by Gene Wolfe
The Best of Gene Wolfe
Gene Wolfe
Thirty-one stories by the most distinguished creator of literary sf makes for a pretty indispensable volume. Of course, “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” and “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”—recognized as classics for many years now—are here. So are such objects of amused contemplation (on account of their titles) well before they are read (and as amusedly enjoyed) as “The Hero as Werewolf,” “The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton” (steampunk with more than one difference), “Seven American Nights” (an account of archaeology of the future), and “Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?” written in homage to the witty Catholic sf (and historical) novelist R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002). Each of those and the rest of these stories characteristically begin at a point from which Wolfe diverges in a number of different directions—with just how many depending, surprisingly enough, on the particular reader.
The Best of Gene Wolfe
(A collection of stories.)
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories
Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half-buried write in the wet sand Tackman Babcock.
Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying your work.
Home is the big house on Settlers Island, but Settlers Island, so called, is not really an island and for that reason is not named or accurately delineated on maps. Smash a barnacle with a stone and you will see inside the shape from which the beautiful barnacle goose takes its name. There is a thin and flaccid organ which is the goose’s neck and the mollusc’s siphon, and a shapeless body with tiny wings. Settlers Island is like that.
The goose neck is a strip of land down which a county road runs. By whim, the mapmakers usually exaggerate the width of this and give no information to indicate that it is scarcely above the high tide. Thus Settlers Island appears to be a mere protuberance on the coast, not requiring a name—and since the village of eight or ten houses has none, nothing shows on the map but the spider line of road terminating at the sea.
The village has no name, but home has two: a near and a far designation. On the island, and on the mainland nearby, it is called the Seaview place because in the earliest years of the century it was operated as a resort hotel. Mama calls it The House of 31 February, and that is on her stationery and is presumably used by her friends in New York and Philadelphia when they do not simply say “Mrs. Babcock’s.” Home is four floors high in some places, less in others, and is completely surrounded by a veranda; it was once painted yellow, but the paint—outside—is mostly gone now and The House of 31 February is gray.
Jason comes out the front door with the little curly hairs on his chin trembling in the wind and his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his Levi’s. “Come on; you’re going into town with me. Your mother wants to rest.”
“Hey tough!” Into Jason’s Jaguar, feeling the leather upholstery soft and smelly; you fall asleep.
Awake in town, bright lights flashing in the car windows. Jason is gone and the car is growing cold; you wait for what seems a long time, looking out at the shop windows, the big gun on the hip of the policeman who walks past, the lost dog who is afraid of everyone, even you when you tap the glass and call to him.
Then Jason is back with packages to put behind the seat. “Are we going home now?”
He nods without looking at you, arranging his bundles so they won’t topple over, fastening his seat belt.
“I want to get out of the car.”
He looks at you.
“I want to go in a store. Come on, Jason.”
Jason sighs. “All right, the drugstore over there, okay? Just for a minute.”
The drugstore is as big as a supermarket, with long, bright aisles of glassware and notions and paper goods. Jason buys fluid for his lighter at the cigarette counter, and you bring him a book from a revolving wire rack. “Please, Jason?”
He takes it from you and replaces it in the rack, then when you are in the car again takes it from under his jacket and gives it to you.
It is a wonderful book, thick and heavy, with the edges of the pages tinted yellow. The covers are glossy stiff cardboard, and on the front is a picture of a man in rags fighting a thing partly like an ape and partly like a man, but much worse than either. The picture is in color, and there is real blood on the ape-thing; the man is muscular and handsome, with tawny hair lighter than Jason’s and no beard.
“You like that?”
You are out of town already, and without the streetlights it’s too dark in the car, almost, to see the picture. You nod.
Jason laughs. “That’s camp. Did you know that?”
You shrug, riffling the pages under your thumb, thinking of reading, alone, in your room tonight.
“You going to tell your mom how nice I was to you?”
“Uh-huh, sure. You want me to?”
“Tomorrow, not tonight. I think she’ll be asleep when we get back. Don’t you wake her up.” Jason’s voice says he will be angry if you do.
“Okay.”
“Don’t come in her room.”
“Okay.”
The Jaguar says hutntntaaa . . . down the road, and you can see the whitecaps in the moonlight now, and the driftwood pushed just off the asphalt.
“You got a nice, soft mommy, you know that? When I climb on her it’s just like being on a big pillow.”
You nod, remembering the times when, lonely and frightened by dreams, you have crawled into her bed and snuggled against her soft warmth—but at the same time angry, knowing Jason is somehow deriding you both.
Home is silent and dark, and you leave Jason as soon as you can, bounding off down the hall and up the stairs ahead of him, up a second, narrow, twisted flight to your own room in the turret.
I had this story from a man who was breaking his word in telling it. How much it has suffered in his hands—I should say in his mouth, rather—I cannot say. In essentials it is true, and I give it to you as it was given to me. This is the story he told.
