by Gene Wolfe
Where was I? Oh, yes. It was on a dark and stormy afternoon in October that I was first introduced to the weird and sinister business which I, in these reports, have chosen to refer to as The Affair of the Rubber Bend.
Street waited until I had dried myself and was about to sit down with the paper, and then said sharply, “Westing!”
I confess I was so startled that for an instant I froze in a sort of half-crouch with my hips perhaps four inches about the seat of the scuffed old Morris chair next to Street’s antique tele-spectroscope; had I known at the time how significant that posture was to be, in the eldritch light of the disappearance of Prof. Louis Dodson and the haunting of—but perhaps I am in danger of anticipating my story.
“Westing,” Street continued, “for goodness’ sake sit down. Hanging in the air like that, you look like a set of tin monkey bars flunking Darwin.”
“It’s only natural,” I said, taking my seat, “for you humans to envy the somewhat greater coordination and superior muscular effectiveness we possess, but it is hardly necessary—”
“Quite. I’m sorry I startled you. But I had been thinking, and I want to talk to you. You are, are you not, a member of the Peircian Society?”
“Certainly,” I said. “You know perfectly well, Street, that on the first Monday of each odd-numbered month I absent myself from this apartment—good lord, have I missed a meeting?” I had risen again and was actually trying to recall what I had done with my umbrella when I caught the error. “No, you’re wrong for once, Street. This is October. October isn’t—November is, of course, but today’s Tuesday. Our meeting’s five days off yet.”
“Six,” Street said dryly, “but I didn’t say you were late for the meeting; I simply asked if you were still a member. You are. Am I not correct in saying that the purpose of the society is to discuss—”
In my eagerness I interrupted him. “To prove that the works signed ‘Damon Knight’ were actually written by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, of course. And they were, Street. They were. It’s so obvious: Peirce, the otherwise unknown founder of Logical Positivism—”
“Pragmatism,” Street said.
“They are almost the same thing. Peirce, as I was saying, lived in Milford, Pennsylvania—a minute hamlet since buried under the dammed waters of the Delaware—”
“You don’t bury things under water.”
“—thus conveniently destroying certain evidence the historical establishment did not want found. Note these points, Street: a village the size of Milford could hardly expect one such man in five hundred years; it had—this is what we are supposed to believe—two in less than fifty. Knight—”
“Knight also lived in Milford?”
“Yes, of course. Knight appeared shortly after Peirce—supposedly—died. Peirce, at the time of his supposed death, was being sorely hounded by his creditors. Peirce grew a thick beard, obviously to keep from being recognized later as Knight. Knight also grew a beard to prevent his being recognized as Peirce. Can’t you see, Street …” I paused.
“You pause,” Street remarked. “Has something struck you?”
“Indeed it has. You, Street, have become engrossed in this most fascinating of historical, scientific and literary puzzles. You will apply your immense abilities to it, and in a short time we will know the truth.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I only apply those abilities you have flatteringly called immense to puzzles which hold out some possibility of remuneration, Westing. I merely wished to know if you were still a member of the Peircian Society. You are, and I am content.”
“But surely—”
“There is a favor I would like you to do for me—it may be rather an inconvenience for you.”
“Anything, Street. You know that.”
“Then I want you to live for a few days with a friend of mine—be his houseguest. It shouldn’t interfere with your practice, and I’ll set up a gadget to relay your calls.”
“I could go to a hotel—”
“I’m not trying to get rid of you, Westing; it’s your presence there I want—not your absence here.”
“Street, does this have something to do with—”
“The Peircian Society? No, not at present; in fact, Westing, I wish you’d forget I ever mentioned that. Put it completely out of your mind. A friend of mine—his name is Noel Wide, by the way—wishes to have a good bio-mechanic near at hand in the evenings. Ordinarily he calls a neighbor of his, but the fellow is on vacation at the moment. He asked if I could suggest someone, and I told him I’d try to persuade you to fill in. If you are willing to go, I want you there tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“At once. Collect your medical bag and emergency self-maintenance kit and be on your way.”
“Street, you’re not telling me everything.”
“I am telling you everything it’s politic to tell you at the moment, and it’s important that you don’t miss dinner at Wide’s. If you are sincere in wanting to go, go now. Here—while you’ve been jabbering I’ve written out the address for you.”
“Dinner? Street, you know it isn’t necessary—we robots don’t—”
Something in his look stopped me. I collected the accoutrements he had suggested and took my departure; but as I left I noted that Street, now calm again, had picked up the book that lay beside his chair, and as I read the title an indescribable thrill shot through me. It was A for Anything.
The address to which Street had dispatched me proved to be an old brownstone in a neighborhood that held a thousand others. It had once had, I observed as I plodded toward it through the downpour, a sort of greenhouse or conservatory on its roof, but this was now broken and neglected, and its shattered panes and rusted ironwork, dripping rain, looked as dejected as I felt. At my knock the door, which was on a chain-guard, was opened by a robot younger (or as Street would say, “newer”) than myself. I asked if he was Mr. Wide.
