by Gene Wolfe
He glanced across at North and saw that North was no longer grinning.
A street he did not know unreeled before them; it was wide, with two traffic lanes on each side of two sets of shiny trolley tracks. There were trees, bare and yet snow-laden, between the street and the sidewalk. He thought of the streets he had seen radiating from the intersection outside the mental health center. This was one of them, he felt certain. But which? It seemed to him that though all had run straight, none had run in a definable direction—neither north nor south, east nor west. And yet this street had surely run to North.
“Stop up there,” North told him, “where it says guns. See the sign?”
“You’re going to get a gun?”
“Stop or I’ll break your God-damned neck.”
North seemed to mean it. He pulled to the curb in front of the gun store and switched off the ignition. North got out, and he sighed with relief as he saw North walk past the show window and go into the haberdashery beside it.
He took out the Tina doll and studied its enigmatic smile for what felt like a long time, then pulled the charm Sheng had given him free of his shirt. It was a root, a dry, hard thing shaped like a tiny wrinkled man no taller than Tina’s forearm.
A passing woman glanced through the window, and he realized how strange he must have looked to her with the doll in one hand and the charm in the other. She probably thought he was crazy, and if she called the police, she would find out she was right.
Except that even United had not thought him crazy, only an alcoholic. He was—supposedly—a drunk, and North was what? A schizophrenic maniac. Something like that.
He put the charm and the doll away and turned his attention to the passersby. At first they looked ordinary enough, though a little old-fashioned in their dress. He had seen pictures set in the thirties and forties, and he felt that these quiet, dark figures hurrying through the cold were costumed for just such a picture, girls and women and a few men, all in heavy coats that reached nearly to their shoe-tops, the men in wide-brimmed felt hats, the women and girls in head-hugging cloches.
Or that he was somewhere in Eastern Europe, where according to the evening news such clothing was still worn. One young man who passed him had a fur hat, and several women were wearing fur coats. Was there a place in Eastern Europe where they spoke English? A training city, perhaps, for Russian spies? Yet such a city should have been far more accurate. American clothes and American cars were not hard to get.
Three middle-aged women passed, each with an attache case or a briefcase. It occurred to him that he had seen very few older men, and he began to count. He had counted twenty-three women and three men who looked middle-aged when North came out of the gun store.
“All set,” North told him. “Let’s roll.”
“I thought you were in the other place.”
“I was. I got this coat. Like it?”
It was single-breasted, of thick, brown tweed. “Sure,” he said.
“I got to feeling a little chilly. Now I’m fixed.” North unbuttoned the coat and the jacket beneath it, and spread them wide. There was a shoulder holster on each shoulder; the butt of an automatic protruded from each holster. “Nine millimeters. I was afraid they wouldn’t have them, but they did. Okay, let’s get rolling. We’ve got places to go and people to see.”
He shook his head. “Not as long as you’ve got those.”
“You’re afraid of me. I guess that’s only natural. Here.” North dropped one of the pistols into his lap. “Now we’re even. I’ll give you the shoulder rig as soon as we get someplace where I can take off the coats. Let’s roll.”
He shook his head.
“What the hell’s the matter with you? I’ve tried—”
He didn’t want to pick up the pistol, but he did. “Here. Take it back. Take them both back to the store. They’ll give you your money.”
North’s right fist crashed into his jaw, driving his head against the window glass. For a moment he saw intense flashes of pale yellow.
“Next time I hit you, it’ll be with the gun, not my hand.”
He tried to open the door, but North caught him by the arm. “You got a gun,” North said. “Go for it.”
He shook his head, trying to clear his vision.
“Go for it! It’s loaded, ready to shoot. Pick it up and try to kill me. I’ll go for mine. One of us wins.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You really are crazy.” He felt the checkered grip of the automatic pushed into his hand; North had it by the barrel, trying to make him take it. Instead he held up both hands as he had seen people hold up their hands in movies, as he had seen suspects hold them up on television. He hoped a passing cop would see them.
North said, “You got no guts. No guts at all. I thought you had some, but I was wrong.”
“If it takes guts to shoot an empty gun at a man with a loaded one, you’re right; I don’t have a bit.”
North jerked back the slide; a cartridge flew out, striking the windshield. North caught it, took out the clip, jammed the cartridge into it, and slammed it back into the butt of the gun. “Want to try again?”
He shook his head and turned on the ignition.
“Then get it in gear.”
As they pulled away from the curb, he asked, “Where are we going?”
“A hotel to start with. I need more clothes, documents, newspapers, a base to work from.” North snapped his fingers. “The Grand! Keep moving, I’ve got to get myself located.”
He wondered—very much—what sort of work was to be carried out from that base. He thought it better not to ask.
The street lost its trolley tracks and became a boulevard flanked by imposing buildings of granite and marble, buildings guarded by snow-draped statues and in one case by a live sentry who might have been a United States Marine in dress blues. At last they were drawn into a traffic circle in which cars, small trucks, double-decked buses, and an occasional bike spun dizzily around a bronze general with a sword and a cocked hat. There was a moment of wild disorientation before he realized that the general, his rearing charger, and his pointing sword were all circling too, that the statue was revolving counterclockwise, like the traffic.