Captain Phillip Ransom had been adrift, alone, for nine days when he saw the island. It was already late evening when it appeared like a thin line of purple on the horizon, but Ransom did not sleep that night. There was no feeble questioning in his wakeful mind concerning the reality of what he had seen; he had been given that one glimpse and he knew. Instead his brain teemed with facts and speculations. He knew he must be somewhere near New Guinea, and he reviewed mentally what he knew of the currents in these waters and what he had learned in the past nine days of the behavior of his raft. The island when he reached it—he did not allow himself to if—would in all probability be solid jungle a few feet back from the water’s edge. There might or might not be natives, but he brought to mind all he could of the Bazaar Malay and Tagalog he had acquired in his years as a pilot, plantation manager, white hunter, and professional fighting man in the Pacific.
In the morning he saw that purple shadow on the horizon again, a little nearer this time and almost precisely where his mental calculations had told him to expect it. For nine days there had been no reason to employ the inadequate paddles provided with the raft, but now he had something to row for. Ransom drank the last of his water and began stroking with a steady and powerful beat which was not interrupted until the prow of his rubber craft ground into beach sand.
* * *
Morning.
You are slowly awake. Your eyes feel gummy, and the light over your bed is still on. Downstairs there is no one, so you get a bowl and milk and puffed, sugary cereal out for yourself and light the oven with a kitchen match so that you can eat and read by its open door. When the cereal is gone you drink the sweet milk and crumbs in the bottom of the bowl and start a pot of coffee, knowing that will please Mother. Jason comes down, dressed but not wanting to talk; drinks coffee and makes one piece of cinnamon toast in the oven. You listen to him leave, the stretched buzzing of his car on the road, then go up to Mother’s room.
She is awake, her eyes open looking at the ceiling, but you know she isn’t ready to get up yet. Very politely, because that minimizes the chances of being shouted at, you say, “How are you feeling this morning, Mama?”
She rolls her head to look. “Strung out. What time is it, Tackie?”
You look at the little folding clock on her dresser. “Seventeen minutes after eight.”
“Jason go?”
“Yes, just now, Mama.”
She is looking at the ceiling again. “You go back downstairs now, Tackie. I’ll get you something when I feel better.”
Downstairs you put on your sheepskin coat and go out on the veranda to look at the sea. There are gulls riding the icy wind, and very far off something orange bobbing in the waves, always closer.
A life raft. You run to the beach, jump up and down, and wave your cap. “Over here. Over here.”
The man from the raft has no shirt, but the cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He holds out his hand and says, “Captain Ransom,” and you take it and are suddenly taller and older; not as tall as he is or as old as he is, but taller and older than yourself. “Tackman Babcock, Captain.”
“Pleased to meet you. You were a friend in need there a minute ago.”
“I guess I didn’t do anything but welcome you ashore.”
“The sound of your voice gave me something to steer for while my eyes were too busy watching that surf. Now you can tell me where I’ve landed and who you are.”
You are walking back up to the house now, and you explain to Ransom about you and Mother, and how she doesn’t want to enroll you in the school here because she is trying to get you into the private school your father went to once. And after a time there is nothing more to say, and you show Ransom one of the empty rooms on the third floor where he can rest and do whatever he wants. Then you go back to your own room to read.
“Do you mean that you made these monsters?”
“Made them?” Dr. Death leaned forward, a cruel smile playing about his lips. “Did God make Eve, Captain, when he took her from Adam’s rib? Or did Adam make the bone and God alter it to become what he wished? Look at it this way, Captain. I am God and Nature is Adam.”
Ransom looked at the thing who grasped his right arm with hands that might have circled a utility pole as easily. “Do you mean that this thing is an animal?”
“Not an animal,” the monster said, wrenching his arm cruelly. “Man.”
Dr. Death’s smile broadened. “Yes, Captain, man. The question is, what are you? When I’m finished with you we’ll see. Dulling your mind will be less of a problem than upgrading these poor brutes; but what about increasing the efficacy of your sense of smell? Not to mention rendering it impossible for you to walk erect.”
“Not to walk all-four-on-ground,” the beast-man holding Ransom muttered, “that is the law.”
Dr. Death turned and called to the shambling hunchback Ransom had seen earlier, “Colo, see to it that Captain Ransom is securely put away; then prepare the surgery.”
A car. Not Jason’s noisy Jaguar, but a quiet, large-sounding car. By heaving up the narrow, tight little window at the corner of the turret and sticking your head out into the cold wind you can see it: Dr. Black’s big one, with the roof and hood all shiny with new wax.
Downstairs Dr. Black is hanging up an overcoat with a collar of fur, and you smell the old cigar smoke in his clothing before you see him; then Aunt May and Aunt Julie are there to keep you occupied so that he won’t be reminded too vividly that marrying Mama means getting you as well. They talk to you: “How have you been, Tackie? What do you find to do out here all day?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Don’t you ever go looking for shells on the beach?”
