by Gene Wolfe
North stumbled backward, one gun firing into the rafters. Joe and Sawyer were on their feet. The referee was ringing her bell, ringing for the fighters to fight again, he thought, and they were going to do it across North.
No, North was up, scuttling toward the ropes, still holding one gun. Klamm’s men were firing from the aisle. North’s gun barked at him, spitting flame and leaping like a big, angry dog; but W.F. had thrown the red-and-white kit, and it struck North’s arm.
Then he held the gun, too. He twisted it up and back. It fired—its flash half-blinded him, and the sound of the shot was deafening. North’s jaw was a red horror, yet North struck him again and again. He heard his own nose break, a terrible sound; something had invaded his head and was working destruction there. He gasped for breath, drew in blood and spat it out. More blood was streaming down his face.
Joe’s padded glove slammed North’s ear. After that, North no longer wrestled him for the gun. It was in his hand, but he did not know what to do with it—and then it was gone. North’s corpse sprawled on the canvas near the center of the ring, in a widening scarlet stain.
“Set down now,” W.F. told him. “We got to get a ice-pack on your nose. Stop that bleedin’.”
He discovered there was a stool behind him. He sat, wanting to say something about bananas or tomatoes, to joke with W.F.; but he could not speak, could not ensnare the fleet thoughts in syllable and phrase. He had lost teeth, and his tongue explored the places.
Klamm was in the ring, waving to the audience, muttering to the fighters, a hand upon the shoulder of each. Each was a head taller than Klamm.
Joe squatted in front of him. “You okay?”
The ice-pack was on his face, but he managed to nod.
“That was a brave thing you done.” The words were muffled, slurred by Joe’s mouthpiece.
The bell rang once, sharply. Klamm had struck it with the case of an old-fashioned pocket watch.
“Gotta go,” Joe mumbled. “But you’re a real champ.”
“Hol’ still,” W.F. told him.
Klamm said, “This fight. It is to take their minds off it. You will make this a long round, ja? Because perhaps at the end they are nervous once more.” Klamm was talking to the referee, not to him.
A hard-faced man he recognized as one of Klamm’s bodyguards asked, “Where’s his other gun?”
Walsh handed it over sheepishly, butt first. “I only got one shot at ’im,” Walsh confessed. “Somebody was always in the way.”
“Good thing you didn’t try for two.”
Walsh nodded. “Ya never can tell.”
“We take him to a hospital,” Klamm was explaining to W.F. “To a doctor. You must see to your man, ja?”
W.F. took away the ice-pack and changed the cotton in his nostrils. Klamm’s bodyguard helped him through the ropes. He looked around for Lara, but she was gone.
“She is not here, Herr Kay,” Klamm told him.
It was as though he had spoken aloud—but it was too hard to speak. Klamm had known; Klamm had read his thought, or at least had read his expression and noticed the direction of his eyes. For the first time it struck him that one did not become a cabinet officer by chance, that the sleepy old man with the dyed mustache probably possessed extraordinary abilities.
The bodyguard asked if he could walk. “He walks,” Klamm declared. “He is a tough one, a Raufbold, ja?”
The pain of his broken nose was like fire on his face. He wondered vaguely whether he had been hurt anywhere else. Those teeth, of course; that was drowned in the other pain.
Outside several hundred men were milling around the arena. “North is dead.” “North’s dead.” “In there—they just killed Bill North.” He caught the words everywhere; he could not tell who had spoken them because everyone was speaking them. A man of about his own age wept without shame, sallow cheeks flooded with tears. Klamm’s guards had their guns out—in one case a strange-looking gun with a long curved magazine. He decided it was probably a machine pistol.
Three black cars—one an enormous limousine—stood at the curb. “He rides with me,” Klamm told somebody. “You need not come.”
A uniformed driver with a gun opened the rear door. Klamm got in first, sliding across the wide leather seat to make room for him. The door clicked softly behind him.