He grinned mechanically, and without offering to unchain the door, replied, “He lives here, but I’m Arch St. Louis—you want in?” I observed that he sported a good deal of chrome-and-copper trim, arranged in a manner that led me to think better of his bank account than of his taste. In answer to his question I said, “Please,” and when he continued immobile I added, “As you see, I’m standing in the wet—I’m Dr. Westing.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
In a moment he had opened the door and shown me in. “Here,” he said, “I’ll get you some red-rags to wipe yourself off with. Don’t take the cold reception to heart, Doc; we have unpleasant company from time to time.”
I stifled the impulse to remark that birds of a feather assemble in groups, and asked instead if it would be possible for me to see Mr. Wide, my host.
St. Louis glanced at his watch. “Five minutes, he’s down in the plant rooms. He’ll be up at six.”
“The plant rooms?”
“In the basement. He grows mushrooms. Come on into the office.”
I followed him down a short corridor and entered a large and beautifully appointed chamber fitted out as something between an office and a parlor. A small desk near the door I deduced to be his; at the other side of the room stood a much larger desk with a scattering of unopened correspondence on its top, and behind it an immense chair. I walked over to examine the chair, but my awed perusal of its capacious dimensions was interrupted by the labored sighing of an elevator; I turned in time to see a pair of cleverly disguised doors slide back, revealing the most bulky robot I have ever beheld. He was carrying a small basket of tastefully arranged fungi, and holding this with both hands so as (at least, so it seemed to me) to have an excuse to avoid shaking hands with me, he marched across the room to the larger desk, and seating himself in that gargantuan chair, placed the basket squarely before him.
“Mr. Wide,” St. Louis said, “this is Doc Westing.”
“A pleasure, Doctor,” Wide said in a thick but impressive voice. “You have come
, I hope, to stay until my own physician returns?”
“I’m afraid there has been a mistake,” I told him. “I am a bio-mechanic, with no experience in robot repair. My patients—”
“Are human. Indubitably, Doctor. It is not for me, nor for Mr. St. Louis, that your services may be required. I frequently entertain human guests at my table.”
“I see,” I said. I was about to ask why his guests should require the services of a bio-mechanic when St. Louis caught my eye. His eloquent look told me more plainly than words could that I would be wise to hold my peace until he explained later.
“You are clearly fatigued, Doctor,” Wide was saying. “Perhaps you will permit my associate to show you to your room, and afterwards give you a tour of the house.”
I admitted I could do with some freshening up.
“Then I will expect you for dinner.”
As the sliding doors of the elevator closed behind us, St. Louis grinned and gestured towards the control panel. “See those, Doc? Push one. Your room’s on three.”
I pressed the button marked 3. The elevator remained immobile.
“They’re phonies; leave it to Arch.”
Addressing no visible person he said loudly, “Take ’er down, Fritz. Plant rooms.” The elevator began a gentle descent.
“I’m afraid,” I began, “that I don’t—”
“Like I said, the buttons are phonies. Sometimes the cops want to bother Mr. Wide when he’s down in the plant rooms or up in the sack thinking great thoughts. So I herd ’em in here, press the button, they see it don’t work, and I take off that access plate there and start playing around with the wires. They’re dummies too, and it works good on dummy cops. Like it?”
I said I supposed such a thing must often be useful, which seemed to please him; he treated me to his characteristic grin and confided, “We call it the St. Louis con, or sometimes the old elevator con. The real deal is the house has a built-in cyberpersonality, with speakers and scanners all over. Just ask for what you want.”
“I thought,” I ventured as the elevator came to a halt, “—I mean, weren’t we going up to my room?”
“I’m showing you the mushrooms first,” St. Louis explained, “then you’ll have a clear shot upstairs until dinner, and I’ll have a chance to do some chores. Come on, they’re worth seeing.”
We stepped out into semidarkness; the ceiling was low, the room cool and damp and full of the smell of musty life. Dimly I could make out row upon row of greenhouse benches filled with earth; strange, uncouth shapes lifted blind heads from this soil, and some appeared to glow with an uncanny phosphorescence. “The mushrooms,” St. Louis said proudly. “He’s got over eighteen hundred different kinds, and believe me, he gets ’em from all over. The culture medium is shredded paper pulp mixed with sawdust and horse manure.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“That’s why he wants you here,” St. Louis continued. “Wide’s not only the greatest detective in our Galaxy, he’s also the greatest gourmet cook—on the theoretical end, I mean. Fritz does the actual dirty work.”
“Did you say Mr. Wide was a detective?”
“I may have let it slip. He’s pretty famous.”
“What a striking coincidence! Would you believe it, St. Louis, my own best friend—”
“Small Universe, isn’t it? Does Street cook too?”
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know you knew him; no, Street’s hobby is collecting old machines, and scientific tinkering generally.”
“Sometimes I wish Wide’s was, but he cooks instead. You know why I think he does it?”
“Since no one but a human can eat the food, I can’t imagine. »
“It’s those add-on units—you noticed how big he was?”
