by Gene Wolfe
The old woman in the rocker looked her part too, perhaps almost too much: snow white hair, bifocals, knitting, cat. “It’s the Packerhaus method,” she said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” She was smiling at her two front doors.
“Mmmh,” the social worker replied, looking troubled.
“Meow,” said the cat.
“The Packerhaus method. I believe I heard you to say that you were familiar with the name but not fully cognizant of all the details?”
The social worker waved a hand. “Something like that. It’s rather a shock to have one pop out at me in that way and then learn …” She let the sentence trail away, wishing she could herself.
“Fine,” the old woman said. She had been knitting, apparently, instead of listening. One of the front doors opened and a man in uniform rapped gently on the varnished frame. “Meter reader.”
The old woman looked up from her knitting, smiling. “In the basement,” she said. “Just come right through, Frank.”
The uniformed man smiled in return and moved across the living room on a small rectangular platform. A door at the far side opened to receive him.
The social worker gulped. “He didn’t walk,” she said. “He was riding on a sort of little cart.”
“The Packerhaus method is not perfect.” The old woman looked at her severely. “And please note, my dear, that neither I nor Col. Packerhaus ever once said it was. He was my cousin, did I tell you that? But it gives, in the felicitous phrase the Colonel coined, ‘a living memorial to the living.’ That became the motto of the company he founded when he left the Army Graves Registration Service, you know.”
“No,” the social worker said humbly. “I didn’t.”
“The Colonel conceived of his method as a means of assuaging the grief of the sorrowing parents, wives, and sweethearts; but it was not really well suited, as he used to say subsequently, to a military application. So many soldiers are damaged by death.”
The meter reader re-emerged from the door he had entered and glided across the room again, tipping his cap.
“Your grandfather … didn’t your grandfather come through that door a minute ago?”
“My father.” The old woman nodded, rocking. “A wonderful man, looking for a light for his cigar. That’s what he does, mostly—looks for a light.” She sat rocking and knitting after pronouncing this, half waiting for the social worker to reply, half listening for the tea kettle. After a time an old man with a cigar in his fingers entered the room on a platform like the meter man’s. He wore drooping black trousers and a loose white shirt, and looked like Mark Twain and a little like Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The social worker jerked slightly on seeing him, and he asked her for a match; he had a deep, resonant voice.
“You shouldn’t smoke, Papa,” the old woman said. And to the social worker, “It’s the Packerhaus method. I believe I told you?”
“You mean he’s not just a doll?”
“Oh no.” The old woman shook her head, smiling. “He’s a living memorial. By which the Colonel and I mean that it is really he. Aren’t you you, Papa?”
He was looking under an antimacassar for matches.
“The Packerhaus method,” the old woman continued, “preserves the entire brain by saturating it with a phenolic resin. Then an exterior source of voltage powers the nerve impulses.” She leaned forward confidentially, lowering her voice. “He can’t breathe, you know. I don’t keep matches in the house, but sometimes he remembers that he can light his cigar from the stove element. Then he finds out he can’t draw on it, and it makes him very angry.”
The social worker was watching the old man’s back. “If he can’t breathe, how can he speak?”
“A fan,” the old woman said. “A fan in the base forces air past his vocal cords. The tube runs up his leg.”
“Meow,” said the cat.
Turning around the old man asked for a match again in his deep voice; the social worker said she had none and he left.
“Not back to the stove, I hope,” the old woman said. “He’ll lift off my teakettle and forget to put it back. I always made tea for him when he was ill. Did I tell you that?”
The social worker shook her head and asked, “He can still move?” She looked faint.
“Of course he can still move. That was the other half of Col. Packerhaus’s great discovery. Muscles, you know, will still respond to an impulse after death. We used to do it with frogs’ legs and a galvanic cell when I was a little girl in school—no doubt you moderns have more advanced methods.”
“I seem to remember something like that in biology,” the social worker said weakly.
“The Colonel’s fluid preserves this attribute, you see—at least for a long time. It’s based on formaldehyde like the old fluid, but it contains vitamins and proteins in solution, and oxygenators, and ever so many other things. You may have smelled the formaldehyde the first time you met Papa, but no doubt you thought it was after shave lotion.”
“I think I must be going.” The social worker looked around vaguely for her bag.
The old woman smiled. “Oh no, not yet. I’ll be leaving myself soon. Papa had stomach cramps—did I tell you that? Just like Frank, who used to come around for the gas company. That’s funny, isn’t it: stomach cramps and the gas company.” There was a knock at the door and the old woman called, “Not now, Frank. We’re talking.”
“He can think?”
“Oh yes.” The old woman rocked back and forth. “Think and talk. The standing ones are put on a platform with the extra equipment in it so they can move about, while the seated ones just have it built into their chairs. Now Kitty here,” she leaned over and stroked the cat, “was a special job just for me, and the extra equipment is let into the floor under her; but they don’t often do animals.”
“If they can think and move,” the social worker asked, “how is it different from being alive?” She answered her own question. “Alive, but crippled perhaps, like someone who has to use a wheel chair.”
