The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

by Gene Wolfe

  Brenda Yarwood squeezed his arm.

  “Ten thousand years from now, the three of us will take a picnic basket and come looking through the ruins of this city for these stairs.”

  Someone (an elderly man, white hair flying in the wind) is running up the steps toward them. His hand is extended, and Alvard recognizes the hand before the face. “Remember me?” Dr. Margotte asks. “We used to work together.” Alvard hears his own voice saying, “I thought you were dead.”

  “I was frozen. Like you. I heard you were going to be here today, and I’ve been waiting for you. I came to the prison once, but you were in solitary. I beg your pardon, madame.” Old-fashioned word, old-fashioned courtesy; he wants to be introduced to the lady. Alvard turns instinctively until he half-faces each, and only then, despite all his aversion to Margotte, learns why he fears him. His eyes are precisely the protuberant eyes of Barry Seigle, going over the edge, going down to the pavement eighty-three floors below. Jessie is steadying (a gun?) on the top of the car door, and the thought of jealousy on Lisa’s behalf flickers in Alvard’s mind. Edith Pomme’s book slips from under his arm, and at his feet he hears a tiny voice: “Winestains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, mudstains, blood-stains!”

  It is the peddler pursuing Bill Sikes.

  But Jessie has a camera, Alvard thinks, not a gun. He has seen the flash. The book is near his head now. “Mud-stain or blood-stain—”

  “CUES

  ?” the young (not really so young any more) man said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, cues,” the bowling ball answered. “Visual cues, auditory cues, even olfactory cues. Sensory cues of all sorts. You agree the universe is infinite? I mean in extent.”

  “I suppose so; I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “Think about it now,” the bowling ball urged. With a mental arm it grasped his bicep. “Suppose yourself immortal and possessed of a galaxy-goblin spaceship requiring no fuel.”

  “Goblin?”

  “I beg your pardon. I meant ‘gobbling.’ Out you go from—what do you call this place?” The bowling ball “took” a “card” from its “pocket.”

  “‘Earth,’” the not-so-young man said.

  “Right. Earth. Out and out forever. Past … ?”

  “Stars, nebulae, galaxies, I guess. Cosmic dust.”

  “Precisely. And when you have passed them, what will you find ahead of you?”

  The not-so-young man thought for a moment, then said, “The same sort of thing, I suppose.”

  “Cosmic dust, galaxies, nebulae, stars?”

  “Yes.”

  “You agree, then, that the universe is of infinite extent?” The bowling ball, for emphasis, slapped one of the arms of its chair, which, though it was constructed entirely of massy gold and conformed to an alien pattern of beauty and utility, was irresistibly comic.

  “I do,” the not-so-young man said, smiling a little.

  “Very well. Now obviously a universe of infinite extent contains an infinite number of real objects of one kind or another—you need only go forward until you find something, and since we have agreed that the universe is infinite, you can always go forward some more.”

  The not-so-young man nodded.

  “Now you will have noticed that some of the real objects in this universe produce sensory cues which you are able to detect—that is to say, you are not deaf, blind, and so forth. What is one half of infinity?”

  “Infinity,” the not-really-so-young-anymore man answered promptly.

  “And half of that? Or for that matter a millionth part of it.”

  “Still infinite.” (He had once been forced to take a course in mathematics.)

  “Then if any part of the sensory cues produced by that infinite number of real objects reaches you, you are confronted by an infinite array of sensory cues.”

  After a moment the not-so-young man nodded again, then added, “If you are right—and I have to admit I can’t see where you could be wrong—I’m surprised I’m not overwhelmed.”

  “Because,” the bowling ball told him, “you are incapable of reacting to or even noticing more than a very small fraction of the total. By an unconscious process you heed these and ignore everything else. Let me give you an example: you are driving toward a railroad crossing—the warning light is flashing, and beside it a little girl is skipping rope. What do you do?”

  “I stop,” the not-so-young man said, “and let the train go past.”