“I guess so.”
“You’re a handsome boy; do you know that?” Aunt May touches your nose with a scarlet-tipped finger and holds it there.
Aunt May is Mother’s sister, but older and not as pretty. Aunt Julie is Papa’s sister, a tall lady with a pulled-out, unhappy face, and makes you think of him even when you know she only wants Mama to get married again so that Papa won’t have to send her any more money.
Mama herself is downstairs now in a clean new dress with long sleeves. She laughs at Dr. Black’s jokes and holds on to his arm, and you think how nice her hair looks and that you will tell her so when you are alone. Dr. Black says, “How about it, Barbara, are you ready for the party?” and Mother, “Heavens no. You know what this place is like—yesterday I spent all day cleaning and today you can’t even see what I did. But Julie and May will help me.”
Dr. Black laughs. “After lunch.”
You get into his big car with the others and go to a restaurant on the edge of a cliff, with a picture window to see the ocean. Dr. Black orders a sandwich for you that has turkey and bacon and three pieces of bread, but you are finished before the grown-ups have started, and when you try to talk to Mother, Aunt May sends you out to where there is a railing with wire to fill in the spaces like chicken wire, only heavier, to look at the view.
It is really not much higher than the top window at home. Maybe a little higher. You put the toes of your shoes in the wire and bend out with your stomach against the rail to look down, but a grown-up pulls you down and tells you not to do it, then goes away. You do it again, and there are rocks at the bottom which the waves wash over in a neat way, covering them up and then pulling back. Someone touches your elbow, but you pay no attention for a minute, watching the water.
Then you get down, and the man standing beside you is Dr. Death.
He has a white scarf and black leather gloves and his hair is shiny black. His face is not tanned like Captain Ransom’s but white, and handsome in a different way like the statue of a head that used to be in Papa’s library when you and Mother used to live in town with him, and you think: Mama would say after he was gone how good-looking he was. He smiles at you, but you are no older.
“Hi.” What else can you say?
“Good afternoon, Mr. Babcock. I’m afraid I startled you.”
You shrug. “A little bit. I didn’t expect you to be here, I guess.”
Dr. Death turns his back to the wind to light a cigarette he takes from a gold case. It is longer even than a 101 and has a red tip, and a gold dragon on the paper. “While you were looking down, I slipped from between the pages of the excellent novel you have in your coat pocket.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Oh, yes. I’ll be around from time to time.”
“Captain Ransom is here already. He’ll kill you.”
Dr. Death smiles and shakes his head. “Hardly. You see, Tackman, Ransom and I are a bit like wrestlers; under various guises we put on our show again and again—but only under the spotlight.” He flicks his cigarette over the rail and for a moment your eyes follow the bright spark out and down and see it vanish in the water. When you look back, Dr. Death is gone, and you are getting cold. You go back into the restaurant and get a free mint candy where the cash register is and then go to sit beside Aunt May again in time to have coconut cream pie and hot chocolate.
Aunt May drops out of the conversation long enough to ask, “Who was that man you were talking to, Tackie?”
“A man.”
In the car Mama sits close to Dr. Black, with Aunt Julie on the other side of her so she will have to, and Aunt May sits way up on the edge of her
seat with her head in between theirs so they can all talk. It is gray and cold outside; you think of how long it will be before you are home again, and take the book out.
Ransom heard them coming and flattened himself against the wall beside the door of his cell. There was no way out, he knew, save through that iron portal.
For the past four hours he had been testing every surface of the stone room for a possible exit, and there was none. Floor, walls, and ceiling were of cyclopean stone blocks; the windowless door of solid metal locked outside.
Nearer. He tensed every muscle and knotted his fists.
Nearer. The shambling steps halted. There was a rattle of keys and the door swung back. Like a thunderbolt of purpose he dived through the opening. A hideous face loomed above him and he sent his right fist crashing into it, knocking the lumbering beast-man to his knees. Two hairy arms pinioned him from behind, but he fought free and the monster reeled under his blows. The corridor stretched ahead of him with a dim glow of daylight at the end and he sprinted for it. Then—darkness!
When he recovered consciousness he found himself already erect, strapped to the wall of a brilliantly lit room which seemed to share the characters of a surgical theater and a chemical laboratory. Directly before his eyes stood a bulky object which he knew must be an operating table, and upon it, covered with a sheet, lay the unmistakable form of a human being.
He had hardly had time to comprehend the situation when Dr. Death entered, no longer in the elegant evening dress in which Ransom had beheld him last, but wearing white surgical clothing. Behind him limped the hideous Golo, carrying a tray of implements.
“Ah!” Seeing that his prisoner was conscious, Dr. Death strolled across the room and raised a hand as though to strike him in the face, but, when Ransom did not flinch, dropped it, smiling. “My dear Captain! You are with us again, I see.”
“I hoped for a minute there,” Ransom said levelly, “that I was away from you. Mind telling me what got me?”