“Now you’ve hit it,” the old woman said. She was putting away her knitting. “It’s the memory, my dear. You see, the moment-to-moment memories a person has are electrical, as you might say, in their nature. But the permanent ones, the things a person recalls more than just five or ten minutes, are due to changes in the molecules that make up one’s brain. With the Packerhaus method, since the brain isn’t alive it can’t change itself that way.” She waved a hand, pleased with her explanation. “That’s why Papa can’t remember that he can’t smoke, for example.”
“Stomach cramps.”
“Yes, just like you. Col. Packerhaus had them too, but though I do love having people around me I don’t have him here, of course. The company has him down in the lobby of the Packerhaus Mortuary Number One where the bereaved can talk to him. He’s still quite a good salesman, you know, and very comforting.” The old woman stood up, stowing the knitting under her rocker. “It’s interesting, too, to see how long his memory span is; it seems to improve with age. I was about to say that it almost seemed his brain had learned to make the moment-to-moment kind last longer—but that would be silly, wouldn’t it? I mean since after the resin hardens it can’t learn at all. But you’ll see for yourself.”
“I want to go home,” the social worker said.
“You can’t dear,” the old woman told her gently. “But it was nice of you to come around to visit an old lady.” She bent quickly and kissed the social worker on the forehead. “And,” she added when she had straightened up again, “I have some lovely news for you: when I go myself I’m going to have it done too. It’s all in my will. Then we can just sit and talk all the time. You and I and Papa, and of course Frank, when Frank wants to talk. And the new girl they’re sending to look in on me. There’s a note on the outside front door, but if you remember you might tell her that there’s a cup set out for her with a tea bag already in it, and hot water on the stove. I have to go to the store, but I’ll be back soon.”
The social worker leaned forward to stroke it, but found she could not leave her chair. The clock ticked. A slow horror filled her, and there was an agonizing tightness in her throat. She should be crying, she knew; but there was no moisture in her eyes.
One of the front doors opened and a man in uniform rapped gently on the varnished frame. “Meter reader, lady.”
“You’re Frank, aren’t you?” The clock ticked.
The other front door opened and a new social worker came in. She looked the part, with brown, sensible hair, round-lensed glasses and large, kind, short eyes.
“You have short eyes,” the social worker said.
The new social worker smiled. “Short sighted, you mean. Yes, that’s why I have to wear these awful things.” She tapped her glasses with a forefinger.
“Meow,” said the cat.
“I’m the meter reader,” said Frank. “Sometimes I look in too; old people get lonely you know.”
“Charmed,” said the new social worker. “I do hope you folks don’t mind my barging in like this. There was a note on the door saying I’d find tea on the stove, I didn’t realize the old lady already had company.” She went into the kitchen.
“You’re very kind, aren’t you?” the social worker said to Frank. The clock ticked.
The new social worker came back, carrying a cup of tea and smiling. “There’s an elderly gentleman in the kitchen,” she said. “He’s cursing his cigar.”
The social worker dropped Frank’s hand. “I was either to tell you to drink that tea, or not to drink it; but I can’t recall which. And he’s behind you.”
“Oh?” said the new social worker, and turned around.
Grandfather had followed her from the kitchen, and he asked the new social worker for a light for his cigar. “I’ve been trying to light it from the stove,” he complained, “but it won’t draw.”
The clock ticked.
“Meow,” said the cat.
“That cat’s shedding,” said the new social worker. “In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat shedding quite so much. The hair’s coming out of her in a quite remarkable way.”
The clock ticked.
The clock ticked.
The clock ticked.
“Ah,” said the old woman. “All my little circle gathered together. Did the new girl come?”
“New girl?” asked the social worker. There was a gagging sound from another room.
“I think she must have gone into a bedroom to lie down,” said the old woman. “Perhaps she has gas.”
“I thought it was the plumbing,” said Grandfather.
“We have news for you,” said the social worker. “Good news, I hope, though it means I won’t be coming to see you any more—at least not in an official capacity.”
The old woman was getting out her knitting. “Wonderful,” she said.
“Meow,” said the cat.
“Frank and I are getting married. We wanted you to be the first to know.” The social worker sat primly, knees together, hands in lap.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the old woman. “Marvelous! Of course,” she added in a more serious tone, “you know what this means. We’ll have to invite the minister—for tea.”
“Come on,” said Grandfather, taking Frank by the elbow. “We’d best leave these women to plan the wedding. Got a match on you?”
The social worker gulped. “They don’t walk,” she said. “Frank was riding on a sort of little cart. Haven’t I noticed that before?”
“It’s the Packerhaus method,” the old woman said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
“Mmmh,” the social worker replied, looking troubled.
“Meow,” said the cat.
Straw
YES, I REMEMBER KILLING MY FIRST MAN VERY WELL; I was just seventeen. A flock of snow geese flew under us that day about noon. I remember looking over the side of the basket, and seeing them; and thinking that they looked like a pike-head. That was an omen, of course, but I did not pay any attention.