“I certainly did! You don’t mean to say—”
St. Louis nodded. “The heck I don’t. Add-on core memory sections. His design is plug-to-plug compatible with them, and so far he’s sporting fourteen; they cost ten grand apiece, but every time we rake in a big fee he goes out and buys his brains a subdivision.”
“Why, that’s incredible! St. Louis, he must be one of the most intelligent people in the world.”
“Yeah, he’s smart. He’s so smart if he drops something on the floor I got to pick it up for him. But it’s the image, you know. He’s eighty inches around the waist, so he figures he’s got to do the food business. You ever hear of Truffes et Champignons à la Noel Wide? He makes it with sour cream and sauerkraut, and the last time he served it we almost lost two clients and an assistant district attorney.”
“And he’s giving one of these dinners tonight? I’m surprised that anyone would come.”
St. Louis shrugged. “He invites people who owe him a favor and don’t know; and then there’s a bunch who’ll turn up darn near regular—some of the stuffs pretty good, and it’s a sort of suicide club.”
“I see,” I said rapidly checking over the contents of my medical bag mentally. “Am I correct in assuming that since, as you say, there is a great deal of cooking done in this house, you are well supplied with baking soda and powdered mustard?”
“If it’s got to do with food we’ve got tons of it.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry—”
I was interrupted by the sound of the elevator doors, and Wide’s deep, glutinous voice: “Ah, Doctor, you have anticipated me—I wished to show you my treasures myself.”
“Mr. St. Louis tells me,” I said, “that you have mushrooms from all over the Universe, as well as the Manhattan area.”
“I do indeed. Fungi from points exotic as Arcturus and as homely as Yuggoth. But I fear that—great as my satisfaction would be—it was not to expatiate upon the wonders of my collection that I came.” He paused and looked out over the rows of earth-filled benches. “It is not the orchid, but the mushroom, which symbolizes our society. I used to grow orchids—were you aware of that, Doctor?”
I shook my head.
“For many years. Then I acquired my eighth unit of additional core.” Wide thoughtfully slapped his midsection—a sound deeply reverberant, but muted as the note of some great bronze gong in a forgotten catacomb of the temple of Thought. “I had no sooner gotten that unit up, than the insight came to me: No one can eat orchids. It was as simple as that: No one can eat orchids. It had been staring me in the face for years, but I had not seen it.”
St. Louis snorted. “You said you came down here for something else, boss.”
“I did. The client is here. Fritz admitted her; she is waiting in the front room with a hundred thousand credits in small bills in her lap.”
“Want me to get rid of her?”
“There has been another apparition.”
St. Louis whistled, almost silently.
“I intend to talk to her; it occurred to me that you might wish to be present, though Dr. Westing need not trouble himself in the matter.”
A sudden thought had struck me: If, as it had appeared to me earlier that evening, Street had had some ulterior motive in sending me to this strange house, it was quite probable that it had to do with whatever case currently engaged Wide’s attention. I fenced for some time. “Mr. Wide, did I hear you say ‘apparition’?”
Wide’s massive head nodded slowly. “Thirteen days ago the young woman’s ‘father,’ the eminent human scientist Louis C. Dodson, disappeared. Since that time an apparition in the form of Dodson has twice been observed in his old laboratory on the three thousand and thirteenth floor of the Groan Building. Miss Dodson has retained me to investigate Dodson’s disappearance and lay the phantom. You appear disturbed.”
“I am. Dodson was—well, if not a friend, at least a friendly acquaintance of mine.”
“Ah.” Wide looked at St. Louis significantly. “When was the last time you saw him, Doctor?”
“A little less than two months ago, at the regular meeting. We were fellow members of the Peircian Society.”
“He appeared normal then?”
“Enti
rely. His stoop was, if anything, rather more pronounced than usual, indicating relaxation; and the unabated activity of the tics I had previously observed affecting his left eye and right cheek testified to the continuing functioning of the facial nerves.”
I paused, then took the plunge. “Mr. Wide, would it be possible for me to sit in with you while you question his daughter? After all, death is primarily a medical matter, and I might be of some service.”
“You mean, his ‘daughter,’” Wide said absently. “You must, however, permit me to precede you—our elevator is insufficiently capacious for three.”
“He’s hoping she’ll object to you—that’ll give him an excuse to threaten to drop the case,” St. Louis said as soon as we were alone. “And that elevator’ll hold five, if one of ’em’s not him.”
I was thinking of the death of my old acquaintance, and did not reply.
Alice Dodson, who sat on the edge of a big red leather chair in front of Wide’s desk, was as beautiful a girl as I had ever seen: tall, poised, with a well-developed figure and a cascade of hair the color of white wine. “I assume,” Wide was saying to her as St. Louis and I emerged from the elevator, “that that diminutive glassine envelope you hold contains the hundred thousand in small bills my cook mentioned.”
“Yes,” the girl said, holding it up. “They have been microminiaturized and are about three millimeters by seven.”
Wide nodded. “Arch, put it in the safe and write her out a receipt. Don’t list it as an addition to the retainer, just: ‘Received of Miss Alice Dodson the sum of one hundred thousand credits, her property.’ Date it and sign my name.”