase. When that was done, he drove into town again. Ryan was still in Washington, but Tim told his secretary where he was. “Just in case anybody reports me missing,” he said.
She laughed. “It must be pretty cold for swimming.”
“I like it,” he told her. “I want to have at least one more long swim.”
“All right, Tim. When he calls, I’ll let him know. Have a good time.”
“Wish me luck,” he said, and hung up. He got a hamburger and more coffee at a Jack in the Box and went back to the cottage and walked a long way along the beach.
He had intended to sleep that night, but he did not. From time to time he got up and looked out the window at the ship, sometimes visible by moonlight, sometimes only a dark presence in the lower night sky. When the first light of dawn came, he put on his trunks and went into the water.
For a mile or more, as well as he could estimate the distance, he could not see it. Then it was abruptly close, the long oars like the legs of a water spider, the funnel belching sparks against the still-dim sky, sparks that seemed to become new stars.
He swam faster then, knowing that if the ship vanished he would turn back and save himself, knowing too that if it only retreated before him, retreated forever, he would drown. It disappeared behind a cobalt wave, reappeared. He sprinted and grasped at the sea-slick shaft of an oar, and it was like touching a living being. Quite suddenly he stood on the deck, with no memory of how he came there.
Bare feet pattered on the planks, but he saw no crew. A dark flag lettered with strange script flapped aft, and some vague recollection of a tour of a naval ship with his father years before made him touch his forehead. There was a sound that might have been laughter or many other things. The captain’s cabin would be aft too, he thought. He went there, bracing himself against the wild roll, and found a door.
Inside, something black crouched upon a dais. “I’ve come for Lissy,” Tim said.
There was no reply, but a question hung in the air. He answered it almost without intending to. “I’m Timothy Ryan Neal, and I’ve come for Lissy. Give her back to me.”
A light, it seemed, dissolved the blackness. Cross-legged on the dais, a slender man in tweeds sucked at a long clay pipe. “It’s Irish, are ye?” he asked.
“American,” Tim said.
“With such a name? I don’t believe ye. Where’s yer feathers?”
“I want her back,” Tim said again.
“An’ if ye don’t get her?”
“Then I’ll tear this ship apart. You’ll have to kill me or take me too.”
“Spoken like a true son of the ould sod,” said the man in tweeds. He scratched a kitchen match on the sole of his boot and lit his pipe. “Sit down, will ye? I don’t fancy lookin’ up like that. It hurts me neck. Sit down, and ’tis possible we can strike an agreement.”
“This is crazy,” Tim said. “The whole thing is crazy.”
“It is that,” the man in tweeds replied. “An’ there’s much, much more comin’. Ye’d best brace for it, Tim me lad. Now sit down.”
There was a stout wooden chair behind Tim where the door had been. He sat. “Are you about to tell me you’re a leprechaun? I warn you, I won’t believe it.”
“Me? One o’ them scamperin’, thievin’, cobblin’ little misers? I’d shoot meself. Me name’s Daniel O’Donoghue, King o’ Connaught. Do ye believe that, now?”
“No,” Tim said.
“What would ye believe then?”
“That this is—some way, somehow—what people call a saucer. That you and your crew are from a planet of another sun.”
Daniel laughed. “ ’Tis a close encounter you’re havin’, is it? Would ye like to see me as a tiny green man wi’ horns like a snail’s? I can do that too.”
“Don’t bother.”
“All right, I won’t, though ’tis a good shape. A man can take it and be whatever he wants, one o’ the People o’ Peace or a bit o’ a man from Mars. I’ve used it for both, and there’s nothin’ better.”
“You took Lissy,” Tim said.
“And how would ye be knowin’ that?”
“I thought she’d drowned.”
“Did ye now?”
“And that this ship—or whatever it is—was just a sign, an omen. I talked to a policeman and he as good as told me, but I didn’t really think about what he said until last night, when I was trying to sleep.”
“Is it a dream yer havin’? Did ye ever think on that?”
“If it’s a dream, it’s still real,” Tim said doggedly. “And anyway, I saw your ship when I was awake, yesterday and the day before.”
“Or yer dreamin’ now ye did. But go on wi’ it.”