“We speak in private, Rudy,” Klamm said, and a thick sheet of glass slid from the back of the front seat to the roof. A moment later, the limousine pulled smoothly away from the curb. One of the sedans was ahead of it, and he suspected the other was behind it, but he did not bother to turn his head to see.
“You haff saved my life,” Klamm said. “I shall reward you, if I can. I haff some money, and I am not without authority in this place.”
“No,” he said. He managed to shake his head a little.
From his pocket Tina announced, “He needs your help, Papa.”
“Then he shall haff it. Whatever I can give.”
He said, “I want to find Laura.”
The old man sighed. “So do we all, Herr Kay.”
“She’s your daughter—your stepdaughter.”
“She is a grown woman, my stepdaughter. She goes where she wants. Sometimes she tells me because she loves me, such is her way. More often not. I will help if I can, but I cannot say to you her apartment is here, she is in that hotel.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not right.”
“What is it you mean, Herr Kay?” Klamm leaned back in the corner, eyes sleepier than ever.
“Laura says she’s your stepdaughter, and you say she’s your stepdaughter. But she can’t be, not really, so you know. She’s the goddess.”
Klamm opened one eye wide. “She told you that?”
He tried to think back. “I figured it out. She admitted it. She knows I know.”
“Yes, Herr Kay, she is the goddess.”
He understood then, and could not understand why he had not understood before. “Then you’re her lover—or one of her lovers. Or you were.”
“Yes, Herr Kay.” Klamm’s eye had shut again. Now both eyes opened. “Long ago, when I was younger than you. But she is still fond of me, nicht wahr? I hold her hand. She holds mine. Perhaps we kiss when nobody sees. That is all. Do you envy an old man so much, Herr Kay?”
“No,” he said.
“I assist her when I can. For her I perform certain little services. She does not require them, but she knows it makes me happy to do these things. At times she assists me, as she saved me tonight. She brought you, Herr Kay, and without you I should lie dead at this moment.”
He waved that aside. “I want to ask you about her, but I don’t know what to ask.”
“She is very beautiful, always. She believes she can hide her beauty when she chooses, but she is wrong in that. It is only that sometimes it is open, this beauty—the beauty of one who knows herself to be beautiful, ja? Other times, the closed beauty of one who does not know, and then we must look. If we begin by saying, ‘Why is that woman not beautiful?’ we never see it. But if we search—you know, I think.”
“Yes, Lora Masterman. Mr. Klamm, once while I was in the hospital I tried to call my apartment, and you answered.”
Klamm nodded sleepily. “I answered, and you hung up your telephone. You wish to know how such a thing could happen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It is so simple. She thought you might call. Sometimes one can, from here to there or the other way. So we arranged that such calls should ring at my desk. A special instrument, you understand. She told me of you, and that I was to assist you, should you ask my assistance. You did not.”
“And another time I got another man.”
“One of my agents,” Klamm explained. “I am very much at my desk, but not always. When I am gone, another must answer my calls. Sometimes we must act at once; then he acts for me, in my name.”
“He wanted to know where I was. Lara knew where I was. She sent flowers.”
“But we di
d not, nor did we know that Laura knew. She does not know everything, you see, though she knows so much. Nor does she tell me a tenth what she knows. Perhaps she only sends your flowers as an experiment; if the florist had said, ‘There is no one there with such a name,’ she would have known that you were elsewhere. We too often make such experiments. That United was a good guess she made, ja? Visitors are often brought there.”
It was the word Fanny had used. He asked, “Am I a dangerous Visitor or a harmless one, Mr. Klamm?”
Klamm chuckled softly. “Harmless, very much so, exactly like me. But Herr North, he is a dangerous Visitor, you see? And so we must question all Visitors somewhat. You become the responsibility of one of my subordinates. She will keep you from harm, and it might be someday Laura comes for you.”
