A Borrowed Man

by Gene Wolfe

  “Right. I’ll make you a deal. You want my boss’s name, right? Well, I’ll tell you—his first name an’ last name, an’ planetwide. Only you got to tell me what you were doin’ in headquarters.” For an instant, Chick hesitated. “An’ you got to go first.”

  I said, “Fine, I will. How familiar are you with the house that your boss and his girlfriend were in when they saw us?”

  “I never seen it, but I know where it is. He told me.”

  “Good enough. Did you know that there was a murder committed in it a few weeks ago?”

  Chick looked a trifle surprised. “I never heard nothin’ about that. I didn’t do it, an’ I don’t know who did.”

  “There was. A young man named Conrad Coldbrook, Junior, was killed. Presumably you’ve seen your boss’s girlfriend. Perhaps you’ve even spoken to her.”

  I waited until Chick nodded.

  “The victim was her brother, and the case is still unsolved. The police report on that murder is a matter of public record, available to anyone upon payment of a small fee.”

  The report was in an inner pocket of my jacket. I took it out, unfolded it, and held it up. “I went to that police station to obtain it. Here it is. Would you like to read it?”

  Slowly Chick nodded. “Look it over anyhow. That smooth with you?”

  I said it was and handed him the report.

  “A ’bot found the body an’ told his pa when he got back? That must’a been rough.” Chick returned the report. “What’s it to you?”

  “That goes beyond our agreement. I’ve told you why I went to the station, and shown you the document I obtained there as proof. That fulfills my half. What’s your boss’s name?”

  Chick finished his pastry and sipped hot chocolate. “You going to drink that tea?”

  I sampled it obediently.

  “You got me bothered a little. Maybe you can see it. See, I can tell you what my boss says his name is, an’ I think it’s the pure. Only I don’t know for sure an’ can’t prove it. Dane van Petten is what he says. The other cops call him Dane.”

  It took some prying to get Chick to describe van Petten, but eventually he did.

  Georges returned and sat down. I glanced at him, and he said, “Later.”

  “Fine.” I turned back to Chick. “How long have you been here? In New Delphi?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I know,” Georges told me. “He came on the bus.”

  Chick’s eyes opened a trifle wider at that.

  “Your boss sent you here,” I told him. “Or anyway, so I’d guess. If he didn’t…” I shrugged. “I think he must have had a job here for you. If I’m wrong, you can laugh in my face. But if I’m right—and I believe I am—we may be able to help you accomplish it. You’ll be able to report back to him proudly, and presumably you’ll be well paid.”

  Georges said, “His boss may have a stronger hold on him, be able to send him up whenever he wants. Something like that.”

  I shook my head. “He was generous with me once in order to win my friendship. Clearly he was well paid.”

  I turned back to Chick. “I’m in your debt, as I just said, and I’ll help you if I can. What is it you’re after?”

  “Couple of things. The first one is find out what you’re doin’ here an’ who that guy and the girl are that he seen with you. The other one is find out how you found out where him an’ the girl was.”

  Georges chuckled.

  I glanced at him. “Your call, was it urgent?”

  He nodded. “Fairly.”

  “You may see to it, if you wish.”

  “If you’ve got things to say to him”—Georges jerked a thumb at Chick—“that you don’t want me to hear, just say so, and I’ll go.”

  “No, not at all. I admit that what I’m going to say to him next will sound so weak that I’ll be discomfited. Truthful answers to his questions will be embarrassing, in other words; and I’d prefer not to be thus embarrassed in your hearing.” I sighed. “No doubt it will be salutary, however.”

  “You’re a village cadet.” Georges was still grinning. “Clean as snow.”

  “If you say so.”

  Chick selected another pastry. “You come for the fruit festival?”

  “I’m afraid not. Basically I came because I was terribly concerned about Colette. That’s your boss’s girlfriend, I take it.”

  “That’s what he calls her, yeah.”