  “Exactly. And when you arrive safely at home, it is because of the various sensory cues presented, the one you chose to act upon was that of the railway signal, while you never even noticed the traveling mountebank with his wand and coins and cups.”

  “You said it was a little girl skipping rope,” the not-so-young man protested.

  “The girl skipping rope was a cue you noticed without acting upon. We are discussing the cues you did not even notice. You wish to become a successful cartoonist, do you not?”

  “More than anything else in the world,” the not-so-young (really) man said, leaning forward. “And I must say I was beginning to wonder when we’d get to that.”

  “We already have. You are adept at pen and pencil sketches—unfortunately, they are not funny.”

  “They are funny. Listen, I realize that wherever you’re from”

  “Deneb,” said the bowling ball.

  “I thought you said—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the bowling ball said quickly.

  “Well, your sense of humor will naturally be different from ours, but look at this.” The not-so-young man began to fumble in his portfolio, and the bowling ball said quickly (even more quickly than it had said “It doesn’t matter”), “We have no sense of humor at all.” It said this with a perfectly straight face.

  “Well, have a look at this anyway.” The not-so-young man thrust a sketch in front of two of the bowling ball’s holes. As it happened, they were the wrong holes.

  “Hilarious.”

  “I don’t think so, but I do think it’s amusing. Yet no one wants it. How can you help me?”

  “By making you aware—and only aware—of those cues which will enable you to depict the object you perceive in the most amusing possible way. You are sketching me?”

  “I am,” the not-so-young man said. “I’ve just gotten this idea for a sports equipment series.”

  “If you think I’m funny,” the bowling ball said, “you ought to see the tennis racket.”

  “How did you know I thought you looked like a bowling ball? I’ve been noticing it all the time we’ve been talking. It’s obtrusive, somehow.”

  “Only to cartoonists. Artists are likely to visualize us as dark spheres filled with stars.”

  “What about the holes?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Coalstack Nebula?”

  “Say, there’s an idea in that.”

  “There’s an idea in everything,” the bowling ball said.

  “I mean a cartoon idea—maybe a series.” The not-so-young man was silent for a moment, thinking of a great many things—things that included a certain still-young woman and the drafting job to which he would soon be forced to return. “Listen,” he said, “I want you to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “What you said—make me see only the funny cues.”

  “I already have,” the bowling ball said. “Or at least, the process has already begun. You said earlier that you wished it, and the cost is very low.”

  “How low?” the not-so-young man asked, suddenly wary.

  “Twenty-five cents.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Or nothing. Or whatever you like.”

  “I get it. I read a story like this once. I’ll get rich, and then if I want to change back, you’ll soak me for a fortune. Well, you’re going to lose on this one, because I’m not going to want to, not ever. I’m going to have a hell of a good time, and I’m going to
be famous and rich.”

  “You certainly are,” the bowling ball agreed. “We’ll even throw in an extra: your children will inherit your talent. They, too, will be rich and famous, though not, during your lifetime, as rich and famous as you, since you will be established earlier.”

  “Say, that’s great. You’re already doing it, you said? Is there anything else I have to do to qualify?”

  “Nothing at all,” the bowling ball said. “You are already beginning to respond only to the sensory cues I outlined, both in objects and situations. The process will be complete in a few days, and from that time forward we guarantee that where others see duty or ugliness or pathos or even beauty, you will see only humor. Good-by.”

  The not-so-young man left, and a second bowling ball rolled into the room; but the first did not perceive it as a bowling ball, nor was he himself so perceived. Instead each, for a moment, saw a fair blue world, mottled by clouds and rich with life. As it happened, at just that instant the not-so-young man returned and asked (grinning): “Say, since you’re so nice, I wonder if you Denebians could stake me to twenty-five cents instead of the other way around. I’d like to tell my girl what’s happening, but it’s a toll call and I haven’t got any change.” Another customer pushed past him as he spoke, and the first bowling ball, after an inventory of her mind that required only a very small fraction of a second, began—as the new customer would later phrase it herself—to “think sexy.” In answer to the not-so-young man’s question, the second bowling ball turned from side to side. “I bed your pardon,” he said. “We give no quarter.”