A small green car cut in front of them, and North reached for a gun.
“Easy,” he said, and laid his hand on North’s until the green car was gone.
“By God, I would have rammed the bastard,” North whispered through clenched teeth. “Rammed him!”
“And the police would have got us. Where do I turn off?”
North said nothing, staring straight ahead. Cars, mostly black, wove in and out. A policeman and a policewoman passed them in a black-and-white squad car. The woman glanced at them incuriously before her squad car moved off through the traffic.
His jaw still hurt; he rubbed it with one hand as he drove. “Keep circling,” North told him. “It’s one of these.”
Hotel Room
There was a balcony whose smooth carpet of snow testified that no one used it in winter. He did, opening the French doors and stepping out in his topcoat to study the winter sea. The waves were of that nearly black green he had been told artists called cannon; they pounded at the deserted beach like sentient beings, like so many workmen who knew that the job would be finished at last, the final stones, the last grains of sand, washed to the bottom, and that until it was done they would get their pay.
Nearer was a windswept concrete seawall; nearer still, a narrow asphalt road spotted with ice. A paved terrace flanked by evergreens in tubs led from the road to the marble steps of the Grand, which was clearly a resort in summer and in winter nothing much.
Their room—North had insisted that they share a room—was on the uppermost floor. It cost a modest twenty-five dollars a night; yet even so they had been able to get a weekly rate of a hundred and twenty-five. It was spacious, with a high ceiling; and thus far it had been always cold.
A lonely gull circled the freezing sea, and it struck hi
m that North might well have tried to shoot it if North had been there.
And that the seagull might—if only it could—tell him what sea this was and whether his own land lay over it, though he was convinced that it did not.
But where? Or had he been given some drug that permanently distorted the way he viewed the world, so that in the city where he had been born they now saw him wandering, wide eyed, talking to phantoms? Was it, as Lara had hinted in her note, merely the other side of a special door that he must find? If so, was Lara here or there? For she seemed to be in both places, admitting a strange man to his apartment, appearing here in his dream and on television, though that had perhaps been Marcella.
Who was surely, certainly, Lara herself in disguise. What had she told him? “Darling, it’s terribly dangerous, my talking with you.” That had been a message; that had been a warning as clear as Lara had dared to make it.
“What time is it there?” So “Marcella” was—had been—far away in another time zone, and had come on a jet as soon as she had finished speaking to him.
Or she had wished him to think her far away.
Marcella was a star, Marcella appeared on television, was known to everybody. What was it the nurse had called her? A goddess of the screen? But Marcella had telephoned him, waking him from sleep, if the call itself had not been a dream.
He watched snow dance across the broad, bare flags of the terrace.
On the other side of the French doors, the telephone rang and rang again. He opened them, stepped into a room that now seemed warm, and slid them shut, latching them carefully.
The telephone rang a third time.
He looked around to see whether the French doors had sent him back to his own country, or perhaps whisked him to a place stranger even than Lara’s. Other than the comfort of the room, nothing seemed to have changed, and he knew that it existed only in its contrast to the freezing wind outside. He picked up the handset.
“Mr. Pine?” It was the name he and North had decided upon.
“Yes,” he said.
“Are you sharing your room with a Mr. Campbell, sir?”
“Yes,” he said again. “Or rather, Mr. Campbell’s sharing his with me. He paid.”
“Our records show only your name, sir, although they show double occupancy. The other gentleman is Mr. Campbell?”
“That’s right. Why are you asking?”
“Mr. Campbell is buying some things in one of the shops, sir,” the clerk said, and hung up.
He hung up too, and switched on the television. Lara did not appear on the screen, though he had half expected her. He took the map and the bundle of currency from the pockets of his topcoat, pulled it off, and tossed it on the sofa.
As far as he could judge, the bills were perfectly genuine. The brown paper band with its stamped inscription, inked Chinese character, and ten-cent price was just as he remembered it.
He put away the bills and studied the map, trying to recall the topography of the United States and where such an area might fit into it. The girl in the map shop had mentioned some nearby town—or maybe it had been the red-faced man he had talked to in the street. He could not remember the name of that town, though he racked his brains for it.
No town of any kind appeared on the map, which he thought too much like a picture. There were mountains with snow-white peaks, and narrow valleys that seemed forbidding. A crude red array of walls and towers marked “Giants’ Castle” was probably just a rock formation. He felt he had heard of it, or perhaps only of something like it, a Giants’ Causeway or something of the sort.
The girl had mentioned a place called Crystal Gorge; he felt certain of that. He found it on the map—sparkling urns and statues on glass pedestals. Another place was called The Goddess’s Pleasure Garden, and there was a gray stone arch in the center smothered in flowers. Recalling that arch from his dream, he shivered.
The door banged open, and North came in carrying boxes and a paper. “Here you go,” North said, tossing a box into his lap.
He pulled the map from under it. “What is it?”
“Hat. I had to guess your size, but you can bring it back if it doesn’t fit. You look funny without one. Everybody wears them here.”