  “You have to understand that I didn’t know then that she’d been arrested. This was in Owenbright. The bed was mussed, a lamp had been knocked over, and she had left her shaping bag behind. At that time, we supposed that van Petten and his confederate were criminals.”

  “Cops? Yeah, they all are. Just dig down a little.”

  “I had been arrested myself, taken to a safe house, tormented—tortured would be too strong a word—and questioned for hours. I had escaped. I hoped to find Colette and help her to escape as well.”

  Chick nodded. “I got it.”

  I finished my tea, which was getting cold. “Where to look? She and I had seen them in Spice Grove. She had been kidnapped, as I then thought, in Owenbright. When I had been in New Delphi with her, she had clearly been convinced they were there as well. There, perhaps, more than anywhere else. That they had planted their listening devices in the family home, for that matter.”

  “So you come here. I got it.”

  “Correct, I did. Everything seemed to revolve around the fortune Colette was in the process of inheriting, and that fortune—her father’s fortune—around the murder of her brother. Thus it seemed quite possible she had been taken here; and that if only I understood the fate that had overtaken Conrad Coldbrook, Junior, I might understand the entire affair.”

  Chick was watching me sidelong; he said, “Smooth. Do you?”

  I shrugged. “Not yet, but I’m trying. That’s why I went to the police station and paid to get the police report. You wanted to know why I was here and who the couple who had come with me were. Now you have the answer to your first question. The second is not at all complex. Georges?”

  “Sure, if you want me to.”

  He turned to Chick. “You came here on the bus. So did we. It’s a long drive and there are stops—you know all about that now. We met Mr. Smithe on the bus and got to talking with him. We liked him, and it looked to us like he liked us. It was raining buckets when we got here.”

  Georges waited for Chick to speak, but he remained silent.

  “He asked where we were staying, and I told him we didn’t have anything lined up. We’d have to wait till the rain stopped, then have a look around. He said he had a card for a mansion, and we could stay there with him until we got settled.”

  “Yeah. What’s your name?”

  “Georges Fevre.”

  “What about the lady’s?”

  “Ask her.”

  “Yeah, I will. I’m supposed to believe all this turdticky?”

  “It’s true,” Georges told him, “and I don’t give a busted bucket whether you believe it or not.”

  Chick spoke to me. “You got him and the lady helpin’ you? That’s all it is?”

  I nodded. “Georges is an acute observer and the lady with him is much better on a screen than I am. If they’re willing to help me, I’m happy to have them. I’ll be happy to have your help as well. What about it?”

  Chick was silent.

  “If you’re willing to join us, we’ll welcome you. If you’re not, Georges will confiscate your pistol and we’ll turn you loose. Which is it?”

  Chick cursed under his breath.

  “Please understand, we won’t be confiscating your pistol as some sort of punishment. I simply do not want to be shot.”

  “Only you want to be pals?”

  “Exactly.” I smiled.

  “Smooth. I’m in, Mr. Smithe. What you want me to do?”

  “You have fu
nds, I know. I want you to find the main public library here. Ask if they have the poet Arabella Lee. Not her books, the person.”

  “On a shelf, like.”

  “Exactly. If they have her, check her out.” I considered. “For a week. That should be enough.”

  Reluctantly, Chick nodded.

  “If they don’t have her, tell them you want her. Ask them to borrow her from another library for you. You’ll have to get a library card, to start with. I’m sure you understand.”

  Chick had thought of a new objection. “What if she won’t come?”

  “Come back and tell me why she objected, and anything the librarians may have said. I doubt that we’ll be here. We’ll probably be at the Coldbrook house, the country house you call the mansion. Bring her there if you get her, and come there alone and report if you don’t. There’s a ’bot. It will let you in. If we’re not back yet, it will make you comfortable while you wait for us.”

  Chick rose. “Sounds like candy. Be seein’ you in a couple hours.”

  He walked away, and I told his back, “Good luck!”