  And, still grinning, the not-so-young man withdrew.

  THE EYEFLASH MIRACLES

  “I cannot call him to mind.”

  —ANATOLE FRANCE The Procurator of Judea

  Little Tib heard the train coming while it was still a long way away, and he felt it in his feet. He stepped off the track onto a prestressed concrete tie, listening. Then he put one ear to the endless steel and listened to that sing, louder and louder. Only when he began to feel the ground shake under him did he lift his head at last and make his way down the embankment through the tall, prickly weeds, probing the slope with his stick.

  The stick splashed water. He could not hear it because of the noise the train made roaring by; but he knew the feel of it, the kind of drag it made when he tried to move the end of the stick. He laid it down and felt with his hands where his knees would be when he knelt, and it felt all right. A little soft, but no broken glass. He knelt then and sniffed the water, and it smelled good and was cool to his fingers, so he drank, bending down and sucking up the water with his mouth, then splashing it on his face and the back of his neck.

  “Say!” an authoritative voice called. “Say, you boy!”

  Little Tib straightened up, picking up his stick again. He thought, This could be Sugarland. He said, “Are you a policeman, sir?”

  “I am the superintendent.”

  That was almost as good. Little Tib tilted his head back so the voice could see his eyes. He had often imagined coming to Sugarland and how it would be there; but he had never considered just what it was he should say when he arrived. He said, “My card …” The train was still rumbling away, not too far off.

  Another voice said: “Now don’t you hurt that child.” It was not authoritative. There was the sound of responsibility in it.

  “You ought to be in school, young man,” the first voice said. “Do you know who I am?”

  Little Tib nodded “The superintendent.”

  “That’s right, I’m the superintendent. I’m Mr. Parker himself. Your teacher has told you about me, I’m sure.”

  “Now don’t hurt that child,” the second voice said again. “He never did hurt you.”

  “Playing hooky. I understand that’s what the children call it. We never use such a term ourselves, of course. You will be referred to as an absentee. What’s your name?”

  “George Tibbs.”

  “I see. I am Mr. Parker, the superintendent. This is my valet; his name is Nitty.”

  “Hello,” Little Tib said.

  “Mr. Parker, maybe this absentee boy would like to have something to eat. He looks to me like he has been absentee a long while.”

  “Fishing,” Mr. Parker said. “I believe that’s what most of them do.”

  “You can’t see, can you?” A hand closed on Little Tib’s arm. The hand was large and hard, but it did not bear down. “You can cross right here. There’s a rock in the middle—step on that.”

  Little Tib found the rock with his stick and put one foot there. The hand on his arm seemed to lift him across. He stood on the rock for a moment with his stick in the water, touching bottom to steady himself. “Now a great big step.” His shoe touched the soft bank on the other side. “We got a camp right over here. Mr. Parker, don’t you think this absentee boy would like a sweet roll?”

  Little Tib said, “Yes, I would.”

  “I would too,” Nitty told him.

  “Now, young man, why aren’t you in school?”

  “How is he going to see the board?”

  “We have special facilities for the blind, Nitty. At Grovehurst there is a class tailored to make allowance for their disability. I can’t at this moment recall the name of the teacher, but she is an exceedingly capable young woman.”

  Little Tib asked, “Is Grovehurst in Sugarland?”

  “Grovehurst is in Martinsburg,” Mr. Parker told him. “I am superintendent of the Martinsburg Public School System. How far are we from Martinsburg now, Nitty?”

  “Two, three hundred kilometers, I guess.”

  “We will enter you in that class as soon as we reach Martinsburg, young man.”

  Nitty said, “We’re going to Macon—I keep on tellin’ you.”

