Storeys from the Old Hotel

by Gene Wolfe

  Smith said, “You seem to have eliminated everyone—except yourself.”

  The KGB officer smiled. “I have eliminated myself as well, Comrade. I know that I did not steal my own steak knife.

  “Now we must ask ourselves how this murder was accomplished. I propose to you that the answer is one we have seen already—it is the answer to the question: How did Comrade Merry know she could reenter the spacecraft without being observed? The answer, as we have seen, was that she had a confederate. The murderer also had a confederate. This is the only way in which this crime could have been committed.

  “So I have asked myself who among you might have such assistance. Let us go around again. Comrade Koroviev knew no one on this spacecraft except Comrade Merry and her clone. The Petrovskys knew the same two and each other, but no one else. Comrade Cherry we may dismiss. Comrade Smith knew no one, so far as I have been able to discover. Comrade Merry knew Comrade Koroviev, the Petrovskys, and Captain Bogdanoff, but no one else, and as we have seen, none of them could have committed this crime. That leaves us with Captain Bogdanoff.” She paused, and smiled again.

  “Captain Bogdanoff knows at least a dozen people very well—people whom we have not even considered thus far, because we ourselves do not know them. I mean the members of his crew, his subordinates.”

  “Comrade!” The Captain rose from his chair. “Are you accusing me?”

  “I am. You will sit down, Captain. I have already radioed Moscow, and at any moment your first officer should receive orders to place you under arrest.”

  The bureaucrat said, “But Comrade, if he was assisted by one of his men …”

  “I do not believe he was,” the KGB officer told him. “I have questioned them, and in any event it seems unlikely. He had another, much safer, confederate. It is he who controls the programming of the robots.”

  For a moment no one spoke. The Captain looked stricken.

  “Much earlier I spoke of the three legs supporting the camera that gives us a picture of the murderer. You will recall that they are motive, means and opportunity. Since we are already dealing with opportunity, we shall consider them now in reverse order.

  “Of the eight who sat at that table, only Captain Bogdanoff could have nullified a robot’s basic directives so that it would commit the crime. He is thoroughly familiar with cybernetics, as all cosmonauts must be, and only he and the first officer know the access code required. A robot operated the air lock controls.

  “Of the eight, only he could have cut the rope. It was he who provided it, and since the rope was coiled the cut would not have shown if it was inside the coil. All that would be necessary would be to leave a few threads uncut so that the ends would not separate. So much for opportunity.

  “We now consider means. Of the eight, any of us could have taken my knife, but Captain Bogdanoff was in the ideal position to do so. He sat on my immediate left, which is to say that my platter was at his right hand.

  “Last, motive. Captain Bogdanoff’s wife is the daughter of an important official of the party-I hope you will excuse me if I do not name him. Suppose he were to hear that his son-in-law had been intimate with an American entertainer? Comrade Merry, as we have seen, is not reluctant to speak of it. We may presume that Comrade Cherry, who was her second self, was not either. No doubt he initially believed they would be discreet, and only later realized that they would not.”

  Earth seemed no more than a distant star, and Mars, round and red as the sun glimpsed through fog, grew until it filled the viewpoints. The blonde was packing her bags when Smith rapped at the door of her compartment.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  She hesitated.

  “It will only take a moment.”

  She opened the door more widely, and he sailed through and settled expertly into a vacuum chair. “Gravity again soon,” he said. “We won’t have to take those shots to keep our bones from melting anymore.”

  “Uh huh. Actually, I kind of enjoy floating.” There was one other chair, and she had taken it.

  “Me too. I suppose I was just making conversation.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s such a relief to speak English.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “We’ll both be pretty lonely on Mars. We’ll both be travelling, too. I’ve got some flexibility as to where I go, and I’m sure Koroviev could juggle your dates a little. It might be possible for us to be together most of the time.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “I don’t think … No.”

  “Well, would it be all right if I called you? If it ever happens we’re in the same place? We could have dinner together.”

  She shook her head.

  “You were a lot more friendly that first evening at the Captain’s table.”

  “That was Cherry.”

  “I see.” Smith nodded.

  “Did you hear about Vera Oussenko? They’ve got her locked up. They’re not even going to let her off on Mars. Straight back to the Terrestrial USSR.”

  He shrugged. “She said herself that the Captain’s wife was the daughter of a party official. She must have known the risk.”

  “I still don’t see how they can do it.”

  “She was the only one no one else would vouch for at the time of the killing. She said she was behind me, but I didn’t see her. And it was her knife.”

  “I mean, because she was KGB. I guess even if you are, if you over-step …” the blonde shrugged, letting the sentence trail off.

  “It’s the same for us Americans, Cherry. If you go too far and the law finds out, it’s all over.”

  “I’m Merry.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got a bug detector in my pocket, and if they were ever listening in here—and I suppose they were, since that KGB woman seemed to know all about the Captain—they aren’t now. With her gone, the system’s probably run out of tape and shut itself down.”

  “I’m Merry. You’re guessing.”