  Georges waited until he had gone. “You wanted to get rid of him.”

  “I did. What did Mahala say?”

  Georges nodded. “You’re right, it was her. Somebody there let her use a screen, I guess. Either that or she found one nobody was watching.”

  “Or several other things. What did she tell you?”

  “She’d seen that picture in the sunroom, the one that shows the Coldbrooks, the whole family. You pointed it out to us one time.”

  I nodded.

  “Maybe she found some other pictures, too, while she was searching. Anyway, a young woman came into the bus station looking for somebody. Brunette, pretty tall and fashionably dressed, expensive clothes. She went around looking at people, then she left.” Georges took a deep breath. “Mahala’s seen those pictures in the sunroom, and she’s pretty sure this woman was Colette Coldbrook.”

  I got up and walked to the big window at the other end of the room. We were five floors up, and the ceilings were high all over the store. I stared down at the spotless sidewalks and orderly traffic, and up at the pure blue and almost cloudless sky until my watch struck the hour.

  Georges was still at our table when I returned; I had half expected him to be gone. He wanted to know what I had been thinking about.

  “Motivations,” I told him. “The reasons why people act. Motivations are always important, and I haven’t been thinking nearly enough about them. Not principally about yours or Mahala’s, but I’m going to start with those. You suggested that we rendezvous in the bus station. You were afraid of the police; and I suppose you suggested we meet there mostly because all three of us knew where it was and there were places to sit down, buy food, and so on. People can wait there without arousing curiosity.”

  “Sure.” Georges sounded impatient. “Now you’re going to ask me something. What is it?”

  “You and Mahala have been together ever since I met you on the bus. Why did you leave her in the bus station, and where did you go?”

  He grinned. “I can tell you, but I doubt you’ll believe me. I guess you thought I was afraid I’d be arrested.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “I’m not. I told you once the police have already seen more of me than they ever wanted to. You shouldn’t have doubted me.”

  “I see.” I waved the wait ’bot over and asked for more tea.

  When it had gone, Georges said, “It’s Mahala they want. She can’t talk, and that makes her a defective. They want to lock her up.”

  I knew that already, but this did not seem to be the time to discuss it.

  “We’ve got money now, both of us, thanks to you. We need new clothes and at least one more suitcase to carry them in. We decided I’d come here, buy a few things I need pretty badly and another bag, and she’d wait in the station in case you came. We could both go shopping when there was less pressure and more time.”

  “I see. How did she know you’d be here, in this restaurant?”

  “I didn’t ask her about that, but knowing her I can give you a good guess. She would have tried Menswear first, then Luggage, then maybe Lingerie and Women’s Wear in case I was buying something for her. After that, all the other departments. She’d have turned up a list of those somewhere, probably alphabetized. This tearoom is called Alice’s.”

  It made sense, and I nodded. “Have you bought what you need?”

  “Not yet. I parked Geraldine and walked Mahala into the terminal, and we sat around for a while. When I came in, I saw you and that little guy.”

  “Chick.”

  “Right. What are we going to do about the woman that Mahala saw? About Colette?”

  “That’s the least of our problems. She will almost certainly go out to the house. This time we’ll get there first and wait for her. Who was she looking for in the bus terminal?”

  Georges considered. “That’s a good question. You want a guess? Chick.”

  “I doubt it. A better one would be his boss, van Petten, but I believe there’s another that’s better still.”

  “What is it?”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to reserve that. It’s a mere guess, but it’s mine until we know more. Why did they come here?”

  “Ah! I think I know that one. Chick has money, so he’ll have an eephone for sure. He spotted you coming out of police headquarters, and he saw a chance to score points with his boss. While he was tailing you, he texted him and told him he’d seen you.…” Georges paused. “Wait up! That won’t work. If his boss and the girl were out of town, they can’t have gotten here that fast. Not even in a flitter.”

  “Correct. But they probably did fly in.”

  Georges rubbed his chin. “She came by car before. We found that rented car. You turned it in.”