It was clear, fall weather—a trifle chilly. I remember that. It must have been about the mid-part of October. Good weather for the balloon. Clow would reach up every quarter hour or so with a few double handsful of straw for the brazier; and that was all it required. We cruised, usually, at about twice the height of a steeple.
You have never been in one? Well, that shows how things have changed. Before the Fire-wights came, there was hardly any fighting at all, and free swords had to travel all over the continent looking for what there was. A balloon was better than walking, believe me. Miles—he was our captain in those days—said that where there were three soldiers together, one was certain to put a shaft through a balloon; it was too big a target to resist, and that would show you where the armies were.
No, we would not have been killed. You would have had to slit the thing wide open before it would fall fast, and a little hole like the business end of a pike would make would just barely let you know it was there. The baskets do not swing, either, as people think. Why should they? They feel no wind—they are travelling with it. A man just seems to hang there, when he is up in one of them, and the world turns under him. He can hear everything—pigs and chickens, and the squeak the windlass makes drawing water from a well.
“Good flying weather,” Clow said to me.
I nodded. Solemnly, I suppose.
“All the lift you want, in weather like this. The colder it is, the better she pulls. The heat from the fire doesn’t like the chill, and tries to escape from it. That’s what they say.”
Blond Bracata spat over the side. “Nothing in our bellies,” she said, “that’s what makes it lift. If we don’t eat today you won’t have to light the fire tomorrow—I’ll take us up myself.”
She was taller than any of us except Miles, and the heaviest of us all; but Miles would not allow for size when the food was passed out, so I suppose she was the hungriest too.
Derek said: “We should have stretched one of that last bunch over the fire. That would have fetched a pot of stew, at the least.”
Miles shook his head. “There were too many.”
“They would have run like rabbits.”
“And if they hadn’t?”
“They had no armor.”
Unexpectantly, Bracata came in for the captain. “They had twenty-two men, and fourteen women. I counted them.”
“The women wouldn’t fight.”
“I used to be one of them. I would have fought.”
Clow’s soft voice added, “Nearly any woman will fight if she can get behind you.”
Bracata stared at him, not sure whether he was supporting her or not. She had her mitts on—she was as good with them as anyone I have ever seen—and I remember that I thought for an instant that she would go for Clow right there in the basket. We were packed in like fledglings in the nest, and fighting, it would have taken at least three of us to throw her out—by which time she would have killed us all, I suppose. But she was afraid of Clow. I found out why later. She respected Miles, I think, for his judgment and courage, without being afraid of him. She did not care much for Derek either way, and of course I was hardly there at all as far as she was concerned. But she was just a little frightened by Clow.
Clow was the only one I was not frightened by—but that is another story too.
“Give it more straw,” Miles said.
“We’re nearly out.”
“We can’t land in this forest.”
Clow shook his head and added straw to the fire in the brazier—about half as much as he usually did. We were sinking toward what looked like a red and gold carpet.
“We got straw out of them anyway,” I said, just to let the others know I was there.
“You can always get straw,” Clow told me. He had drawn a throwing spike and, and was feigning to clean his nails with it. “Even from swineherds, who you’d think wouldn’t have it. They’ll get it to be rid of us.”
/> “Bracata’s right,” Miles said. He gave the impression that he had not heard Clow and me. “We have to have food today.”
Derek snorted. “What if there are twenty?”
“We stretch one over the fire. Isn’t that what you suggested? And if it takes fighting, we fight. But we have to eat today.” He looked at me. “What did I tell you when you joined us, Jerr? High pay or nothing? This is the nothing. Want to quit?”
I said, “Not if you don’t want me to.”
Clow was scraping the last of the straw from the bag. It was hardly a handful. As he threw it in the brazier Bracata asked, “Are we going to set down in the trees?”
Clow shook his head and pointed. Away in the distance I could see a speck of white on a hill. It looked too far, but the wind was taking us there, and it grew and grew until we could see that it was a big house, all built of white brick with gardens and outbuildings, and a road that ran up to the door. There are none like that now, I suppose.
Landings are the most exciting part of travelling by balloon, and sometimes the most unpleasant. If you are lucky, the basket stays upright. We were not. Our basket snagged and tipped over and was dragged along by the envelope, which fought the wind and did not want to go down, cold though it was by then. If there had been a fire in the brazier still, I suppose we would have set the meadow ablaze. As it was, we were tumbled about like toys. Bracata fell on top of me, as heavy as stone: and she had the claws of her mitts out, trying to dig them into the turf to stop herself, so that for a moment I thought I was going to be killed. Derek’s pike had been charged, and the ratchet released in the confusion; the head went flying across the field, just missing a cow.
By the time I recovered my breath and got to my feet, Clow had the envelope under control and was treading it down. Miles was up too, straightening his hauberk and sword-belt. “Look like a soldier,” he called to me. “Where are your weapons?”
A pincer-mace and my pike were all I had, and the pincer-mace had fallen out of the basket. After five minutes of looking, I found it in the tall grass, and went over to help Clow fold the envelope.