  A slight smile tugged at the corners of Smith’s mouth. “You want me to tell you how the trick actually worked?”

  “No!”

  “All right, then we’ll begin with you and Merry. While I was sitting between you two at the Captain’s dinner, I started wondering what she wanted you for. I knew why I wanted you already—but what about her? I knew you must have cost her a small fortune.” He paused. “Are you going to tell me to get out?”

  The blonde said nothing.

  “So I thought about it a bit. And there was only one reason I could see. Sure, an identical twin clone might be a handy thing for a magician to have. But a quarter million or so? Then too, at least half the value of the clone would be lost if everyone knew about her, and thanks to the scientific notoriety, everyone seemed to know about you. What was left, as far as I could see, was life insurance. The clone could do the really hazardous stunts. It didn’t seem very fair.”

  So swiftly he almost missed it, she glanced at him, then down at her lap again.

  “And here the great Merry Houdini was going to pull a very dangerous stunt on board. I decided then that I’d keep an eye on you both to see if you’d switch roles.”

  “Could you tell?” It was a whisper.

  Smith shook his head. “No. In fact, for a while you pretty well had me convinced you hadn’t. I thought that maybe Merry figured you weren’t up to it yet.”

  “You’re right,” the blonde said. “I’m Cherry. But I’ll never admit that to anybody else, and I didn’t kill her. How could I have?”

  He grinned. “You’re going to make me explain the stunt. All right, I will. It was risky, but nowhere near as risky as that loony thing the KGB woman dreamed up. Anyway, I knew that couldn’t be right because I was sure there’d been no hidden compartment in the lid of the tool chest. I remember seeing it when the two of you opened it, and it was a flat piece of steel. Even so, I didn’t really understand what you’d done until a couple of days afterward.


  “There was no secret compartment. But when you—pretending to be Merry—climbed into the chest, you had a few little items hidden on your person. Since you had on a dress with a full skirt, my guess is that they were taped to your thigh. One of them was a little tube of sealant.”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible.

  “As soon as Merry—wearing your red costume—shut the lid, you got the sealant out and went around the crack with it. Doing that in the dark would have been a pretty tough job, so I suspect you had one of those little penlights too.

  “Meantime, the Captain was snapping on the lock Merry had given him, and Merry was tying one end of that coil of nylon safety line to the handle of the box and the other to the cleat that the Captain had got welded to the wall for you. The Captain said, and probably believed, that he was the one who had insisted on that precaution; but my guess is that Merry psyched him into it, which shouldn’t have been too hard. If he hadn’t bought the idea, she would have insisted on it, or maybe used something else, like a telephone wire.

  “But what did Merry do when she had both ends tied? Let go of the coil and let it float there? No, she put it over the cleat, just as if she were hanging it on the wall down on Earth. All of us were so used to seeing that kind of thing that we didn’t pay much attention.

  “Then everybody backed off. The inside hatch was shut and the outside hatch opened. The rush of air ought to have blown the floating chest out, just like the Captain said it would. Only it couldn’t, and it didn’t. I tried the idea out later; I cut a cleat out of cardboard and made a rope by tying a pair of shoelaces together. And when you hang the coil over the cleat the way Merry did, and then pull the end, it doesn’t uncoil. The first loop just tightens until it grabs the cleat. That chest never went out the air lock at all. It was moored, anchored in the lock.

  “So there you were. You were inside the chest, with no air on the outside, but you were still in the Red Star. You had sealed the top, and there must have been enough air inside to last you for at least half an hour if you didn’t start thrashing around. All Merry had to do was wait until the rest of us ran out to look for you through the viewports.

  “We saw you too, or at least we thought we did. Because your Russian manager, Koroviev, was at one of the utility air locks with another tool chest. This one had been gimmicked in advance; there was a piece of rope tied to the handle, and the lid was held closed by the sort of stuff that KGB woman thought you’d used in the lock—this was a whole lot easier, of course, because all you had to do was slap some on. My guess is that heavy grease would have done it. Anyway, it held the lid down, whatever it was, until it boiled off in space. Inside the chest was a dummy arm on a spring. As soon as the grease was gone, that pushed against the lid enough to open it a little, and all of us saw what we thought was your hand.

  “In the meantime, as soon as she was sure the coast was clear, Merry closed the outer hatch, opened the inner one, and let you out. She didn’t even have to pick the lock; she probably had the key stuck down the front of her dress.

  “But you had something else stashed away besides the tube of gunk and your little light. You had the KGB woman’s knife. Why did you pick her, anyway? Did you know she was KGB?”

  Cherry shook her head. Her eyes were bright with tears, though she was not sobbing. “She was just the farthest away, and I hadn’t liked the way she held my hand. It was as though I had another boss.”

  “Somebody else to take the cash and the glory while you took the orders? And the chances. Yes, I can see that. That’s what made me sure you two had switched identities—Merry had no reason to kill you, but you had a couple of swell ones for killing Merry. Do I have to go on with this?”