He refolded the map, opened the box, and pulled out a high-crowned snap-brim. He had never worn a hat, but he had to admit that North was right.
“Got you a new tie too, and a couple shirts. If the maid snoops around, we want her to find something.”
“Did the man who was supposed to meet you come?”
“I’m saving that for last. Try on the hat.”
He did, thinking at first that it was a trifle snug, then deciding it was a good fit. The tie was red silk with a yellow pattern that reminded him of scrambled eggs. Both shirts were taupe, one with a yellow stripe, one with a blue.
“Pure silk—silk’s cheap here. I figured you for a sixteen collar. If they don’t fit, leave the collar open. They look better like that anyhow.”
“Sixteen should be fine.”
“Now you get to read about us,” North said, handing him the paper. “We made page one.”
LUNATICS ESCAPE
Three patients escaped from the male floor of United General Psychiatric Hospital yesterday. Names are being withheld to spare the feelings of their relations, but Dr. Jonathan Pille, a hospital official, describes one as dangerous. “He is a male Caucasian of medium height,” Dr. Pille told this reporter. “With receding dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a black mustache. We were treating him with electric shock and lithium, and we felt we were making progress. He was transferred from the Violent Ward to our General Treatment Facility ten days ago, but without treatment he is liable to relapse.”
The second is said to be a short, slightly built man of forty-five, almost totally bald. He is reported to have an ingratiating manner, and to be capable of appearing fully sane for extended periods. He is not thought dangerous, but should be confined for his own safety.
The third is young, below medium height, with curling brown hair and brown eyes. He is reported to be friendly with the patient above, and it is believed they may be together.
The present episode is the only instance of escape from United General in the current decade. Security measures are being tightened.
North said, “Not a word about her, you notice? They’re afraid they’ll make them quit using nurses on the men’s floor.”
“The nurse who helped you? Maybe they don’t know about her.”
“Sure they do, if they’ve got any brains. Whose car was gone? Whose—” North bit off the sentence, struck by an idea. “That’s Eddie Walsh. It’s got to be.”
“He wasn’t with us.”
North grinned. “But we left the door unlocked. Remember Door C? That was always locked. The guys had him up on their shoulders when we went out, and he must have seen us. Eddie’s one sharp little bastard.”
“He didn’t have any street clothes. My God, he must have frozen to death.”
“He took his chances just like we did.”
If North said anything more, he did not hear it. He saw his mother’s face and heard his mother’s voice, the face and voice as each had been toward the end, when they were about to lose the house: “I took my chances.”
“They don’t carry much in the way of ID here,” North said. “According to what he tells me, a driver’s license will get you just about anywhere. Here’s yours.”
A square of stiff paper sailed through the air and landed in his lap. It seemed to him that a driver’s license should be cased in plastic and carry a picture; this looked more like an elaborate theater ticket, although a name was printed on it (as if he himself were the show tonight) and there was a space for his signature.
North said, “I’m going to take a shower and change. You too, if you want to. Then we’ve got things to do.”
He nodded, still seeing his mother’s face, her face as it had perhaps been when she was much younger, on the television screen.
Or Lara’s. The woman turned and was only an actress who presented her back to him while the camera peered over her shoulder at the handsome, vapid man she spoke to. His mother had been Lara, he felt—Lara in a way that fluttered off when he tried to grasp it. Not quite the Lara who had lived with him, yet they were both …
He shook his head. Was it possible to catch insanity like measles? What was it anyway? Was anyone who denied the facts insane, like poor Eddie Walsh? He shook his head once more and picked up the paper, a tonic for the madness that threatened to drown him: Section 1, Classifieds, Sports.
Eddie Walsh’s features threw him a cocky challenge from the sports section.
JOE READY FOR THE CHAMP
Popular pugilist Joe Joseph has concluded an agreement to fight World Heavyweight Champion “Sailor” Sawyer, Joseph’s manager, Edward E. Walsh, announced today. “Joe’s already the champ,” Walsh cracked. “He’s just going to defend his title.” A date for the bout has not yet been announced, but under the terms of the agreement it must be held within the year.
Joseph has scored convincing victories in his last five outings, KOing Ben MacDonald in the third last night. The match with Sawyer will be his first appearance in a main event. Walsh, who has been hospitalized with a stomach complaint, is returning to his post to ready Joseph for the big fight.
He dropped the paper. Poor Eddie—they would find him now. Even doctors read the sports. He tried to remember the Oriental doctor’s name but could think only of Sheng; the elderly Chinese had sold patent medicines in his little curio shop. Would it be possible to call Walsh and warn him? Surely he had already seen the story in the newspaper, yet a warning might do some good.
There was a thick gray-and-yellow directory under the stand between the beds, but no Walsh, Edward E., was listed there. He tried to remember the name of Walsh’s company, the company that Walsh had named when they had first met. Walsh Promotions, that was it—and there it was in heavy, black type a little way down the column. He dialed the number.
No twittering voices this time. The telephone (he imagined a dingy little office two flights up in a brick building near a gym) rang twice, and a marvelously familiar voice said, “Hello?”