“He said Lissy couldn’t have been abducted because I was in the same bed, and that she’d gone out for a swim in the morning and drowned. But she could have been abducted, if she had gone out for the swim first. If someone had come for her with a boat. And she wouldn’t have drowned, because she didn’t swim good enough to drown. She was afraid of the water. We went in yesterday, and even with me there, she would hardly go in over her knees. So it was you.”
“Yer right, ye know,” Daniel said. He formed a little steeple of his fingers. “ ’Twas us.”
Tim was recalling stories that had been read to him when he was a child. “Fairies steal babies, don’t they? And brides. Is that why you do it? So we’ll think that’s who you are?”
“Bless ye, ’tis true,” Daniel told him. “ ’Tis the Fair Folk we are. The jinn o’ the desert too, and the saucer riders ye say ye credit, and forty score more. Would ye be likin’ to see me wi’ me goatskin breeches and me panpipe?” He chuckled. “Have ye never wondered why we’re so much alike the world over? Or thought that we don’t always know just which shape’s the best for a place, so the naiads and the dryads might as well be the ladies o’ the Deeny Shee? Do ye know what the folk o’ the Barb’ry Coast call the hell that’s under their sea?”
Tim shook his head.
“Why, ’tis Domdaniel. I wonder why that is, now. Tim, ye say ye want this girl.”
“That’s right.”
“An’ ye say there’ll be trouble and plenty for us if ye don’t have her. But let me tell ye
now that if ye don’t get her, wi’ our blessin’ to boot, ye’ll drown—hold your tongue, can’t ye, for ’tis worse than that. If ye don’t get her wi’ our blessin’, ’twill be seen that ye were drownin’ now. Do ye take me meaning?”
“I think so. Close enough.”
“Ah, that’s good, that is. Now here’s me offer. Do ye remember how things stood before we took her?”
“Of course.”
“They’ll stand so again, if ye but do what I tell ye. ’Tis yerself that will remember, Tim Neal, but she’ll remember nothin’. An’ the truth of it is, there’ll be nothin’ to remember, for it’ll all be gone, every stick of it. This policeman ye spoke wi’, for instance. Ye’ve me word that ye will not have done it.”
“What do I have to do?” Tim asked.
“Service. Serve us. Do whatever we ask of ye. We’d sooner have a broth of a girl like yer Lissy than a great hulk of a lad like yerself, but then too, we’d sooner be havin’ one that’s willin’, for the unwillin’ girls are everywhere—I don’t doubt but ye’ve seen it yerself. A hundred years, that’s all we ask of ye. ’Tis short enough, like Doyle’s wife. Will ye do it?”
“And everything will be the same, at the end, as it was before you took Lissy?”
“Not everythin’, I didn’t say that. Ye’ll remember, don’t ye remember me sayin’ so? But for her and all the country round, why ’twill be the same.”
“All right,” Tim said. “I’ll do it.”
“ ’Tis a brave lad ye are. Now I’ll tell ye what I’ll do. I said a hundred years, to which ye agreed—”
Tim nodded.
“—but I’ll have no unwillin’ hands about me boat, nor no ungrateful ones neither. I’ll make it twenty. How’s that? Sure and I couldn’t say fairer, could I?”
Daniel’s figure was beginning to waver and fade; the image of the dark mass Tim had seen first hung about it like a cloud.
“Lay yerself on yer belly, for I must put me foot upon yer head. Then the deal’s done.”
T
he salt ocean was in his mouth and his eyes. His lungs burst for breath. He revolved in the blue chasm of water, tried to swim, at last exploded gasping into the air.
The king had said he would remember, but the years were fading already. Drudging, dancing, buying, spying, prying, waylaying, and betraying when he walked in the world of men. Serving something that he had never wholly understood. Sailing foggy seas that were sometimes of this earth. Floating among the constellations. The years and the slaps and the kicks were all fading, and with them (and he rejoiced in it) the days when he had begged.
He lifted an arm, trying to regain his old stroke, and found that he was very tired. Perhaps he had never really rested in all those years. Certainly, he could not recall resting. Where was he? He paddled listlessly, not knowing if he was swimming away from land, if he was in the center of an ocean. A wave elevated him, a long, slow swell of blue under the gray sky. A glory—the rising or perhaps the setting sun—shone to his right. He swam toward it, caught sight of a low coast.