  “Your papers are all in order, I suppose? Your grade and attendance records from your previous school? Your withdrawal permit, birth certificate, and your retinal pattern card from the Federal Reserve?”

  Little Tib sat mute. Someone pushed a sticky pastry into his hands, but he did not raise it to his mouth.

  “Mr. Parker, I don’t think he’s got papers.”

  “That is a serious—”

  “Why he got to have papers? He ain’t no dog!”

  Little Tib was weeping. “I see!” Mr. Parker said. “He’s blind; Nitty, I think his retinas have been destroyed. Why, he’s not really here at all.”

  “’Course he’s here.”

  “A ghost. We’re seeing a ghost, Nitty. Sociologically he’s not real- -he’s been deprived of existence.”

  “I never in my whole life seen a ghost.”

  “You dumb bastard,” Mr. Parker exploded.

  “You don’t have to talk to me like that, Mr. Parker.”

  “You dumb bastard. All my life there’s been nobody around but dumb bastards like you.” Mr. Parker was weeping too. Little Tib felt one of his tears, large and hot, fall on his hand. His own sobbing slowed, then faded away. It was outside his experience to hear grown people—men—cry He took a bite from the roll he had been given, tasting the sweet, sticky icing and hoping for a raisin.

  “Mr. Parker,” Nitty said softly. “Mr. Parker.”

  After a time, Mr. Parker said, “Yes.”

  “He—this boy George—might be able to get them, Mr. Parker. You recall how you and me went to the building that time? We looked all around it a long while. And there was that window, that old window with the iron over it and the latch broken. I pushed on it and you could see the glass move in a little. But couldn’t either of us get between those bars.”

  “This boy is blind, Nitty,” Mr. Parker said.

  “Sure he is, Mr. Parker. But you know how dark it was in there. What is a man going to do? Turn on the lights? No, he’s goin’ to take a little bit of a flashlight and put tape or something over the end till it don’t make no more light than a lightnin’ bug. A blind person could do better with no light than a seeing one with just a little speck like that
. I guess he’s used to bein’ blind by now. I guess he knows how to find his way around without eyes.”

  A hand touched Little Tib’s shoulder. It seemed smaller and softer than the hand that had helped him across the creek. “He’s crazy,” Mr. Parker’s voice said. “That Nitty. He’s crazy. I’m crazy, I’m the one. But he’s crazier than I am.”

  “He could do it, Mr. Parker. See how thin he is.”

  “Would you do it?” Mr. Parker asked.

  Little Tib swallowed a wad of roll. “Do what?”

  “Get something for us.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Nitty, build a fire,” Mr. Parker said. “We won’t be going any farther tonight.”

  “Won’t be goin’ this way at all,” Nitty said.

  “You see, George,” Mr. Parker said. “My authority has been temporarily abrogated. Sometimes I forget that.”

  Nitty chuckled somewhere farther away than Little Tib had thought he was. He must have left very silently.

  “But when it is restored, I can do all the things I said I would do for you: get you into a special class for the blind, for example. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, George?”

  “Yes.” A whippoorwill called far off to Little Tib’s left, and he could hear Nitty breaking sticks.

  “Have you run away from home, George?”

  “Yes,” Little Tib said again.

  “Why?”

  Little Tib shrugged. He was ready to cry again. Something was thickening and tightening in his throat, and his eyes had begun to water.

  “I think I know why,” Mr. Parker said. “We might even be able to do something about that.”

  “Here we are,” Nitty called. He dumped his load of sticks, rattling, more or less in front of Little Tib.

  Later that night Little Tib lay on the ground with half of Nitty’s blanket over him, and half under him. The fire was crackling not too far away. Nitty said the smoke would help to drive the mosquitoes off. Little Tib pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and saw red and yellow flashes like a real fire. He did it again, and there was a gold nugget against a field of blue. Those were the last things he had been able to see for a long time, and he was afraid, each time he summoned them up, that they would not come. On the other side of the fire Mr. Parker breathed the heavy breath of sleep.