“One more thing, sir. I told you about the other man, who answered the phone in my apartment.”
“Ja.”
“I saw him on TV one time. I just switched on the TV, and there he was, answering the phone in my apartment.”
Klamm nodded. “No one else was looking? Perhaps another would have seen what you saw, Herr Kay. But perhaps not. More often, not. She was near you then, and she brings such dreams; I cannot explain why.”
That was the end of their conversation for a time, and it seemed to him that the limousine should have pulled up in front of a hospital when Klamm said, I cannot explain why. In point of fact, it did not, but followed the black sedan for another mile at least while he considered what had been said and Klamm slumped in the corner apparently asleep. Even when they reached the hospital—St. Anchises’s, according to a sign illuminated by the headlights—the limousine did not stop in front but circled to the emergency entrance in the rear.
“Good-bye, Herr Kay,” Klamm said, once again extending his hand. “No, at such a time you haff a right to the correct name. Good-bye, Herr Green, my friend. May good fortune go with you! I only call you Herr Kay because I remember an old friend, that was myself also.”
He shook Klamm’s hand. “Good-bye, Mr. Klamm. You can call me anything you want.”
One of the bodyguards opened the door.
“You know how to reach me at my desk, ja? Or another who will act for me.”
The dome light had come on when the door was opened, and he saw with astonishment that there were tears in Klamm’s eyes. He said, “Yes, I do, sir.”
“Take care of him, Ernest. See he has a good doctor.”
The bodyguard replied, “I will, Mr. Secretary,” and he got out; as soon as the door closed, the limousine glided away.
Tina said, “What a nice old man.”
The bodyguard glanced down at her and grinned. “You got one of those? I used to have one myself.”
Tina told him, “You should get another one.”
He followed the bodyguard into a brightly lit room, where an Oriental who had been sipping from a battered china mug rose to attend to him. “Good to see you again,” the Oriental told him. “But not here. Have a seat.”
He sat down. “It’s good to see you again, too, Dr. Pille.” After a moment he added, “I thought you were at that other place.”
“I am, when they need me. It’s only a block away. You had a concussion that time, remember?”
“Sure,” he said. “Ow!”
“Your nose is broken,” Dr. Pille told him. “We’ll have to set it. I’ll give you an anesthetic, but it will still hurt a bit. You get in a fight?”
A nurse answered for him. “With an assassin, Doctor. It was all over TV.”
Still examining his nose, Dr. Pille nodded. “Really?”
The bodyguard asked, “Can you keep him overnight, Doc? Somebody will come by to get him in the morning.”
“Certainly.” Dr. Pille straightened up and began filling a hypodermic.
Decision
A nurse woke him to ask what he wanted for breakfast. “You lost a couple of teeth,” she told him. “So no toast or anything like that. Do you think you could manage a coddled egg?”
He nodded and sat up in bed. “I’m hungry. Guess I missed dinner last night.”
She grinned. “That would explain it.”
When she was gone, he looked around the room; it was bigger than the one he had occupied at United, much smaller than the open ward in which he had slept with nine other patients in the psychiatric wing of some hospital whose name he could not quite remember. Like his room at United, it held a locker, but this locker was unlocked. His jacket, his trousers, and his overcoat hung inside. His shoes were on the bottom. He recalled that he had not had his overcoat when he had been in the limousine with Klamm. Someone had brought it.
He peeked into the breast pocket of his jacket, and Tina said, “Hello-good morning,” and stretched.
“Good morning.” He held out his hand, and she climbed into it. “Back in the hospital,” he said.
“Were you in the hospital before?”
“Yes, but you were asleep. I’ve been in hospitals a lot.”
The nurse came in with his tray. “Those are against our regulations,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t know.”
“I really should take it and lock it up. But you’re going to be discharged today anyhow, so it’s really not worth all the trouble. Just don’t let anybody else see it.”
“I’ll hide,” Tina promised.