  “That’s understandable. She was afraid to return to her apartment building in Spice Grove to get her flitter. Whether they were watching it or not, she would have thought they were. From what I know of her, that is a certainty.”

  “She has a private flitter?”

  I nodded. “A small red one, a two-seater. I’ve flown in it.”

  “You said ‘they.’ Do you think van Petten’s with her?”

  “I do. Or she’s with him. That might be more precise.”

  “Suppose she’s here alone?”

  “Then I will have been proven wrong. She will have returned to what she believes, perhaps correctly, to be a hotbed—”

  “And shown her face in public in the bus stations. I get it. You’re probably right. Do his superiors know he has her?”

  By that time, I was thinking of something else. “I don’t know,” I said, “and I doubt that it matters. Here’s something that does. Let’s assume they’re together, which I think likely. Assume, too, that van Patten was with her in the terminal. Mahala wouldn’t have recognized him, and it doesn’t seem probable that he’d let Colette go off on her own—or that she would want to. What brought them to New Delphi?”

  “Damn it, I need more kafe.” Georges waved at the wait ’bot and held up his cup.

  “Also time to think.” I sipped what remained of my tea. “Go ahead. If you come up with something I haven’t thought of, I’ll be happy to hear it.”

  “You know, I ordered these and I’ve hardly touched them.” Georges pushed away the pastries. “I thought I was hungry.”

  “You’ve eaten two,” I told him. “One before your screen and another after. But please go ahead. Have a third.”

  “Kind of you.” Georges grinned. “I’ll pick up the check.”

  “I assumed you would.”

  The wait ’bot poured his kafe, collected the whitener jug, and set a fresh one on the table.

  “All right,” Georges said when it had left. “You want to know why the girlfriend came here. As I see it, it had to be one of two things. Here’s the first. One of the ’bots back at the house was under orders to screen her if we showed up,
and did. Probably the maid.”

  “Possible, but I doubt it. What’s the other?”

  “Chick called in yesterday. Not just to tell van Petten he’d gotten here, but something else that made Colette and van Patten move fast.” Georges paused. “By the way, are we on their side? Or are we going to try to get her away from him?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll find out when the two of them come to the house—or so I think.”

  17

  ESCAPE

  “Ms. Coldbrook and her guest are waiting for you in the sunroom, sir.” The maid ’bot opened the door all the way and stood aside.

  I wanted to say, “Sure”; but what I really said was, “You needn’t show me in.” I was alone. Like somebody I had been thinking about, I had paid off my cab and walked up to the front door. Unlike him I had rung the bell, though I had a card for the door in my pocket; and it had come to me while I waited for somebody to answer it that I was going to have to get used to being alone again. When it did, I realized that I had known it ever since Georges and Mahala had left me to shop, with instructions to meet at the bus station. I have a subconscious, just like you and everybody else, and now and then mine shows me that it is a lot smarter than I am.

  Colette stood up and hugged me. Probably you will laugh, but her hug has stuck with me. Also you will probably think Colette is a witch when you finish reading all this clear to the end (if I ever get to the end), but she is not and I could never think of her that way if I tried. The luck of the draw plays some really nasty tricks on a good many of us, and if you do not understand that, there is a whole lot about life that you do not understand. Take it from me; I am on my second, and I know. Destiny is what the cruel twist in my brain would make me call it if I wanted to say it out loud. God is playing a board game with himself, or that is one way to look at it. He shakes three dice and throws, and two of them are Destiny and Chance. It was a good hug from a fully human who smelled glorious and looked even better, and it was warm and long.

  Van Petten—I had already guessed that he was the tall young cop who had tied us up in Colette’s apartment—held out his hand when she let me go. I could see he knew I was just a reclone, but he made himself do it. So I shook his hand quick and hard, and said thank you; by the time we let go, which was maybe less than one half of one second, I had given up wondering what he wanted; I knew I was about to find out.