H
e crawled onto the sand and lay there for a time, his back struck by drops of spray like rain. Near his eyes, the beach seemed nearly black. There were bits of charcoal, fragments of half-burned wood. He raised his head, pushing away the earth, and saw an empty bottle of greenish glass nearly buried in the wet sand.
When he was able at last to rise, his limbs were stiff and cold. The dawnlight had become daylight, but there was no warmth in it. The beach cottage stood only about a hundred yards away, one window golden with sunshine that had entered from the other side, the walls in shadow. The red Triumph gleamed beside the road.
At the top of a small dune he turned and looked back out to sea. A black freighter with a red and white stack was visible a mile or two out, but it was only a freighter. For a moment he felt a kind of regret, a longing for a part of his life that he had hated but that was now gone forever. I will never be able to tell her what happened, he thought. And then, Yes I will, if only I let her think I’m just making it up. And then, No wonder so many people tell so many stories. Good-bye to all that.
The steps creaked under his weight, and he wiped the sand from his feet on the coco mat. Lissy was in bed. When she heard the door open she sat up, then drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.
“Big Tim,” she said. “You did come. Tim and I were hoping you would.”
When he did not answer, she added, “He’s out having a swim, I think. He should be around in a minute.”
And when he still said nothing. “We’re—Tim and I—we’re going to be married.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I had intended to end this collection with “Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” Vaughne Hansen and Chris Cohen, who market my work from the Virginia Kidd Agency, insisted on my including this.
Which gives me a fine opportunity to explain. You may wonder who selected these stories. Except for this one, I did, choosing my best work to the best of my poor ability. You have every right to disagree, but don’t tell me if you do; it won’t accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume.
If enough of you do that, there will be one—chosen by you.
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” copyright © 1970 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Orbit 7.
“The Toy Theater,” copyright © 1971 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Orbit 9.
“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” copyright © 1972 by Damon Knight; first appeared in Orbit.
“Beech Hill,” copyright © 1972 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Infinity Three, edited by Robert Hoskins.
“The Recording,” copyright © 1972 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
“Hour of Trust,” copyright © 1973 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Bad Moon Rising.
“The Death of Dr. Island,” copyright © 1973 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Universe 3.
“La Befana,” copyright © 1973 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Galaxy.
“Forlesen,” copyright © 1974 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Orbit 14.
“Westwind,” copyright © 1973 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Worlds of IF.
“The Hero as Werwolf,” copyright © 1975 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in The New Improved Sun.
“The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton,” copyright © 1977 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Universe 7, edited by Terry Carr.
“Straw,” copyright © 1974 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Galaxy.
“The Eyeflash Miracles,” copyright © 1976 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Future Power.
“Seven American Nights,” copyright © 1978 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Orbit 20.
“The Detective of Dreams,” copyright © 1980 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley.
“Kevin Malone,” copyright © 1980 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in New Terrors, edited by Ramsey Campbell.
“The God and His Man,” copyright © 1980 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction.
“On the Train,” copyright © 1983 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in The New Yorker.
“From the Desk of Gilmer C. Merton,” copyright © 1983 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
“Death of the Island Doctor,” copyright © 1983 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in The Wolfe Archipelago by Gene Wolfe.
“Redbeard,” copyright © 1984 by Gene Wolfe; first published in Masques, edited by J. N. Williamson (Maclay & Associates, 1984).
“The Boy Who Hooked the Sun,” copyright © 1985 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared as a Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street.
“Parkroads—a Review,” copyright © 1987 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Fiction International.
“Game in the Pope’s Head,” copyright © 1988 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Ripper!
“And When They Appear,” copyright © 1993 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Christmas Forever.
“Bed and Breakfast,” copyright © 1995 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Dante’s Disciples.
“Petting Zoo,” copyright © 1997 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Dinosaur Fantastic II.
“The Tree Is My Hat,” copyright © 1999 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in 999.
“Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” copyright © 1999 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Moon Shots.
“A Cabin on the Coast,” copyright © 1981 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Zu den Sternen, edited by Peter Wilfert (Munich: Goldmann Verlag, 1981).