“What would you like to drink? We’ve got coffee, tea, and milk.”
He asked whether he could have both tea and milk, and she nodded and brought them in, managing to get a cup, a little hot-water pot, and the glass of milk all on his tray.
“The tea’s for you,” he told Tina when the nurse had gone. He put the teabag into the pot and sprinkled salt from an old-fashioned glass saltcellar into the cup.
“Goody!”
He held the cup for her while she drank. “You don’t need any food? Just this?”
“This is all,” Tina said. “And this was plenty. Eat your egg so you’ll grow up strong.”
With a napkin to protect his fingers, he unscrewed the top of the white porcelain dish.
“Don’t you have to go to school today?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. There was a soft roll on his tray as well. He tore it in small pieces and mixed the pieces with the egg, adding pepper and the pat of butter. “Somebody’s coming for me, but I don’t think it’s to take me to school.”
“Where are they going to take you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. After a moment he added, “I’m not sure I’ll even go.”
About an hour after the nurse took his tray, she returned with a wheelchair. “I’m afraid you’ve got to ride in this,” she said. “Regulations.”
He looked around for Tina.
“It’s under the sheet. You’ll be back in an hour or so.”
He hesitated, then said, “All right. Where are we going?”
“To see the dentist.”
He stared curiously as she wheeled him to the elevator; the hospital seemed merely a hospital like any other, a little less modern than the ones he recalled seeing on TV. Perhaps they all were.
The dentist was a large woman who gave the impression of disliking him and the nurse equally. “Open wide,” she told him, and when he complied leaned so close it seemed she was trying to thrust her head into his mouth. “One came out clean, and one left a piece of root.” She turned to the nurse. “This will be a local. You can go if you want.”
The nurse shook her head.
The dentist shot something into his gum, after which he and the nurse spent a quarter of an hour in the outer office waiting for it to take effect. “If I’d gone,” the nurse said, “she’d have had you out like a candle.” He nodded, wishing she had; he had never liked having his teeth worked on and saw nothing wrong with being out like a light.
There was a stack of magazines. As he leafed through one, it struck him that he had read almost nothing here. Tina would rebuke him if she knew; thinkin
g of it made him feel guilty, and he studied the magazine with more care. It seemed very similar to those of his own world up until page forty, which showed Lara sitting with a pink drink in a tropical garden. Lara’s hair was gold, her skin bronze. “Marcella Masters relaxes at home before beginning work on Atlantis,” read the caption.
He tore the page out, folded it, and put it in the pocket of his pajama shirt. The nurse seemed scandalized but did not protest. After that he flipped through magazines energetically until the dentist summoned him back to her chair, but he found nothing more.
Fanny was waiting for them when they returned to his room. She showed the nurse her badge and a letter, at which the nurse appeared impressed. “He’s all yours, Sergeant, if you want him.”
Fanny grinned at him. “I do.”
The nurse opened his locker and glanced inside. “I’ll have to get his laundry. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Okay,” Fanny told her. To him she said, “You look pretty damned awful with all that tape on your face.”
He told her he felt all right.
The nurse said, “He’s lost a couple of teeth too, Sergeant. In a week or so he should see a dentist about getting a bridge. In two or three days a doctor should check his nose. You can take him to Dr. Pille’s office or bring him here. Dr. Pille set his nose last night.”
Fanny said, “Okay.”
When the nurse had gone, Fanny said, “You went back to wherever it is you come from, didn’t you? That time in the restaurant.”
He nodded. “I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I couldn’t get back. Well, once I did, but it only lasted a few minutes. Then I found Lara again and followed her—I think she let me—and here I am.”
“I hope you stay here,” Fanny told him. “I’m responsible for you now, and I’ll catch hell if I lose you. Do you have to sit in that thing?”
“No,” he said. He stood to show her, then sat beside her on the bed. That reminded him of Tina; he reached beneath the sheet and pulled her out.