  “No. Merry unlocked the box and let me out, and I was waiting for her. Twice before I had tried to hit her back, and I knew how fast she was. Faster than I am, I guess because she’d had more practice. I had my knife all ready. She had to pull the lid and the box apart because of the stickum, so her arms were spread out.” The blonde demonstrated, one arm up and one down. “And I pushed it right into her chest. I stuck it in so hard it made the box and me fly back and bang against the outside door. I hadn’t thought of that, and I was afraid somebody would hear it, but I guess all of you were making too much noise yourselves.

  “Then I took the box into one of the service corridors and hid it. Merry had been supposed to help me with that, but it wasn’t hard. I just pulled it along with the rope. I had to wait there myself until I was sure the other box was far enough away that nobody could see the fake hand. Then I came out.”

  Smith nodded. “And by then I had already found Merry. But Merry in your red dress, so I thought it was you.”

  “Are you going to tell them? I mean, you’re not going to tell them here, I know that from what you said before. But when we get back home?”

  “I don’t know,” Smith said. “It all depends on how things go on Mars.” He glanced toward the swollen crimson sphere in the viewport.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you there? Murder you too? I killed her, after all. I don’t even feel bad about it. Only bad because you found out.”

  “You’ve never been a child,” Smith said. “Never had the time to develop a conscience. That was something Merry forgot about.” He hesitated. “No, I’m not frightened. Not much. I’ve seen you and talked to you and you’re worth the risk.”

  “I think you are too,” Cherry said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’re a more dangerous person than I am. You’re a spy of some sort, aren’t you? Even the Russians guess that, and part of the reason you won’t turn me in is that it looks better if a Russian killed Cherry than if I killed Merry. Anyway, anybody who thinks the way you do is dangerous.”

  Smith chuckled. “You’ll have to risk it.”

  “I think I want to risk it. Smitty, are there children on Mars?”

  “A few, I think. Not many yet. Why?”

  “Because like you said I’ve never been one. I mean, it went by so fast. I want to see what they do. Maybe play with them.”

  Smith got out of the vacuum chair and allowed himself to drift toward the center of the room. “This is fun, all right,” he said. “I’m really sorry I won’t be able to do it much longer. Listen, Cherry, I grew up at the regular speed in the regular way, and it seems awfully short to me too now.”

  “You’d better call me Merry, so you get used to it. There are bank accounts and things.”

  “I’ll bet. If she could spend a quarter million for you, there must be quite a bit more. All those TV specials. Do you know what first put me on to you—Merry?”

  The blonde shook her head.

  “The dessert. The way you looked when I told you about the year of the jubilee, when the poor relations got their land back. Your eyes got round. You’re very pretty when your eyes get round.”

  “You said it was radical economics, and it was. This is too, I suppose. You’ve just gotten yourself a girl on Mars—all through radical economics.”

  “You’re right,” Smith told her. “But I wish I could have gotten my girl the way you got your man.”

  Redbeard

  IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW HOWIE AND I BECAME FRIENDS, except that our friendship was unusual. I’m one of those people who’ve moved into the area since … Since what? I don’t know; someday I’ll have to ask Howie. Since the end of the sixties or the Truman Administration or the Second World War. Since something.

  Anyway, after Mara and I came with our little boy, John, we grew conscious of an older strata. They are the people who were living here before. Howie is one of them; his grandparents are buried in the little family cemeteries that are or used to be attached to farms—all within twenty miles of my desk. Those people are still here, practically all of them, like the old trees that stand among the new houses.

  By and large we don’t mix much. We’re only dimly aware of them, and perhaps they’re only dimly aware of us. Our friend
s are new people too, and on Sunday mornings we cut the grass together. Their friends are the children of their parents’ friends, and their own uncles and cousins; on Sunday mornings they go to the old clapboard churches.

  Howie was the exception, as I said. We were driving down U.S. 27—or rather, Howie was driving, and I was sitting beside him smoking a cigar and having a look around. I saw a gate that was falling down, with a light that was leaning way over, and beyond it, just glimpsed, a big, old, tumbledown wooden house with young trees sprouting in the front yard. It must have had about ten acres of ground, but there was a boarded up fried-chicken franchise on one side of it and a service station on the other.

  “That’s Redbeard’s place,” Howie told me.

  I thought it was a family name, perhaps an anglicization of Barbarossa. I said, “It looks like a haunted house.”

  “It is,” Howie said. “For me, anyway. I can’t go in there.”

  We hit a chuck hole, and I looked over at him.

  “I tried a couple times. Soon as I set my foot on that step, something says, ‘This is as far as you go, Buster,’ and I turn around and head home.”

  After a while I asked him who Redbeard was.

  “This used to be just a country road,” Howie said. “They made it a Federal Highway back about the time I was born, and it got a lot of cars and trucks and stuff on it. Now the Interstate’s come through, and it’s going back to about what it was.

  “Back before, a man name of Jackson used to live there. I don’t think anybody thought he was much different, except he didn’t get married till he was forty or so. But then, a lot of people around here used to do that. He married a girl named Sarah Sutter.”